Vice Bunker 45 (Patreon)

Vice Bunker

Chapter 45

-VB-

I stared up at the new pillar of technological backassery and scrap tech peak.

It was a fusion power plant but one made to generate as much heat as possible. It was … it was technically an inefficient and useless piece of junk that can only heat something, but in a world where everything had frozen over, I supposed that this was the best that I was going to be able to work with.

There were other technology, of course, that I could use to heat up the city, but they weren’t efficient at generating heat like a very inefficient fusion power plant. Also, I didn’t have access to fossil fuels in abundance. On top of that, I did have water everywhere and a way to filter water for deutrinium and tritium.

“So this will …?”

I looked to my left and saw Kali standing there. She, like the rest of the girls except Sophia, was pregnant and closing in on her third trimester. So even while wearing a heavy winter coat, her pregnany was prominent on her figure.

“Heat up some of the area around, yes, but it’ll be used to heat up water instead of just uselessly emitting heat,” I said. “That’s what the water lines are.”

“Hmm,” she hummed as she looked around at the two dozen pipes leading out of the pillar fusion plant. Each pipe would pump at least a thirty gallons per second at a temperature of 80 degree Celcius at the start of the line and reaching somewhere around 30 degrees Celcius at the end of the line at the end of it. So far, each pipe could only heat up three dozen buildings with each building down the line growing colder and colder while the first two buildings were actually too hot for human habitation.

This was the fifth pillar that I have built so far, and people have, expectedly, began to move out of the bunker and into the refurbished buildings that are connected to the pillar fusion plants. There have been, however, also those who decided that the surface was not worth the effort and were settling down in full in my underground bunker-city.

At this point, it really was a city with large caverns bigger than some malls with trees, grass, and artificial sunlight, the last of which was actually not available in its natural form on the surface beyond what bled through the constantly present thick clouds.

A constant sky of rain, snow, and grey didn’t make for a place for good mental health, unlike my underground parks that looked like it had a real sky. Also, contrary to expectations, the knowledge that the sky was fake didn’t make people dislike it. In fact, most people appreciated it more. The ones who didn’t appreciate the fake sky in the underground mega park were specific types of people: artsy, philosophical, pessimistic, and negative. But I don’t cater to people. They lived in my kingdom and lived to see fake skies, fusion power plants, and survive through the apocalypse because of my generosity. I didn’t have to do anything more than the bare minimum!

PRT ENE’s people in their bunker were begging to come over, but I kept refusing.

Some people just didn’t know how good they had it and only complained about what they didn’t have. The grass was always fucking greener on the other side.

… Maybe that should be a punishment for people who commit crimes in my fiefdom. Since stealing to survive was not possible with how freely I offered food, clothes, shelter, and even entertainment (I saved quite a number of books), stealing was a crime done to harm others or for the sake of adrenaline here. For people like them, what was the best adrenaline rush if not the adrenaline needed to survive out there in the ruins of America?

Yeah, I liked that idea. Exile would be a “humane” punishment for crimes. Certainly better than what I did to Sophia.

“How much further are you going to expand this heating network?” Kali asked me while looking around.

I also looked around and saw a number of my people walking about on the surface now. With how warm it was, some of them didn’t even wear their outdoors winter coat anymore around any of the buildings supplied by the pillar fusion plant.

“They’re not tinkertech, but I still don’t want to expand so much that I’ll be stuck with a majority of my bodies doing maintenance and chekcs on them everyday,” I replied. “For now, I’ll keep them as they are. Maybe I’ll even need to train a few people to look after them.”

“It would be ideal if you didn’t have to spend a lot of time on them, yes,” she agreed with me. “Besides, that’ll make all of us girls unhappy.”

I chortled. “Oh?”

“Oh yes,” she crooned. “You realize that some of the girls have been rather … antsy.”

“Hmm?”

“Just because we’re pregnant doesn’t mean we don’t want to have sex, Alan. We definitely do.”

“... Oh.”

“Oh, yes,” she huffed. “Don’t keep us waiting, alright? Once we get into the last half of the trimester, then we really shouldn’t have sex, but now isn’t that time yet.”

After that, she walked away, leaving me pondering just how many clones I would need to start with when I walked into our bedroom for sexy time later today.