The team led by My Black finally passed through the mountains of obstacles and metabolites and arrived at the dust-free warehouse where the black boxes were stored.
Looking at the mission coordinates on the map, all the players breathed a brief sigh of relief.
This straight-line distance of less than two hundred meters is simply longer than a kilometer of cross-country travel, especially when bugs suddenly emerge from the shadows and challenge their SAN values from time to time.
"I'm going to open the door.
I was the darkest person leaning on one side of the warehouse door. I made a gesture to my teammates who were leaning on the other side, and then punched the mechanical button that manually opened the movable door.
Along with the sound of air leakage, dry air blew out from the door, blowing away the dust stuck to the crack of the door.
Several gun barrels were quickly fired into the door, and the flashlight light quickly scanned every corner of the dark room. When I confirmed that there was no threat, a trace of surprise appeared on my darkest face.
He originally thought that there would be strict protection here, and he was even prepared for a hard fight. However, the actual situation was completely opposite to what he imagined.
Ling Ding, who was following everyone, teased him unceremoniously.
"Positive pressure sealing is the basic configuration of the dust-free workshop. I thought you should know it when you see the wind blowing out. There is no way that unclean dirt can get in here."
After saying that, it climbed into the house, operated the spider robot, stretched out a leg, and pressed the switch on the inside of the wall.
White lights illuminate the entire dark room.
I was most embarrassed and turned off the tactical flashlight and lowered the muzzle of the gun in my hand.
Strange....
So where did the inexplicable uneasy feeling from just now come from?
However, the weird feeling in his heart did not last long, and was replaced by the surprises that followed almost instantly.
In the wide warehouse, on the side near the freight elevator, square black boxes of different sizes stood proudly.
Seeing those black boxes, the eyes of the players who were following behind me suddenly glowed green, and they all let out shouts of surprise.
Although the current version of the black box does not support private possession by players, every time a new black box is recycled, all players in the entire server will benefit from it.
All the novelties produced by the black box can be purchased with silver coins, and things that can be purchased originally will become cheaper or the purchase threshold will be lowered due to the newly unlocked black box.
Even putting aside the impact on the overall strength of the alliance, individual players will receive generous silver coins and contribution point rewards for recycling black boxes.
The only uncertainty now is how many of these black boxes are still usable.
The peak population of Vault 100 reached over 80,000, and the consumption of supplies was no less than that of an ordinary settlement.
A dust-free working environment and professionally trained operators can extend the life of a black box, but the life of any black box is not permanent.
All I can do is pray that these treasures of pre-war civilization will not be completely ruined by the residents of Vault 100.
Otherwise they wouldn't have anything to waste!
Leaving five teammates to guard the door, I led the remaining four people into the warehouse and determined the function of the black box through the translator on the VM.
In fact, it doesn’t matter if you don’t use a translator.
The design concept of the black box itself assumes that the user is completely illiterate. Even a completely illiterate gorilla can make it function according to the instructions printed on the black box.
After careful inspection, there were a total of twenty-nine black boxes, and only twenty-two were functioning normally.
However, what is surprising is that the broken items are all small items that are worthless and can be replaced, such as the dome's light-emitting panels and the filter elements of the ventilation system. Almost all the "big items" that are truly valuable are left behind.
Among them, the most surprising thing for players is undoubtedly
Black box for the production of Type 5 "Light Cavalry" and Type 6 "Heavy Cavalry" exoskeletons!
These two sets of police equipment are not only handsome in appearance, but also have excellent overall performance. Although they are not suitable for high-intensity battlefields, it is not a big problem!
Just weld a steel plate on your chest and that's it!
Due to many advantages, these two sets of equipment have always been in limited quantity, and only a small amount is released in each version update.
Currently, only the Enlightenment faction in the entire wasteland has installed these two pre-war equipment on a large scale.
I still remember the previous battle in the desert. The Alliance seized two hundred sets of "Five Styles" from the Enlightenment Society at once, which made the administrator extremely happy.
If these two black boxes are moved back, will the favorability of the camp BOSS be increased to the sky?!
Let's see who dares to say that I have a bad face in the future!
However, the most surprising thing is not just the black box for producing the "Type 5" and "Type 6" exoskeletons, but the two big ones placed closest to the freight elevator.
One is a plasma engine that can produce 50 tons of thrust, and the other is an aviation-grade metal hydrogen battery that can produce hydrogen storage capacity of up to 10 tons! I finally understood the functions of these two black boxes, and I muttered to myself with joy.
language.
"Good guy! I have to open up Brother Mosquito's little ass this time!"
The Alliance previously recovered the technology related to the "big plane" from the wreckage of the Enterprise Orca transport plane, but it has not fully understood it until now.
Even after the Alliance absorbed engineers from Jushi Military Industry, the technological generation gap was still prohibitively large.
Based on the production conditions of Jushi Military Industry, the maximum thrust provided by a single plasma engine is only about five tons, which is at the same level as helicopter propellers before the Prosperity Era.
As for the killer whale transport aircraft, a large aircraft with a take-off weight of over 100 tons, there is no need to think about it. Twenty plasma engines produced by Jushi Military Industry must be connected in series!
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Now with these two black boxes and the electronic control system recovered from the killer whale transport aircraft, the alliance can build its own large plasma aircraft!
It is no exaggeration to say that this is the most profitable excavation operation for the Alliance from the relics of the pre-war era after Vault 79!!
"These two black boxes have almost never been used. After all, such powerful engines and batteries are not used in the shelter, and there are not so many surplus materials. My master was optimistic that the future of this coffin would be revealed in the future.
People will regard it as an antique collection, but it looks like
Son...you are indeed not joking. Not only do you not have a hundred colonized planets, you have not even flown out of the atmosphere.
Seeing the darkest expression on my face that had never seen the world, Zhong Ding walked up to him and complained slowly.
But I'm the blackest and I didn't feel offended at all, but hehe
He laughed and mocked back.
"What about you? You didn't even leave the house." Bell chuckled.
"That's hard to say."
Seeing its weird smile, I couldn't help but feel slightly alert.
"What's the meaning."
Not paying attention to his alert expression, Ling Ding spoke slowly in a story-telling tone.
"Didn't you say before that you saw Ga Bang outside? It's the Ghost-faced Insect you were talking about. This shows that they succeeded in the end. Hahaha, they are really a group of persevering people. No wonder my master admires them so much.
Bell seems to be in a happy mood.
If this AI has such a thing as emotions, I was stunned for a moment.
"Success...what do you mean?"
"That's the literal meaning," Ling Dang said with a smile in a relaxed tone. "Although they didn't open the door of the shelter, they still managed to leave this prison. It's a pity. It's a pity that my master is dead, otherwise he would definitely be with me.
I also laughed out loud.
Didn't open the door of the shelter. But left the shelter?
I looked at the bell that sounded like metal friction and laughter with incomprehensible expression.
Is this refuge
Is there any other way out? "Is this possible?"
"Why do you ask such a question?" Ling Dang chuckled, "They have lived in the shelter for more than fifty years! Most of them have been in the shelter since they were born! They are familiar with every light bulb here.
very
Down to every screw, anyone who is literate can recite the rules of the shelter by heart... For them, it is easier than breathing to find loopholes in this shelter."
I can't help but feel dumb.
He originally thought that the defense of the shelter was absolute, but if he thought about it carefully, defense and destruction were relative concepts.
How can there be anything truly unbreakable in this world?
Even if it is a wall that can withstand a nuclear strike, it would take ten thousand years for an awl to dig through it. What's more, the people here have a weapon that is sharper than an awl - knowledge.
Suddenly, he seemed to realize something, his Adam's apple moved unconsciously, and the hand holding the rifle trembled slightly.
"What do you mean, those bugs..."
"If the window of the cell is not big enough, then saw off the arms. If cutting off the arms is not enough, then just send out the head... Is it a ventilation system? What a brilliant idea."
Bell clicked his tongue twice and talked to himself. However, the metallic sound that was light and cheerful a second ago was now filled with a hint of loneliness.
Or regret.
Listening to its monologue, I understood everything.
Why did this guy change the subject when I asked him where all those people had gone...
To escape from this prison.
After equipping "Gabeng" with weapons, they turned themselves into "Gabeng", and through perseverance, they drilled a "crack" in the ventilation system of the shelter just enough for them to leave.
”, finally successfully jailbroken.
They left this sanctuary many years ago.
The most direct evidence is the Direfaced Insect active outside the refuge.
Although whether they can still be called them, and what percentage of the souls of those residents they carry is hard to say.
At least none of the bugs I encountered outside looked like nuclear engineers or biologists.
Thinking of the honeycomb tower made of molted carapace in the courtyard, I squeezed out a sentence with the most difficulty.
"So... that past conflict was won by the majority of the Vault's residents?"
"Win?" There was a hint of confusion about this sentence. Ling Ding turned around and looked at him, "Do you think someone won?"
I took a deep breath and changed my question.
"So...where are the supervisors here? Where have they gone?" Lingdang smiled and said lightly.
"Ah, they, except for my master, all the supervisors who survived the disaster returned to the embrace of the tree. I haven't seen them since. Maybe they are still remembering the past on some circuit board, maybe with those bugs
The same has already left here, who knows? I am just a museum tour guide.
I stared at it blankly. "The embrace of the tree?"
Ling Ding said in a teasing tone.
"Yes, they believe that they come from a great tree and should be buried under the roots of the tree... This may be a little difficult for you to understand. In short, they uploaded their thoughts to the server of the sanctuary and gave up
He lost his body and became one with this refuge forever."
"But my master doesn't think they succeeded. He thinks they were more like leaving a memory and committing suicide collectively in fear of crime. And he chose to end his life in a human way."
When he said this, the bell opened his chat box and told everything that happened more than a hundred years ago.
Because of the scarcity and uneven distribution of resources, the conflicts between "tree people" and "worker ants" have been accumulating for a long time. Even though the living standards of both parties are continuing to decline, tree people, as distance sensing "trees"
part of the controller module, the rate of descent will still be slightly slower.
The trigger of the crisis was the climate resurgence event in Wasteland Era 50.
In the fifth year after the disintegration of the War and Construction Committee, signs of climate recovery gradually appeared in the wasteland. The residents of Vault 100, with their enthusiasm for rebuilding the wasteland and their yearning for a better life, re-emerged with the thoughts of the Era of Prosperity.
, while preparing for returning to the surface, they formed an autonomous industry committee of workers and engineers, planning to say goodbye to the past after returning to the surface, and stuff everything in Vault 100 into a coffin and bury it in the soil.
However, the sixty-three-year period has not yet arrived, and the behavior of the worker ants made the tree people panic.
They have spent their entire lives carefully pruning the branches and leaves of this great tree, fulfilling their responsibility as defenders of order, and blocking the "ant nests" drilled by the worker ants on the trunk.
Even if the fate of this big tree's ultimate collapse was set from the beginning, it would end its mission as a refuge after fulfilling its duty of shelter and become a casting well to continue to contribute to the rebirth of human civilization. However, the tree people did not want it.
Their mission also collapsed along with the big tree.
They tried to consult the worker ants, hoping to keep the tree in view of the many years of hard work.
It is not difficult to find loopholes in any human-designed rules. As long as you have the patience to look for them, you will definitely find them.
There is a condition that needs to be met to activate the dome's self-destruction program.
That is, the average daily number of detectable residents in the shelter remains below 5,000 for 180 consecutive days, or below 3,000 within 24 hours.
Only in this case will the Great Tree determine that the residents of Vault 100 no longer need to rely on its guidance and that they are capable of living outside their own sensors, and it will use the remaining resources to send children
Our last journey.
However, they can also take advantage of this.
As long as the worker ants stay with them, at least five thousand people are guaranteed to live in Shelter 100, making Shelter 100 think that its children still need it, so that it will not leave them.
However, this request, which had a commanding meaning, was ruthlessly rejected by the happy worker ants.
Almost all autonomous committees refused to communicate with the tree people on this matter.
This is a matter of course.
The worker ants have endured the cold and ruthless orders of the tree for too long. Even if they know in their heart that it is necessary for survival, they have no reason to keep it after it is no longer needed.
Let it die with this shelter.
Becoming a foundry well was originally part of its destiny.
Shelters should not be the end of human civilization. The ultimate fate of any shelter is to be demolished and used as raw materials for reconstruction.
As for the tree people, if you are so reluctant to part with it, then just go down with it.
Perhaps the tough attitude of the worker ants made the tree people feel the threat of liquidation. The tree people interfered with the organizations formed spontaneously by the worker ants, including cutting off water, electricity and supplies, and tried their best to provide these organizations with services within the limits allowed by the rules.
activities create trouble.
Although the conflicts between the two sides have become more and more intense, they have been restrained so far.
But what really lit the fuse was something that happened outside the shelter.
In the 52nd year of the Wasteland Era, the climate recovery lasted for two years.
The ice became loose before the door to Vault 100.
Melting snow and spreading lake water poured into the abandoned urban area of Xizhou City, and even poured into underground transportation tunnels.
The worker ants who were proud of the spring breeze were a little panicked. Although climate recovery is a happy thing, if the ice caps and snow on the surface continue to melt, their shelter may not be able to wait until the 60th year of the Wasteland Era.
Soak in water.
Some people think that the door should be opened immediately, at least some people should be allowed out, and the area where backflow may occur should be reinforced.
However, it is useless for the residents of the shelter to do so. The tree people must
Communicate this request to the manager of the shelter—the AI named Tree.
Of course, it was impossible for the tree people to do this. The lake water pouring into the tunnel not only did not cause them to panic, but made them gloomy and overjoyed.
Even though some supervisors believed that they should cooperate with the residents to fill this gap that anyone with a discerning eye could see, most supervisors still made a decision that suited their own needs - weakening this crisis that might flood the shelter into a crisis.
A meager drizzle.
As long as the "tree" is convinced that its designers have considered the possibility of water from Xizhou Lake pouring into the tunnel, and there is no need to make any superfluous additions to the already perfect rules, then it will continue to implement the original rules according to the established rules.
plan of.
This can even be used conversely to make the tree mistakenly judge that the climate recovery speed is faster than expected, thereby making wrong decisions based on wrong feedback factors and continuing to extend the closure period.
From this sixty-three years turned into seventy years.
Although it is only seven years, for the first generation residents who are already ninety years old, this will mean that their funerals will be held in the shelter, and they may never be able to see the giant gear-shaped door.
The day it opens.
For shelter residents who are still young, these seven years can be
It may mean that his youth will be exhausted in the shelter, and his life plans and preparations for rebuilding the wasteland in the past few years will become nothing.
After all, a shelter with 80,000 people is still too small, and the space in Vault 100 is too crowded. Any slight emotion may become explosives stuffed into a powder keg.
The first riot occurred quickly and ended with the deaths of 879 ordinary residents and 37 supervisors.
The blood temporarily calmed everyone down.
Everyone's corpses are put into the nutrient recycling device and turned into fertilizers and nutrients for ecological recycling.
Although some shelter residents have died of natural causes in the past and their bodies have been recycled by the shelter's ecological recycling system, this is undoubtedly the largest number of deaths.
So much so that most people who originally didn't want to know are forced to learn where their food comes from.
Later, rumors spread that the bodies of the supervisors were not sent to the nutrient recovery device, but were secretly cremated by their families.
No matter how much the tree people deny it, it has lost its meaning. Under a development that everyone can foresee, the conflict between the tree people and the worker ants has been further intensified.
In the 56th year of the Wasteland Era, the lake had almost flooded the gate of the shelter. Just when the tree people were planning to sink the shelter into the water forever, the second organized uprising broke out.
Engineers at the Biological Research Station spent three years modifying the genes of Ga Bang. The staff of the breeding farm released them through deliberate illegal operations, attracting the attention of the tree people. While the tree people jumped up and down to kill the bugs, the entire refuge
All the workplaces in the institute launched an uprising at almost the same time.
Since a large amount of mechanical equipment and even biological weapons were invested in this battle, the aftermath of this riot exceeded everyone's expectations.
A total of more than 77,000 people disappeared or died in the riots, including 645 supervisors.
In the end, there were only 111 surviving supervisors, and the owner of the bell, the supervisor named Craig, was among them.
The battle between the two sides was not limited to gun battles and scuffles over operating engineering equipment, but also included a series of regular weapons.
For example, during the battle, the tree people tried to use the power of trees to put sleeping gas into the residential areas densely populated by worker ants to suppress the riots.
However, their plan was discovered in advance by the worker ants who were responsible for repairing the exhaust pipes. They used a few milligrams of ozone to fool the air detection device in the residential area, passively activated the ventilation system of the shelter, and discharged the gas into the wasteland.
Seeing that they were about to lose all hope, the worker ants also tried to take advantage of the power of rules and moved some residents to the cold storage where food was stored. They tried to deceive the life detection device of the shelter and achieve "24-hour shelter" without going out.
The dome's self-destruction condition is "less than 3,000 residents",
Take off the roof of the shelter.
However, their plan was soon discovered by the tree people.
Seeing that the detectable life signal in the shelter dropped at an incredible speed, the Treants frantically unplugged the power supply - using a loophole they had discovered long ago but not repaired, causing the fusion reactor in the shelter to actively overload and shut down.
I am afraid that the designers of Vault 100 did not expect that people more than fifty years later would play such a big role.
But thanks to this trump card, Vault 100 did not turn into a reservoir in Wasteland Era 56.
However, it was precisely because they cut off the power that more than 50,000 residents who did not die in the battle ended up dying in the cold storage.
There are less than 3,000 surviving residents in the entire shelter. It is impossible for the tree people to activate the reactor, which will cause the entire shelter to collapse within 24 hours.
And there is no way for those who survive to reproduce quickly within 180 days.
Five thousand people, even if they abandon ethics and common sense in order to survive, it will take ten months for a newborn to be born.
Not to mention that the chemical battery is only enough to maintain the operation of the ventilation system, and the rattles that have spread throughout the shelter are squeezing out their only survival resources.
As the bell said, no one wins in this war, and it is not even over at all.
After paying heavy casualties, the tree man had given up on reconciling with the worker ants, and the worker ants did not expect the tree man to sacrifice himself to help them.
The two sides moved within the areas under their respective control, had a truce in complete silence, licked their wounds, and waited for the other party to take its last breath.
Until the 61st year of the Wasteland Era, the last life signal consistent with human characteristics disappeared from the shelter, and the shelter completely became a "cracking" world.
And the life signal that finally disappeared was Craig, the owner of the bell.
"...My master entrusted me to bring this absurd memory to you who have entered the interstellar age. I hope you can use it. Don't foolishly think that you can't solve it yourself.
Everything will be fine if you leave the problem to AI, but unfortunately you have not entered the interstellar era, so it seems that it is not useful."
"So...some of the residents here turned themselves into bugs, and some people turned themselves into data?" The ghost chaser who stood next to my darkest side and hadn't come out of the story couldn't help but
He complained, "What kind of prison is this? It's a mental hospital!"
The darkest expression on my face is that of deep understanding.
He thinks so too.
Everyone here is crazy.
The supervisors disparagingly refer to the residents as "worker ants", while the workers in their mouths call them "tree people".
In order to keep the shelter running forever, the tree people tried their best to buy time for the lake water to flood to the door. And in order to take a look at the world outside the shelter, the worker ants did not hesitate to turn themselves into real insects, destroying the ants that could still endure it for a while.
The future is torn into pieces.
They chose all the craziest options, so that in the end not a single person walked out of the shelter. At this moment, a piercing alarm suddenly sounded outside the warehouse, and I was suddenly shocked.
Heila returned to reality.
"what happened?!"
Looking at the surprised people, Lingdang said with a nonchalant expression.
"This alarm sounds a bit familiar. It seems to have happened before... Ah, I remembered it. I should have told you before that in order to thwart the plan of the worker ants, the "Treants" took the initiative to shut down the fusion reactor.
, didn’t you open it again? Maybe the life monitoring program and the dome self-destruction program have been restarted, so it’s not a big problem.”
When I heard this sentence, my darkest face instantly turned blue. It's not a big problem...
This is not more than a hundred years ago!
The self-destruction program that just happened to allow the upper structure to fall into the patio more than a hundred years ago, who knows what impact it will have today more than a hundred years later!
Not to mention anything else, the tower that the Ghost-Faced Insect built in the courtyard might just be buried by the pouring earth!
"But why didn't there be any problems when the fusion reactor was started?" The Ghost Hunter immediately realized something was wrong and asked anxiously while staring at the bell.
Lingdang just smiled, still with the same expression that it had nothing to do with him.
"Is this so strange? After Shu's mission is over, you have already taken control of this shelter. It is not difficult to terminate the dome's self-destruction program with administrator authority. This kind of thing is just like
It's as easy as opening the door to the shelter."
I was most confused.
"Wait a minute, since the control of the shelter has been transferred to us, why is the self-destruction program still triggered?"
Lingdang looked at him jokingly.
"Maybe your boss wants to silence you? Haha, of course, this possibility is too small. I am more inclined to think that you triggered an unrepaired BUG in this mountain of bugs, causing some settings
It was rolled back to before the rules were modified. This is a common tactic used by trees and worker ants in fighting. They often need to blindfold the tree when resolving personal grudges."
I was the first to rule out my own problem. After all, he just touched the black box a few times.
Immediately afterwards, he immediately thought of the Ten Fist Man who quickly passed through the manager's office on the B51 floor and ran to B100 to work on the branch line without stopping.
Not daring to hesitate at all, he immediately reached out and pressed the button on his helmet, shouting loudly into the communication channel.
"Brother Chao! What's going on over there? Brother Chao?!" There was a burst of electric current in the communication channel.
No response at all!
My face changed slightly, and I immediately gave the grave ghost hunter next to me a dark look.
"I'll go down there!"
"OK."
Immediately understanding his plan, Graveyard Ghost Hunter made a gesture of understanding.
Without wasting any time, I turned off the safety of the rifle and leaned it aside, lay down on the ground, closed my eyes and went straight off the line.
Looking at this guy who was yelling at the communicator one second, and lying down on the ground and falling asleep the next second, Ling Ding circled around him in surprise.
Two laps.
"It's amazing, you can actually sleep?"
I, who was already offline, had no reaction at all and ignored what it said.
Looking at this fussing AI, the ghost hunter who was guarding the grave chuckled.