1.The Little Prince in the Ossuary

It was dark. The boy floated in a crouched position in the blackness of weightlessness. A sight not possible except in virtual reality. From here, he could watch fourteen hundred and forty sunsets in twenty-four hours a day.

A false world that bends to one person's will, where no one else exists.

Within arm's reach of the boy, the only light in the darkness shimmered. It was a square screen. The screen showed the people he was supposed to play. They were shouting at the top of their lungs. Toni Morrison, Sadako Ogata, Lyndon Johnson, Martin Luther King, John Kennedy, Winston Churchill, Adolf Hitler....

He had already watched them long enough to memorize them. Snowed in by heart, the boy could easily imitate their words, intonations, and gestures.

To be an actor, you have to learn to act. Each day that he immersed himself in acting and became proficient, it was a depressing time for the boy, but it was a necessary endeavor if he wanted to reach for the stars. Only with a star would the rose not dry up. The rose was thorny, but beautiful. He didn't want to see the end of something beautiful. Even if it bled while he held it.

The boy thought.

'The outside world is always trying to make me into something I'm not, and here, I just want to be me.

But it can't be helped. Once again, the boy decided to tame himself: it wouldn't be so hard if he compromised with his true heart from time to time, so that he could have fun once in a while.

You're ready to go.

Let's get started.

The unfunny story of the twenty-seventh game.

The moment I made up my mind, the virtual reality "post-apocalyptic" world began, as it always does, with a monologue from an AI imitating a boy.

#Journal, page 2, Camp Roberts

The apocalypse originated in China: a disease that turned humans into non-humans, sweeping across East Asia in a matter of days. The plague was named Morgellons. It is now said to have reached Europe.

I was Korean.

I use the past tense because there is no country to go back to.

Personally, I consider myself lucky. Otherwise, I would have been a walking corpse by now. Eaten by non-human things.

Those who lost their country were sent to camps. With martial law in place, I was no longer able to stay with my host family.

He is now staying at Camp Roberts. Originally a National Guard base, it was the first refugee camp established by the United States. It's about halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco.

The number of people being accepted kept growing. In the five months since I arrived, the camp has become a de facto city. Once we reach capacity, the plan is to disperse the rest of the population to Fort Hunter Liggett. It's about 50 kilometers northwest of here in a straight line.

From what I've heard, there are mountains everywhere.

I've also heard of new camps being set up.

As the number of people increased, so did the number of unsavory incidents. Refugees organized themselves and began to take supplies from people. If they resisted, they would kill them.

The names of the organizations are equally vicious. Some of them, like the Chinese "Hei Xue Hui" (Black Society) and the Japanese "Sumi Yoshikai" (Jugil Kai), were originally the names of gangs. There are also stories that the key players are actually former gangsters.

The U.S. military is turning a blind eye to these organizations. It's understandable. With only one battalion of administrative staff, the number of refugees is overwhelming. Maybe the US military needs a middle manager?

To use a familiar analogy, it would be like a landowner in Joseon who was a marm. I was taught that the peasants' resentment was directed at the mummies, not the landowner. After all, they lost their country. Even if they mismanaged it, it wouldn't be a diplomatic problem.

On the brink of human extinction, there were no civil society organizations to bother governments with human rights issues.

I've heard rumors that organizations are making sexual sacrifices to U.S. Army battalion commanders. It's probably true. Yesterday, I saw members of the Korean Patriotic Association dragging a woman away. She was crying. A U.S. Army soldier on patrol tried to stop them, but after talking to one of the members, they stopped interfering. He just frowned.

One more thing about the treatment of refugees.

From 6th to 15th streets of Camp Roberts were barracks used by the garrison. If a refugee was spotted there, they were immediately charged with attempted theft. People from countries that had lost their governments or the equivalent were treated very poorly. There was also racial discrimination. Conscience and compassion were hard to find in people.

According to CNN, more than 60% of the world's population has mutated since the Morgellons Outbreak. In the face of human extinction, morality has gradually disappeared. At Camp Roberts, it was palpable.

It's sad.

#Journal, page 5, Camp Roberts

Organizations created in difficult times are often nationalistic. And difficult people need a scapegoat to take out their anger on. They take what they can and they take what they have.

However, the majority of the refugees were from Asia and Oceania. The mainstream were Chinese and Korean refugees, who were not well received by the Japanese in many ways.

As a result, a fight broke out against the Japanese organization, a fight between gangs, if you will.

Many Japanese people were dead or as good as dead. The largest Japanese organization, the Sumiyoshikai, tried desperately to resist, but they were too different.

Once again, the U.S. military looked the other way. There were plenty of frowning soldiers and officers, but they didn't speak up. I wonder if they weren't ordered to.

Later, a fence was built inside the camp. Was this to prevent too much fighting? The camp was divided into sections. Each section contained about 200 people of different nationalities.

In the meantime, I was still safe. I was able to use my English skills to translate for the U.S. military. Surprisingly few of the refugees spoke English. They were either traveling or doing business and got stuck, or they had fled after the Morgellons. The latter overwhelmingly outnumbered the former.

People like me who could speak freely were treated like middle management. Above all, it was nice to be treated like a person by the U.S. military. If you couldn't talk, you were an animal. I get it. They were in a precarious position.

"AI Help (Insight Level 4): You may accept or decline the role of Administrator. If you accept, you will gain the favor of the US military and receive a modifier to your reputation within the community. There are no tangible benefits to declining, but there may be other penalties or benefits that you cannot infer from your current abilities. For more detailed advice, you will need to increase your Insight skill rating."

"Player's Choice: Accept the offer."

At first, I was overwhelmed and tried to refuse, but the US military officer laughed. He said that the US favors English speakers.

In the 1980s, the United States wanted to support nationalist forces to drive the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan. The problem was that the CIA had no Arabic speakers. It was impossible to find anyone to give money to. However, there was one Afghan nationalist leader who spoke English, so the CIA went along with it, even though they knew he was an asshole, and he later screwed the US by creating the Taliban.

The officer told this story with a chuckle and said you had no choice but to do the job.

My area of responsibility was a solar farm. It was located across the street from the base on Highway 101. The panels needed to be wiped down periodically, and new panels and transformers needed to be installed as capacity increased.

Koreans were mobilized here. I distributed food during the work. Adults who must have been several times my age tried to make fun of me. I felt dirty behind their smiling faces. Many of them tried to fake their age. I thought it was creepy.

I heard that several organizations were trying to recruit me. Rationally, I thought, I have to get in everywhere, there are more and more English speakers, and my position could be jeopardized at any moment.

"AI Help (Insight Level 4): At this point, you can decide which organizations to join. If you join an organization, that organization will provide you with various benefits. However, joining a particular organization means that you may be targeted by other organizations."

"Player's Choice: Do not join any organization."

But I didn't want to go anywhere.

Once, the Korean Patriotic Association offered to give me a Japanese girl if I joined their organization. Honestly, I felt nauseous. When I refused, they thought I was looking at their liver. They asked me if other organizations offered me better conditions, and said that I should think about the size of the organization and my future, not just the conditions. He even asked me if I liked men.

I may be the dark side of the world, but still, I wanted to be human.

#Journal, page 11, Camp Roberts

News broke of an outbreak in San Francisco.

Due to the isolated nature of the camp, news is always a few days late. Given how quickly Asia was devastated, the San Francisco Bay Area (a metropolitan area that includes San Francisco and neighboring Oakland, Butte, and San Jose) would be a living hell by now, no matter how prepared you were.

As a testament to this, transports have been arriving at the camp since dawn, a mix of races, but mostly white and black. Most of them were speaking English. They were likely survivors who had fled the city.

Tensions were high among the U.S. troops on guard. They were visibly on edge, and rightfully so. There could be an infected person among the survivors in San Francisco right now.

"There is no vaccine for Morgellons. Once infected, there is no way to stop it from mutating.

The refugees had noticed. They screamed to be kept away from the new Americans. The spaces originally occupied by the refugees were given up to American citizens, and the refugees settled into a tent city that extended beyond the water tower on the west side of the base.

Shortly after the evening distribution, we heard some of the refugees plotting their escape.

"AI Help (Insight Level 4): You can choose to leave the base with the people trying to escape, report them to Camp Command, or do nothing. Escaping the base will end the tutorial, and reporting to Camp Command will earn you favor with the US military, but will result in a downward correction to your relationship with some of the refugees. Doing nothing will result in a small downward correction to your Willpower."

"Player's Choice: Take no action."

For a moment, I thought about running away with them. Out of camp, to the safety of the center of the country. But the question was how to survive as a fugitive. I might be killed on sight.

I thought about filing a report, but I didn't want to. People would hold a grudge. I don't want to be the last person to die. I'm sure the U.S. military will do something, but I don't think it will be enough. They've been stretched thin for a long time.

I decided to stay put. I felt like I shouldn't be doing this.

"Willpower nerfs occurred / details unknown"

In the middle of the night, a series of gunshots rang out. I covered my ears and forced myself to sleep, but I couldn't get back to sleep. When I went outside at dawn, the barbed wire was blood-red. Torn pieces of flesh and clothing were strewn across it. The barren landscape beyond the fence was also filled with death. Birds flew over and pecked at the corpses. I wondered how many had died and how many had managed to escape.

I skipped breakfast. I had no appetite.

#Journal, page 16, Camp Roberts

The infection has spread.

There have been reports that an undetermined number of infectious variants have escaped the San Francisco Bay containment line.

Just four days later, Sacramento went up in flames. Despite the massive deployment of federal and national guard troops, it was not enough to stop the mutated citizens.

It's estimated that 7% of the city's population is mutated. That's over 300,000. Though they may not have the intelligence of their human counterparts, their physical prowess surpasses their human counterparts. And their violence is overwhelming.

A few suburban refugee camps have been swept away. Even a few are worth tens of thousands of units. The U.S. military conducted maximum rescue operations, then dropped several nuclear bombs east of the city center.

It's a Band-Aid.

"China, the first country to collapse from Morgellons, was a nuclear power. Unable to control the outbreak despite mobilizing its military, China used massive amounts of nuclear weapons on the infected areas. It didn't mind being accused of abandoning its people. The argument was that the infected strains could no longer be seen as human, but there were citizens there who were not yet infected.

Immediately after the nuke, the population of the infectious strain plummeted. The military was called in, and control seemed to be regained, but after a while, the infection spread rapidly again.

According to experts, it is likely that the Morgellons pathogen-contaminated material was swept up in the updraft of the nuclear explosion, and then scattered with the fallout in a gust of wind. In the end, China's collapse was accelerated by the use of nuclear weapons.

The west coast of the United States has prevailing westerly winds. A nuke dropped in Sacramento would likely spread contamination to the central United States. Before the nuclear attack began, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) issued evacuation orders for all residents of California, Nevada, and Arizona, as well as untested areas of the state.

The camp was a silent abyss. There was a strong outcry for us to be evacuated as well. Tragedy struck. A group of radicalized protesters scaled the garrison fence, and the U.S. military opened fire.

In retrospect, the National Guard soldiers were probably just as anxious to get away. Suffering from anxiety, fatigue, and depression, the American soldiers overreacted, and even their officers lost control. Within minutes, more than 700 men had been killed.

Fear overwhelmed people. The anxiety of not knowing when they would die was no match for the fear of dying now. There was a strange calm.

We later learned that an infectious strain had also emerged in the small town of San Miguel to the south. Now both the north and south sides of the camp were infected. This is why the federal government has stopped transporting refugees. The U.S. military stationed at the camp is equally stuck. A few bad-tempered soldiers assaulted refugees, who, in their minds, were responsible for their own deaths.