Chapter 9: The Security System
The base garrison and Zhao Man’s home were situated on opposite sides of West Gate 3. Once they reached the portal, it was time to part ways.
“The harvest season starts in another half a month. Are you looking for work? You can make up to fifty cents a day for a ten-day stint. If you want in, I can reserve a slot for you,” Zhao Qingjin offered.
Fifty cents a day meant five points for ten days. “Count me in,” Zhao Man answered without a second’s hesitation.
“Head on home first. I’ll bring your things over in a bit,” Tang Heng chimed in.
Zhao Man nodded. Clasping his backpack securely across his chest with one hand, he took his shovel back from Tang Heng with the other and set off briskly toward home in high spirits.
Arriving at the house, he unloaded the sand yams into the kitchen and set water on to boil. Once it was bubbling, he pulled the pot aside to cool. Seeing that it was still early, he made a trip to the Housing Administration Office.
Just inside the entrance stood a self-service kiosk. Following the on-screen prompts, Zhao Man quickly navigated to the home security section.
Filtering the options by price, he found only three packages within his budget. The first was a basic surveillance camera linked directly to the homeowner’s terminal, priced at five points. The second was an alarm system tied into both the homeowner’s terminal and the garrison network; it sounded an audible siren and cross-referenced intruders’ biometric identities for fifteen points, with a fine-print disclaimer: Garrison dispatch fee: 2 points per callout. The third package built upon the second by adding a high-voltage shock grid across the perimeter for thirty points, with the dispatch fee remaining at two points per callout.
“Hello. I had a defense system installed when my house was built. Can I just add this second tier on top of it?”
Seeing that he was here to place an order, the female Beta clerk behind the service counter offered a courteous smile. “May I have your base ID number, please? Let me pull up your account.”
“BN8511005K697,” Zhao Man read off his terminal screen.
“I’ve checked your file. Your existing defensive installation is strictly calibrated for mutated beasts. By base law, activating lethal perimeter systems against humans is illegal.” In the end, Zhao Man gritted his teeth and paid thirty points for a specialized anti-personnel defense setup.
Leaving the Housing Administration Office, he swung by the public market. He spent one point on a pouch of salt, another fifty cents on ten glass jars, and picked up a tube each of sweetener, umami seasoning, and chili flavoring for a total of one point and fifty cents.
Next, he pulled up the informational farming guide he’d paid for earlier and headed into a dispensary to purchase the chemicals specified in the post. It listed only two: a bio-inhibitor and a root-cleansing tincture. The pair set him back nearly twenty points.
Back home, Zhao Man poured warm water from the pot into a drinking cup and topped the pot off with fresh water. Once it came to a rolling boil, he dropped in a glass jar to scald and sanitize it inside and out, then set it upside down on the counter to drain.
Drying his hands, he took a look around to make sure no wealth was left in plain view before scheduling an installation request via his terminal.
The technicians arrived remarkably fast—one specialist accompanied by an automated drone. The technician guided the drone along the perimeter wall, spraying an invisible, odorless compound across the surface before mounting a palm-sized control node just inside the front entrance.
Halfway through the installation, Tang Heng arrived. The gate was unlocked, so Zhao Man waved him straight in. Through the transparent roof panels, Zhao Man watched Tang Heng and an unfamiliar patrolman each carry a heavy sack of sandy soil into the courtyard, stacking them behind the front gate as instructed.
Once the loads were hauled in, the unfamiliar patrolman looked up, beamed warmly at Zhao Man with a cheerful wave, and chugged off on his tricycle with a series of putt-putt-putts.
With Zhao Man’s permission, Tang Heng stayed behind in the courtyard, watching the technician wrap up the installation.
“Why are you installing another security system?” Tang Heng asked.
“Someone was banging on my door in the middle of the night. The original setup can’t be triggered against people,” Zhao Man replied.
“Someone was knocking on your door? Why didn’t you tell me?” Tang Heng’s volume spiked a notch.
Zhao Man tilted his head to look up at him. His expression remained completely deadpan, but his tone was mild: “It only happened that one time. It was late at night—I didn’t want to trouble you over nothing.”
Tang Heng nodded. Turning his gaze back toward the technician, he remarked with offhanded calm, “If anything like that happens again, just ping me. Security in this sector falls under my watch.”
With two pairs of eyes bearing down on him, the technician worked at blistering speed. He ran the wiring along the interior seams of the wall and bolted the terminal into place by the front gate.
“The shock mechanism triggers automatically whenever physical force on the wall or door exceeds a set threshold. A danger alert will immediately register on your terminal, and the intruder-verification ping is routed straight to your personal account. If you don’t have any further questions, I’ll take my leave,” the technician announced.
“Understood. Everything looks great. Thank you for your trouble.”
Tang Heng eyed the five sacks of sandy soil stacked by the wall. “Planning on farming indoors?”
“Yeah. Figured I’d give it a shot,” Zhao Man said.
“I’ll give you a hand. Consider it settling the favor from today,” Tang Heng offered.
“No need. You’ve already settled it,” Zhao Man countered.
“Come on, don’t take Sun Chao’s smart mouth to heart. What we hauled in today is practically worth a full year’s earnings for both our squads. Lending a small hand is the least I can do,” Tang Heng admitted with a helpless chuckle.
That huge?
Seeing Zhao Man’s baffled look, Tang Heng explained, “We usually hunt in high-radiation sectors. Venturing out requires filing formal mission dockets. Once you deduct the lease on heavy hazmat suits, weapons, transport, and equipment wear-and-tear, the base takes a flat ten-percent tax off the top. Whatever’s left gets split evenly across the entire squad—just enough to scrape by on rations. But today, we didn’t log any official base gear. With twenty-odd guys splitting zero overhead, every scrap of profit stays in our pockets. We logged the sand yams under a private squad requisition; the base doesn’t levy taxes on staple food discoveries.”
Noticing that Zhao Man was hanging on every word, confirming he was genuinely oblivious to how the system operated, Tang Heng continued, “The real prizes today were the sand yams and that queen. The yams fill a permanent agricultural quota for the base—the bonus points go to Qingjin and me, but the men get performance merits. As for the queen, she falls under the base’s high-priority energy quotas. Her psychic rating tested at 85. The authorities will keep a live specimen like that in containment, drawing on her mental wavelength to reinforce the settlement’s defense grid. Her abdomen is packed with eggs, which the research labs will hatch and domesticate to sniff out wild energy stones. Qingjin and I just filed the post-action docket, logging it as a team bounty for performance points. The regular ants and the lizards weren’t part of either quota, so we get to carve them up among ourselves tax-free. Those two bounties alone just knocked out ninety percent of this year’s performance targets for all fourteen core members across both squads.”
And that’s not even counting the cuts for the two captains, Tang Heng added silently to himself.
Zhao Man reflected inwardly: More like two hundred percent. No wonder that kid smiled like he’d seen an angel just now. Every bit of that gratitude is well-earned.
“Since you’ve got this defense system set up, let me tweak the dispatch routing for you. I’ll lock the response unit to Brigades 7 and 12 for the next twelve months. When it triggers, pay the callout fee through your terminal as usual, and Qingjin and I will reimburse you under the table.”
“Well, aren’t you considerate, Captain Tang! If I dig up anything else out there, you’ll be the first person I call.” Zhao Man looked up and flashed him a radiant, ear-to-ear grin.
A thought struck him, and Zhao Man asked, “Can’t I just bypass paying the dispatch fee directly? Seems like a hassle for you guys to reimburse me every single time.”
“Out of the question,” Tang Heng replied firmly. “That two-point fee has to clear the garrison’s central ledger. It gets taxed and routed down to our squad balance before it officially registers on our performance record.”
Zhao Man raised an eyebrow. Wait… did I just get roped into some kind of kickback scheme?
“Are live psychic specimens really that rare?” Zhao Man inquired.
“Extremely. A hive colony almost never produces more than a single living psychic node—their leader. The rest just absorb environmental radiation until an inert energy stone forms in their gut, or more often than not, nothing at all. Even if you manage to corner a live one in the deep red zones, hauling it back intact through high-radiation territory is a nightmare. That’s why they’re worth a fortune,” Tang Heng explained.
Zhao Man suddenly thought of ABO psychic ratings and ventured cautiously, “What about human mental strength?”
“Same principle. But harvesting it is strictly outlawed—unless it’s a condemned death row convict.” Tang Heng’s tone turned chillingly flat.
With business concluded, Tang Heng wrapped up: “I’ll be taking off for today. I’ll keep an eye out for building materials for your indoor grow room.”
“Sure. Thanks, Captain Tang. Can you keep this quiet for me?” Zhao Man asked.
“Naturally. You have to understand, Zhao Man—in this base, personal assets are a matter of absolute secrecy,” Tang Heng replied.
Zhao Man mused: Not just in this base. That applies everywhere.
Once Tang Heng was gone, Zhao Man shook out the foxtail grass and spread it across the firewood pile to dry. He deposited the sand yams in the kitchen, put fresh water on the stove, and snapped the three bracken fiddleheads in half before tossing them into the boiling pot to blanch. Unsure of the exact timing, he waited for them to shift color and gave them another three minutes before scooping them into a wooden basin.
Setting the sterilized jar right side up on the counter, he shredded the thick fiddleheads lengthwise until they were roughly the width of chopsticks, packing them into the glass. The three forearm-length stems filled the jar about eighty percent to the brim. Once the boiling water cooled, he poured it in until the fiddleheads were submerged, dumped in a generous half-pouch of salt, and stirred the brine along the glass with a chopstick until every crystal dissolved. Screwing the lid shut with all his strength, he carried the jar into the bedroom and tucked it into a corner.
A few loose scraps of fern remained in the basin. He shredded them into fine threads the size of toothpicks, seasoned them with salt, umami powder, and chili seasoning, gave them a vigorous toss with his chopsticks, and enjoyed them alongside a boiled potato.
After eating, he dumped a sack of sandy soil into a corner of the front recreation room. He measured out the inhibitor, root-cleansing tincture, and water in a 0.74 to 1.1 to 1 ratio, stirred the mixture thoroughly, and splashed it over the sand. Using his shovel, he turned and blended the soil until the chemicals were evenly distributed, then scooped it back into the sack and tied it tight.
Collapsing onto his bed, Zhao Man let out a long, luxurious sigh as the soft cushioning gave way beneath him. Finally, no more sleeping on bare wooden planks.
Just as he was drifting off into a daze, a series of heavy knocks echoed from the front door.
He tapped open his terminal. A strange man was standing outside the entrance. At first, the intruder tapped lightly, testing the lock. Receiving no answer, he drew back his leg and kicked the door with brute force.
Zzzzt!
“Aaargh!”
A bloodcurdling shriek pierced the silence as the man dropped like a stone, twitching violently across the pavement.
A system prompt flashed onto Zhao Man’s screen: Intruder detected. Request emergency dispatch?
Zhao Man tapped Confirm. Once two points were debited from his account, a status message appeared: Outer Ring West Patrol Brigade 7 is five minutes out. Please remain in a secure position.
Zhao Man turned off the screen, closed his eyes, and went right to sleep.
