Guide to the Fallen World - Chapter 1

#1. Frozen Human

Beep- beep-

A sharp, mechanical sound was heard repeatedly, waking me up.

But, did I set this mechanical sound as my alarm sound?

Yeo-won instinctively reached out to find her loudly ringing cell phone.

However, it was not a cell phone that reached the fingertips, but a cold and hard wall. The unfamiliar and cool touch naturally led to questions.

Uh. A strange floating sensation. The irregular tickling of air brushing between her fingers.

‘What is this? Am I groping the wall in my sleep?’

No, that’s not it. This isn’t the roughness of the wallpaper I remember.

And besides, how on earth did I even move my hand?

With that realization, the sensation throughout her body slowly awakened.

Noticing something felt off, Yeowon managed to lift her heavy eyelids.

And then she confirmed it — what her palm was pressed against wasn’t a wall, but glass.

As her gaze slowly shifted to survey her surroundings…

Bit by bit, her awareness expanded and the chilling realization invaded her consciousness—she was inside a massive capsule.

Surprisingly, the mechanical sound she mistook for a phone alarm turned out to be a warning emitted by the capsule. And she was trapped inside it.

Instinctively holding her breath, Yeowon quickly sifted through her memories, searching for an answer.

What is this? I was definitely put to sleep as a cryonic human…

Wait, could it be? Am I waking up now?

As if answering her question, a static-filled voice came through the system.

[Brainwave confirmation complete. Terminating hibernation for RUGSW1287.]

Hibernation terminated. Those words sent a shiver through Yeowon. She had fallen asleep to the comforting lie that one day she might awaken.

But now… now she realized it wasn’t a lie.

She had truly woken up. She was awake!

The lights installed in the hibernation capsule flickered, and with each flash, the emotions of despair and hope intertwined, rising and fading in her mind. It was unbelievable, but perhaps miracles really do exist.

Her heart raced with overwhelming anticipation and excitement. Who had awakened her? Had the cure finally been developed? Was that why they were waking her up?

Countless questions filled her mind, spinning in confusion.

How much time had passed since I fell asleep? How much had Earth progressed? Where are Mom and Dad?

As if in response to her endless questions, the guidance voice echoed.

[Discharge the solution inside the capsule according to the WDS-12 protocol.]

The guidance voice, crackling like an old recording, was far from smooth, but it was clear enough to understand.

Soon, the liquid that had risen to her head quickly drained down past her chest, and with a loud warning sound, the capsule door slowly began to open.

Instinctively, Yeowon removed the suffocating respirator and took a deep breath. She didn’t even have time to wonder about the musty, dusty smell that filled the capsule.

It was cold, dizzying to the point of madness, and her stomach churned as if she had been punched in the solar plexus, but she was alive.

Moreover, her arms, legs, fingers, and toes were all moving properly. Even as she watched her limbs move with her own eyes, she couldn’t believe it.

After being diagnosed with total paralysis due to damage to her cerebellum, her limbs had never moved as she wished, yet now they were moving naturally, without her even trying to consciously make them do so.

The fact that she was about to break free from the freezing capsule, a death-like tomb, was less shocking than the realization that she had finally escaped the prison of her body, a cage she had been trapped in for her entire life.

In a violent rush of liberation and breathless joy, Yeowon buried her face in her palms and cried. The feeling of her skin against her cheeks, the trembling of her fingers—she was so moved by these simple sensations that she sobbed uncontrollably.

And in that state, she waited for someone to come and take care of her. Soon, the staff would rush in. Perhaps the medical team would swarm around her, providing immediate attention.

‘Hurry, take me out of this capsule…!’

But no matter how long she waited, no one came to find her.

Silence. Only silence.

Even with the warm voice welcoming her awakening from hibernation, she couldn’t stop crying. Instead, the unbearably cold silence kept tapping against her skin, over and over again.

Yeowon then sensed something was wrong.

Her thoughts turned to the half-open capsule door and the mechanical sound that had suddenly stopped.

A cold, sudden doubt crept into her mind. The tears that had been flowing relentlessly also ceased at once.

Why isn’t anyone coming? There’s no way someone who just woke up from hibernation would be left like this.

Questions began to arise one after another.

Shouldn’t someone come to ask if I’m okay, if anything hurts, and how I feel after waking up from a long sleep?

Moreover, why had the capsule only opened halfway? Was it a mechanical failure?

“Cough! Hello, is anyone there?”

She barely moved her dry throat and tried calling out, but despite repeating it several times, there was no response.

Now that she look at it, there is no emergency nurse call button that should be there.

After a moment of hesitation, Yeowon removed the pads, tubes, and needles attached to her body. Then, she carefully pushed the glass door of the capsule open and cautiously stepped outside.

She might be scolded for recklessly removing the various devices attached to her body, but the freezing cold and the overwhelming sense of confusion took priority.

She needed to understand what was happening right now. Given her already poor condition, she had to assess her surroundings to figure out how to handle the situation.

For this very reason, after several failed attempts, Yeowon finally managed to push the frozen capsule door completely open and step outside.

What greeted Yeowon was an empty, suffocating darkness. The faint, flickering emergency exit light barely illuminated the eerie emptiness, signaling an unsettling desolation and silence.

The absence of any signs of life immediately made her instincts flare. Something had gone terribly wrong.

Had some kind of accident happened? If her arms and legs were moving fine, then the treatment must have been completed… What is going on? Was I not supposed to wake up yet? Did some mechanical malfunction in the capsule wake me up?

Yeowon forced her stiff tongue to move and called out.

“Hello? Is anyone there?”

She called out several more times, but there was still no answer. For a moment, a sense of defeat washed over her, but then she thought to herself: instead of futilely calling out to people who weren’t coming, maybe she should just go out and find someone.

Perhaps the staff, having seen the situation through the CCTV, were rushing to get to her. Still, it was too frustrating to remain there any longer.

It was cold, too. Before leaving, she wanted to find something, anything— a blanket, a sheet, anything to wrap around herself.

As Yeowon fumbled through the unknown objects that littered the floor, pushing them aside with her feet, she carefully groped along the wall. Finally, her hand found a switch-like object, and she pressed it.

Suddenly, a bright light flooded the room.

The light momentarily blinded her, and Yeowon rubbed her eyes, but as her gaze swept around, she froze and let out a strangled scream.

“Ugh!”

Scattered across the floor were broken hibernation capsules and fragments of bones, lying in a chaotic mess. The pieces, decayed and gray, were so disordered that it was almost impossible to tell they were human, but the skull stood out, white and sharply illuminated.

Yeowon, stunned and trembling in fear, couldn’t help but clench her teeth as she faced the unmistakable remains of a human body, her body shaking uncontrollably.

In a panic, Yeowon quickly turned her gaze, only to find that most of the items around her were broken machines or medical waste. On one side, there was a massive heap of trash, piled high.

The bleak scene sent a cold shiver down the back of her neck.

Something was wrong. No, it was much worse than that. Something had gone terribly, horribly wrong.

With the realization, a sharp, distinctly different voice suddenly echoed through the silent space, contrasting with the usual mechanical voice of the capsule.

[I thought there was an error with the voice recognition system, but it seems that wasn’t the case.]

Startled, Yeowon looked up at the voice that came through an unseen speaker, delivering a bizarre and out-of-place greeting that didn’t match the dire situation.

[Welcome back. Or should I say, condolences instead of a greeting?]

[Hello.] [Nice to meet you. I’m Jay. I’m a transhuman from the Ark Network.]

“Condolences? What do you mean? No, more importantly, who are you…?”

It had been a week since she awoke in this unfamiliar research facility called the Ark.

For the first three days, she didn’t believe a word from the voice that seemed to be an unknown AI or transhuman, but after multiple conversations and watching several videos, Yeowon gradually began to accept the reality.

In fact, when she walk around a huge, empty structure, she cannot help but experience reality as it is, even if she try to deny it.

Here, she was the only living person.

The only other entities roaming around were the life-support androids and a few robotic vacuums, all moving according to the commands of Jay, the transhuman entity.

This place was, quite literally, a barren wasteland of steel with not a single blade of grass in sight.

She wasn’t particularly unhappy about this. After all, it was with the help of these machines that she managed to maintain her body temperature and health, as well as take care of her daily needs.

In the past few days, she had received care that felt more fitting for a newborn, a level of attention so extraordinary that it was impossible to be dissatisfied with the environment.

The convenience provided by the multifunctional androids, always by her side to assist with daily tasks, was truly remarkable.

Yet, despite all of this, accepting the fact that Earth had been destroyed was an entirely different matter.

It was a claim she’d heard countless times before—after nuclear war, humanity would have to start over with stone axes. She never imagined that it would come to this, though.

Perhaps she should consider herself fortunate that the reason for the downfall wasn’t the nuclear war, after all?

With a heart heavy with despair, Yeowon gazed at the images of Earth captured by the military satellite. Whether it was aware of her mood or not, Jay’s voice, which provided the status of the planet, was as cheerful as ever.

[Today’s population status is 353,067,295. Roughly 350 million. 2,484,688 are unaccounted for in terms of life activity. Looking at the fact that 20 million people have died, it looks like a few more shelters have collapsed.]