Credits
Author:
Translator:
A prelude story under the Foundation 4K canon.
Extended Reading：
Overture of 4K: Nightmare Regent Red
Overture of 4K: From Now On and Forever
Overture of 4K: A Better Notion
Special thanks to:
Abigail_Ade,
Infas12,
Agent Phage and more, members of the Linkage group that are willing to look at my idea. I wouldn't have written it if you have not seen it. (
I tell you, you can never imagine my reaction when I saw the scene……
Ah you are here! Please have a seat…….what we are talking about? Surely it's the thing about the game. You wanna hear about it? No problem, come here, let us briefly cover it again.
It was the summer two years ago, and Steam platform has announced the release of a game in all regions. The producers named "Letters Entertainment" came out of nowhere, but from the trailer and the overview, they have released a management simulator that is extremely exquisite. The well-drawn details, the highly addictive rules, and the comfortable pricing has attracted much to buy and play. The noun "next round" had replaced "next year" to become the synonym of "happiness takes no account of time", seemingly the game will become the next best-seller. But, in less than a week, the blue words of positive had been flooded by those of red negatives.
It's because the game is too difficult.
The overview of the is is like this: You will play the position of a god of a world, and change the world into what you want. Facing different challenges, you will lead the world to an unknown future!
No one knew what "different challenges" meant, until the game has run on to that year.
We nicknamed the year "Year of Death", as once the game runs long enough to reach that year, your world will die: undying monsters that suddenly appear will uproot your buildings; a weird statue will make your city a river of blood; different kinds of strange bugs will appear out of nowhere, making houses mountains, humans inhumane. Most players that reached the Year of Death cannot even hold it through an hour before seeing his hard work for days becoming an indescribable thing. The difficulty were inhumane.
At that time, people have found the true purpose of the toolbox in the menu, hence officially starting to deeply explore the game.
The name of the toolbox is "Putting in simulative projects", which contains some creatures, items, or even seen concepts and events within the Year of Death. Players could throw these things into their worlds, and bring some "fun" for their citizens. People thought the toolbox was something like "disasters" in similar games, that for the players to fool around with the citizens within the worlds. But everything changed when they found out that the citizens within the game will try to control, destroy and contain the "simulative projects" they threw in.
Putting in simulative projects into the world, such that the citizens of the game can try dealing with them, and accumulate experiences on dealing with anomalies before the Year of Death. There were examples that the players stressed it too hard and end up destroying the world, but the result is remarkable: professional anti-anomaly organizations like "Foundation" and "GOC" have started to be active within different worlds of players, and some humans within has learnt much about the "truth" of the "reality", and the technology level of the worlds have been increasing rapidly due to the chain effect caused by the simulative projects. There are even players that created the technology of "digitization of human", and evolved humanity into a data species.
But the Year of Death had torn their hard work to pieces without mercy.
Surely, the appearance of anti-anomaly organizations, and the advancement of technology had made their worlds hold up longer. But what greeted them were waves of anomalies of over twice the strength. To my knowledge, the player who hold through the longest back then had not let his world live till 4th January. And for the guy who transformed humanity into a species of data, the enormous console that he built had been been reality altered quite a few times on the first day. Though the console itself is not destroyed, but the human data within it were rearranged a few hundreds of thousands, a truly living hell.
That's when the rating of the game totally crashed. Everyone shouted at the company saying that the game is impossible to defeat, and to make patches and lower the difficulty. But Letters of then were like a closed down company, and remained silent about all the reflections. What is more detestable, Letters did not make a creative workshop function, that even the best hacker cannot decrypt the file encryption of the game, not to mention editing the game. Therefore the nickname "Most unreasonable and hardest game of all time" has spread like wildfire, and most players locked the game into the deepest section in their collection after working off their anger, which became their dark history.
And for sure, there are people who liked to challenge the impossible, that includes me. I have joined a discussion group mainly focused in passing the game, whose members are from every corner of the world, but the same aim as me of challenging the legendary impossible game.
After much discussion and experimentation, we have finally reached the conclusion that to defeat the game, technology would be the most important step. Yes, the advancement of technology will surely make the Year of Death more frightening, but undeniably, only more advanced technology will lead the world further in the Year of Death. Except for the guy who got too off-track and transformed human to a species of data, the one friend that held through the longest then is now in our discussion group, and the technology of his world was the most thorough and comprehensive of us all. We believed that if the technological advancement of the worlds have developed to an extremely high level, there would be a chance that we can hold through the waves and waves of ever-stronger anomaly attacks on the Year of Death.
But the problem is, humanity's pace is too slow. We have tried running more than twenty worlds, but none of them can develop the technology required for them to live longer on the Year of Death. Except for the human civilization the lived long enough to see the sun that turns humans into meatballs on the morning of January 4th, no decent progress have been made.
"That was because our determination isn't enough," a group member said.
"We have done our best under the existing frame, but it is not enough. It is time to break some rules."
Therefore we have once again created a new world. But what was different this time, is that the "Foundation" and "Global Occult Coalition" had came to the front on the second millennium after accumulating strength in the dark. They have united to control all the countries in the world with iron-fisted policies to form a firmly united global government, that every country or organization that stood in their way are crushed by their anomalous powers. Under the Foundation-Coalition United Government, all policies and resources favored scientific researches. Within 300 years, we have done what cannot be done even with 500 years in the past. In the end, though the consciousness of all mankind have been wiped out by a strong anti-memetic entity on the night of 7th January, Year of Death, but for us, it is a significant step towards victory, as we have found the right way to defeat the game.
We have created new worlds one by one, every United Government established is stronger than the predecessor. The lizard claimed to by unkillable had not left a single atom before the blasts of Charged Particle Cannons; Dyson Sphere had wrapped the Sun such that its sunlight cannot turn anyone into meatballs anymore; and for the sculpture that snaps within blinks]], it hadn't been a problem anymore. The footprints of humanity has spread across the whole Solar System, and there are colonies of humanity on all planets and moons. The enormous starship and the Low Earth Orbit Fleet had cordoned the Low Earth Orbit, completely destroying the alien fleet before they got the the orbit of Neptune. Even the seemingly omnipotent Deer was finally defeated by the best thaumatologist army of the GOC.
In the end, on the 42nd run, we have finally conquered the technology of the Imaginary Amplifier, and the anti-memetic entity that had been in our way was finally dissolved before a better notion, and the world greeted 8th of January that no one has experienced before.
When we were preparing for the next anomaly to appear, we found in surpirse that the world torn in pieces within the week is gradually back to normal, the anomalous creatures and items that shed in blood within the battles with the Foundation and Coalition all over the world had become calm again to be contained by the united army; and all the reality alternations that was thought to be bugs are gradually fading to show the original side of the world. When the man-made sunlight of 8th January rose on the horizon of London, the long gone silence have returned to this world.
The discussion group watching the livestream has burst into tears, and all the die-hard fans watching the livestream all over the world have burst into tears. I also jumped off my seat and hugged my roommates.
We have succeeded! We lived through the damn Year of Death!
Making human survive the Year of Death seemed to be the ultimate goal of the game. After the sun rose on the eight day, the point of view of the game is drawn far into the infinite universe, and the credits of producers rolled down. While I was confused about why the name list rolled so fast, the last words appearing on the screen had lit all of my anger accumulated through these months:
Congratulations, you have made humanity survive in an apocalypse, and the history of humanity will continue.
But the organizations that should have been behind the curtains have made it to the front, as the curtains have been torn.
Humanity will shiver under the shadows of dictatorship within a long period of time.
We have survived, but is this all worth it?
Fuck you! It was all fucking worth it! If we hadn't done it we would have all lost the game on the first day!
And it wasn't only me, but the whole world outraged by the arrogant question. Poor game breakers from all over the world that had joined for their interests in the game, only receiving this one cold and detached question. Is it not enraging? The damned producers! Put up or shut up!
To conclude, the reputation of the game hasn't increase with the game finally beaten, but decreased instead. And its title has become The hardestshittiest Game in the Entire History, the existence that anyone not a masochist must not try, and the shame of the entire history of gaming.
Ah? The name of the game? Though you can find it searching for the keyword "Letters" on Steam, but I might as well just tell you about it. The name is a piece of integers, the Year of Death. And its name is……
But the organizations that should have been behind the curtains have made it to the front, as the curtains have been torn.
Humanity will shiver under the shadows of dictatorship within a long period of time.
We have survived, but is this all worth it?He remembered today of a year ago.
When he received the answer, he couldn't help questioning this, but he immediately regretted it.
Was it worth it? It was sure worth it. And they didn't have a better way.
The situation has come to a deadlock, and all further actions are drowning man clutching a straw. They didn't have any other choices.
And hence the scene now.
The Solidarity has perished together with the Hateful Star; the colonized moons on the orbit of Jupiter has fallen into Jupiter, not even one escaped out of ten; colony on the Moon surface were nearly fallen; over half of the cities on Earth were turned into dead ones; over 80% of the armies of the United Government have their military units cancelled; and within the finally battle with the anti-memetic entity, the three anti-memetic departments of the Foundation: the Antimemetics Division, the Memetics Department and Omega-0, have been completely covered by antimemes in exchange for dragging the existence within the range of the Imaginary Amplifier, securing the victory.
Though there was a great sacrifice, but in the end humanity has won, and they have finally gotten over the barrier.
And reconstruction are to come. He subconsciously wanted to give the orders to activate Ganymede Protocol, but then he remembered that the facility was already destroyed under the hostile mental attacks. He shook his head with a bitter smile, and gave the orders to prioritize the reconstruction of SCP-2000.
For their current technological level, it would be a piece of cake to reconstruct a restoration facility.
He walked towards the bridge, and outside the windows are the remaining space fleet: 3 heavily damaged spaceship. And in front of the fleet was Earth that has regain some of its green colour, and the enormous Dyson Sphere that sparkled with man-made sunlight.
Imagining about the unknown future of humanity, O5-12 picked up the disc that laid the foundation for it. Warm sunlight shone on the disc, and the name written on it sparkled:
A smile appeared on his wrinkled face.