To Sergei's surprise, the settlement of new happy settlers was going without a hitch. Natasha and Alice allocated the houses beforehand, and all people had to do was - come, get their keys and sign for them.
But then another problem emerged - the shortage of furniture and beds... New settlers had to sleep in sleeping bags, but even then people were happy. It's better to sleep in a sleeping bag but in your own apartment - than to sleep on a king-sized bed but in the middle of the forest.
The dining halls were hastily provided with food supplies and the people in charge of them started cooking dinner. One hundred rabbits were slaughtered earlier that day, so there was a feast waiting for everyone.
The dinner of the "first people in the haven" was wonderful as well. For the occasion, the boss brought a few bottles of good wine and cognac, while Alice and Giselle, Solomon's wife, had prepared the best meat dishes that they knew. The festive table was full of delicious food, most of which were meat dishes.
"This is very delicious!" Boss complimented, after trying something made of soft dough stuffed with meat and veggies.
"Giselle cooked it, she's really good at cooking," Alice said with a mysterious smile on her face.
"Hm...," boss wanted to say that Alice was a good cook too, but looked at her face and changed his mind. "I know that you have a lot on your plate recently, so you can left the cooking to Giselle."
Sergei took the girl's hint and he didn't mind really. Recently Alice took upon herself handling all haven matters, there were many problems that required her attention, a lot of situations that needed to be agreed upon, she needed to organize everyone, provide them with work and establish the process...
"Okay, boss. What do you think, Giselle?" Alice inquired as if it wasn't their plan from the very beginning...
"Of course," Giselle replied happily. She was very nervous, even though Alice reassured her that the boss wouldn't mind. Giselle didn't have any opportunity to prove herself before, so she was afraid of her future and the future of her kids.
(fr) "I will help you, Mommy!" Said a little seven years old girl, pulling on her mother's sleeve.
The little girl was Irene, Giselle and Solomon's daughter. She became good friends with Pierre, Alice's son, who Alice would constantly leave under Giselle's care. It also affected Dominic, Irene's brother. When he first arrived into haven he was pretty much a vegetable, but the boy began to gradually come back to life in a friendly and peaceful environment. He hasn't spoken yet, but he was already showing emotions and eating on his own.
The feast went on, people ate and drank - well, aside from Sergei and a few others. The boss wasn't allowed to drink and everyone knew that, so they did their best not to tease him and downed their drinks fast and without comments.
"What are you planning to do next, boss? Will you continue trading in Paris?" Asked a slightly tipsy Annette.
"No, Paris is done for. I'll finish the quest, try to sell as much food as possible and then we'll immediately get the hell out of this accursed city."
"But where are you gonna... go? They say that... The British Isles are safe," a very drunk Anne asked this time.
"To my homeland, of course! Besides, who cares if it's safe out there or not? The enemies from the outside world cannot get in here and I will deal with the rest. But we need more people, more coins and more supplies, so I'm going to travel through previously densely populated areas. Natasha, will you please plan a route for me?"
"Will do, boss." Natasha was sitting next to her boss, because he didn't drink and even the smell of alcohol could get her drunk. The last "bender" was more than enough for the girl, she was sick for a long time after that.
"Also make sure to highlight interesting places, as well as the fortified ones - if there are any survivors, they will be only in those places."
"Got it, boss. I will highlight all interesting places and plan a route, but what will your final destination be?"
"First - Berlin, then we'll decide where to head next."
After finishing with their plans, people continued having fun. Kathrine arranged a performance, as usual, but this time she only played the guitar. She was pretty bad at drunk singing.
Natasha, feeling that she was getting drunk from the smell of alcohol, went to sleep; she soon was followed by Alice with her son, Giselle and her kids followed suit as well. The rest continued with their feast, but Sergei didn't stay as well - people were drunk as skunks and that, usually, never ended well.
***
"Boss! Boss, wake up! It's noon already and he won't get up! Why always me? I didn't manage to wake him up even once!" Anne stood in front of boss' house and kept on shouting, she was a little scared to come inside - she's had enough last time...
"Ha, Natasha's asleep, she doesn't feel good after yesterday, you are the only slacker left," Annette teased a very annoyed Anne.
"That's it, I'm gonna go find Alice!"
"Wait for me, I've got something to ask her as well."
Soon the girls left, leaving a quiet and deserted central sector behind.
***
August 7, 2024
Sergei's awakening was extremely pleasant - so much so that he didn't even want to move, his "tanks were completely empty". Another unusual thing was a warm towel that someone put on his face.
Realizing that something weird was going on, a wide awake boss removed the towel from his face, but the door already closed shut and he was left alone in the room.
"What was that? Eleven o'clock! Crap, they were unable to wake me up yet again!" Thanks to Alice's efforts, boss became used to sleeping until the "awakening ritual", and even the alarm couldn't wake him up sometimes...
After putting on some clothes and coming out of his house, boss tried to look for the intruder/kind person, but couldn't find anyone.
(rus) "Where's everyone... Whatever." Sergei shrugged and went to the laptop to check the situation on the streets of Paris.
The situation on the streets was usual. The red zombies were sitting in ambush, the lone regular zombies would wander into the area from time to time, only to be caught by the red ones and connected to the "corncob". "Corncob" was the name of that unknown thing with tentacles, where the common zombies were connected to in order to turn them into red ones.
Taking advantage of the free time he suddenly got, boss launched the "Staff" program. When upgraded to the level 4, it started showing the stats and skills of the haven's residents, who became system users. It also showed him their health status, reserve of strength and general mood.
(rus) "Hm, Sylvie has reached level 5 already! I should ask her later which new abilities she's got. What? Tentacle? Ha-ha-ha, such a ridiculous skill," while going through the list of people and their skills, boss found one that caught his attention. Considering the fact that the owner of the skill didn't have any "position", he probably got the skill while helping to fight off zombies.
(rus) "Interesting, do his limbs turn into tentacles or he can choose what part of his body to turn into a tentacle?..." In Boss' imagination appeared a horrifying scene, where a hentai tentacle appears out of man's boxers... "Ew ew ew..."
"O-o-o-oh! Boss's awake!" He heard Anne's sonorous voice; Alice and Annette were walking beside her.
"Boss, you're awake... I'm sorry, they woke me up early in the morning because of some problem that came up, and I couldn't... wake you up," Alice blushed.
"Huh? Then who... Whatever, what problem were you talking about?" Boss asked feeling aroused. Every time he saw blushing Alice, liked it or not, Sergei remembered times when they had sex.
"An accident occurred when moving furniture from the warehouse and several people were slightly injured. It caused a scandal..." the girl stammered upon noticing her boss' burning gaze and blushed even harder. She then gathered her wits and continued: "As a result, the brawlers were taken to the fence and forced to patrol until lunchtime. And Solomon reminded again that it would be best to organize an isolation cell or a jail for such troublemakers."
"Yeah... I completely forgot about that. And one more thing... How's our rescued soldier doing? I forgot about him as well..."
"He's displeased about being locked up, but happy that he's being given delicious meals," she was present during his feeding. The soldier was practically thanking god for such a feast...
"Hm, maybe we should recruit him? Take that up with Solomon."
"Yes, boss."
"Annette, what's the situation outside?"
"The red ones grab the common ones, turn them into red ones and then they take off in an unknown direction."
"So, in other words, we are still screwed?"
"...That we are, boss."
"Well then why don't we grab a bite to eat?" boss offered, rubbing his growling stomach.
"Right! You haven't had breakfast yet!" Alice ran inside her house and a minute later brought him some leftover food from yesterday's feast. "Do not eat too much! You are gonna spoil your appetite before lunch!"
"Alright, alright," Sergei smiled and took the plate with the leftover veggies and meat.
***
"Aaaaaand... what am I doing here?" Sergei asked himself out loud, standing in one of the alien apartments in the building on the captured shard. "I need to do something with this head of mine... It's not good..."
Once again Sergei found himself in an unknown place for unknown reasons, and it was starting to become scaring...
"Boss, we found something interesting," Solomon's voice called him from behind.
"Why are we even here, Solomon?" The boss turned around and asked his subordinate with a lost look on his face.
"Boss... are you having memory loss again?"
"No, i just wanted to make sure you're not a shapeshifting alien in my man's body! Of course I'm having a memory loss!"
"...You wanted to check if there are any interesting devices or new technologies on this shard."
"So, are they?" Sergei asked looking around a half empty room that looked like it has seen a lot.
"There are some devices, technologies are at the level of the early nineties. Come, I've found a TV."
Solomon took his boss to another apartment - and what took Sergei's interest was the shape of the rooms. There was not even a single rectangular room. They were either triangular or trapezoidal. To simplify, each apartment resembled a schematic and a bit bitten slice of pizza.
"This is a TV?"
"Yes, boss, I'm one hundred percent sure. A regular tube TV, it's just shaped weirdly," Louis confirmed.
Solomon, boss and Louis stood in front of a wooden cabinet with a huge, built in TV. It had an oval shaped screen, and it was not horizontal as it was common on Earth, but rather vertical, as if it was designed to view smartphone videos...
"Anything else that caught your interest?" Boss asked after looking around the room. The furniture was old and shabby. There was mold in there somewhere, so it smelled awful. Also there was little light in the apartment because only one room out of three had a window.
"No, boss, it's mostly junk. There are a few interesting ideas, but nothing useful," Louis concluded with confidence. "I can tell you that electronics in their world was the lot of the rich people. There is not much of it and it looks like it's custom made."
"Alright, let's go back. Hey, we can organize a tour around this place for our people. Let them see how aliens used to live," boss suggested after observing the room once more. Solomon was fully on board, old Louis, on the other hand, couldn't care less.
Upon returning to the center of the camp, boss immediately headed towards the Professor's lab.
The Professor was an extremely paranoid person, so he had asked to be placed in the most secure place in the haven. For that reason, the lab, a one-storied brick building, was located in the military sector.
The lab was broken down into several areas: the storage room, the medical room, the chemical lab itself, the server room, where the stolen server from the pharmaceutical lab was located, the study and the bedroom.
Knock-knock-knock.
(fr) "Come in."
(rus) "I have no idea what he just said, but it didn't sound like "fuck off" to me..." Sergei thought out loud. He opened the door and saw Professor Curie sitting behind his computer.
"Hey, Prof, how's my disease analysis coming?" The visitor asked upon entering the room.
"This is a unique case. The AI is looking for a solution and I'm helping it any way I can," Professor replied immediately. The artificial intelligence was built into the server and was one of the most powerful AI of modern times.
"Let's perform an examination since you're here - it might speed things up a little bit." Sergei nodded and followed Professor to the medical room, although it looked more like something between Frankenstein's laboratory and an S&M practice room. Lots of complex equipment was placed around - the same equipment that was stolen from the pharmaceutical company, and, for example, by the looks of it, one of the devices required a person to be tied up to it and at the same time to be hanging from it...
Professor took his blood and saliva samples, did an MRI of his head and ran a few more tests.
"So?" Sergei asked hopefully.
"Nothing new, although, comparing to the results in your medical file, there's a slight improvement. Your headaches are gone, right?" The old man asked without looking up from the papers full of data.
"Yeah, almost immediately after I started taking medicine, but my memory keeps failing me and sometimes I behave very foolishly and illogically."
"To be honest with you, I have no idea how you didn't turn into a "vegetable". From the documents that you gave me, I learned that at the time of the apocalypse your brain was in the process of being repaired, but when the pod ran out of medicine it started searching for alternative solutions. It somehow managed to make your brain work again, but, according to the data in these documents, it was only supposed to last for fifty two hours. After that, according to the forecast, you either was supposed to get the needed treatment or die. But somehow you're still alive and there're no signs of deterioration."
"Do you know what's the reason for it?" The mention of those fifty two hours kind of scared Sergei a little bit. Also the phrase "either treatment or death" wasn't exactly reassuring at all...
"I assume it is the effect of the haven or the system."
"So, theoretically, it means that if I spend a lot of time away from the haven, my condition will get worse and I'll die?" Sergei asked with a hint of approaching panic in his voice.
"It is possible, yes," Professor replied nonchalantly.
"What if I find the pod??"
"It won't work, we don't have any needed medications and nanomaterial."
"Crap, where else can I find those pods?"
"Hm, the closest medical centers I know of are in London and Berlin."
"Where those pods are built then?"
"It used to be in Paris, but then Google bought the factory and the firm moved to the States."
"Fuck... Your government let America buy the company that has developed innovative medical technology?!"
Professor, just like a lot of intelligent people, judged his own government for sagging under Americans. Even the world famous magazine "Charlie Hebdo" portrayed the president of the country with his pants down, red butt and a tube of Vaseline in his hand. However, that proved to be of little use.
"Okay, so their HQ is in the states now. And where is it exactly?"
"That I don't know. Americans quickly vetoed any information about the company, their developments have state secrets stamps all over them."
"Okay, thank you Professor. I hope your research yields the desired results."
Sergei left the lab and went to lunch.
(rus) "Ignorance is bliss... So, either the healing skill or the pods then... But everything will be alright while I don't leave the haven for long periods of time. So don't you worry Sergei, we'll make it through!"
After a peaceful lunch, boss secluded himself in his house. Back when he was a kid, he met an old Thai healer, who taught the boy healing massage, shared his wisdom and taught him how to meditate.
Through massage the boy healed his body and through meditation - his soul. The old man used to say: "When the soul is ill, the body suffers as well". He would also often say the words that later became the boy's motto in life: "A problem is considered a problem only when it is treated as such"...
Using the meditation technique, Sergei cleared his head from thoughts. The old healer taught him to picture his mind as a house, and if thoughts are the furniture, the negative thoughts are garbage and vermin.
Concentrating and clearing his mind, Sergei got rid of unnecessary thoughts and all the furniture vanished, but the garbage and vermin remained. He got rid of negative thoughts by imagining collecting the garbage and dumping it in an urn, but it was hard to get rid of vermin. Those were the most intrusive and soul torturing negative thoughts. They can live in a person's "house" all their life, becoming stronger with each passing day and then one day lead a person to depression or suicide.
There happened to be a lot of vermin... The first love who ended up being a spy planted to extract information from him, the loss of parents in early childhood, his abduction by mafia realtors, which led to the death of his grandmother, who signed their apartment over to the kidnappers in ransom...
But the most resilient and big of them all was a black spider which personified the thought of inevitable death. It made Sergei hate himself even more, because judging by the size of his negative thoughts, his own life meant more to him than his grandma and parents...
Sergei pulled himself together and began his battle with the spider, which didn't want to go and started to bite him and run away. But, the longer it struggled the weaker it became, because he slowly started to realize that everything wasn't that bad, that it will get better, and even if Sergei was destined to die it obviously wasn't gonna happen that exact moment, so for now he could live as he pleased and try to survive against all odds.
And even if he ends up dying, he can safely say that the humanity would die as well, which makes him feel a little better...
The wannabe monk smiled and opened his eyes. The battle with the spider was hard, but in the end, it was defeated and thrown out of the "house". His soul found peace, his mind became free from unnecessary thoughts, however...
"Damn it, it's evening already!"
The plans that he made for the day were gonna have to be postponed...
Knock-knock-knock.
"Come in." The knock on the door interrupted his brainstorming session.
"It's me, boss," a nervous looking Alice came through the door. "You've been gone most of the day and... I was worried about you. Then I happened to meet the Professor, he told me about your visit and that you might be a little depressed right now..."
"Haha, don't worry, I'm not a pussy to mop around and be sad!" Boss laughed, then stood from the bed and approached her. "My disease is curable and that's the only thing that matters. Plus I'm not alone and I've got support. So I've decided to take everything I can from life and move towards my goal," he spoke seriously looking the girl in the eyes.
"I will support you, boss! Oh!" Alice smiled at him brightly, but then Sergei suddenly swept her off her feet. For a system user with 16 points of strength the girl was light as a feather.
"Boss... The dinner is in half an hour..." the girl spoke in quiet and embarrassed voice upon figuring out her boss' intentions.
"Just in time to work up an appetite!" Boss laughed and gently eased the girl onto the bed.
***
"Bo-oss! We are starving!!! ALI-I-ICE! Come on, don't you have a heart?!!" Shouted Anne, who was hungry like a wolf - even her stomach howled from outrage.
It's been hour and a half since Alice went to comfort their boss. No matter how loud Anne screamed, no one in the house heard her - because she herself demanded earlier from the boss to soundproof his house. He listened to her and fulfilled her request...
After five minutes of shouting, when there was still no response, the hungry as a bear girl went to bang on the boss' bedroom window. Nothing could be seen from behind the curtains, but she achieved the result - in two minutes, the couple that made people starve, finally came out of the house.
"Boss! You should be ashamed of yourself! We almost starved to death while waiting for you!" Anne protested vehemently.
"Sorry, sorry. Next time don't wait for me," the boss said, struggling to hold his laughter. Hungry and angry Anne looked very hilarious.
"That's not right! You're our boss! Alice! You are to blame as well, you can't seduce boss before meals! You're not a little girl anymore, you should know that men only think about one thing! And you willingly entered that den of vice and debauchery, knowing full well that the dinner was coming!"
"Since when did my house became the den of vice and debauchery?" Boss asked in surprise, to which Anne couldn't find anything to say.
"Alright, that won't happen again," Sergei announced with a big smile, while a very red, embarrassed Alice silently stood by his side. She was of course a grown woman and was very active in bed, but any discussion of her intimate life - especially by outsiders - made the girl turn bright red and wish to run away to somewhere very far.
After joking around and teasing the boss and Alice a little bit, everyone sat down to dinner. By boss' order, no less than a hundred rabbits were slaughtered each day. The butchers have begun their work and first servings of rabbit legs, fillet, thighs and etc. were already on the table.