The Time from Before

Back to Work

With nothing to do, Allen stood before the bunker. He decided then to get into gear and start the repair process. With any luck, he could find a few old repair units, and have them fix up the more important systems.

Starting, however, is always the hardest.

He weighed his options. He could reinforce the structure, preventing any more collapsing sectors. But he quickly realized that he had no materials to do that, and it would be a waste of time.

Instead, he could focus on the electrical systems. The control room in Sector Sixteen was still in serviceable order, but with the radar units offline, not to mention the antennas... The telescopic array was probably a pile of scrap metal by now, and the HVAC system needed a major overhaul.

Who knew thousands of years of decay would, well, subject everything to decay.

He should check a workshop for a few tools, of course, assuming those workshops still exist. The tools were sealed in boxes during the lockdown sequence at the very least.

Heading inside, he began his search for the workshops. With a flashlight and familiarity with the bunker's layout, he searched the workshop locations first.

The first workshop was deep inside the bunker, but it had collapsed completely.

The second workshop was even deeper, and it had suffered the same fate.

The third workshop, which was the last one he could access from that sector, was deeper still. He pressed on through the moist and dusty air, venturing further into the bunker.

Finally, after what seemed like hours, he managed to reach the workshop he was looking for. The journey here was certainly a nostalgic trip, but he had more urgent matters to deal with.

Looking inside, it looked to be intact. The room was, however, absolutely massive. Even if half of the room collapsed, most of the storage should be intact.

Searching for what he came here for, he quickly found multiple towering shelves stacked with boxes. None of them were labeled, but a clipboard should be around here somewhere...

Aha, there it is. Allen picked up the clipboard and dusted it off. Running his finger down the list of names, he eventually landed on a box labeled "General Purpose Tools - 12". Off to the right, where a notes section was present, a little note was left behind.

It said, "I swear to God, if you fucks keep taking the GPTs, I'll find your bunks."

Huh.

He put down the clipboard and moved through the shelves, looking for a number twelve.

...

Then, as if fate willed it, a glint caught Allen's eye. On closer inspection, that glint was from a small metal plate that held the number twelve on it. That should be what he was looking for.

The box in front of the plate was pretty large, though. Managing to grab the box and set it down, Allen ripped open the wooden lid.

Inside wasn't a set of tools at all. For how big this box was, to fit something like this inside is impressive.

Inside the box was a disassembled repair unit. It felt like he was just thinking about these things a few hours ago. No matter how nice it would be to get this thing running, it's not like he had a battery to chuck in this thing. Nor some sort of RTG, but that's beside the point.

This thing was merely dead weight until he could find a way to power it. Normally, these things use batteries housed in their chest cavities, but with the way this unit is disassembled, there wasn't a battery in sight. Although, any battery that wasn't a certain type would have decayed long ago.