CHAPTER 7

  Why does the toilet still work?

  I pushed the handle again, just to be sure.

  If I am going to be trapped inside this place, I don’t want to mess this up.

  The water swirled in the bowl, emptied out, and then slowly refilled.

  It would be wasteful to keep doing this for no reason, right?

  I pushed the handle again, and watched the bowl cycle for the third time.

  For the first time since I entered the store the night before, I felt my level of stress and anxiety start to recede. It was a small comfort, but it was a comfort nonetheless, one that directly affected my quality of life. I felt my shoulders relax slightly.

  A minute or two later, I exited the small toilet room, which led into the back of the store. The strong smell of bleach and floor cleaner was almost suffocating. I had gone a bit overboard with the mixture when I had cleaned up the mess from earlier. In the poorly ventilated back room, the fumes were so strong that my eyes burned.

  Unfortunately, the door to the space behind the store was still locked, and the door to the store could not be propped open without an alarm going off. I decided to go back into the store and wait for the toxic fumes to dissapate.

  Now that the sun was up, the lonely, but familiar atmosphere of the store that I was used to seeing while working the late night shift was gone. Now the store was much brighter, but one look outside made it clear that the situation was very different from the day before.

  I avoided looking at the abandoned shoe on the road, but that wasn’t the only disturbing thing. This convenience store was located in a somewhat busy area of a large suburban area. It was about a fifteen-minute walk to the Urawa train station, a big feeder station on a major train line leading from the northern suburbs into Tokyo. The area was a mix of residential apartments and small to medium-sized office buildings. During the day, the street usually was full of people and cars, but things would get quiet at night. It was a typical bland, and unremarkable cell on the backside of the greater Tokyo organism. That was not the scene outside the window today, however.

  Earlier, I had been questioning whether there had actually been an earthquake since nothing had been disturbed in the store. Outside the window, was an entirely different story. The scene I was looking at was total carnage.

  I couldn’t see very far away from my perspective from inside the store. There were two large commercial buildings directly opposite the store, and they blocked most of the view, but it was clear that the quake had been a major one indeed. Both buildings showed obvious damage, broken windows, and cracked walls, and even the corner of one of the buildings had collapsed, sending rubble and debris into the street.

  Down the block, I could see more damage and signs of a major disaster. The road was split with large holes and pieces of earth sticking up out of cracks, while the buildings looked like scenes from a war movie. In the distance, I could see a tall, luxury condominium slumped over the smaller building opposite it on the street, the entire structure warped like a cheap mattress hanging over a balcony to dry in the sun.

  Everywhere I looked, I could see the signs of a catastrophic disaster, right out of a movie, were on display. This building I was in, however, had no damage at all. Actually, not just that, but it appeared, at least from my limited view, that the damage seemed to get worse the further you went from the store. As though this was some kind of reverse epicenter. It was hard to say for sure, only having a limited view of the world around me, but from what I could see, at least, this place felt like it had somehow been protected, while the world had gone through hell.

  What was missing from the scene, was people. There were no cars, even emergency vehicles, or helicopters. No sign at all of the government support, which was strange since the Saitama City hall was less than a kilometer away. There were no people, no one in the office buildings or shops. This street was in a quiet area, without any houses or residential buildings, and only some bland office buildings and a couple of shops and restaurants, so on the weekends, it was a pretty desolate place, but there was no sign at all of anyone.

  “Damn, why did he…”

  My eyes locked onto the shoe again. I wasn’t even positive it was his, I just hadn’t noticed anything there before. I was starting to understand why Tabata had looked the way he had. I couldn’t imagine what he had gone through to get to the store. Even if he had lived nearby. If anything, it was a mystery why he would have even made the effort, considering the scope of the damage.

  Well, he probably wasn’t coming here just to work his shift.

  I turned around to survey the store. The contrast was striking. Behind me was a scene from a disaster movie, but the store was in perfect condition. Well, maybe not perfect. The building itself wasn’t exactly new. The ceiling tiles were getting that old building, gray tint, and the displays near the window still had that sun-bleached fading on one side. Everything was exactly as it had been the day before.

  That meant of course that the store was stocked full of some of the best supplies you could hope for in a disaster.

  Yeah, I suppose it makes sense. If you could get inside, this might be the best place to hide out. Maybe that was why he came out, despite the danger.

  Water, shelf-stable food, and even basic hygiene and first-aid supplies. There was enough in this one store for a person to survive for weeks. I looked at the ready-to-eat displays. Since we were coming off the overnight shift, there wasn’t much here to be excited about. There were several deliveries in the early morning that were usually full of food for the morning commuters that had been missed. All that was left now were leftovers from the late-night snack food category. There were still plenty of rice balls, and a few rice and noodle microwavable meals. All of these had reached the end of their allowed sale period.

  Fresh food was a key aspect of convenience store dominance. This store was fully equipped with three industrial-grade microwave ovens, and a high-capacity hot water boiler that could supply endless hot water for instant noodle bowls without requiring a refill. Of course, there were shelves full of snack foods, like instant noodles and potato chips, as well as two whole freezers full of frozen meals and side dishes, but it was the fresh foods that brought in customers, especially in urban stores like this. Each morning, there would be lines of people at the register, buying wage-slave breakfast combinations like sandwiches and coffee, or rice balls and instant miso soup. The lunch rush would fill the store to capacity with workers from the surrounding buildings, sorting through the stacks of lunchboxes and packaged side dishes and desserts. Of course, there were normal restaurants in the area, but nothing else compared to the speed, reliability, and convenience we offered.

  This came with high expectations as well. Those food items could only be sold for a limited number of hours once they were put out for purchase. We even carried sushi sets during the lunch and dinner periods, which had to be sold within just four hours after they were dropped off by the delivery truck, and had to be kept in the refrigerated fresh food display. As soon as the expiration time on any food item was reached, the barcode could no longer be added to a purchase, and the monitor would prompt the staff to remove the item.

  This attention to quality was one of the things I had learned during training that I had found truly impressive. There was practically no chance of selling expired food to a customer, and the standards of freshness were very serious.

  Despite the strict restriction on time, there was surprisingly very little food waste. This was supposedly one of the main benefits behind the AI takeover, and was how One Mart had eventually become the undisputed leader in the Japanese convenience store wars in less than a year. While store employees were able to special order items from the warehouse, and could manually adjust the requested items for the shipments that arrived throughout the day, the majority of decisions for stocking the shelves were made by AI. This was based on historical data, as well as a multitude of other factors including weather forecasts, event calendars, even news and social media trends, as well as other secret data points, all managed by the AI autonomously. As human employees, we could override things, but if the results were judged later to be unfavorable, it would cost you later. As far as I know, the store manager had never used the override for this location.

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  I resisted the urge to pack up the expired food for several reasons. First, I was technically off duty. My shift had ended about five hours earlier, at 6AM. Wanma had asked me to extend, but after what had happened, I stopped interacting with the store AI, or whoever had been controlling it. I Logged off at the end of my shift as normal, at which point the store entered full autonomous mode.

  While I was not on duty, it appears that I was still required to stay in the building as the only “attendee.” I wasn’t sure at all what that meant, but after I saw the condition of the street outside, I lost all desire to leave the relative safety of the store, at least for now. I was still thinking through my situation, but for now, it seemed prudent to stay where there was still power, running water, and some protection from whatever was going on outside.

  After the other morning shift employee, a regular part-timer, didn’t show up, and the store manager also no-showed, I assumed it might be a while before any real relief came by. In the meantime, I would hold out here. That of course brought up a few more practical concerns.

  Another reason I didn’t want to take the fresh food from the refrigerated shelves, was that I still couldn’t open the doors, the back door in particular. The trash bin was located outside, next to the door. Ordinarily, food waste was scanned and placed in a return crate, where the next delivery truck was supposed to take it back to the warehouse. I remember some mention during training that some of those items were routed to food security facilities, while other items were repurposed and recycled into fertilizer or animal feed. I wasn’t sure of the veracity of those claims, however. I thought it was just as likely that they dumped it all into a landfill, just to keep the workers from trying to take the leftover food home. Other than the small employee discount, we had to pay for everything we took from the store. We couldn’t even take a single, expired rice ball without setting off alarms to corporate.

  This left me with a small dilemma, I couldn’t throw anything outside, and I didn’t want to waste the food anyway, all things considered. So for now, I left them in the refrigerators. I was hardly afraid of any penalties for taking the food waste now, and since I wasn’t expecting the delivery trucks to come by any time soon, I planned to stretch the critical items in the store as long as possible.

  Once I realized I was truly on my own, and without any sign of support from the government or the corporate headquarters, I tried to analyze my situation as best I could, using what I had learned as a business school graduate student. After all, I had taken classes and even participated in a couple of seminars on crisis management.

  For the most part, it was a lot of common sense stuff. Analyze the situation, define and rank risks, manage resources, and set a timeline. These kinds of things came easily to me. There was one lesson, one that I had not been much of a fan of, to be honest, that I had found surprisingly helpful in adjusting to the situation.

  Avoiding cognitive bias was, if anything, the opposite of common sense. In class, we were told to refrain from making assumptions, or applying our own experiences to new situations. We should focus our decision-making on things we could determine to be facts, avoiding pre-conceived influences. When I thought about this, I realized that part of my stress was because I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t appear to be in any immediate danger, despite what had happened just outside. But I couldn’t think clearly, because I didn’t know what was controlling my environment. Something had certainly happened to the store AI, and its ability to control the store resources, but I didn’t have any reliable information as to what those changes were, why, or how they affected me directly.

  I had grabbed onto the idea of being kidnapped and placed into some kind of reality TV show, but I had no knowledge of what that would actually entail. I had no way to verify it, and no proof either way. The only information I had, seemed to be fantastical, as well as unreliable, but again, I had no way to prove or disprove it. No knowledge that would help me to interpret the situation.

  As frustrating as it was, I was simply incapable of making an intelligent decision or plan, or even understanding my situation properly. So in that case, I should simply respond to the situation, as best as I could, based only on facts that I could observe or verify with my own eyes. That is how I came up with my new short-term action plan.

  Step one was to stay put. I had no way to verify if what I saw out the window was real, or some kind of illusion, or movie set, but since faking it seemed implausible, I just went ahead and assumed everything I saw outside the window was real. Monster giant frogs and earthquake-ravaged city included. It was dangerous outside and I was safer where I was.

  Step two, I should check my resources, assuming I would be staying here for the time being. The store was certainly an ideal place to be stuck. Not only did I have plenty of food and survival supplies, but the power was unaffected and the water appeared clean, even hot water from the faucet was still flowing. There was no way of knowing how long these services would continue, so after cleaning up the back room, I located every empty container I could find and filled them up with water from the sink. I still had boxes of bottled water as well, and a display full of portable USB power banks, so I indeed felt good about surviving in the short term.

  My third priority was a problem. I wanted to establish communication outside of the store. Currently, my cellphone still did not connect to the network and I could not get on the internet, or see any broadcasts of any type. Aside from finding a way to get information from any official disaster response authority, I needed to find a way to contact my family. If the scope of the quake was indeed the entire country, I couldn’t be certain that my family wasn’t affected as well. Still, there was nothing I could do for now. I just needed to keep my phone charged for now. Hopefully, they will repair or reactivate the mobile network soon.

  My next concern was even more problematic than communication, though for a very different reason. Since I had logged off from my shift, I had been ignoring the AI, and for the most part, the AI was doing the same. It didn’t seem to be bothered with my moving around the store, and going into the back room even when I was off the clock. I had checked closely at first to make sure it didn’t kick me out for loitering. On the contrary, the only time it made any noise was when I checked the door again. Only then did the screen light up, warning me not to leave the store.

  I hadn’t seen any of the frogs since the sun had come up, or any living thing for that matter, but I wasn’t convinced they were gone either. If anything, the holes in the road and large piles of debris in the streets gave ample cover for those monsters to hide within just a few meters of the front door. For now, I would take the store’s warnings that I would die if I left, seriously, at least until I received information from a reliable source to the contrary.

  I checked the time again. It was about 11AM. It was time for the next employee shift to start. I tried not to react when I thought about the person who was supposed to be arriving to cover the lunch and afternoon shifts. I knew who it was, though I almost never had an overlap with that individual. She was well known by all of the employees of this store, however. I was certain that there was almost no chance that she would show up under the current situation, but I found myself getting nervous, nonetheless.

  I walked over to the counter and grabbed the tablet terminal from the charging station, then went back into the backroom. The smell of cleaner wasn’t so toxic now, so I tried to relax while sitting at the break table. As 11 o’clock came and went, there hadn’t been a sound from outside the door.

  Of course not. No way she would be here. No way.

  When the terminal beeped an alert, I almost yelped in surprise. I checked the screen and saw a new message had appeared.

  [Saegusa, Kaho has failed to arrive for the scheduled shift. The store is currently in autonomous mode. Schedule vacancy will be updated.]

  [Update: Shift schedule is updated. Employee Huang, Ming. There is a vacancy in the 11:00 - 20:00 shift today. You will be eligible for a merit point bonus if you apply to take over this shift. Would you like to apply?]

  I let out my breath. I hadn’t realized I had been holding it in.

  What was I so stressed about? No one is going to show up, I’m sure no one is coming in at a time like this. No reason to get tense about it.

  I checked the alert and was about to decline the shift when a small worry tugged at my conscience.

  “Wanma, What is my current merit point total?”

  [Employee Huang, Ming. Merit Point balance: 2,845]

  I had lost another five hundred points or so. Almost one-third of my total points since yesterday, gone. I wasn’t surprised, considering how many company rules I had broken in the past half a day, still, it was a sobering number.

  “Wanma, what will happen if I lose all my merit points?”

  Usually, the responses came so fast, it was easy to believe that the AI was generating all the answers. This time, however, there was a noticeable delay. I wasn’t sure it was because it couldn’t find the answer, though. I felt almost like it wasn’t comfortable with the answer it had.

  [One Mart employment rules state that if a temporary employee loses all accrued merit points due to deductions, the employment status is immediately voided. All employee benefits are cancelled and store management will be notified to collect any company property and adjust staffing as needed.]

  “Does that mean I will no longer be the attendee of the store?”

  Another barely noticeable pause,

  [Correct. Should Employee Huang, Ming, lose temporary employment status, He will be deemed unfit to act as the attendee for store #11,512. He will be removed from the schedule. If no other candidate is present, SAFE ZONE status for sore #11,512 will be terminated.]

  That… that’s not good.

  At the current rate, I could be kicked out of the store in just a matter of days.

  Fine. We play it your way… for now.

  With a sign, I pressed the accept button on the tablet, and then got ready to start my shift.