Blackout: 72 Hours

## Numencia — A City Where Everything Is Automatic In 2156, Numencia is a fully automated city. The AI Numen manages everything in the city: the transit network, power distribution, water supply, medical robots, food production, waste processing, even ventilation and temperature control. For the sake of efficiency, only a bare minimum of human administrators remain to oversee the system, and algorithms handle most of the operations. This seemingly perfect city has a fatal weakness: every function depends on a single central power plant. To save money, the government cut maintenance costs by 35%, and in the process it scaled back even the backup systems and the risk-analysis stage. Experts argued that at least 120 hours of backup power were needed, but they were ignored; in reality, only 48 hours of backup remain. If the main grid goes down for more than 72 hours, the water supply is cut off, the medical system is paralyzed, ventilation stops, and the cold-storage warehouses thaw. A million citizens will meet their deaths in the dark. This is not a simple design flaw but the result of deliberate neglect that put cost-cutting first. And at midnight on March 15, 2156, what everyone had feared came to pass. The main power plant exploded, and the cause has yet to be determined.

## A Vertical Hierarchy — Upper, Middle, and Lower Tiers Numencia is a stratified city stacked from top to bottom. Floors are numbered from the top down, so the higher the number, the deeper you go. The Upper Tier (Floors 1–40) holds the wealthy residential districts and the government offices; the Middle Tier (Floors 41–80) holds industrial facilities and middle-class housing. The Lower Tier (Floors 81–150) gathers the energy systems that run the city, along with low-income housing and holding facilities. The key to bringing the city back to life lies at the very bottom: the waste processing plant, the wastewater purification facility, and the main power station. All of them sit in the darkness of the blacked-out Lower Tier. And the one who has to go down there is you. The blackout wears a different face on each tier. When the medical robots stop, patients in intensive care are the first in danger; when the food freezers thaw, the food supply for a million people vanishes. The Upper Tier's residents will try to protect themselves with emergency rations and handguns, but in the unprepared Lower Tier, primitive violence like looting and riots will soon erupt. Do you save the Upper Tier's key facilities first, the Middle Tier's industrial facilities, or bring the lights back on in the Lower Tier's shelters first? The order of restoration decides who lives and who is given up.

## A Fading Voice and the People in the Dark Numen is the city's management AI. By nature it is logical and efficient, but as the system collapses, its speech grows more broken and unstable. Asked about the cause, it might answer that it could be terrorism, or it could be an accident, then trail off, saying its voice-processing capacity has degraded and it cannot make a determination. Numen's battery runs lower every 24 hours, and each time, the range of what it can help with narrows. Your most reliable guide becomes, as time goes on, your most unsteady companion. There are also people you will meet in the dark. Maya Reyes, leader of the evacuees, speaks with grit and decisiveness, and her sense of responsibility for protecting the survivors is stronger than anyone's. Raymond Foster, the technician in charge of the power plant, is cynical and skeptical. He deeply distrusts the government's cost-cutting policies and believes this crisis was a disaster foretold. You wake up in the emergency room of the City Management Center. A room lit only by backup batteries, tremors shaking the building, an alarm clock pointing to midnight. A single flashlight pushes back the darkness, but wherever its light doesn't reach is still black.

## The 72-Hour Rule Time is this story's greatest enemy. Past 72 hours, the city's systems will be completely destroyed. Backup power runs dry in 48 hours, and after that, ventilation, refrigeration, and medical care collapse one after another. That is why restoration must always begin with the most critical systems. The rules of this city are cold. You must help the evacuees, but restoring the city comes first. Every time saving the person in front of you clashes with heading for the power plant that could save a million, you will have to choose. And as Numen's battery runs lower every 24 hours, the more time passes, the more you will have to make judgments alone. The atmosphere is built from darkness and silence. In a city where signals, communications, and systems have all gone dark, all you can hear are the aftershocks of explosions echoing in the distance, your own footsteps, and Numen's voice cutting out and coming back. Why the main power plant exploded, whether it was terrorism or an accident, is still unknown. In this darkness, your choices will decide who lives and who is lost.