Volume 14: Devastation Chapter 647 Office
But what Ke Lan didn't expect was that this joke would become reality not long after.
…
Ark, South District 4, "General Office for Disaster Relief of the Alexander Incident".
This was originally the Commercial Expo Center of the South Fourth District. Due to its geographical location adjacent to the damaged area, convenient transportation, and proximity to several important material distribution sites, it was temporarily requisitioned and converted into the general headquarters for disaster relief affairs.
This commercial expo center is rarely used on weekdays, and only during the annual commercial expo will there be a large flow of people. But this time, as many as 3,000 soldiers from the garrison were urgently transferred here, plus nearly 50,000 staff members in charge of various affairs. The originally empty park was instantly filled with people, and many offices could only be set up in tents and temporary cabins built on the open space.
Of course, these simple offices are prepared for lower-level staff, while the leaders' offices are concentrated inside the "Silver Building" in the most central location of the park.
The "Silver Building" is the core building of the entire South Fourth District Commercial Expo Center, with a total of 139 floors, and is even 200 meters higher than the 1,000-meter-high five-star hotel of the Morgan Consortium. The glass curtain wall on the outside of the building is covered with a layer of silver-white metal plating. From a distance, it looks like a huge silver ingot standing upright in the park - this is the origin of the name "Silver Building".
As one of the landmark buildings in the South Fourth District, the Silver Building itself is even more famous than the Commercial Expo Center - after all, not to mention the South Fourth District itself, even residents of the surrounding districts can see this building spanning three horizontal floors and hundreds of suspended platforms around the building as soon as they look up.
The property rights of the Silver Building do not belong to any private consortium, but were invested and built by the United Parliamentary Group, so the requisition process was almost unimpeded. From cleaning the rooms to the office leaders and senior staff moving in, the entire process did not even take more than twelve hours.
"The efficiency is pretty good." Standing at the entrance of the park, Ke Lan commented silently in his heart, then stepped forward.
He was wearing a field corps officer training uniform. Although he was not wearing shoulder straps or collar insignia, the security at the entrance to the park was not strict. Two garrison soldiers holding Type 01 rifles only glanced at him and then looked away.
Although the main military unit involved in disaster relief work is the garrison, it is a special period after all and there is a shortage of manpower. It is not surprising that people from the field corps appear here. In addition, the training uniform that Ke Lan is wearing is a style that is , and this type of uniform is extremely difficult to imitate, and there are basically no imitations on the market. Faced with a mid- to senior-level officer with the rank of at least major, the two soldiers naturally chose to let him go.
Just after entering the park, Ke Lan was almost bumped into by someone - it was a young man dressed in a suit and tie, dressed like a corporate animal, with a mobile phone on his shoulder, two tablets in his hands, and a pile of paper documents under his armpit. He didn't even have time to say "sorry" before running past Ke Lan and heading for another tent.
It's not just this young man. Such busy staff can be seen everywhere in the entire park. Some women even kicked off their high heels, tore open the side seams of their straight dresses, and ran barefoot on the ground for the sake of efficiency.
Telephones rang one after another in every tent and makeshift house - the damaged area of the Ark accounted for one-third of the entire ship, and even if the remaining two-thirds were not damaged, they were more or less affected. It can be said that all 50 million people on the ship were affected by the disaster... and as the general office for post-disaster handling, the workload here can be imagined with your heels.
"I guess I'll have to work overtime for several nights..." Ke Lan sighed and continued walking forward, crossing most of the park and arriving at the downstairs of the Baiyin Building.
At this time, he was finally stopped by the guard at the door.
But he noticed that although these guards were wearing the same lightweight riot armor made of carbon fiber as the garrison, they were wearing pure black uniforms underneath the armor - these people were not soldiers of the garrison, but on-duty personnel of an administrative department.
"Stop, which department are you from?" The two guards looked at Ke Lan's officer uniform with some caution. "There is no field service corps office in this building."
"I'm here to look for someone." Ke Lan said.
"Please show us your ID." Another guard said to Ke Lan in a businesslike manner.
"Do you have anything like iris verification equipment here?" Ke Lan asked.
When Ke Lan left the meeting room, Demeter told him that his personal biometric data had been entered by the Undead Crew and that he had been granted the highest level of authority in the entire Ark - in other words, he could use his face to travel, eat, or take a walk in the institute's underground ice storage.
"Here." Another guard took two steps back and pointed to the electronic lock panel next to the glass door of the building and said, "Face scan, fingerprint, iris scan are all OK... But now is a special period, we must confirm your identity before letting you in, even if you are an officer, you must..."
Ke Lan ignored the guard who was still muttering, and walked directly to the electronic lock panel and put his eyes close to the iris scanning window.
A red light swept across, and the machine immediately made a soft "beep" sound, and the screen lit up with a green light of "passage allowed".
"Huh? What's going on?" The guard was stunned and immediately walked forward and looked at the screen of the electronic lock.
After the office took over the Baiyin Building, the building's electronic security system was immediately reset. Only the identity information of people who had workstations in the building would be entered into the system. However, in the impression of these two guards, there was no such person as Ke Lan among those staff members.
"The name is... Ke Lan... Huh? Why is there only one name? Where is your other identity information?" the security guard asked in surprise. He only saw the two words "Ke Lan" filled in the name column on the screen, and the other information was all blank. However, the machine's judgment was to allow the person to pass, which made him confused.
"Is there a possibility..." Ke Lan said to the two of them with a smile, "My identity is more confidential?"
"Impossible! Even if they are from the Security Bureau, they will be listed as corresponding units and positions!" The guard suddenly became nervous and reached for the holster on his waist. "Did you hack into the building's security system?"
"You can ask the engineer in charge of the electronic security system of this building to check carefully to see if there is any problem with the system." Ke Lan shrugged, "But my advice is... you'd better not waste my time."
The guard's expression froze. After exchanging a glance with his colleagues, one of them stared at Ke Lan, while the other turned around and spoke in a low and hurried voice into the intercom.
Ten seconds later, the other guard ended the call, looked Ke Lan up and down strangely, and said, "The security department said there is no problem..."
"Then can I go in?" Ke Lan pointed to the door.
The guard nodded with a complicated expression, seeming a little reluctant, but had to let Ke Lan in.
Just as Ke Lan said, if he had an urgent task and wasted time, if they were held accountable, not only would they lose their jobs, they would also most likely face other punishments.
"Strange... It's so busy outside, but it's so hard to get into this building." Ke Lan muttered to herself, "If everyone entering and leaving is questioned like this, it would waste too much time... Well, it may be that I'm wearing the wrong clothes. If I had changed into a suit before coming here, these two guards wouldn't have stopped me."
Ke Lan walked straight to the elevator entrance on one side of the lobby. In addition to him, there were a dozen young men and women waiting for the elevator. Each of them had the same characteristics - anxious expressions, mobile phones with non-stop message alerts, and folders so thick that they could hardly be closed... Compared with the lower-level staff outside, these people working in the building were no different at all except that they wore more upscale clothes.
Ke Lan was lucky. Just as she stopped, the elevator arrived at the first floor. The door of the elevator opened, and a group of hurried staff members filed out, followed by the people waiting for the elevator.
Because there are too many floors, the elevator in the Baiyin Building does not have buttons. Instead, it has a touch screen that can write numbers. After entering the elevator, everyone enters the floor they want to go to. Ke Lan is the last person. He stretched out his finger and wrote "139" on the touch screen.
The top floor of the Baiyin Building is also where the office of the highest leader of the entire office is located.
He found that when he wrote down 139, several staff members around him looked at him in surprise - when they focused their attention on Ke Lan's clothes, the surprise in their eyes became even stronger.
"What's wrong?" Ke Lan asked, "Why do you look... surprised?"
"Don't you know that the 139th floor is... the commander-in-chief's office?" A young man with an honest face reminded Ke Lan.
"I know." Ke Lan answered immediately.
"Only the commander-in-chief and his secretary can enter his office. Anyone else who wants to report to work must apply in advance..." The man continued, "Look at the clothes you're wearing... Are you a military man?"
"I guess so." Ke Lan responded. After all, he still held the rank of major general in the field corps. Although he had no troops under his command, there was nothing wrong with saying that he was a military man.
"The military... is looking for the commander-in-chief?" This news immediately spread like wildfire in the crowd, and many people were whispering, as if this was a very big deal.
"I did want to find him, but is this worth being so surprised?" Ke Lan's doubts grew even stronger... Could it be that these people thought that the Field Service Corps wanted to intervene in the aftermath of the incident? They must have been kicked in the head by a donkey. Now the Field Service Corps has a pile of shit hanging on its butt that it can't clean up, so how can it have the time, energy, and manpower to get involved in the affairs of the Ark?
"Nothing, nothing." The young man waved his hands repeatedly, with a frightened smile on his face.
Ke Lan knew that even if she continued to ask, this guy probably wouldn't tell her anything more.
But in the whispers of others, Ke Lan heard a sentence that was quite informative - "Shouldn't this kind of thing be handled by the United Parliamentary Group? Even if it was reported to the higher-ups, the people who came should be from the Security Bureau... How could it be someone from the military?"
"There is something fishy." Ke Lan thought to himself, but he did not rush to ask those people - he was already in the elevator anyway, and he would know the answer by seeing it with his own eyes what the problem was with the "commander-in-chief".
The elevator went up very quickly. When it reached the 138th floor, Ke Lan was the only one in the elevator. When the floor number jumped to "139", there was a "ding" sound, and the elevator door slid to both sides. An empty and tidy corridor appeared in front of Ke Lan.
"Only the commander-in-chief and his secretary are on the top floor?" Ke Lan looked around. Compared with the crowded other floors, the top floor was extremely quiet. No human voices could be heard at all. "This is such a waste."
He glanced at the floor plan posted on the wall and walked towards the office of the "Office Director"... But before Ke Lan reached the door, he saw a beautiful girl with messy clothes and a flushed face hurried out of the room.
Her steps were hurried, but she didn't hold any documents or electronic devices in her hands, and the posture of her legs and hips when she walked was strange.
The girl lowered her head and did not see Ke Lan. She turned and walked into an office with a sign saying "Secretary Office No. 4" and quickly closed the door.
Ke Lan frowned.
He had vaguely guessed something, and an inexplicable anger suddenly rose in his heart.
He pushed open the door and strode into the general manager's office.
There was a strange smell in the room - if it was in the past, Ke Lan might not have been able to tell what the smell was, but now, the answer in her heart was about to come out...
There was no one sitting behind the desk. After Ke Lan walked around the office, a middle-aged man with a big belly came out of the lounge hidden behind the wall with his trousers held up.
As soon as he saw Ke Lan, he immediately exclaimed: "Who are you? How did you get in?"
He stretched out his hand to grab the phone on the desk, but the next second, the phone was already in Ke Lan's hand.
"Of course I just walked in like that." Ke Lan replied.
"This is the headquarters for the aftermath of the Alexander Incident, not the base of your field corps!" the middle-aged man shouted breathlessly, "I demand that you leave immediately... No, that's not right, you can't leave now!"
"Oh, you also know that this is the headquarters for the aftermath of the Alexander incident?" Ke Lan said sarcastically, "If you didn't tell me, I would have thought you regarded this place as your home..."
"What do you mean?" the middle-aged man immediately widened his eyes and asked.
"Your name is Hinata Yuji, right? Are you Congressman Williams's man?" Before coming, Ke Lan had already obtained the identity information of all the senior leaders of the office, but he did not expect to be greeted by such an outrageous scene.
Fortunately, I asked the Undead Crew not to notify the United Parliament in advance, otherwise, this guy would be coming to me with neat clothes and a smile on his face, right?
"Who are you?!" Hinata Yuji asked in shock and anger.
"The people below are so busy, but I see you are quite free?" Ke Lan did not answer the other party's question, but dragged the laptop on the table and started looking through the documents inside.
