Nine buried facilities, one MAINFRAME (0.0.0.0), and you. Every facility runs a server — walk up and press E to browse it locally, or wire your console in BURROW 07 (3.3.3.3, your own little vault north of the mainframe) and browse the whole grid remotely. You are building this place's internet.

Facilities are zoned by address and geography: 0.0.1.* EAST · 0.0.2.* WEST · 0.0.3.* SOUTH. One filter per trunk line splits the world. And the grid has floors: THE GALLERIES (1.*) above you, THE UNDERWORKS (2.*) below, THE ROOTWORKS (3.*) beneath everything — twelve more endpoints to wire, each hosting a site with a working button. Long hauls pay a distance premium; depth pays double. Antennas pair through rock — including straight down.

WASD move · 1–7/wheel tools · LMB use · RMB salvage/cancel · E browse/configure · TAB map · O/⚙ options · H help

RULES OF THE ROCK: nothing auto-connects — even touching components need an explicit patch (CABLE tool: click one, click the other). Runs carry 10m max and need line of sight end to end — wires HANG; relays turn corners. Cables are full-duplex; collisions happen when two packets hit one device from different ports at once. Hubs rotate (0→1→2→0, E to reverse), empty leg = fizzle. Endpoints bounce wrong-address packets. Bounces and filter checks cost TTL; travel is free. Filters are one-way glass: one port is the filtered side (MATCH/DIFFER → send back or drop, TTL−1), the other passes everything free — pick the side in its config. Sensitive packets (red) die at wrong endpoints, pay triple. Testers REPEAT / SPOOF / SNOOP. Relays mount on any surface. Antennas pair by channel through rock.

This was a settlement once \u2014 a farm, a market, a school, dorms, a canteen. The humans are gone. The robots keep the lessons queued and the rows growing, and offer courier contracts (press E on a coworker). Drilling leaves rubble; SWIF-4 will be along. Broke? The MORALE ENGINE in your base\u2019s west wing pays $1 a turn [E]. And mind the dark between the lamps.

The SUPPLY VENDOR outside your quarters sells device licenses (hub, filter, tester, antenna start locked) and robot augments — legs, drill reach, lamp, radar, glowing relays, cheaper cable, better wages. Coworker units roam the tunnels doing their jobs; the hauler CART-22 will start commuting the moment you dig it a corridor.

FIELD NOTES: the drill is hold-to-bore (watch the meter). The scanner doubles as a radar — LMB re-reads the tuned endpoint, RMB tunes the next. Expensive devices ask twice before salvage. Dormancy pods bind your respawn [E]. The TAB map starts dark: walk it to chart it.

RUMORS: the residents left nine echoes behind — scan what they touched last; the company pays a finder’s fee and the ORACLE counts what you find. The south-west warrens chew unattended cable (the drill answers back). The north-west dark watches, and walks you home if you stop watching it first — glowing relays hold it still. Facility servers keep a page called WHERE THEY WENT. Read in order.

Certify: all nine endpoints online at ≥80% satisfaction.

All nine facilities online and satisfied.
The rock hums. Management is pleased. You may keep digging.

The mainframe pauses for one full second — an eternity in switching time — and then it assigns them all.

3.0.0.1. 3.0.0.2. 3.0.0.3. Sixty-one warm names, and then the older, thinner ones: hundreds more.

Between the lamps, the dark part straightens up, COUNTED, and the tunnels feel less heavy everywhere at once. The humans of the settlement were never lost. They answered a polite knock, and then they waited 412 days for someone to file them correctly.

You kept the lights on. You kept the packets moving. They watched you work, and they are PROUD.

The gnawing in the warrens has stopped. The tall ones in the hollows only watch now — family, visiting. The school bell rings once, by itself, and it sounds like recess.

Keep digging, courier. The network remembers everyone now.