Chương 50: Chapter 51: The 300K Problem

The neural disconnect always tasted like copper pennies and cold ozone. Ethan pulled the heavy, scratched haptic visor off his face, his lungs expanding as they took in the dense, stale atmosphere of Room 12-04. The apartment was dead silent, save for the rhythmic, low-frequency hum of his grandmother's pod in the corner. He swung his legs out of the makeshift haptic rig, his bare feet hitting the cold, un-insulated concrete floor.

Before he could even reach for his water bulb, the apartment's master terminal on the wall snapped out of its low-power standby mode. A stark, high-visibility crimson notification banner flooded the display panel, casting a violent red glare across the cramped rental flat. [MANDATORY SECTOR LIQUIDATION NOTICE] Chinatown Housing District — Sector 4 State Lease Reclamation Enforced. Purchasing Entity: Horizon Global Infrastructure Consortium.

Current Lease Status: Terminated. Eviction Grace Period: 60 Days. Replacement Allocation: Northern Sump Sector 12 — Legacy Block 88. WARNING: Allocated Replacement Sector operates on a strict Smart-Grid Cap. Max Wattage Throttled during peak load hours. Medical utility exemptions nullified. Ethan stared at the flashing text, his stomach bottomed out. The state was reclaiming the land.

While the housing board was technically offering a replacement rental flat in an older legacy estate down in the industrial lowlands, the automated energy cap in that sector would be a slow death sentence. The relocation target was a ground-level block buried deep in the toxic, humid basin formerly known as Yishun—a district now completely enclosed beneath a massive carbon-mesh ceiling to trap the super-heated exhaust from the city's corporate high-zones.

His grandmother's therapeutic life-support pod required a continuous, high-voltage power draw to scrub out the heavy sulfur particles. If they relocated to the Yishun sumps, the automated grid would forcibly throttle her medical pod during peak-load hours to protect the neighborhood infrastructure. The system parameters were absolute: if you want a guaranteed, un-capped power line, you have to buy a title in an elevated private development.

He lunged toward the terminal, his fingers frantically tapping the cracked plastic bezel to pull up the private market real estate registry. He filtered for the lowest possible tier—compact, modular Private Studio Pods mounted on elevated structural pylons floating above the ground-level haze traps. The search results loaded with an agonisingly slow, text-only scroll. [PRIVATE HOUSING REAL ESTATE REGISTRY — ELEVATED FRINGE] Asset ID: Micro-Pod Studio, Western Industrial Sky-Pylon Hub.

Dimensions: 350 Square Feet (Modular Steel/Concrete Hull). Environmental Rating: Grade 3 Independent Air Scrubbers & Dedicated Power. Total Asset Value: $1, 500, 000. 00 Singapore Dollars (SGD). Corporate Bridging Loan Minimum Downpayment (20%): $300, 000. 00 SGD. Notice: Conditional on raw cash downpayment. Three hundred thousand dollars. Just for the initial cash deposit. Ethan leaned his forehead against the cold terminal screen.

To purchase a tiny, 350-square-foot modular cell suspended one hundred and fifty metres in the air—anchored to a structural pylon tower soaring directly above the industrial rail tracks of what used to be Jurong East —it cost a fortune. It was a massive price tag for an outpost fringe zone, but it was the absolute cheapest asset on the market that guaranteed an un-throttled medical power line.

From the Jurong pylon's eastern windows, his grandmother would at least be able to look out across the upper-tier sky-bridges toward the distant, glimmering towers of Queenstown —the expensive, elite-tier district where she had grown up, back when the air was clean enough to see the sky from the actual ground. But because of his irregular income as a freelance gamer and his complete lack of a traditional corporate payroll, no commercial bank would ever authorise a standard mortgage.

He had zero Central Provident Fund savings. The private developer's high-risk bridging loan was his single, narrow path out of the lowlands, but he needed a mountain of raw cash upfront to secure the purchase option and freeze the relocation processing. If he missed a single future installment, the developer would repossess the pod instantly, but right now, he just needed to survive the initial sixty-day cliff. He pulled up his digital banking wallet.

His total liquid savings, including his hard-earned silver shekel cash-outs from his sulphur cake exploit, sat at a miserable three thousand dollars. He remembered his triumph—cornering the localised sulphur market had net him a grand total of thirty Silver Shekels ($1, 500 SGD). It had paid their past utility bills, but that minor commodity loophole couldn't be used anymore. Pixel Rex had locked down those northern tracks. He was short by two hundred and ninety-seven thousand Singapore dollars.

He had eight weeks to find it. Ethan sat back down into his worn haptic chair. He pulled the visor back over his eyes and jammed the neural interlock trigger, dropping straight back into the fault lines of the Jordan Valley wilderness. The monochrome server tickers flashed back into existence across the lower left quadrant of his field of vision.

Ethan stood in the pitch-black limestone fissure, the glow from the words Emet (אֱמֶת) on the foreheads of his three automated units casting sharp, elongated shadows against the bedrock. As he watched his golems work, he did some mental sums on how many blades he needed to sell to make up the difference for an apartment. Two hundred thousand individual blades. Ethan sighed as how unpractical this approach would be. Even with his three golems working continuously, it was a mathematical trap.

If he tried to manually peddle these inserts to random refugees at the crossroads, it would take months. He would run out of time in the real world long before he hit his milestone. To survive the two-month eviction clock, he had to come up with a much better strategy. These ten initial blades in his pouch were just a market test to spark an uncontrollable, viral demand. Raising the prices was an option, but it would hurt his current momentum and choke the market before it could truly grow.

He didn't just need a higher price tag; he needed to find other, more valuable products to diversify his operations. He needed to find where the real wealth lay in this part of the server. He needed more information. Beth Shean—he had to go there and do more market research before he could formulate a viable plan. The pressure was on. Ethan pulled his soot-stained mask scarf over his face, hiding his profile before stepping toward the fissure exit.

It was time to head down the pass and see what else this region had to offer.