How to Abandon D-Day

Three X marks were drawn on the whiteboard. The time of the Myeongjin Station accident, the hospital oxygen cutoff, the Boridong floodgate closure. I taped black tape over the line where I'd written the original date. The line drawn in pen was still visible on the paper, but the tape was a mark telling me not to look at it again for a while.

Jang Yura crossed her arms and stood in front of the board. "Is the next calculation also based on the original date?"

"Only as a secondary reference..."

"No. From now on, the current basis."

I closed my mouth. Discarding the original date was harder than I'd expected. A date is easy to hold on to. The 27th, the 11th, 02:17. When people have numbers, they mistake that for control. But right now those numbers were dragging us in different directions.

Seo Jin set down the radio equipment. "I'll cut the date from the broadcast lines too. We need to be careful with phrases like tonight as well. If network time keeps drifting, arguments will start over what counts as today."

Min Chae set three offline clocks on the desk. "These three are still accurate. But my phone jumps to 02:17 and comes back. The moments it jumps are getting longer."

O Gyeongtae's voice over the extension line was rougher. "Watch the pump, not the clocks. Even if time goes crazy, the water still flows down."

I taped a new sheet of paper to the lower part of the board. I started to write a title and then erased it. A grand name wasn't necessary. People, equipment, sources. Three columns were enough. Boridong resident representative, Mun Sangpil, Jang Yura's rescue team, Seo Jin's broadcast, Min Chae's clocks, O Gyeongtae's remote advice, the hospital's power, the southwest floodgate, the West Sea barrier's backup line. Every time I drew a connecting line, I wrote a condition instead of a date.

If Mun Sangpil touches the water supply valve, backflow to the upper floors slows down. In exchange, it becomes more vulnerable to changes in floodgate pressure. If Seo Jin broadcasts, resident movement speeds up. In exchange, unverified rumors can ride along with it. If Jang Yura pulls out the isolated residents first, the power budget shrinks. In exchange, people stop being placed by numbers alone.

"Now it actually looks like a map," Seo Jin said.

"What was it before."

"A lineup of the dead."

That stung, but it wasn't wrong. I folded the date chart from my notebook and put it in my pocket. I didn't throw it away. The original is evidence. I just took it down from the command board.

Min Chae picked up a colored pen. "Can I add source tags? Direct observation is A, logs are B, estimates are C, invalid is X. But let's not use the word accuracy."

"Good," I said.

"Also, my battery's at 58 percent. I can't fly the drone. I can only run one sensor."

"Then where do we put the sensor."

Min Chae didn't answer right away. A look of wanting to seem useful crossed her face first. Then came the calculation. "I'd like to put it near the floodgate, but the travel time is too long. For now I'll attach it to the water pressure gauge in the management office. But someone needs to write the numbers down by hand too. If the sensor dies, that's it."

Mun Sangpil raised his hand. "I'll write it down."

"Not every hour. Every ten minutes."

"My eyes are bad and my hands are slow."

"Then write the numbers big."

He grumbled but took the paper anyway. Min Chae had just given orders to an adult, and Jang Yura hadn't stepped in. Once a role exists, hands move before age does.

Seo Jin read through the broadcast draft. "We'll state only confirmed facts. Cell 3 is operating autonomously, and a scheduled command for the outer floodgates has been confirmed. Whether access is currently possible is unconfirmed. Each building's representative should log the location of isolated residents, medication refrigeration, and water usage on the management office board. Rumor tips will not be broadcast unless they come with an original location and time."

"If we mention the floodgate command, it'll cause panic." Im Doyun said.

"Hiding it just makes the panic come later."

"The problem is the scope of disclosure. The word closure could push residents to move."

Jang Yura stepped between the two of them. "We say a closure is planned. But not in a way that sounds like an order to flee. If people get pushed outside right now, they'll get hurt at the outer gate."

Seo Jin revised the line. "Do not push toward the outer gate. The field team is confirming whether it has closed. What's needed right now is the headcount per floor and water usage limits."

Im Doyun looked it over for a moment and nodded. "That much can go on record."

On record. Broadcastable. Rescuable. All different things. We spent time getting those differences to line up. The old me would have called that time wasted. Not anymore. Consent and verification are slow, but they cost less than being fast and wrong.

Jang Yura split the rescue team into three. She would check on isolated residents in Building B herself, two younger members would take the stairwells, and resident volunteers would carry water containers. She didn't hand command over to me. Instead, she asked. "Withdrawal conditions."

"Water pressure at or below 13, confirmed closure of the outer floodgate, or emergency power budget below eight hours."

"If any one of the three happens?"

"Reassess on site. If two happen, halt upper floor rescue and evacuate inside."

"We'll disclose it."

I hesitated. If we disclosed the withdrawal conditions, residents might think we were preparing to leave. But hiding it would be a bigger betrayal. Jang Yura waited. This time I spoke first.

"We'll disclose it."

Seo Jin added that line to the broadcast too. There are three withdrawal conditions, and if any of them occur, the field commander will re-announce the evacuation order. It was a sentence residents would hate. But sentences people hate and sentences that are necessary often overlap.

Inside Boridong, the sounds changed to those of preparation. Water containers gathered at the bottom of the stairwells, and camping batteries were labeled with pharmacy names. The daycare teacher wrote current locations instead of children's names on the board. One resident demanded power for his own refrigerator, then stopped when he heard the unit number of a household that needed diabetes medication. It wasn't goodwill that held people back. It was order.

Deciding the order became a fight in itself. An elderly man on the 15th floor refused to come down the stairs. He said his knees couldn't manage it, and he wasn't wrong. The residents on the lower floors got angry because the stretcher was tied up because of him. Jang Yura didn't send the stretcher up first. Instead, she had someone check the width of the stairs leading to his front door, the height of the railings, and where he could rest.

"Saying he can't come down is information," she said over the radio. "Don't treat it as stubbornness. If he's coming down, first we find out where he stops."

I marked the old man's location on the board with a dot. Because of that one dot, the stairwell route in Building B changed. The elevator, running on the power budget, had only one run left. We had to decide whether to use that one run for the old man, for a child who needed oxygen, or save it for the medicine refrigerator.

Seo Jin stopped the broadcast and asked me. "If we disclose this, it'll cause a fight."

"Hiding it will cause an explosion later."

"Scope."

I thought for a moment. The old me would have decided alone. This time I asked Jang Yura. "Yura, disclosure scope."

Over the radio, I could hear stairs and breathing. She answered even while running. "Skip individual names, just the conditions. One elevator run, one person who can't move, one who needs oxygen, one medication refrigeration case. Disclose the decision criteria."

Seo Jin changed it right away. "There is one remaining elevator run. We must choose between someone who cannot move, someone who needs oxygen, or power for medication refrigeration. The field team will decide based on life threatening risk and whether alternatives exist. Opinions will be gathered through each floor's representative."

Swearing erupted in the hallway. But at the same time, hands went up. Someone asked which floor the oxygen child was on, someone said they could move the old man with a chair. The pharmacy owner recalculated how long he could give up refrigerator power. Disclosing information didn't make everyone kind. But everyone had to put their own demands on the same board. That was the difference.

The pharmacy owner spoke. "The insulin can hold for three hours in a cooler box. The refrigeration power can wait. But we need more ice."

Two residents from the lower floors said they'd bring ice from their freezers. One of them was the same person who, just a moment earlier, had been shouting that his child was being delayed because of the old man. People aren't consistently good or bad. When conditions change, actions change too. That's why the conditions had to be disclosed.

The one remaining elevator run went to the oxygen child. The old man decided to come down slowly, with a chair and blanket set up at every landing. The choice didn't satisfy everyone. But no one could later say they didn't know why it was made.

Instead of the date chart, I drew new lines on the dependency map. Elevator, one run, to the oxygen child. Old man, to stair assistance. Medicine, to the cooler. All of it was temporary. The word temporary used to sound like failure to me. Now it looked like the condition of a living plan.

O Gyeongtae read out the manual power procedure over the phone. "When you flip the breaker, don't do it all at once. One at a time. If sparks fly, bring it right back down. If you smell something, don't stand there being proud of it, just run."

Mun Sangpil was writing it down and said, "Why is your tone so rough."

"If you're still alive, I'll talk nicer to you later."

Min Chae laughed quietly. The laugh didn't last long. The pressure gauge number dropped to 15.8. She switched colored pens and wrote next to the number, drop after floodgate scheduling. It wasn't a confirmed cause, just the order of observation.

On one side of the board, I wrote in large letters for the last time.

Current time / Field reading / Source.

It wasn't a finished sentence. It didn't even sit comfortably in my mouth yet. But it was the three things we needed to ask instead of a date. Below it I wrote D-day in small letters, and instead of a circle, I marked it as pending.

Mun Sangpil looked at the letters and asked. "Why write down the source too. Isn't it fine as long as the number's right."

"If we don't know who saw the number and when, different numbers will end up fighting each other later."

"Then does the pressure reading I wrote get a name attached too?"

"It does. Mun Sangpil, water pressure, management office gauge, based on real world time."

He twirled his pen, looking embarrassed. "What if my name turns out to be wrong."

"Then we leave a correction record. That's better than hiding a mistake."

Im Doyun heard that and made a small box at the bottom of the board. Corrected by / Reason for correction. The resident representative complained looking at the box. But soon he corrected the headcount for his own floor. A floor he'd first said had 18 people actually had 21. Three were visitors, people who would never appear on a date chart.

Because of those three people, the water distribution chart changed. It was a small correction, but in that moment I felt that the current roster weighed more than D-day.

Seo Jin didn't broadcast the three visitors. "Personal identities stay with floor representatives and the rescue team only. The public broadcast gets only the total count."

"Why?" Min Chae asked.

"If names come out, families will all rush over at once. What we need right now is location and quantity, not who is who."

That line went up next to the map too. Disclosing information wasn't about saying more, it was about cutting things down to a size people could actually act on.

"So we're throwing it away?" Im Doyun asked.

"We're excluding it from operational criteria. The original evidence stays archived."

"I'll record that distinction."

Good. Someone needed to record the distinction. A distinction that goes unrecorded gets used as an excuse later.

The radio room was a small storage closet emptied out next to the management office. Seo Jin set the transmitter on the desk and tied the antenna wire to the railing outside the window. As the network wavered, the internet broadcast cut out, but the short range FM transmission stayed alive. Residents brought in old radios. Hiking radios, kitchen radios, ones doubling as flashlights. The same static came out of speakers of every different size.

Seo Jin read the first line. Her voice wasn't fast. "This is a temporary internal broadcast for Boridong, Cell 3. We separate confirmed facts from unconfirmed rumors before delivering them."

Between the static, the noise in the hallway grew quieter. People hadn't gone quiet because they believed her. They'd paused for a moment because there was something to listen to.

As the broadcast was about to end, one radio suddenly let out white noise. At first it sounded like an antenna problem. Seo Jin adjusted the frequency slightly, but the static didn't disappear. The same sound came from other radios too. All six units in the closet trembled out of order, then cut off at the same interval.

Static.

A short silence.

Static.

Min Chae checked the offline clock. "Real time, 10:06."

A low mechanical tone came out of the radios. It wasn't a human voice. It wasn't reading numbers either. But the terminal screens all turned white at the same moment and then came back. In between, a line of network time appeared.

02:17.

Seo Jin kept transmitting and said, "Preserve the original signal from just now. No speculative broadcasting."

But the radios rang again at the same interval. This time the management office's electronic board, residents' phones, and even the small screens of the hospital's extension terminals all trembled at once.

02:17.

Radios across the entire city began reading the same time.