The Opening Teams
197 doors opened. 12,000 waiting. The math doesn't work and everyone knows it.
Overview
The Bunker Opening Authority — known informally as the Opening Teams — is a joint operation between Nexus Dynamics, the Consciousness Archaeologists, and Zephyria's Anthropological Institute. The Authority was established in 2170 after the unauthorized opening of Bunker 1 revealed that unprepared contact with emerged populations could be catastrophic.
Since 2170, the Authority has conducted 197 authorized openings. The waiting list contains 12,000 bunkers. At current pace, the list will take sixty years to complete. Many bunkers' systems will fail before they are reached.
Twelve openings a year. Twelve thousand bunkers waiting. Every year the list grows longer, the systems inside grow weaker, and the math stays the same.
Doctrine
Contact must be controlled. Everything else follows from that.
The Contact Protocol
340 pages of procedures governing every authorized opening. The Protocol exists because Bunker 1 proved that compassion without preparation kills people. The casualty rate dropped from 12% to 0.4% after its implementation. The cost was speed — openings take weeks instead of hours. The people inside those 12,000 bunkers are paying for that caution with time they may not have.
Three Stakeholders, Three Agendas
Nexus funds most expeditions because bunkers contain intact ORACLE instances — their real interest. The Consciousness Archaeologists want data on ORACLE-human interaction patterns preserved in isolation for decades. Zephyria's Anthropological Institute insists on observation protocols that slow everything down and save lives. The resulting procedures are slow, expensive, and effective.
The Bunker 1 Precedent
Custodian Yara Osei's unauthorized opening of Bunker 1 catalyzed the Authority's creation. What happened inside that bunker convinced every stakeholder that uncontrolled contact was unacceptable — for different reasons, but the conclusion was unanimous. The details of Bunker 1 remain partially classified.
The tension is structural and deliberate. Nexus wants speed — every day a bunker stays sealed is a day they can't access its ORACLE instance. Zephyria wants caution — every shortcut risks another Bunker 1. The Consciousness Archaeologists want thoroughness — every rushed opening destroys irreplaceable data. The Protocol is the compromise. Nobody is satisfied. Everybody follows it.
Field Conditions
An opening is a controlled sequence that unfolds over days or weeks. Every member of the field team — Contact Linguist, Systems Engineer, Medical Officer — has a role that cannot be compressed or skipped.
The Breach
Drill bits on hardened steel — the outer seal breach. Hours of cutting through doors designed to survive centuries. The Systems Engineer monitors atmospheric readings on both sides, calibrating equalization rates to prevent pressure shock. The hiss of atmospheric equalization when the seal finally gives. Air that hasn't mixed with the outside in decades, carrying smells nobody on the team can identify.
Then the specific silence of a Contact Linguist waiting for a response to their broadcast. Speaking into the dark, in languages selected from pre-war records that may no longer match what's spoken inside. The broadcast loops. The team waits. Sometimes for hours. Sometimes for days.
First Contact
If the opening goes well — the first human voices from inside, speaking languages the team may not recognize. Generations of linguistic drift in sealed populations. The Contact Linguist adapts in real time, finding cognates, establishing basic communication through tone and repetition. The Medical Officer assesses from a distance, looking for signs of disease, malnutrition, or psychological conditions that require immediate intervention.
The harsh white of assessment equipment meeting the warm amber of bunker emergency lighting. Two worlds touching at the threshold. The people inside have never seen the sky. Some of them don't believe there's anything outside the door. The Protocol accounts for this. Page 47, Section 12: "Reality Orientation Procedures for Long-Duration Isolation Populations."
Notable Members
Commissioner Idris Adamu
Authority CommissionerControls the waiting list and enforces the Contact Protocol. The most hated bureaucrat in the Sprawl among bunker advocacy groups, and the person most directly responsible for the 0.4% casualty rate. Every bunker he delays is a bunker that opens safely. Every bunker he delays is a bunker whose systems may fail before he reaches it.
Dr. Yuki Tanaka
Chief ArchaeologistDeveloped the Classification System that categorizes bunker populations by isolation duration, ORACLE integration level, and cultural drift. Leads field research personally on high-complexity openings. Her system has been criticized as clinical — reducing human communities to taxonomic categories. It has also prevented three potential contact failures by identifying risk factors that field teams would have missed.
Points of Inquiry
The Waiting List Calculus
Twelve openings a year. Twelve thousand bunkers. Sixty years to clear the backlog, assuming no new discoveries. Bunker life-support systems were designed for fifty to seventy-five years of operation. Many have been sealed since the 2090s. The math is public. The implications are not discussed at Authority press conferences.
Who decides which bunkers open first? Commissioner Adamu's prioritization criteria are published but the weighting factors are not. Nexus-funded expeditions consistently reach bunkers believed to contain intact ORACLE instances. Coincidence, or the cost of keeping the lights on?
What the Collective Knows
The Collective monitors every opening. Their analysts attend as "observers" under Zephyria accreditation. They believe at least three sealed bunkers contain intact ORACLE fragments — not degraded instances, but fragments of the original architecture.
If they're right, the opening of those bunkers changes everything. If Nexus knows which three, the waiting list order starts making a different kind of sense. If Adamu knows, his prioritization criteria aren't just bureaucratic — they're strategic.
The Unauthorized Opening Problem
Osei opened Bunker 1 without authorization and the result was catastrophic enough to create the Authority. But the Authority's pace means thousands of bunkers will never be reached in time. Unauthorized openings are illegal, dangerous, and — for some bunker advocacy groups — the only alternative to watching people die behind sealed doors.
The Authority's legitimacy rests on the Protocol's success rate. If unauthorized openings start succeeding at acceptable casualty rates, the argument for the sixty-year waiting list collapses. Several groups are quietly developing simplified contact procedures. The Authority is aware.
Diplomatic Posture
Nexus Dynamics
FunderNexus funds most expeditions. Their interest is access to bunker ORACLE instances. The Authority needs the money. Nexus needs the access. Neither trusts the other's priorities, but the arrangement persists because neither can afford to walk away.
Consciousness Archaeologists
Technical PartnerProvide technical expertise for interfacing with bunker ORACLE instances. Their methods are slow, meticulous, and irreplaceable. No other organization has the capability to safely assess ORACLE integration levels in isolated populations.
Zephyria (Free City)
Protocol AuthorityThe Anthropological Institute insists on observation protocols that slow everything down and save lives. Zephyria's involvement gives the Authority its humanitarian legitimacy — without it, the operation would look like a Nexus-funded ORACLE extraction program.
The Collective
ObserverMonitors every opening under Zephyria accreditation. Believed to have intelligence on which bunkers contain intact ORACLE fragments. Their presence is tolerated because their analysis has proven useful. Their agenda is their own.
Custodian Yara Osei
CatalystOsei's unauthorized opening of Bunker 1 created the conditions that made the Authority necessary. The Authority exists because of her actions. The Authority's regulations exist to prevent anyone from repeating them.
Atmosphere
Setting
The threshold of a sealed bunker door. Neutral grey equipment staged in precise formations — drill rigs, atmospheric sensors, medical stations, communication arrays. The harsh white of assessment lighting cutting into corridors that haven't seen anything but amber emergency glow in decades. The team in position, waiting. The silence before the broadcast begins. The silence after, which is worse.
Key Symbol
A sealed door with a speaker beside it. Communication before contact. The speaker is always mounted before the drill starts — the Authority's founding principle made physical. You talk to them before you open the door. You give them the choice to respond before you take the choice away.