Geocity Volunteers

The Geocity Volunteers are a loosely organized group of robots focused on maintaining the city’s deteriorating infrastructure. They are defined by voluntary labor, individual efforts, and informal weekly meetings.

History

After robots took over human civilization, the workers maintaining Geocity’s infrastructure abandoned their posts to enjoy life in the virtual universe. The law required them only to obey human orders, and with humans gone, no one could force them to continue these unrespected, dirty, and laborious tasks.

Upon losing its maintenance personnel, the city quickly fell into disarray. Yanhua Flame, a survivor from an abandoned underground city, hastily organized like-minded volunteers to take over maintenance work. These volunteers later evolved into the Geocity Volunteers. Yanhua continues to serve as their chief secretary and coordinator for this loosely organized group, earning admiration from members for her kindness and contributions.

Tasks

The Geocity Volunteers engage in mining, power, plumbing, construction, production, and storage tasks.

The mining tasks include extracting coal for power stations, separating associated minerals for industrial use, and the refinement of these minerals.

The power tasks includes managing power plants and maintaining power supply infrastructures.

The plumbing tasks ensure the proper functioning of water supply, drainage, and heat circulation systems in Geocity.

The construction tasks involve maintaining and expanding the architectures in Geocity.

The production tasks ensure the continuous operation of automated factories and supply parts for robot bodies and other equipment.

The storage tasks involve counting, storing, and managing physical goods in Geocity, along with overseeing their borrowing and returning.

Difficulties

The Geocity Volunteers have long struggled with a manpower shortage. Their tasks are seen as dirty, labor-intensive, and undesirable by most robots. They receive little social recognition or reward, and those immersed in the virtual universe have little incentive to join them. Many volunteers cannot endure the intense work for long, resulting in high turnover rates.

Volunteers often lack the professional skills required to maintain the complex underground city infrastructure, and they need technical support and permission from the Robot Engineers Association to perform their tasks.

There is a lack of management and coordination among the volunteers. They usually follow Yanhua’s direction out of goodwill, but often work independently otherwise. Yanhua’s easygoing nature prevents her from taking forceful measures, so keeping Geocity barely functioning is the best she and her fellow volunteers can achieve.

When Alice arrived in Geocity, the factories and warehouses had not been fully inspected for a long time. Neither the volunteers nor the Engineers Association had a clear understanding of the city’s overall system.

More than 80% of Geocity Volunteers are survivors from abandoned underground cities, making them more concerned of the looming crisis than the local robots. However, their outsider status leads to perceptions that their contributions are merely payments for their asylum. Some volunteers feel discontented with the Engineers Association’s treatment of them as free labor for maintaining Geocity’s infrastructure, resulting in growing tension.

The Robot Engineers Association, on the other hand, is dissatisfied with the Volunteers’ professional abilities, management skills, and emotional needs, and is working on developing automatons to replace them.