As he stepped into the control room of project purity, David's life began to flash before his eyes. Dad, his tenth birthday, the G.O.A.T., Amata… The escape, those first few days, Megaton, the slavers, the second escape, his first super mutant encounter, Galaxy News Radio. Always leads, no one willing to give him a helping hand without something in return. Vault 112… Tranquility. Lane. The horrors of that virtual reality still haunting him. Heading back to Rivet city, restarting project purity, Dad. Favors. Favors. Favors. "Do this and I'll tell ya all about dear old dad." Depression, being a mailman with a death note, a deliverer of horrible news, the Brotherhood, the G.E.C.K. The trap. Raven Rock, President. Fucking. Eden. With that memory came the memories of all the horrible people, places, and things in and outside the wasteland. The Pitt, Point Lookout, Burke, Tenpenny, Evergreen Mills, and all the other horrible scourges of existence. He had seen it all. All the best and worst memories possible flowing through him all at once.

Then, out of nowhere, clarity. With that sudden clarity David focused on one thought, a shred of memory barely recognizable when he ad just turned one. He could only remember one thing, his smiling father.

Twenty three years earlier.

"Wow! Look at you! One year old and already walking like a pro! Your mother would be so proud of you…"

James' voice faded off as he remember the terribly saddening thought in his mind. He quickly shook it off, and his light hearted aura resumed.

"Come on David, come to daddy!"

The infant obeyed as he slowly but surly waddled his way over to his father, giggling merrily the entire time. He finally reached James, eagerly awaiting his son's arrival in the playpen. James then closed the gate behind the child and crouched down gently until he was (somewhat) at the eye level on his son.

"I know you don't like it when daddy leaves but I need to run and check on a few things in the lab first. I'm gonna need you to stay here and hold down the fort while I'm gone, can you do that for me?"

A somber face replaced quickly by a giggle was all the answer James needed to know that his message had gotten across. He slowly got up and made his way out of the room and left his son on his own, knowing that in a few minutes David's curiosity and ingenuity would get the better of him. Personally, James was amazed at how his son managed to retain the information given to him with such precision. Even though David's ability to communicate was marginal at best now, with a vocabulary of about 10-15 words, his ability to learn, coupled with his young enthusiasm and growing ingenuity was more than enough to keep little David busy.

Within about two minutes of James' departure David had managed to unlock the playpen gate, casually stroll out, grab his favorite teddy bear, and begin looking at an old pre-war book titled, "You're SPECIAL." After skimming the book from cover to cover, apparently making himself even happier, despite what little he could understand. David then began to slowly pace the room, examining all the details of his little room within the vault. Vault 101 to be exact, a massive fallout shelter capable of protecting and sustaining up to 1000 residents from a nuclear Armageddon for an unlimited duration, or at least that was the goal of this vault in particular.

Vault 101 was one of 116 public fallout shelters constructed by U.S. Government contracted Vault-Tec inc. These shelters were advertised to house costumers in some of the most secure places on the planet, usually encased within a mountain or similar terrain feature, in addition to the 13-ton cog-shaped front door which could withstand a direct hit from a nuclear warhead, with an advertised two percent failure rate. Those people lucky enough to have the money and forewarning reserved their spots in vaults across the nation in fear of the coming apocalypse. These lucky few would live in luxury, safe underground while the apocalypse occurred above them, while they happily sipped on a fresh, ice-cold Nuka-Cola, blissfully unaware of the devastation occurring no more than 1000 feet away from them.

However, the dark truth was that the vaults were never intended to save anyone. They were a massive social experiment determined to test how the average human would react in certain conditions. Every vault had a flaw built in to test how the resident would respond over the course of the experiment. One example, vault 46 was populated by 15 men, 12 women, and one panther. Another example was vault 69 and 70, where women outnumbered men 999-1 and vise versa.

Another, more gruesome example, was vault 12, located in southern California where the main door to the vault did not shut properly, allowing the inhabitants to be exposed to the radiation from the nuclear war that the vault was supposed to protect against. Instead of the results predicted, (severe radiation sickness and death) the radiation slipped into the vault in such a way that the inhabitants were exposed to non-lethal amounts of radiation in a slow, horrifically painful process in which the skin began to dry and start to fall off in sheets of dead skin and muscle. This process took several months, but at its conclusion, the former vault dwellers were transformed in to a group of zombie-like, sterile humanoids. The process did however give them a very unique trait, it granted them extremely long lifespans, allowing them to live well beyond a typical, non-mutated human, a few of them passing the 200 year mark, making them vessels of knowledge, of what the world once was, and what the world has turned into since that time. A major downside, apart from becoming a horrid mess was their alienation from the rest of humanity, due to their once again, zombie like appearance. Eventually, these sad individuals were dubbed ghouls, a sadly fitting name for these former humans.

As for vault 101, its "goal" was for it to be governed by a dictatorial and overbearing overseer. In addition to basically being governed by a paranoid bully, the vault was intended to be sealed in 2077, and never open ever again.

However, to David as he examined his room, I was simply home. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. A few minutes later, James returned after viewing some test results and checking on a few patients in his office. When he walked into David's room, he was not the least bit surprised to see his boy up and about, always exploring, always wanting to know more. Just the thought of it reminded him of Catherine, those emotional wounds not being more than a year old and yet he felt as if she had been taken away from him just yesterday. He managed to shake it off, albeit a little reluctantly and focused on his son before him.

"Quite the explorer you are, huh?" He smiled in that I-figured-you-were-up-to-no-good way and sighed in a mixture of sadness and pride.

He then said, "Well if I can have your attention for a few minutes I want to show you something important to me and your mother."

James then brought his son to the other side of the room and brought his son's eyes to bear on a small framed bible quote sitting on the desk.

"It's a passage from the Bible, Revelations 21:6 I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the waters of life, freely. It was your mother's favorite quote, I had it framed after she passed…" He ended the last phrase with a rather depressing note, a year away and the pain was still a fresh knife wound. He noticed his son's expression and straightened, saying,

"Well, that's enough of that for now, how about we see if your friend Amata wants to play?" With that, David's face grew exponentially and he grabbed his father's hand, leading him into the hallway.