Author: Hello there, hopeful fanfiction reader! Welcome to my waking fever dream, i.e. Fallout 3 story. I did so enjoy writing this and do enjoy hearing feedback on my work. A few things to go over: First, Fallout canon is very very loose. I enjoy writing as developer of Fallout series had intended, but there is only some much I want to use from what I've seen in the games and read online. So, one could say this is a AU...just in the details, though. Everything I'm using could be used in the Fallout world without really going against the feel of the 50's futuristic post-apocalyptica. I'm really just opening up Fallout to be more believable and enjoyable to both you, the reader and me writing it. Enjoy and R&R
Disclaimer: Fallout is a trademark and content is owned by Bethesda Softworks... seriously, if I'm not afraid of George Lucas suing me how could these guys threaten me?
In the darkness of the theater, the bright silver screen illuminated the shadows with an intimate scene between to star crossed lovers in lament. Clinging for sheer life, as it looked, the heroine gazed up into her dashing lover's eyes as the two stood in the middle of the National Mall. The Washington Monument, standing tall and persistent white against the black night, was dominant in the background of the couple, remaining their silent cherub. The great American capital had transform from the central of patriotism and freedom to that of passion and romance, if only for the two lovers... but they could feel nothing about despair.
"Please! Johnny, my dearest!" The heroine pleaded, "Alaska is a suicide mission! The Reds have slaughtered regiment after regiment that we send, without us gaining a single inch. It's hopeless!"
"And what do you want me to do?" Her lover's square jaw clinched tightly as he turned his head away from her. The screen suddenly switches to a picture of the two looking up to the flag atop the Capital Building, that proud Star-Spangled Banner on high, "Do you want me to run? After making a promise to God and Country, how can I leave and let some other poor schmuck to take my place. No, Sandra... Uncle Sam's a' callin', and I'm a' goin'."
"Johnny! No, Johnny!"
The silver screen quickly turned to an angle of the heroine burying her head into her lover's dress uniform shirt. She sobbed and whimpered for Johnny not to go, say that they could go to Europe or maybe even South America. Johnny just smiled and shook his head quietly. Down trotting, our heroine found herself with nothing left to do but grip to her lover's shirt and cry. With a strong gentle hand, Johnny took the heroine's chin and softly pulled her to look back up at him. They said not a word, merely inched closer and closer to one another's faces and their lips... ...
"Eww! Their going to kiss!" A squeaky voiced declared in a loud, yet hashed voice.
"Shhh! Be quiet, Timmy!"
Jo sighed and focused back onto the movie. It was annoying enough having to bring the little twerp with her to the theater, but then he insisted on watching the same movie as her. He should have just went to that darn Captain Whats-His-Name space film in the theater next door and leave her alone. Jo could still hear the occasional rumble from the wall as some explosion shook the other theater. She abhorred those fantasy violence movies, with their over the top special effects and melodramatic plots, though Timmy loved them to his a fault. However -after Jo calmed the boy to be the definition of childish- he demanded that he enjoyed 'mushy' movies just as much as she did. So, there they were...Timmy scrunching his nose up in disgust as Jo try to ignore his endless comments and enjoy the great romance picture of the year...In the Mood for War and Love. She had seen it countless times before and remembered ever line by heart, but that didn't take away from the experience for Jo.
The two lovers continued to move into each other in insufferable slow motion, nearer and nearer to the masterful kiss, the one plastered on the film's poster outside. In sudden jerk the couple jumped to one another's lips and the movie's score turned up in a romantic rapture, responding to the two's passion. Jo made a silent gasp, like she had every time she watch the scene, then slow released her breath as she felt her cheeks heat up in a blush. She counted the seconds...one...two...three and the two lover pulled away from each other, staring once more into each other's gazes.
"Are they done yet?" Timmy squeal from beside her.
Glancing over to him, Jo saw that the little boy had covered his eyes with his eyes and was turned away from the scene. She ignored Timmy and crossed her arms atop the empty seat in front of her and rested her head there. Pulling her glasses back to the bridge of her nose from where they to slide down, Jo sighed for what she believed to be the eighteenth time. She needed to find some guy to kiss her like that. To get married and live on Tranquility Lane in her own house, become a mother. Well...maybe not if the kid turned out anything like little Timmy, but what a perfect existence it would be. To fall in love and share a life... sigh... ...
As the film came to a close, the two lovers promised their undying devotion to one another and Johnny reluctantly boarded the plane for Anchorhead and the front. Jo sniffled and wiped back the tears as she watched the couple slowly draft apart from each other on the landing strip and the screen irised to black. The inevitable The End popped across the screen as the theater lights fade up to their brightest. Jo stood up and promptly blow her nose on the sleeve of her fuzzy pink sweater. It was such a great movie...
"Oh, thank goodness! It's finally over! I thought that stupid movie would never end."
"Timmy Neusbaum! YOU TAKE THAT BACK!" Jo barked at the boy, "In the Mood for War and Love is one the greatest romance stories ever dreamed up, if not the greatest!"
"That's why it's stupid-OW!" The youth was struck silent with a swift punch to the arm, "I'm going to tell your dad you did that!"
"Do it and I'll squish you, twerp!"
As the two exited the nearly empty theater -no one else other than Timmy and her- Jo stopped by the concession stand for one last Nuka-Cola for the long walk home. There wasn't a soul there, as usual, and she proceeded to grab a bottle of the fizzy drink from the counter. Jo popped the cap off and took a sip, find it ice cold as they always were, as though someone had just taken the bottle out of the refrigerator. Of course, she never saw anyone working at the stand to do so. Just like there wasn't anyone in the ticket booth or the lobby or the projector room. All the snacks would appear occasionally, and the movies would start up on there own at the specified times posted out in front of the theater. Jo wondered from time to time if all movie theaters ran like this or some other way.
Outside, the sun was still floating brightly in the sky. The temperature was a pleasant seventy five degrees or so and would remain like that until the burn global fell behind the horizon, then it would drop down to seventy four. There was still plenty of time for Timmy and her to get back to Tranquility Lane before then. The streets were abandon, save for the two, and Jo continued to ignore the pouting boy that trudged behind her. She walked quietly down the sidewalk, listening to the chirping birds and buzzing bees. The world was at peace, serenity... ...gosh was it boring.
Fuck...where's a girl to go for some real fun? Jo silently thought to herself, reveling in secret profanity. She would dare say it in front of Timmy or the adults on the Lane, it was her own guilty pleasure, God damn this stupid fucking life I was put in. There isn't even any boys my age around to mess around with...that is if they wanted to with me... ...
Jo stopped for a second to consider her fifteen year old physique. Short Corn yellow hair frame her round face and a pair of blue framed glasses sat in front of her dark doe eyes. A button nose hovered above a candy sweet lips...but aside from that... No hips. No tits. And a midget at four, eight. Even if some guy were to magically appear in Tranquility Lane, Jo knew she wasn't going to attract any of his attentions. Maybe, just perhaps, if there was some way, anyway, to leave the Lane... no it wasn't going to happen. With a sadden tug to her pace, the girl continue down the sidewalk, now following Timmy as he moved pass her to the lead them. It was only a short ways left until the two reached home, reached Tranquility Lane. Walking up to the Neusbaum's residence, the two found Bill Foster trimming the bushes with a pare of long hedge-clippers.
"Well, hello! Joanne...and Timmy too!" Mr. Foster smiled at both of them bending up from his work, "So how where the movies? Did Captain Cosmos save the planet from destruction?"
"I don't know. Maybe he didn't this time." The little boy replied, "I watched some stupid lovey-dovey picture with Jo. It was real stupid."
"Your just a child, Timmy. With no sense of true art." Jo clasped her hands together and brought them under her chin, "The tragic story of a romance impeded by war, the violence of man tearing two lovers from one another... ohh... it's the cry fest of the century..."
"Ha ha ha! I'll take your word for it Joanne Daily!" Elder man cackled in response, "I think I rather see Captain Cosmos fight space aliens any day."
With heavy sigh, Jo turned around and without another word left for her own home across the Lane. She could still hear Mr. Foster laugh as she was crossing the small playground at the center of the neighborhood. She vaguely remembered dangling from the monkey-bars when was smaller, though nowadays the blond girl only cut across the playground to reach her house. Usual she could find little Betty stocking around the place, looking for small animals to torture, however she was no where to be found. That girl gave Jo the creeps! There were days where she noticed Betty just leering at her like a dog would a tenderloin cut of beef. It made blond girl's skin crawl when she did it, but there was something else that told Jo that little Betty was bad news...something deep inside her. As she reached her house, Jo stopped dead in her tracks and blinked at who was stand quietly at her front door.
"Hi Jo-Anne!" The eerie little girl related with smirk that made her look more of sadist than innocent, "Did you have fun at the movies?"
"Oh, Betty. I almost wish you'd had come with us." Jo unlatched the white-picket gate and went up to stoop where other girl stood, "Another gal would have would have made the experience so much more richer!"
"I know your just saying that because you want me think that you don't think of me badly." The blond girl blinked as she nervously readjusted her glasses, "I don't need your pity Jo-Anne. It's me who should be pitying you..."
"That's...nice, Betty. So long!" She brush pass Betty and went to turn the nob of to her door, but a sharp tug on back of her skirt prompt her to stop short. Twisting her head to look over her should, Jo saw the younger girl gripping onto her polka-dot dress with her sadist smirk.
"I'm suppose to spend the night at your house, Jo-Anne!"
"Did you parents go out on the town tonight, sweetie?" The blond asked cheerfully...though in her private thoughts she reeled, Get the fuck away from me, you creep kid! God only knows what would have spawned a crazy bitch like you!
"All I can tell you is that I'm staying here tonight...Jo-Anne!"
The sun had set and the sky was black with night...
The Daily family, plus one, was just finish up a lovely dinner prepared by this night by Jo. She would normally fix the meals on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, while her father would pick up the rest. Jo's mother...she never really remembered which days she made dinners on before she died. At any rate, the blond girl was happy that she didn't have to eat spaghetti in tomato sauce -the only dish her father seemed to know how to make. There was only so much spaghetti in tomato sauce a girl can take! It definitely was pushing it that one Sunday morning breakfast.
"Mmm, honey! That was delicious." Jo's father, Walter Daily, proclaimed, "That pot roast was as good as mother use to make it. Better maybe!"
"Aww, dad. It was just pot roast."
"Yeah, Jo-Anne! It was the best." Jo smiled and nodded to the other girl, pretending not to be effect be the almost hungry look in her eyes. The blond couldn't shake the nasty feeling about Betty when she was around her. If she only know what it was... ...
"Well I think I'll just let this fine meal digest with a little fresh air." Walter announced as had excused himself and walked to the door, grabbing his pipe from the living room coffee table. The two girls sat quietly alone in the kitchen, Jo readjusting her glasses and Betty just leered as she did so.
"Hey, Jo-Anne!" The blond nearly jumped out of her seat when the other girl exclaimed. With a silent sigh and hand over her beating heart, she looked across the table to Betty, "I got really hot and sweaty today playing the sun. Is it ok if I use your tub?"
"Oh...sure, sweetie. I'll find something for you to wear to bed, then."
"You could..." Jo cocked an eyebrow as the younger girl moved around the table to face her, "I sorta' have this thing about using different bathtubs. Maybe, if you could come in with me...I could feel safer...Jo-Anne!"
"Oh, sweetie. Your a big girl now an-"
"Please!" Sticking out her bottom lip and swinging her clasped hand to and fore, Betty was pulling out the stops, "Pretty, pretty please with sugar and a cherry on top!"
"... ..." Jo knew the younger girl wouldn't stop without a really fight, but was there a need to? No matter how strange Betty was, she was another girl and Jo was older. There shouldn't be anything to be after of and she might not have a lot, though the blond still had more then this girl. The thought of showing up Betty, wiping that sadist grin from the little creeps face, it seemed very appealing. Jo smiled, "Alright, Betty. Let's go take a bath!"
Passing the word to her father, the two went up stairs to the bathroom door at the end of the hall. A tile covered room meant them behind the door, with a clawfoot tub dominating the place and a toilet and sink were place in the opposite corners. Closing the door behind them as they entered, Jo immediately started undress before she could change her mind about the whole thing. Folding her glasses up and place them on the sink-top, she quickly unbuttoned her sweater and threw it into the hamper beside the door. Then Jo reached behind her to fastenings of her polka-dot dress and let it slide down her shoulders to the floor. It, too, found itself in the hamper. She pulled flat heeled shoes off and place them beside the hamper, then yanked off her socks -nearly falling onto her ass as she did so, hopping on one leg.
Jo almost gulped when she came to her bra...but she force herself not to and saved face. This was where she would show Betty up and flaunt it in her face. The blond girl smiled and flicked the hooks off on her back. The fabric support slipped off of Jo and her pale chest was bare to the naked air. She smiled and twisted to face Betty, to see how the younger girl would react.
... ...She hadn't started undress... ...
The blond girl blinked, surprise to see Betty still fully dressed, from her shoes to the ribbons on her head. Wasn't she the one who wanted to take a bath? Wasn't it Betty that was afraid to bathe alone and begged the older girl to come in with her? But here Jo was, only her panties saving what dignity she had left, as the younger girl just stared are her with that evil smirk.
"Betty...is something wrong...?"
"Hmmmm...I wonder why I keep making you this way." Betty began, sounding as though she musing to herself as she cocked her head and studied the blond, "Maybe it's because I had something for your real body...and it's still effecting me after centuries... Geh heh! Maybe the face, but those breasts could only be loved by a fag!"
"B-Betty!" Jo pulled her arms over her chest as she felt a blush come over her, "Betty, I was trying to do you a favor, but now you're just being mean!"
"Jesus Christ...I was just trying to get a word alone with you. Your the one who tore every stitch off of your...sweet, white skin...before I could get a single syllable in, Jo-Anne!"
"Sweetie, are you feeling ok?" Jo move over to the other girl and placed a hand atop her forehead, checking her temperature for fever. She wasn't make any sense! This was the most oddest she'd seen Betty be, it was fucking scaring her!
"Please. I don't have games in mind for you, dearie." Betty knock the blond girl's hand away with a dismissive hand and crossed her arms in front of her. Though a sudden look of longing came over her features, "I must admit, however, it would have been nice to have that sweet, pale skin against my own...just once more...but this endeavour is much more important to me then the simple pleasures of the flesh. This is about survival!"
"What are you talking! You sound like that fucking lunatic, Old Lady Dithers!"
"Fascinating..." All of a sudden, Betty otherwise sweetie girlie tone changed to much deeper voice of a man, heavily accented, "Did I give you such a fright that your usual poise hus fallen apart? You must overcome your short comings, Jo-Anne!"
Jo backed away from the other girl -was she a girl?- as the world spun around her. She suddenly tripped over her feet and fell onto her back in a loud thump! Her spine cried out as she laid spread apart and looking back at Betty with wide eyes. This was a nightmare, it had to be! This was the impossible that only could exist in one's dreams, their worst dreams. However...the pain running along her back spoke silently to the reality of the situation. Jo soon found hard breath as her throat clenched up in panic. She was in frantic daze, her mind focusing in and out of perspective. A light touch brought Jo back to a reality with Betty looking down at her.
"Soosh, dearie..." Betty related in the man's voice. She was gentle stroking her small hand down the side of the blond's face, "Your stronger dan you would know. Unlike the peons dance about around us in their fake lives, you are something special. Something...wonderful." The younger girl's hand draft up to Jo's forehead and gripped there tightly, "You will be something wonderful once again!"
The world turned white and the bathroom and Betty faded into the light...as new memories flooded in and the old ones chipped away... ...
The first thing Jo recognized was the smell, somewhere between air conditioner and a doctor's office waiting room. It was... processed. As her eyes slide opened, the blond girl found a dreary place of cold steel. She was alive, she could feel it, but where she was baffled her. Heaven or Hell? God only knew, it seemed. Why wasn't she panicking? There was some part of Jo's mind that seemed demand her to be calm. Something deep inside her that braked commands without words, but with images and feelings. Was it God or some small bit of her sanity, trying it's hardest to stay a float.
As the fog finally disappeared, Jo took true stuck of her surroundings. She was on a chair -practically a flight seat- that sat atop of platform of sorts, the hum from the air vents swirled around her. The girl looked up to see that she was in a giant chamber of cobalt metal, a some light shone from somewhere behind the platform. In front of Jo hung a monitor of sorts...a monitor with a very interesting scene on it. It was Jo's bathroom, be it in a black and white picture, but it was her bathroom. Her tub, her sink, and even her clothes poking out of the hamper. The blond girl thought back to how naked her person was before the white out and gazed down across her body to see that she now wore a some sort of blue jumpsuit. Check her face, she found it to be bear and her glasses were no where in site...however, Jo could see just as well -if not better- as with her corrective lenses.
Standing showed to be a effort. For some reason Jo's muscles felt weak and feeble, almost older then they should be. She stumbled off the platform onto hard steel floor, landing in the black leather boots of a military-style. Without warning, a glass dome dropped atop the platform, trapping the chair and monitor underneath it. Jo gasped as it happened, nearly falling on her behind as she twisted around to face the falling glass. As she blinked and swallowed her heart back down her throat, the blond studied the platform and the dropped dome, finding them to be one and the same. A pod of some sort. And it was not the only one. Walking around the large chamber, Jo found there to be a total of twelve of the pods that she was on and all arranged about some pilaster with thick cables running up into the ceiling.
Moving to the pilaster, the girl found twelve terminal parallel to each pod. When she accessed one of them, it was registered for a subject: W. Foster...Foster. Jo turned to the pod across from the terminal and hesitated. Was it true? And if it was, what did it mean? The blond girl took a steadying breath and walking over to the pod. It was dark inside, however, it was clear enough of Jo to see the face of a thirty year old African-American man. He looked young enough to be his son, but Jo had a sinking feeling that it was W. Foster...William Foster... ...
...Bill Foster, of Tranquility Lane... ...
"Hel-lo, Miss Dai-ly" Jo gasped as the mechanical voice addressed. Whirling around she found a robot with a tall cylinder body, long tubular arms, fiendish metal claws, and glass orb for head. The blond girl grimace in disgust at the visible wriggled brain inside the robot's orb that gave the machine a Frankenstein charm.
"Where am I? What am I doing here?" She asked in a fright, "What are you going to do to me...?"
"Your fears are un-founded, Miss Dai-ly. Dr. Braun will ans-wer your questions" The robot rolled past the girl and towards a heavy looking steel door, "Please, fol-low me."
Any doubts of the robot's honesty seemed pointless to Jo right then. Her world was changing like a whirlwind and as blunt as lightning. What was left for her to lose? She want forth, following behind the robot as it's treads moved down the twisting halls and up rows of stairs. As Jo walked after the machine, she seemed to recognize it's make and model. It was Robobrain from GAI, General Atomic International. The girl remembered skimming, once, through a article on such robot models that dealt with the moral issues of using human organs, namely the brain. Jo could see what they were talking about. The blond girl shivered as she say the robot's brain bubble in the glass orb.
The Robobrain at lasted stopped in front on another steel door, as it rolled to the side of the hallway to allow Jo around it. The girl, however, stood back as she shifted from foot to foot. Her chest tighten up as she watched the large door slide open with quiet swish, as though a ghost had spirited it open. Slowly, Jo placed one leg in front of the the other and cautiously walked through the doorway. It opened into another room, not as giant as one she had awaken to, but large none the less. In the corner there was a desk with a terminal and filing cabins beside it. A line of computing machinery toiled away with blinking red lights and at the center of the room dominated another one of those pods. As Jo neared the pod, she found an older man with white hair inside, almost peace sleeping it would seem.
"You took your time getting here, Jo-Anne!" The blond blinked in surprise as Betty's voice rang down from the ceiling...the voice of the young girl and not the accented man, "I wonder if I should have pick someone else to carryout the task."
"Betty? Is that you?"
"Ahh...she stills hus not caught on" This time it was in the accented voice, the old man in the pod as Jo deduced, "If you can not at least piece together alls the clues, how could you possible survive out in the Wasteland?"
"Wasteland...?" The blond looked at the man in the pod, studying him thoughtfully, "...This is you. And your Betty...somehow..."
"Hmmm, you have piece together that much correctly" The elder man subside and little girl popped into it's place, "HOWEVER...you still have far to go, Jo-Anne! Geh heh heh!"
"This is some other place..." The blond girl gripped her forehead as she reviewed her whole life, "It's different, more...really. It's like something from a dream, it feels familiar."
"Your too slow, Jo-Anne...boring!" The accented soul's tone jumped in to continue, "The world you think is reals is virtual construct in you mind. Your life, our Tranquility Lane, is the dream. Everything that you believe exists is an illusion...such a Eastern concept, I must say! To you, it is 2077 and your in the United States of America. In truth, it's two hundred years later then that...and your in the Capital Wasteland."
Two hundred years... ...
"How...How can that... ..." Jo felt light head. She stumbled to the pod and braced her hands onto the glass to keep herself standing straight. Was everything and everyone she knew...gone? She had to ask, "What happened?"
"A dream in a sense, yes. And I huve just pluck you out of it. Our simulated world is based off a 2077 that the United States sought to be. However, the War hud wipped away such dreams."
"...the War..."
"Big surprise, huh! Any dodo could have guessed that we'd blow up the world!" The eerie humored tone of the young Betty related, "Though I don't think anyone expected people to survive through it. They just hope that humans would, I guess!"
A sudden sense of emptiness crept into Jo's heart and she gripped her chest because of it. It was just a shame, the girl's life...everyone's life on Tranquility Lane. Their were all in a dream, a Never Never Land made up like the last days of civilization. The concession stand with no clerk and the street with no cars, it all seems so terribly wrong now that she was out of the pod...so terribly horrible. Jo wanted to scream out, cry foul to Betty or whoever it was, but her throat was clenched up like in a vise. She looked down to her fingers as the pulled around her jumpsuit's fabric and zipper. The cloth felt thick and the metal was cold. Jo could touch these things in this bitter reality, however, unlike everyone else she knew. They were asleep, stuck in their minds as the man in pod said. The Rockwells, the Neusbaums, little Timmy...her father...everyone was stuck in some make-believe realm for centuries.
"Why would you do this?" was the only whisper Jo could manage.
"Why?" The accented voice tossed back, "Why won't a country's leaders what to preserve it's national treasures? It was I who spearheaded the Vault Experiment, as Director of Societal Preservation Program, Dr. Stanislaus Braun."
"The Vault..." Like a flood bursting over a dam, knowledge flow through Jo's mind. That single word, Vault, ignited a explosion of information that took a few minutes for the girl to process, "..a type of subterranean installation designed by Vault-Tec. Designed for the sole purpose of sheltering up to one thousand dwellers from a nuclear holocaust. Commissioned by the United States government as a part of Project Safehouse in the event of an exchange with a tactical nuclear armed nation, namely the communist People's Republic of China." She said it all in a flat tone, like how she remembered reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in school. The information was ingrained in her somehow, "But...why would I...how-"
"How do you know about the Vaults?" Braun jumped in with Betty's voice, "I put a lot of fun things into your head before I let you of Tranquility! And you'll need every last bit of it for your mission, Jo-Anne."
"I don't want to go on some mission! I want my life back!"
"There, there now, deary" The old man related, "If want you life back, you must accomplish this task. The lives of everyone on Tranquility Lane depend on it!"
"What? What could I possibly do to help?" It seemed too fantastic that Jo, just a everyday American teenage, could do anything in this post-apocalyptic world.
"It is not a simple thing to admit that I can not do everything, Jo-Anne." Braun reluctantly said, "In this Vault, I huve the power of God! With her machinery, I've kept the fragile human body young and alive for decades upon decades! The life-support in our pods sustain and supply of all the needs we huve, and without it...we would die. The water chip, the regulatory device for filtering purified water from the radiated wastelands...it hus failed!"
"So you need a replacement of the water treatment part of the Vault's life-support?"
"Child, we all need water for our bodies to survive. It is our true life's blood!"
"Could there even be one left in the world? I mean...two hundred years after a nuclear war...there wouldn't be anything left!"
"The Capital Wastelands are quite so inhabited, though not entirely by people. For the future of your family and friends, Jo-Anne, go out into the wastes and find the water chip."
Jo was silent, saying not a word as she turned and walked out the door. She found her determination. It was in her father's crooked smile, little Timmy's pathetic whimpers, the play looks between Mr. Rockwell and Martha Simpson when they thought no one was looking. The less than perfect lives of Tranquility Lane that Jo had loved and that she didn't share with in this cold reality. As the blond girl exited the room and back into the hall with waiting robobrain, she made a wordless pray. Praying in one part that there was a god to hear her and the last part for her to be granted strength that she did not yet have. Down the stairs and back into the main chamber followed the robot to where she assumed the mechanical would lead her to the Vault's exit. She was surprised instead to be brought to another one door room, small than where the girl had been before. She blinked at the robobrain for an answer... ...
"What's this?"
"It is a stor-age room where Dr. Braun has in-struct-ed me to take you." The mechanical being replied in it's calm tone, "The Doctor has prepared an a-sort-ment of equipment that you might need in the Waste-land."
The robobrain rolled into the small room to a tell locker, then opened it with it's metal claw. Closing the locker, the robot turned to offered the blond girl a knapsack with two leather strips connect to a dark blue denim bag. Jo forced a smile -if only to make the situation a little brighter- as she took the knapsack from the mechanical and pulled the flap open. Fairly large and able to carry just about anything...if Jo could lift it. The robobrain gentle prodded the girl over to the one of the few table in the room, relating in the it's polite yet direct manner that she was to now choose gear. Something in back of her mind screamed that stimpaks where very important, stimulation delivery packages to be exact. She grabbed a good bunch and placed them in her bag. Food became her second priority, however, she couldn't if much. A couple military field rations -Meal, Ready-to-Eat or MREs- and package of Salisbury steak...old then fucking hell, probably. With a long sigh, Jo toss those in her knapsack as well. A weapon was all that was left... ...
"I don't really like guns..." Jo lamented to herself, aloud.
"There is a fine co-lec-tion to choose from, Ms Dai-ly." The robot related. Jo looked to each table, finding the next to have a more deadly machine than the last.
"An AER9 Laser rifle" The girl's mouth spouted as it took on a mind of it's own, "Sturdier and more reliable then the Wattz 2000 rifle, even that of the it own predecessors. Fires charged particles in a two second beam with devastating effects." Jo gingerly poked at on the large laser's mircofusion cells that laid next to it, "...I don't even know if I could lift the damn thing!"
"Per-haps another wea-pon?" She nodded to the mechanical being response and moved to the next table... ...
"R91 assault rifle, full-auto urban...best at medium range and close-quarters. Five point five six NATO round, making a one point five spread." Jo frown and reached up to tug on a strain of her yellow hair, a nervous tick in place without her glasses to fiddle with, "Fuck, I'd be more afraid of firing it than the people I'm shooting at."
"The next table, may-be"
"Gock 86 plasma pistol...custom..." The blond girl's eyes flickered as she traced her fingertip along the ivory hand-grip and nick trim of the pistol. She found her lips turning up in a smirk, "Designed by the Gaston Glock artificial intelligence. Shoots a small bolt of superheated plasma. Powered by a small energy cell." Jo picked the weapon up in her right hand. It wasn't light, but she was able to wield the gun single handedly and with two for better accuracy. It fit very nicely in the girl's hands, "I could use this one, I guess...!"
Jo picked up the long, red leather holster from the table and strapped it to her belt. It was a little odd walking around with the extra weight to her hip, though the blond girl found new sense of empowerment from simply having the plasma pistol on her person. There was plenty of equipment and supplies left in the storage room, however, that nagging sense in the back of her mind again told her to leave it there. The idea of too much weight slowing her down popped into her head and cross-country traveling would be greatly hampered. So Jo swung her knapsack over her shoulders as she followed the robobrain back out into the main chamber. Walking behind the robot, following the mechanical being to there next location, the girl felt compelled to ask it... ...
"Do you have a name?" Jo question prompt the robot to halt it's treads and swiveled around to face her.
"Is there an pur-pose to your in-qui-ry, Miss Dai-ly?"
"It's just...I don't know anybody in this world now...and you've being so helpful... ..." Making friends with a robobrain. It seemed a little pathetic to the girl, but she found the mechanical being to be much kinder than Dr. Braun/Betty, even if it was program to be so nice, "I might never get back to the Vault and I'd like to know your name if we never meet again."
"... ..." The robot was silent in a thoughtful paused. Either it was going over some series of subroutines for just how to deal with such a matter or, perhaps, the machine was surprised by this human's sacramental value that was placed on it, "My designation is RB-One One Three Eight, unit sign to maintaining Vault inhabitants affairs."
RB-1138 pulled itself -herself...the robot's feminine voice and calm manner gave the robobrain a motherly touch- back around and proceed again with the blond girl following behind. The two came to a room with a colossal, cog shaped door at one end of it. The numbers '112' were inscribed on it and look as though it could withstand a bomb exploding next to it. In fact, her newly acquired knowledge of Vaults told Jo that was exactly what it was meant to do. As the girl gawk at the massive Vault door, RB-1138 rolled over to a panel to start punching in some commands. Suddenly, a siren started to blare and the lights flashed as a sizable hydraulic arm extended down from the ceiling. The arm connected into an opening in the Vault door, twisting around in it and producing an unsettling sound of metal grinding against metal. Pulling away, the arm retracted back into the ceiling as the colossal cog door wheeled over itself to reveal the exit to the Vault.
"I guess I can't put it off any further." Jo related as she smiled to the robot. RB-1138 had a look about her that was almost sympathetic, though she had no face to truly show it, "Well...wish me luck RB."
"I am a ro-bot, Miss Dai-ly. Not a wish-ing well." The blond girl give a short giggle, pleasantly surprised that the mechanical being had a sense of humor, "Super-sti-tions a side, Miss Dai-ly, I would find it most un-for-tun-ate if your were not to return."
Jo nodded to her machine friend and turned to the open Vault door. It was her moment of truth. Tranquility Lane and everyone depended on her find a water chip...though they didn't know it in their perfect virtual world. The girl will keep their dreaming alive, then she could dream along side them. With a deep breath, the blond girl step out of the Vault 112 and into the Wasteland... ...
Author's Note: I want to hear feedback, I really do. However, if you do choose to make a review, please login. It's not that I want to argue with you, but that I don't always know what people are talking about and want them to specify. I'm looking forward to people's reactions.
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