The Birth of Atom
A Fallout 3 Story
Chapter One
Who started It?
The Vault Dweller walked right past Radar, a serious looking English girl with a powerful weapon strapped to her back. She was watching the preacher, melt over the bomb the Vault Dweller had deactivated he couldn't remember how many months ago, a bomb that now sat on a plynth and was acting as a centre piece for the city.
"You!" Radar called
The Vault Dweller looked at her,
"You're welcome" He said to her
"For what?" Radar asked
"The purifying of the water, that was me" He said
"Oh I see, job done" She replied sarcastically, she walked up to the preacher and scanned him, "How are you not dead yet or zombified?"
"I am protected child" He told her
"This whole city needs to be buried because of that bomb, whether it's active or not" Radar said
The preacher didn't know how to respond at first,
"The Atom Smasher was a mirical" He said
The Vault Dweller pulled her to one side,
"I've tried, you can't reason with these people, they're brainwashed, the levels are fine, all these people are fine, look at them, a lick of paint..."
"Everything and everyone will glow in the dark" Radar said
The Vault Dweller shook his head,
"Atom Smasher...I don't understand, what is that?"
"Where have you been?" She asked, then she looked at his attire, "Hang on, you were one of those rich bastards that got a free pass to one of the vaults weren't you?"
"I was born in Rivit City" The Vault Dweller told her, "Then moved into the Vault, we were lucky. The overseer took pity on me...until, look things got complicated, what was the Atom Smasher?"
"How old are you?" She asked
"19"
"That explains it" Radar told him...
2258,
14-year old Radar was in the living area the bungerlow she lives in with her mother, the large windows in the open plan dwelling look out at the Southbank.
"This can't be real, they made this mistake like 290 years ago" Radar' mother commented
The report was about an Atom Smasher. The walls of the building had been concreted but the floor hadn't and now the radiation generated by the experiments the machine was used for was leaking into the ground,
"Residents that live less than 15 miles are being told to stay exactly where they are until they have been examined by Special Forces, it is unclear as yet just why this was allowed to go on" The Reported said
"The enemy!" Came an angry male voice that made Radar and her mother jump, they turned to find Radar' father standing in the doorway with all kinds of tools in boxes afoot, "They painted the floors the same colour as the damn walls and no one thought to check the place was secure before testing out that machine, they all have specialised biohazard on, there was no way of knowing, this is the new thing now, it's not the only Atom Smasher, there's another being built, you mess about with that thing and never mind black holes you could turn it into a bomb or use the technology behind it to create even worse"
"How do you know all this?" Radar' mother asked him
"I was at an emergency meeting at HQ, they want me on the case, it'll be my job to identify the suspects while a new Atom Smasher is being situated" He told her
"Oh come on! They can't...I thought it was just the Americans that had this machine" Radar said, her voice full of fear,
"Oh come on you're a bright girl, we have plants desguised as factories in this country"
"What's with the tools?" Radar asked
"I'm building us a Vault, the report in the paper was bogus, they want serious money for entry into these Vaults" He told them, shutting the door behind him,
"So pay them, I'm not getting nuked for nobody!" Radar spat
"Read that" Her father said, handing her a load of files
"You stole official government files?" Radar' mother said in question and shock
"Just as well I did, read them!" He snapped, "I'm having a vault built for us...you"
"What about everyone else out there?" Radar asked as he layed out the plans on the table in the kitchen area,
"I don't know, I can only think about us right now" He told them,
"What's about to happen to people isolated within the exclusion zone?" Radar asked
There was a silence,
"What's going to happen to them?" Radar' mother asked
A few days later that question was answered and witnessed by everyone all over the world. A concrete wall was built around the exclusion zone and anyone that wasn't already dead or dying were shot at from above before the entire space was filled in with concrete,
Radar stumbled outside to look out at the river,
"I can't believe they aloud that footage to go out on TV" She breathed, "This is exactly what the enemy want, publicity"
"The public would have argued about the secrets being kept if they hadn't aloud that footage to go out on TV" Her mother sighed,
"It's going to end in a fallout" She said
"Our own Vault' not such a bad idea now is it?" Her mother said
As the months passed and the vault was being built Radar relaxed, she started to think it would all be forgotten but then the unthinkerble happened. Her father was rumbled by a number of suspects, those suspects then played her father and used the computers at the base of the Atom Smasher to send a plant into meltdown and another base to release atomic missiles at the Whitehouse, from within the states. When it was traced back to the UK the American president retalliated without stopping to entertain the possiblity that this was a set up and bombed the UK, Germany then bombed the states, and before they knew it nuclear weapons the public had no clue still existed were primed and detonated.
From the moment the first bomb hit the Whitehouse Radar and her mother, and her aunts and uncles and cousins and neighbours had watched this all unfold from the vault her father had built.
She didn't want to think about the other people outside.
She couldn't.
"Why don't they just stop for one second to think about what actually happened? To realise who started this?" Radar gasped
2277
"Who did start all of this?" The Vault Dweller asked
"The Mutants" Radar said