Part 1: Zoiks
Chapter 1: "Points of Authority" by Linkin Park
Five years before a certain doctor and his newborn son took up residence in Vault 101, a man named Dave was interrupted from a passionate "state meeting" in his office with the younger of his two wives by a knock on the door.
The door started to open and Dave heard his daughter's voice. "Daddy? Somebody is at the g-"
"DONT COME IN!" he yelled, pushing his second wife down from the compromising pose she was in to the floor behind the desk. Poking his head up after a few seconds, the tyrannical leader found the door shut tight again. He started mumbling about how no one ever listened, throwing on clothes as he did. His wife made a move to garb herself as well, but he whispered harshly, "I'm not done yet, you get back the way you were. Don't even stop, I'll be back in moments."
Fully dressed, Dave slid out of the room, trying to block the exiting display in the room from anyone who might be outside the door. He found his youngest daughter Flower a few feet away looking scared. He was angry for being interrupted and didn't care. "How many times do I have to tell you, never go into my office or my room if the door is shut!" Tears started to well up in her eyes. "Now, what did you want?"
Sniffing, Flower said, "Bob sent me to get you, Daddy. There's people at the gate."
Unholstering the chinese assault rifle from his shoulders, he went to the gate of the settlement. Bob, his eldest son, was already there talking to the strangers. There were only three people, but they had four robots and a brahmin with them. "What is it you want with the Republic of Dave?"
A woman standing at the front of the group in a dirty and worn white lab coat spoke up. "We wanted to trade, and maybe a place to rest. We have been traveling for a long time and raiders have been wearing us down the whole way."
"So then you seek asylum in the Republic of Dave?" He ignored the look of bewilderment on the woman's face. Newcomers were always astounded by the Republic, she was probably trying to wrap her head around the fact that there was a functional governing body in the wastes.
"Okay... Well, look Dave, we just need some water. We're willing-"
"I am President Dave, President of the Republic of Dave!" he interrupted angrily. "You will address me as 'Mr. President' or I will have you executed!"
Dr. Ivanovitch almost shot the delusional, inbred hillbilly right then and there. After traveling for a week, at a crawl nonetheless because one of the robots had been damaged and could not keep up, and with raiders and wildlife trying their best to erase the scientific expedition off the face of the earth, she was not in the mood to be threatened by an alpha male pseudo-leader that was so illiterate he probably could not even spell the word 'ignorant.' But she saw the women and children behind him and kept her cool, saying, "I'm sorry, Mr. President. I was just saying that all we need is water, and we are willing to trade for it."
"Alright, come in, but stay near the gate. Shawna, go fetch a crate of water." The team of scientists entered and Dave immediately turned back to them. "So, what do you have that you think the citizens of the Republic of Dave might want or need?"
"We have several extra guns and some frag grenades that we picked up from the raiders. I think four bottles per gun and one per grenade would be a fair trade. There are also a few pieces of tech that we might be able to part with, but you will have to throw in caps for those. We lugged them all the way from Rivet City, we're not going to let them go cheep." The woman named Shawna returned and the Doctor slyly asked, "So there is a water source in town?"
As expected, the simple girl didn't know better and easily fell for the trick. Pointing east, she said, "No, the well we use is just over-"
"Silence!" Dave exclaimed. "You're giving away state secrets!" The girl recoiled from her 'President's' anger. Ivanovitch saw it and her blood boiled, not because the man was angry at the girl, to be reasonable she had just given a major secret away, but because of the way the girl recoiled. The Doctor had seen similar motions before; head dipping and being retracted as far as the neck would allow, hands rising defensively, like she might need to word off a blow, feet backpedaling as if of their own accord. This girl had either been hit before or had witnessed enough bouts of insane rage that she took precautions in case things were thrown.
After one last seething glance at Shawna, Dave resumed the conversation. "I'm not sure if that will be enough, water is incredibly hard to come by after all. I think one of your robots would make a much better bargain. To make it fair, I'll even give you the choice of which. Now take the water, all of it, and hand over a robot."
"What? That's not even close to being a fair deal!"
Dave was glowing now, apparently he took pleasure in causing the distress of others. "You don't have a choice. The full might of the Army of Dave will come down on you if you try and refuse! Now submit, before I am forced to take drastic measures."
An older woman stepped up and said quietly, "Mr. President, like I've said before, it's not the best idea to threaten when trading. We can just give-"
Ignoring her, Dave asked, "What will it be, foreigner? Choose quickly!"
Seeing there were sane people around that could take over and lead the settlement, and being fed up with the pompous, arrogant shit in front of her, the Doctor made a quick decision. She raised her laser rifle at the man's face. A line of red energy leapt forward at the speed of light and created a smoldering hole in the asshole's forehead. The other man, Bob, raised his gun in retaliation and was promptly cut down by the gatling laser on the sentrybot next to Ivanovitch. To hold the bots in check and keep them from slaughtering everyone, she yelled, "Override three-K-F-eight-L! Halt attack program!" The growing hum from the robots' attached weapons fell into silence.
Everyone in town fled once the fighting started, so the team left quickly. They did not take the water because after the girl's slip they knew where to find some and the former 'Republic of Dave' would need it more than them.
After getting some water from the working pre-war well east of the settlement, Dr. Ivanovitch retraced their route for about an hour. This lead them back to a medium sized stone building set along what had once been a major power line with the words 'MDPL-16 Power Station' painted in large letters on its side. It was maybe twenty by forty feet with a fenced in area nearby protecting an outdoor power converter of some kind. There was no power flowing through the lines, as was expected, but she knew from experience that stations such as these often had generators to keep important hardware running in case of an outage. Everyone had already agreed that it would be a great place to set up a lab, but the first time they passed by they had reluctantly continued on in search of water. Assured now that there was a water source nearby, it was perfect.
A week was spent unloading the robots and brahmin and setting all the equipment up, setting the robots' patrols, making the building livable and getting ready for the reason they had set off on the crazy adventure. Ivanovitch had always been partial to robotics of all kinds, but for a long time had been unable to augment the human body with mechanical part. She wanted to make a cyborg.
The goal was out of reach until she had stumbled across a pre-war research lab in the ruins of D.C. which containted a detailed and uncorrupted account of the development of a microorganism that formed incredibly strong bonds with surrounding living tissue, including itself. The substance formed by a large culture of the microbe started with normal properties, but in the presence of nitrogen gas it hardened and came close to mimicking the attributes of steel. By itself, that made it valuable, but the amazing properties did not stop there. It could be used seamlessly alongside any living organic matter. Somehow, the pre-war scientists developing it had reversed the process used by viruses of impregnating other living cells with DNA for reproduction. This microorganism actually stole DNA. The cells that bordered the living tissue invaded their neighbors and took their DNA. The layer of cells with commandeered DNA then protected the rest of the culture from antibodies the host might send out. The outer layer essentially became working, native cells of the host body, but retained the small bit of DNA that coded for the ribosomes that created the protein responsible for the high strength of the bonds. And because nitrogen was so abundant, even inside almost every living thing, the proteins had no problem sealing the bonds.
The possible applications of this technology went far beyond the antiquated ability to replace bones and joints with rods and hinges. The way it was intended the microb and the substance formed by it could biologically integrate itself with the damaged area and heal normally. When Dr. Ivanovitch discovered it she had seen even more possibilities. Mechanical parts in people were limited by how much they irritated nearby tissue and organs. An implanted device surrounded by BMTS would heal into place without affecting anything around it.
Three weeks after committing an act of terrorism on the pseudo-Republic's 'president', the scientists had the lab up and running enough to start experimenting. They captured several mole rats, which were large, mutated rodents that lacked hair, and put them in the fenced area just outside the lab. The first test was to see if the BMTS samples that had been collected actually did anything like what the documents said they would. One rodent was injected with a small amount of the microorganism along a bone in it's foreleg. An hour later, the scientists cut open the leg to look at the bone.
It worked.
Two years and dozens of dead molerats later, the animal tests were finished. Dr. Ivanovitch and the two other scientists, Jack and Genevieve, now had a clear understanding of BMTS's capabilities. The Doctor also had a better idea of the most efficient way to insert the microb and had planned out what mechanical and electronic parts they would implant into the cyborg's body. It seemed the younger you started, the more integrated the BMTS would be once the subject reached adulthood. A thin layer around the growing bones would harden like they were supposed to, steal the DNA and continue growing normally from there. Because each new cell retained the BMTS's proteins they were also as strong as steel, forming a metallic coating around the original bone. Ivanovitch also planned on adding a memory device, named a Neurally Integrated Personal Computer, or NIPC, to the back of the cyborg's head and thin hydraulic muscles to replace key strain areas such as the legs and back.
The last two ideas required nerve-to-wire transfers, something not totally unheard of but it was still something extremely difficult. For the better part of the four experimentation years Ivanovitch spent the time between tests honing her skills at the art. By the time everything else was finished, she was confident she could make a connection between human nerves and wires.
The next problem was simple, they needed a child. It had been established early on that the molerat injections were more efficient when performed on young rodents, now the cyborg would face the best chance if it received the same treatment. But where were they going to get a child to experiment on? It was unanimous that they should not just go out and kidnap some kid and they did not want to try fertilizing an egg in a petri dish, everyone agreed there was literally no fun in that, so they decided the best option would be to make one normally. Then they would be morally clean because they, as the parents, chose the life of a cyborg for the child.
Both Dr. Ivanovitch and Genevieve volunteered to be the mother. After some discussion they decided they would both try and whoever conceived first would be the one to personally raise the cyborg. There was too much work, with the NIPC to be programmed and large amounts of BMTS to be grown, for either woman to be pregnant for nine months so an artificial womb was created for the infant to grown in once conceived.
The Rivet City lab had possessed a small collection of pre-war books prized by the scientists there and Ivanovitch, Jack and Genevieve had all read the open-minded philosophies of Robert Heinlein's 1961 A Stranger in a Strange Land, so the three weeks of rather promiscuous behavior that followed were taken fairly well. No one minded the lack of monogamy. In fact there was a certain primal satisfaction to the regular and uninhibited... actions... that everyone enjoyed, and it was over far to soon. Dr. Ivanovitch became pregnant and the unborn child was removed and placed into the artificial womb. The crazy situation was over and everyone was back to work within a month and a half.
Three years went by without any real progress. What the scientists hadn't expected was the wait for the child, whom the Doctor and Jack named Zoiks, to grow strong enough to handle any sort of bodily interference, let alone major surgery.
The little girl led to certain problems as well. The lab had always been a little cramped, with one room containing all the equipment, the sleeping area, the food storage and everything else the group needed. When Zoiks arrived, the space needed for and the noise produced by her drove Genevieve and Jack to the point where they decided to clean the unused molerat pen, wall it up with sheets of scrap metal and move out. Ivanovitch was saddled with caring for her, which she greatly resented Jack, the father, for. At first Zoiks was a major hassle and slowed her work down to a crawl. After six months of frustration she didn't mind as much because the science work petered out anyway and the waiting began. She viewed the full time job as a good way to pass the time, but although it led to some unexpected joys of motherhood she mostly viewed it as a waste of her talents.
During all of this, because of her inexperience in raising a child and the tension everyone was in, Ivanovitch neglected to talk regularly to Zoiks. It just was not something she thought of, it never crossed her mind, and it was something that would come back to haunt her for a long time. It was a trying time for everyone.
Around Zoiks's third birthday, about the same time, give or take a few months, as Project Purity was falling to pieces and James was taking refuge in an underground vualt, the day came when Ivanovitch deemed the child ready for her first operations. The extensive testing paid off, everything went as the Doctor had planned. For years, Zoiks grew normally and healthily while receiving all of the treatments, injections and surgeries needed to make her a cyborg.
After the NIPC installation into the back of Zoiks's head at three and a half, everyone noticed that she became more alert almost overnight. She looked around now, but it was with a knowing look instead of the bewildered and blank look of someone who does not understand. It was solid evidence that the program for understanding and learning in the NIPC was working.
All the surgeries were over and done with by the time Zoiks was five. By then Ivanovitch had written a few programs on the computer to teach her basic math, science and history, but mainly she studied the affects of the enhancements on her body and made sure the additions weren't rejected. Everything seemed fine, the scores she received on the programed tests were good, the only thing Ivanovitch started to worry about was her speech.
Zoiks babbled random sounds from the age of two, and Ivanovitch saw the progress so she assumed everything was fine. She didn't notice the slow pace of development from there, she did not have anything to compare Zoiks too. At four and a half there were disjointed, though clear, words like "mama," "Jack," "lab" and "baby." Her first understandable two-word statement, "Jack gone," was around five and a half, after her surgeries and augmentations. This is when it struck the Doctor that something might be wrong. Weren't children more developed by then? Only two-word statements by five and a half?
She brought this up with the others. Because of Zoiks's developing typing skills, she obviously did not have a problem communicating, just verbal words. They saw the flaw as some sort of disability that was unavoidable, noted it in the notes as a possible reaction from the many alterations that had been made to her and decided that the best thing to do was work around the speech area. From then on whenever any of them talked to Zoiks, it was always through typing. This removed her from almost all speech and kept her from developing her talking ability past where it already was.
Ironically, it was the ignorance of educated and even smart people that led to a perfectly healthy child's inability to talk well.
AN/ An extended summary for this story can be found on my profile. For those who want to read this story, don't bother. For those with questions about my definition of 'canon' or the stipulations I have put on this story's rating, please refer to it.
Also, as of 5/25/12 I am attempting to update every Friday.
As of 7/10/12 I have failed. I went more than a moth consistently though. Impressive.