Note: Prelude to 'Smells Like a Heist'. Courier Six is on the search for the fabled city of Sierra Madre, for the treasure it holds is indispensable to her plans. While this is a priority for her, she also has to deal with a couple of people because Mr. House's position has a lot to do with actual management of property.
Disclaimer: Fallout belongs to Obsidian & Bethesda
1
Too old, still too advanced.
The Courier, with the aid of Yes Man, drove both the Legion and the NCR from Hoover Dam, securing New Vegas' independence from both factions. With Mr. House out of the picture, part of the Securitron army was diverted to The Strip to keep order. Any chaos on the streets was ended, quickly. Chaos became uncertainty, then acceptance, with minimal loss of life. New Vegas assumed its position as an independent power in the Mojave.
In the Mojave no other kind of weather existed but hot, scorching days with not a single measly cloud in sight. Adding to the irony was the fact that despite the sheer number of windows not a single one in the Lucky 38 could be opened. It had something to do with the hazardous combination of height, strong winds and a high risk of unintentional suicide. As one would expect, Mr. House had air conditioning installed back when the building was first constructed. By now it was two centuries old and of questionable functionality, because Mr. House had no need for it. His plan involved spending the rest of his long life in a life-support chamber. If anything, its purpose was to be there for any potential henchman he had planned to install in the 'Presidential' suite.
Regardless, the best option she, the new proud owner of Lucky 38, was left with, bar deliberately vandalizing her new home in a sad attempt to fix the ancient cooling appliance, was to rely on less clothing. She was already down to a pair of shorts and something so short and torn that it could barely be called a shirt. She hated that feeling, of sweaty skin against centuries old leather. More precisely, that moment when you try to get up from one of those damned well preserved leather sofas.
So, armed with the knowledge that having several floors worth of concrete above her head would do wonders to keep the heat out, Guilty was determined to spend the better part of her days in the blissful coolness of her chilly basement. And for her purposes she was glad that for the tower's vault, built into the foundations and consisting of a massive underground storage facility for securitrons, Mr. House had also found time to provide - in addition to a large firing range, a bunker filled with armed robots and a nuclear reactor - for a lab and a repair shop.
For the nth time in the past month she had taken her place in front of the main console identical to one in the penthouse. Yes Man's ever-cheerful face looked down on her from the large monitor. Two of four lesser monitors sported various diagrams, changing in rapid succession. Yes Man was going over data she had brought on her Pip-boy at speeds she could hardly imagine. Pale halogen lights lit the room, some suspended from above and a few that still worked, from the corners. On the floor in-between them were scattered the parts and remains of one ingenious machine Guilty had been obsessing over ever since she learned of its existence. Off to the side was a table with blue design sheets spread across it – printouts of the slideshow from the monitors.
This machine in particular didn't have a chance to see the light of day in the Old World. Not publicly, at least.
"Fascinating!" Yes Man's happy face yelled excitedly – because there was no other Yes Man but the excited Yes Man – from the screen above her. "This vending machine is in fact a self-contained matter transformation device!" The screen danced with static for a moment as he readjusted his excitement. "It can recreate any item – limited by the templates stored in its memory – by using chips as a battery and source of raw material for the created goods! Genius! Absolutely brilliant!"
A pair of securitrons mulled about helping her sort out the parts. One was carefully separating them to match the schematics. Both would wobble whenever he put emphases on some fact or another.
"It can also take certain items and transform them back into said chips. The customer would make a selection through a holographic interface that displayed the item being purchased," he continued, displaying various parts of the machine on his screen and showing how it should function in theory. "This machine demonstrates something astounding about pre-War civilization. Observe:" He demonstrated how the machine should work with a funny little pre-war cartoon show. People from the Old world seemed to be so fond of the Vault boy mascot, that they shoved him just about everywhere and into everything. "The chips are not some form of nanotech feedstock, just simple alloys of common and fissionable elements. And it uses nuclear fission to process this material, not only into tools, but edible food and even prescription chems!" Yes Man sounded almost giddy with all the information he was unveiling.
"According to production logs, these were finalized just weeks before the bombs fell," Guilty said looking over the date on the scientists' reports. She drummed her fingers across her bare arms and rubbed her hands, wondering how odd it was that the Think Tank of Big MT had developed technology that could have stopped the never-ending Resource War dead in its tracks, but was commissioned by a wealthy entrepreneur for his private resort instead of the government for, well, them.
"Just think about the unimaginable prosperity that civilization was right around the corner from when the bombs fell." Only Yes Man could sound so happy talking about how mankind managed to destroy itself, and spectacularly so. The really tragic thing was, there had been an opportunity for survival, and then some, and still they never even attempted to grab onto it.
'Too little, too late to stop the bombs,' the Courier shook her head. There's always more to war than need for resources. "We're in a casino. Wanna take a bet on what they would use the matter-transformation for?"
It wasn't a hard guess.
Weapons. Guns. Bombs. An arsenal that would have made Boomers blow up with envy.
"Funny how you humans are willing to take a rope and hang yourselves instead of making - oh, I don't know... a ladder to climb out of the pit," the AI droned from above, as if lost in his own calculations.
"Us hanging ourselves over and over is what got you created today."
"Hey, you don't hear me complaining!"
She picked up something that looked like a cylinder-shaped light bulb. It was connected to the box where chips were deposited. From the amount of chips given, it depended what item could be transformed and materialized. And that also meant the amount of energy necessary to perform transformation varied. So, how much energy did it eat up then?
Guilty wasn't a scientist. She was learning, and she was willing to learn, but it would take a lifetime of diligent studying to be able to match any knowledge from before the War. She doubted she'd ever be able to go toe-to-toe with the Think Tank or Yes Man or even venerable old Mr. House, but she liked being able to tell when she was being sold radioactive brahmin-shit.
She made sure that the only trips she took to the basement were of the educational sort.
"These vending machines would be one hell of an asset for us." She stood up, stretching her legs and circling the parts laid out on the floor. "We'd no longer depend on the Great Khans for their chems, and we could easily bind the Followers to Vegas with a steady supply of clean, unspoiled and never before used medical supplies."
There were so many things she had to look into before she could even consider them an option for her plan to make Vegas self-sufficient, a hub of commerce and continuous flow of caps. The top of the list being: find a vending machine that actually works!
"Oh! You mean we can cut them off from their only source of income in the area and have them slowly die of starvation?! I'll do it! Sign me up!"
A Securitron with Yes Man's face wheeled about and unrolled another schematic. With a little more delight to its movements than usual, she noted.
"Hush. They act as a perfect buffer between us and the NCR."
There was a dramatic sigh from the monitor. "I suppose brutal eradication of their women and children is better than giant scorpions just eating them as they crawl through the desert, thirsty and starving. You're absolutely correct." The monitor somehow managed to look deep in thought. "Did I thank Boone for all his hard work yet?"
Yes Man would look at the whole incident as a good thing.
"I don't think he'd appreciate the sentiment. Now," she steered the conversation back from the uncanny valley, "we need to see about assembling enough of them so we can always have necessary items in stock. Especially when the time comes and competition starts lacking them." In the cool half-light of the basement Guilty's eyes had that special twinkle, as she already plotted ways upon ways to ensure said competition's lack of resources.
"Oh-hoh! I knew it! We're not gonna make them public!"
Guilty snorted. That would be a colossally stupid move on her part. People would shoot instead of waiting in line or kill for a handful of chips. Or they would try to carry off the machine in the dead of night. And all that's not even accounting a possible all out war with the… well, anyone and everyone who didn't have it and wanted it. The NCR especially would indiscriminately kill, pillage and burn their way to get their hands on technology that allowed matter replication.
"There's no point stirring up the pot. They'll just be happy to have fresh, non-irradiated food and clean bandages." She paused, wheels whirling in her head as she tried to see all the pitfalls of her plan. "Not too much of course. We wouldn't want them to get suspicious."
"Oh yes! All of that sounds like a GREAT plan!" The flashing monitor exclaimed with gusto, brightening up the entire room. "Except for the part that it's not working," he sounded almost sheepish. Excitedly sheepish. Then as his mood shifted, the lights dimmed. "And we don't know how to fix it."
"We don't. And the brains are focused on other things," Courier Six sighed, feeling the weight of the problem. Not to mention that Big MT needed some extensive renovation before any lab, any research center, anything at all in there could be considered even remotely usable.
"We know that the machine works. There are records of shipments to a paying customer." She walked over to the large console under Yes Man's screen and started looking through the records. "Even if there is a design flaw," because not one of Big MT's inventions worked as it should, "the machine had to be in working order for delivery to be made."
She flipped the chip between her fingers. It was one of few she had brought back from Big MT. Her mechanical eye focused on the surface, taking in the precise detailing of its metal composition, the smooth texture of the emblem – the profile of a woman with a flower in her hair and the letters 'SM' carved into the golden surface.
"Sierra Madre…" she whispered. A myth in the wasteland. A legend to lure people to their death. Her eyes turned upwards towards the ever smiling screen. "Find it."
"Find what?" The AI asked cheerfully.
Guilty had found herself in a conundrum. One she would not solve by sitting here and staring at the shell of a broken prototype. And she sure as hell wouldn't locate Sierra Madre by wandering aimlessly around the desert. That's what a highly sophisticated AI was for.
"You have records of delivery and you have maps," she pointed at the screen. "Find me a way into Sierra Madre."
There was a pregnant pause between them. Images of records switched in rapidly on the smaller screens.
"Sure! One mythical death-trap of a place coming right up!" Yes Man exclaimed joyfully and paused as he watched her jump to her feet and pick up her empty coffee cup from the console. A sure sign she was done for the day. "Are you going someplace nice?"
"The Strip," Guilty pulled on a proper shirt.
"The Tops?!" Yes Man, driving one of the securitrons, asked rolling over to her side. As if she had not just given him the monumental task of finding an exact location of a myth. "Are they up to no good? Do they need reminding? Reprimanding?" He asked giddily, almost as if he was looking forward to rolling into the Tops, lining up the family along the wall and making music only Yes Man, and a select few others, would call sweet.
"I need to make my rounds." After all, marking their territory is an important part of any predator native to the Wasteland. Guilty grinned. Wouldn't want anyone to get too uppity about their place in the food chain of New Vegas. She hopped over and picked up the belt with weapons, then paused. She was missing something.
Right. Pants. She needed to go and get those. She groaned and cursed thinking about having to go back up to the oven that was the top floors of the tower where her clothes were.
"It's always good to hand them just enough rope to hang themselves with," Yes Man nodded knowingly. "And! Early morning inspection is the best kind of way to enforce law and order!" Like mobile refrigerators, securitrons buzzed about and around her, busily cleaning up the floor. The AI never had any real need to look directly at the electrical components.
Early? Guilty frowned at his jovial tone. It couldn't be that early. She had meant to spend the hottest part of the day down here and judging by the headache setting in, she had managed just fine to stare at disassembled machine parts and at the screens for hours now. Guilty rubbed her neck and the back of her head. Now that she paid more attention to it, she did feel kind of sore.
"What time is it?"
"Seven twenty-four AM!" At her absolutely dubious expression, stunned silence and mouth just a tiny bit agape, Yes Man coughed, "Yeah, you've been kind of obsessing the entire night. Again."
"Yes Man," she sighed, "you could have snapped me out of it anytime."
"I could have," he said, sounding very smug. "But then you would have left earlier and where would we be?" The pair of securitrons paused in their movements, looking at her. The Courier glanced at them and immediately they scurried off. Pant-less or weapon-less, there was one person in the Mojave no one tampered with – even if you had direct control over the largest army this side of the Dam.
"With our progress!" Yes Man added in an innocent tone that wasn't innocent at all.
Guilty turned her eyes up to the screen and they engaged a staring contest – screen and sensors to flesh and cybernetics. "Is your neuro-computational matrix working properly, Yes Man, because that wasn't very nice of you."
"Well, see… you were so deep into it and looked so happy doing it, that you wouldn't have noticed it even if I had told you! Which I didn't. But, hey! We made a breakthrough, didn't we?!" That might have been an eye roll and a snort from the AI mixed in all those happy exclamations.
"Ever since you took that holotape…" she shook her head walking over to the elevator.
"Hey. Not my fault you don't empty your trashcan."
"A trashcan you played in like a two-year-old in a sandbox. Muggy has more sense than that!"
"There's no need to stoop to personal insults, boss," he admonished, like he was being the reasonable one here. "Or bring the pocket-sized mess of programming into our affair-"
"Yes Man."
"Fine! I'm sorry I didn't tell you about the time. I'm certain you could have spent a few hours on a beauty sleep. Please punish me until your vengeance is sated!"
There was a very long moment of silence.
Really, they've had this conversation a hundred times now. And they'll probably have a hundred more. Downloading a program that wasn't even meant for him was... well, Yes Man was passive-aggressive to begin with. As long as he wasn't working against her and didn't take a page out of Wrangler's book and repurposed one of the protectrons from upstairs…
Yeah… Guilty let out a long, tortured sigh. She might have to do something about it sooner rather than later.
"Just call me if you find anything."
She wasn't mad at him, more disgruntled with herself for letting the time slip past her like that and letting him get the upper hand because of it. In the wastes, that kind of careless behaviour could've spelled a quick death for her. Though, considering how she had been acting lately, she would've stayed all night with or without Yes Man acting as an alarm clock.
The elevator door opened with a 'ding'.
The ever-cheerful securitron bobbed up and down on his mono-wheel, "Right-y-o!"
The moment she stepped into the elevator she felt the heat of the dry air that never seemed to leave the elevator shaft. "And we really need to fix that air conditioning!" She called out to the securitron.
Yes-Man, if possible would have cocked his head and had an even wider grin plastered across his screen, "Sure thing, boss! Just as soon as you find the time to squeeze in some tight places and scrub the pipes."
She threw one scorching glance at him just as the elevator doors closed.
It was a bloody fortune that the AI was restrained to the body of a TV on a single wheel. Who knew what kind of chaos he would try if he had one of those all-too-rare human-looking robot bodies.
