- I -
Conundrum
"I don't know about this, Jay. Virtual counseling? Days spent inside a cramped pod?" Nora asked, her brow puckered in consternation as she held their fussing infant son. "It just seems bizarre."
He gave his wife a smile that he hoped looked reassuring as he peeled off his jumpsuit. Sounds of chatter reverberated throughout the large chamber as the other Vault 111 families prepared for the same procedure. He heard similar verbal concerns from the dressing areas sectioned off on either side of him, but he pushed them out of his mind, just wanting to get the whole thing over with. The cool air hit his skin as soon as he stepped out of the jumpsuit and stripped off his undershirt. He ran his fingers through the short tendrils of his dark brown hair before setting his clothing on the chair nearby.
"I have my doubts on how well it'll work, but there's no harm in trying, hon," he remarked, leaving his boxers on as he rubbed his hands together to ward off the chilly temperature.
"But you and I don't even have any traumatic combat memories to work through," Nora protested. "Why did the Overseer make it mandatory to subject all former servicemembers to this? And don't you think it's odd that all the adult residents here happen to be military veterans?"
Jay sighed and took Shaun from her arms. "Well, almost everyone in our district has served in the Armed Forces, so it's not such a strange notion." Reaching out to brush his knuckles over her cheek in an affectionate gesture, he said, "Now get undressed, Corporal. The sooner we go in, the sooner we can come out."
"Fine," she grumbled, frowning while unzipping her jumpsuit. "And for the record, I really don't like the idea of leaving our son in the care of Vault-Tec personnel. Especially in that horrible metal-walled nursery."
"I'm sure we can file a complaint next week about the Vault's interior design," Jay quipped, holding the baby close and kissing him on the head when Shaun let out an agitated cry. "I know what you mean, though. I don't want to leave our boy, either."
Small hands grabbed at his face, and he caught one lightly between his teeth and nibbled, getting as much father-son playtime in as he could before the long cyber therapy session. Nora stripped down to her undergarments and tossed her clothes on top of his, her expression still troubled as she smoothed the waves of her mid-length brunette hair. He could understand her reservations, and in truth, he shared them as well. Two weeks in the Vault hadn't given them enough time to acclimate to the strict rules and regulations. Had he known about Vault 111's required procedures that separated parents from their children, he might have signed up for a different Vault in the Boston area.
At that moment, a knock sounded on the wooden partition next to their dressing curtain. "Kramer? You decent?" a male voice called.
Nora yelped and leaped for her discarded jumpsuit, wrapping it over herself.
Jay chuckled. "No, but it's not like you haven't seen any of this before."
He endured his wife's peeved glare as the curtain parted to reveal a burly man also wearing only his boxers. The visitor peeked behind him as if to make sure no one had noticed his entrance, and then marched forward. A silver chain holding a set of dog tags and two gold rings dangled from around his neck. His buzz cut lent him a severe and imposing appearance even as he grinned at Jay.
"Kramer."
"Harkness."
Then, to the perturbed woman trying to cover herself with her jumpsuit, he said in a curt tone, "Nora."
"Hello, Aaron," she returned flatly.
Jay clapped his free hand on the shorter man's back. "You ready for this foray into cyber psychology, bud?"
Harkness snorted and lifted a finger to tickle Shaun's chin, inciting a delighted laugh from the baby. "Real psychologists couldn't fix all the post-traumatic stuff in my head. I got no reason to think this'll be any different."
Jay nodded as he recognized the permanent haunted quality in his friend's eyes. "I hear you. I should've been there at Anchorage with you, brother."
"Nah. Better that only one of us had to go through it," Harkness told him. "Besides, getting patched up afterwards wasn't that bad. Got to meet a pretty Armed Forces medic, so…"
Nora lowered her gaze when he glanced in her direction.
"Well, anyway, just thought I'd stop by and see how you were taking this big wank show of Vault-Tec machinery," Harkness continued, shaking his head as he absently fiddled with his dog tags. "Pointless as hell, if you ask me. They should've just given us vets twenty-four hour access to the bar if they wanted us to cope with our memories from the service."
"Trust me, we feel the same way." Jay exhaled and rested Shaun's face against his shoulder. "Not much we can do about it, though. We can't exactly march out of the Vault in protest. I figure it's best to just humor the Overseer and hope he finds a better use for these simulators if the counseling really does fail."
"Which it will," Harkness insisted just as an announcement over the PA system rang throughout the chamber.
"Attention, Vault 111 citizens. Those participating in the virtual counseling session should please make your way to your assigned pods at this time and stand by for further instructions."
Harkness scowled. "Great. Into the science ovens, then." He peered at the two pods situated side by side behind Jay. "Hey, you've got two of 'em over here? I've only got one in my section."
"They're grouped by family units," Nora declared, her voice sounding strained. "Each family's pods are next to each other."
Jay prepared to intervene when Harkness sent her a sharp look, but no verbal spat occurred this time as Harkness's expression tightened to mask his recurring pain.
"Oh. Guess that makes sense," he remarked, rubbing the back of his neck. Then, giving Jay a light parting jab in the ribs, he made his exit. "Well, see you guys on the other side. I'm going through this thing solo. But hey, at least there's no baggage, right?"
Both Jay and Nora stared after him as the atmosphere grew heavy.
"No baggage, he says. We've been divorced for five years, but he's still holding a grudge," she muttered once he left, returning her jumpsuit to the chair. "You'd think he would've been over it by now."
"There's no getting over it when your ex-wife goes on to marry and start a family with your best friend from boot camp," Jay pointed out, completely a neutral party in the matter. "He's been a good sport about everything, hon. For the most part, anyway. And it's not your fault that you weren't meant to be 'the one' for him, either."
Nora crossed her arms, still gazing at the curtain. "If only this virtual counseling could help him where I couldn't."
"Slim as it is, there's always a chance."
They left it at that when another announcement blared from the overhead speakers. The Overseer's assistants began making their rounds, and Nora stepped over to take Shaun from Jay, her face crumpling as she clutched the baby in a tight hug. A palpable feeling of desperation tinged the air in that instant. Jay tried to soothe his wife and child as the buzz of cross voices around them indicated that the other families shared the sentiment.
"Sergeant Jason Kramer and Corporal Nora Kramer?" someone asked from the other side of the curtain before pushing it aside.
Nora tensed under Jay's hands as an elderly female Vault-Tec scientist strode in.
"It's time to commence the session," she told them, the wrinkles around her eyes creasing as she sent them a pleasant smile. "Please say a quick good bye to your baby and give him here."
Nora only tightened her hold around Shaun, who seemed to pick up on her anxiety and began to wail. "Could we have a few more minutes with him?"
"I'm afraid not, ma'am. We're on a very precise schedule. You understand."
"But—"
"We'll see him again soon," Jay murmured to her, leaning down to press his cheek against Shaun's, his heart secretly wrenching as much as hers.
Nora whimpered and cradled the baby against her. "This is the most difficult thing anyone can ask of me," she moaned before raining kisses on their son. "Mommy and Daddy love you very much, Shaun. We'll be back as soon as we can, darling."
He bawled in a high pitch that instigated shrill cries from other upset babies across the chamber. Jay had to fight to keep his own arms down, in danger of snatching Shaun himself and refusing to part with him.
After a few more seconds, Nora's entire frame shook with reluctance as she held the crying baby out to the scientist. "Please take good care of him. He means the world to us."
"Don't you worry about that. He'll be in the hands of our best childcare personnel," the older woman stated as she cooed at him.
And just like that, she swept him away and out of sight.
Nora sniffled and wiped her eyes while Jay embraced her. As a couple, they had weathered through worse together, but as parents, nothing was harder than entrusting their child to a group of strangers. They drew strength and comfort from each other for a few stolen moments, waiting until the very last second to separate and make their way over to the pods.
The daunting metal structures loomed over them, steely and cold in the glow of the blue and orange lighting. Jay studied the construction of his assigned pod, taking in the numerous sets of wires and sensory nodes meant to attach to the skin. A breathing apparatus hung from the top, designed to fit over the wearer's nose and mouth. Each pod provided ample space for a human adult, but offered no sort of cushioning even though it required participants to stand during the entire procedure.
"This makes me nervous, Jay," Nora whispered, her worried green eyes locked onto the gaping maw of her pod.
He went to her and cupped her cheeks, kissing her long and hard as the command to enter the pods blared from the PA system. "Don't worry," he assured her once he broke away, "I'll be here right next to you for the whole thing."
She forced a small smile and nodded.
They took their positions and climbed the steps leading inside. The rough metal dug into his bare feet as he turned and aligned himself with the flashing indicators above the mouth of the opening. A humming noise started behind him, signaling the various functions powering up. Without warning, the wires and nodes shot out and latched onto different parts of his body. He jolted as they adhered to his skin, and he would have leaned out to see how Nora fared, but a translucent blue force field beamed into place at the opening, locking him in.
The breathing mask lowered and automatically moved toward him. He held himself still as it settled over the lower half of his face and fastened itself with a click. A steady stream of oxygen flowed into his nostrils just as a slight rumbling spread over the floor. He watched through the force field as the pod rotated clockwise one hundred eighty degrees, blinking as he found himself facing the opposite pods across the chamber. His gaze roved over the other residents, imagining that his own countenance mirrored the unease in theirs.
Then, before he could send up a prayer for Nora and Shaun, a potent sleeping agent entered his system through the breathing mask. The nodes on his arms and legs emitted some sort of muscle stimulator that kept him upright while his eyelids grew heavy. And as he cast a final look over the darkening chambers, the image of his family burned into his memory right when the last vestiges of his consciousness slipped away.
x-x-x-x-x
He woke to the call of the hollow night.
His lungs inflated as he gasped for air, the breathing apparatus over his mouth stifling, no longer functioning. He staggered back, all sense of balance compromised, and hit the jagged edges of the pod's interior. A ringing sound plagued his ears as he struggled to right himself, residual zaps of energy flowing through him from the nodes. Hues of blue and orange danced across his blurry vision, and he grasped around for leverage, his knees weakening when some of the wires around his legs snapped.
The cold temperature added to the challenge of regaining his motor skills. His mind reeled as he found a stable angle on which to lean, and he waited as his senses slowly refocused, the thundering of his heart growing louder with each passing second. A sharp feeling of dread cut through the disorientation and gripped his stomach. It wrapped around him, constricting, smothering. With trembling fingers, he pried the breathing apparatus from his face.
Once full sensation returned to his fingertips and toes, he pushed himself up from the back of the pod and stood on his own. A short bout of vertigo struck, but then dissipated. He seized the remaining wires still attached to him and yanked them off, nodes and all. They swung away to the sides as he reached for his boxers sitting low on his hips and pulled them back up. The loose waistband indicated a degree of weight loss, and he frowned down at his skinnier physique as his vision adjusted to the dim lighting.
What's going on? How long was I out? This isn't the result of a few days in virtual counseling…
Jay froze.
Counseling.
He recalled no memory of any therapeutic session, virtual or otherwise. The last thing he remembered was the sleeping gas putting him under. In the time he had been out, he received none of the promised psychological treatment. The apprehension already pressing into him thickened at once. Something was off. Something had gone wrong. He felt it in every bone of his body.
He tasted it in the death in the air.
Jay wrestled with the panic threatening to overtake him. He lurched forward, only to bang into the intact force field still blocking his exit. His eyes swung to the LED-lit interface to the right, and he mashed all the buttons in a random sequence, hoping that one of them managed to deactivate the field.
"Stop."
His head snapped to the floor outside, and he spotted a trench coat-clad male figure waving to capture his attention.
"Don't push anything else. I'll try to shut it down from out here," the man declared, voice filtered to a flanging pitch through his own breathing mask. The brim of a fedora hat shielded his face from view.
Jay's eyebrows drew together, but he complied. Peering through the force field, he watched the stranger approach a control panel in the center of the chamber. The blue patterns of the field made it difficult to get a clear view of the premises, but the dark interior boded ill for the status of the Vault. His chest clenched as he thought of Nora and Shaun, and he tried to tell the man to hurry, only for the words to rasp through his dry throat.
Finally, after an excruciating span of minutes, the force field wavered and then dissolved. Jay staggered out on clumsy legs, almost stumbling down the set of stairs. He gripped the railing for support and glanced toward Nora's pod, which stood open, empty, and derelict. Fear coursed through him as he dragged himself over to it, gazing in shock at its state of disrepair.
"Nora," he croaked right before his legs gave out. The dusty floor greeted him as he fell to his knees. What is happening? Where's my family?
"Jay," the stranger said, walking over to him. "Are you lucid? Do you know who you are?"
Jay gaped up at the other man. Swallowing a few times, he nodded. "Yes."
"Good. Considering everything, that's remarkable."
"W-what… happened here…?" Jay trailed off when his line of sight swept over the chamber, taking it all in full.
Random trash and research objects littered the ground, which sported deep fissures that ran through the once-pristine linoleum. The few light sources flickered in weak intervals at scattered points along the perimeter, and the eerie hush told him of some unknown disaster that had befallen the place. Every piece of equipment appeared rundown and damaged. Most of the pods seemed long vacated, but to his horror, others displayed the sprawled skeletons of the residents once housed inside.
He scrambled back to his feet even as his legs threatened to collapse from under him again. "Another nuclear strike?" he asked hoarsely. "But the Vault should have withstood—"
"No. That isn't it," the stranger interjected. Features still hidden in shadow, he stepped closer. "I'll bring you up to speed on the events that occurred here, but you'll have to brace yourself."
Jay motioned to Nora's empty pod. "I have to find my wife. My son. And my friend. God, please let them be all right…"
"You won't find them," the other man told him. "I will explain. Just try to stay calm and listen."
"I—" Jay cut himself off and took a deep breath. "I'm listening."
"Do you know what year it is?"
"2077."
"Not anymore. It's been about two hundred years since then."
An interlude of silence followed.
Jay stared at him as the information refused to register. "Excuse me?"
"You have been in cryostasis for two centuries, Mr. Kramer. You're the last one here. The Sole Survivor of Vault 111."
Disbelief must have spread across Jay's expression because the stranger gestured around them with one gloved hand.
"Look around you. How else can you explain the devastation in here? The skeletons, already past the decomposition stage? The rest of the Vault is the same. This is what an abandoned facility looks like after two hundred years."
"But…" Jay surveyed the chamber, still unable to come to terms with the revelation. "I couldn't have been out for that long. Where did everyone else go?"
"That part I don't know," the other man replied.
Jay shook his head, grief and anger rising to the back of his throat. "No. This is absurd. Cryostasis? What are you talking about?"
"The so-called 'virtual counseling' your Overseer had forced you and your fellow residents to undergo was a front for a massive cryonic experiment," the stranger stated. "If I have my facts right, the purpose was to extract the memories of military veterans and install them into memory chips. These chips were then distributed to other select Vaults, and later to the Institute."
"Institute?" Jay repeated, swiping a palm over his forehead as another dizzy spell hit him.
"You might remember it as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology."
He knew of MIT, but that did little to quell the confusion and discord in his mind. "This is all making less and less sense. Cryonics can't be right. The Vault was supposed to be our home."
But when he scanned the chamber again, he could almost detect the veiled malice lingering around the site. The truth lurked in the corners, in the forgotten remains of the individuals he'd once lived with. This place bled misfortune. The Vault had sealed their fates.
Jesus… what have they done to us?
The stranger adjusted the collar of his trench coat. "I'm sorry. Vault-Tec had more insidious plans than what they advertised on the surface. I don't know much else about how they operated here. Your Vault was one of the ones most shrouded in secrecy."
"How could they do this?"
"Evidently, the memory chips were crucial to Vault-Tec's goals. I couldn't say why; that information is lost to time." Black boots trod over the floor from beneath worn slacks as the other man paced in front of him. "Most of the chips have been scavenged by independent groups over the years, though. There's no way to keep track of all of them. Yours happened to still be here in the Commonwealth. It's the reason I even discovered the possibility that you might still be in this Vault, alive."
Jay scowled at him, suspicion clouding everything else. "Who are you, anyway?"
The fedora tilted, and a pair of glowing orange eyes stared back at him through the darkness. "My designation is A3-20. I'm a self-aware android originally from the Institute."
"Android?" Jay grimaced as a migraine throbbed to life between his temples. "You're telling me you're artificial intelligence? You don't seem like it."
"Some of us go through self-determination and transcend our programming. Humans tend to see that as a danger," A3-20 remarked. "We become fugitives and require extensive physical alterations to stay in hiding. I'm on the run from the same androids I used to work with at the Synth Retention Bureau."
"Does that have anything to do with me?"
"Well, you may be interested to know that my old SRB partner, A3-21, managed to escape all the way to the Capital Wasteland. He underwent a complete identity swap from a skilled surgeon, and the memory chip he received belonged to a man named Aaron Harkness." He paused to allow that to sink in. When Jay gawked at him in alarm, he nodded and continued, "Right. He took on your best friend's identity. He now goes by 'Harkness' and genuinely believes that's who he's always been."
Jay stiffened, his hand curling into fists at his sides. "He is not Aaron Harkness," he growled through clenched teeth.
"No, he isn't, but that's how powerful these memory chips are if they're used to replace an android's memories," A3-20 told him, seemingly unfazed by his rising ire.
If the utter verity of the situation hadn't been so clear, Jay might have thought he was still in the middle of the pod simulation.
"How do you even know all this?" he demanded when the android remained quiet for a long duration of minutes. "If what you say is true, and I've been here for two damn centuries, how did you know to come find me?"
A3-20 inclined his head. "The memory chips generally have an end point that signifies the conclusion of the extraction process in these pods. Whether that meant the subject died or was released remains uncertain. Yours, however, has no end point. Which means your pod had never powered down."
Jay retreated a few paces when the other man closed the distance between them.
"After I gained self-determination, I chose to retain my own memories, but opted to have facial reconstruction and a memory chip implanted just in case," A3-20 said, reaching up to remove his hat and breathing mask. "The thing is…"
In the low lighting, a familiar visage appeared. The orange retinas faded to striking blue eyes, right above a nose broken one too many times. Dark stubble surrounded a set of thin lips, and a broad jawline defined the entire face. Jay balked at the sight of the android's revealed features.
It was like looking into a mirror.
"The memory chip, appearance, and identity I received were yours, Jay Kramer."
x-x-x-x-x
A/N: Very much AU, as I'm already sure my headcanon for the actual Fallout 4 story is too off the mark to even be close. Speculation is always fun, though. The pre-War Harkness's inclusion is based on the lore I read about the history behind A3-21's memory chip. I also established the Sole Survivor's spouse as former military because if she had been the Sole Survivor herself, her military background would explain her ability to build and customize power armor. Second part coming soon!