Chapter 1: Uninvited Guests
This story is going to be a bit longer than other entries in the Eli Cameron series, mostly because of the amount of content in it. There's the Think Tank explaining stuff, the holotapes with Christine and Ulysses, all the secret Ulysses stuff and the whole Father Elijah backstory…Old World Blues just has a lot of lore that ties in with the other DLCs, so I'll have to split this story into like 3 or 4 Chapters. Anyway, let us begin!
I do not own Fallout New Vegas, that belongs to Bethesda and Obsidian
This whole place was fucked up, the Courier decided as he looked around. He had lived a long life and seen some crazy shit in his time but this place, this Big MT…this took the cake and sent it straight to Crazy Town. Robo-scorpions, floating robot brain jars that were batshit crazy and the fact that he was currently missing several body parts, like his fucking brain. Eli had been hesitant at looking into a mirror, worried about what he looked like now after those crazy Think Tank fuckers had carved him up and ripped out bits of him. But surprisingly, there was actually one good thing in this entire fucking mess; they actually fixed his left eye, allowing him the ability to have perfect vision once again. It definitely was taking a bit to get used to, after months of only having one useable eye, but the Courier definitely wasn't gonna start complaining.
"What names do you go by?" One of the robot doctors, a woman called Dr Dala, inquired. "What titles have been bequeathed to you? What roles do you possess?"
"Well I go by many names." Eli Cameron answered. "But I guess you can call me the Courier, since everyone else seems to nowadays"
"Oh, a mailman. A delivery man. Someone who takes parcels from place to place using their primitive feet or similar conveyance." Dr Dala stated, intrigue evident in her voice. "You are the second one I've met in recent times. Very different specimens."
And just with that statement, Eli could feel his trigger finger getting itchy. First he ends up in this place with these robot scientist fuckers, then he finds out his body had been carved up and replaced with robot bits, and then this crazy one-eyed fucker Mobius with his robot scorpions, and now this fucking revelation. It couldn't be, Eli didn't wanna believe it, but he couldn't ignore it; this Dr Dala was talking about him.
"…..Another courier?" Eli inquired slowly.
"Of course. You must have met others in your travels. This one had met other couriers too, although it sounded as if he hadn't met the correct one." Dr Dala answered. "He asked us all many questions, and then he asked a most perplexing one…we had to segment the event from our memories for safety."
That didn't sound good, not at all. Ulysses not only managed to get into Big MT, but also managed to get a face-to-face with these crazy bastards? Yeah, that didn't sound good at all to the Courier, not good at all.
"What were some of the questions?"
"I do not know, nor should we try to access it. Perhaps Klein has the logs. My evaluation would be to let your own curiosity go. I do not think that Klein remembers the conversation as being satisfactory. You could also ask Dr 0 … and you could have asked Dr 8 once, until he was severely damaged in the attack. We like him better this way."
"Breaking News: Talking Lobotomite arrives in Think Tank." Dr 0 announced, as he turned around. "Its purpose? Unknown. Undefinable. Its presence here? Unpossible."
"Yeah yeah, heard this song n' dance before." Eli muttered. "So you're Doctor 0, right?"
"O? O yes, I'm not going to bother correcting you. At least you got the 'Doctor' part correct. I can be grateful for that, at l...Stop the presses! Just in from my eye monitors...is that RobCo tech on your arm? It is! What's your agenda, bringing that in here?"
"What, ya mean my Pipboy?" The Courier inquired, lifting up his Pipboy. "Gotta problem with RobCo?"
"How dare you bring that…that tech here! What, are you showing off? How great Robert House and his biiiiig company are, huh?" Dr 0 retorted, venom lacing every word. "'Oh! We can make Securitrons better than any robot that geniuses at Big MT can make, and they'll last a thousand years!'. Rrrrr, you're lucky I don't have hands to tear off that Dip-boy off your arm – or the feet to stomp on its stupid metal guts! Oooo, damn RobCo!"
The Courier had to admit, he didn't think he'd see the day where he'd meet a pissed off robot. But here he was, chatting with a floating brain that sounded ready to commit violent acts of murder. But Eli shouldn't have been too surprised – after all, given the power and influence of Mr House, it made sense that the man would acquire a few haters over the years.
"Woah there buddy, before you give yourself a coronary. Just wanna have a friendly chat, is all." Eli stated, a frown on his scarred face. "Just wanna talk to ya about somethin' important, like how you and 8 got attacked by previous visitors."
"I don't like to talk about it, and 8…well, he can't talk about it. They fried his voice module something good." Dr 0 admitted. "It wasn't all the visitors, though – only one of them got out of control. He's the one that took control of Little Yangtze, our old human farm."
Human farm? The wording there...that was not a good sign at all. He had heard stories, of course, of how the pre-War government would round up Chinese citizens and lock them up, accusing them of being spies. It was behaviour that made Eli's blood boil, and the man could only imagine what sick experiments this Think Tank performed on those poor bastards.
"What happened?" Eli inquired.
"This human…I can't believe it. He broke out of the Think Tank. In seconds. Then he went for Yangtze, got bomb collars, and started practicing on the subjects that were still there until he got the right frequency."
Oh boy, now this was something he wasn't expecting. Bomb collars? Frequency? That sounded like a certain batshit Brotherhood Elder, whose corpse was currently rotting away in the depths of the Sierra Madre. So this was the place Christine tracked Elijah down to and got her head cut up, huh? This place was just giving Eli more and more reasons to hate it. The Courier made a mental note that when he got out of this place, to nuke the whole fucking place and never come back.
"We were sending robots to stop him and he was slicing and cutting through their shells with some suped-up laser gun like they were cheese…paper. When he hacked into the mainframe, 8 tried to stop him and got fried." Dr 0 continued. "Me? He rerouted my processors to take control of the train network here. If you see the tunnels with the trains plowed into them, you can thank our visitor for that. He wrecked the whole place. While we were trying to keep containment on the surface, turns out he used one train to punch out a tunnel and escape…sealed now, but…"
"Okay 0, but who were the others?" Eli inquired. "Cause Dala told me that there were three visitors."
"O, two other human specimens. One arrived not long after the troublemaker…and the last one, not sure when he showed up. Thought the first one was going to be lobotomized in Y-17, she got out somehow. The last subject…Klein might know more. He talked to him, then let him leave the Think Tank. Hope he knew what he was doing."
"And why is that?"
"Klein knows things we don't. And I think Klein told some of those things to the last visitor. Dangerous things if they ever got out."
"Back again lobotomite?" Dr Klein demanded, a sour tone to his voice. "I hope there is a good reason for your being here sans any of the needed technologies."
"Kinda important reason, actually." Eli answered. "Heard one of the previous visitors to the Dome spoke to ya, asked you some questions."
"Hmm? Oh yes, the last visitor…well, the one just before you. had an interesting name from some language that's unpossible to speak. What did we speak about…? Melancholy fellow, had questions about…history? But…our conversation got interrupted…twice, I believe?" Dr Klein murmured, seemingly lost in thought. "Once when the trains got derailed, and then a second time…oddly enough, now that I'm accessing my databanks, I don't recall what the second time was. Mobius' incessant transmissions keep distracting me. Also, we didn't brainscrub the visitor. He may have left with some knowledge he shouldt've. I believe. Maybe. Oh well, I'm sure it's of no consequence. I don't make many mistakes in calculation or perception, so probability favours me."
The Courier just stood there silently, staring at the floating brain robot called Dr Klein. Of all the things Eli had seen so far, how this…thing managed to become the leader of this group continually proved to baffle him. But then again, when the rest of the group consists of an animal killer, a sex addict, a broken robot and a guy who's only talent seems to be breaking stuff…then yeah, it actually doesn't seem that farfetched.
But now things had become even more complicated for Eli. Not only did he now need to traverse this fucking crater and find all these technologies and take down this nutjob Mobius, he now needed to search through this place to see if there's any evidence of this courier, to see if he left anything behind that'd help out Eli figured out this mysterious fucker's identity. But at least now he has some idea on where to go; either head off to Little Yangtze and pick up Elijah's trail, hopefully to see if he could find this courier along the way, or get moving to this y-17 place and see what happened to Christine. Either way, there was really only two words to describe this whole situation.
"Fucking perfect." Eli Cameron muttered, running a hand through his hair.
And Chapter 1 of The Sleeping Past is done and dusted. I'd like to give a very special thank you, to a certain writer on this site; a guy called Anknownymous. He has been a pure delight to talk to, and has also left some pretty good reviews on my Fallout 4 content. Anknownymous is also currently writing a Fallout 4 story, so please go and give that a look if you wish to read some good Fallout content. Anyway, I hope to see you guys and gals at the next Chapter!
Love,
The Desert Dancer