These Wasteland stories were written back when I was just a young man, back in- well, let's just say it was in another millennium! Obviously they're rough, and not the best writing, but now, looking back as a published novelist, they ain't half bad! I've tried to reconcile some of the references to fit with the Fallout universe, but you may have to just grin and bear it if anything doesn't ring true. I'll be moving on to some fresh New Vegas fiction once I'm done uploading these chapters, and who knows, maybe the story will continue...

SUPREME JERK

I pulled into New Vegas on a DJDT American "Volcano" Hovertank- the boutique edition, came as a matched set with an equally boutique suit of Johnson Servotech power armor. I had an experimental Meson Cannon with Ace Maloney's name written all over it. I got into town only to find that somebody had already croaked him. How was I supposed to terminate someone who was already three feet under? All that 'extreme prejudice' gone to waste.

A man in power armor is hard pressed to squeeze any juice from the grapevine, so I took the regulation flak-vest from underneath the gunner's seat of the Volcano. It was safety-orange. If that wasn't enough to mark me as a wasteland warrior with balls or a death wish or both, I don't what was. Shouldering the Meson Cannon, I headed up the main drag towards a sidewalk bar I knew from word of mouth. It wasn't exactly a bar; it was more like a cordon. Hemp ropes and barbed wire defining a rough octagon around the bartender who was orbited by a bunch of tiny makeshift tables like liquor-bearing satellites. He was a big Jamaican with a rudimentary steel prosthetic lip, and it gave his voice a strange metallic lisp as he motioned me over.

"What ya poithon?"

"Rum, Captain Joe if you got it." He hesitated for a moment, a look of doubt on his sparkling eyes, until I pulled out a couple wads of prewar twenties and peeled a generous amount off. I put one on a little green table where his cashbox was, and the other I stuffed into the breast pocket of his dirty mesh shirt. "And some conversation."

He shook his head, and handed me the bills back with a look of disgust. "That kinda talk'll get ya in a world of hurt. Thave it for thomeone elthe." He handed me a glass with a teeny shot of the Captain's rum, all that twenty would buy. I shifted my Meson on the leather belt I kept it on, and the Jamaican laughed. I looked down and realized that he had a tripod mounted M-60 beneath the long plank that served as his bar. It looked like he had jury-rigged it with the foot pedal from a sewing machine. All he had to do was put his weight down a little, and a would-be tough customer would be exploded like a blood sausage. "Don't even think about threaten I."

"Alright, give me a bottle of squeezin's." I put a rejected twenty with its brother, and he handed me a battered bottle of the milky squeezin's.

"Jah love, my brother," the barkeep laughed.

Downing the rum in one shot- it was excellent- I stowed the bottle of Snake Squeezin's, and returned the shot glass to the plank, the barkeep's metallic grin not wavering for a second.

The pre-Strip- Northside- was fairly empty for midday. I expected to be bothered by punks the moment I stepped out of the Jamaican's little bivouac, but I could only see isolated pockets of them in the distance. Since New Vegas was relatively intact, as cities went, there were a lot of people there, mostly battling tribes and gangs, and no one power had risen to the top yet. The street toughs usually have enough sense to lay low when they smell heavy action, so I figured that something was about to go down in this burg.

My luck was paying off today- no sooner than I had started walking along the street, I heard a raspy voice croak out "Spare change, mistah?"

I looked off between two large brick buildings and into what resembled a vision of hell more than an alley. Looking at the figure who spoke, I thought he looked right at home. The hobo was lanky, and he'd obviously been tall at one point in his life, until his spine had folded rather neatly over from some congenital deformity. He was bald, his head covered in sores, and his face, well, his face actually made me feel a twinge of pity. Pitted, pockmarked, covered with the lines of despair. Lucky for me, I noticed that his mouth was raw and red, and the stubble around it was bleached a spotty orange, one of the two telltale signs of a habitual Snake Squeezin's drinker. The other one was rigor mortis. "Spare change, mistah? Come on?" He was rubbing his hands desperately, and his face went wide when I pulled out the bottle of squeezin's.

"Ah ah ah, naughty." His face fell when I snatched the bottle back out of his reach. "Tell me something first."

"Aw, mistah, you don' wanna, oh no, I mean, I , Come on mistah..." He seemed to grow breathless for a moment, but he was just saving up for the squeaky exclamation that followed. "SQUEEEE-ZIN'S!" He fell down, exhausted. That was nasty stuff. The hardest chem addiction in the world wasn't like this.

"What's going on in this town? What's up?"

"Big reckoning, mistah. Nothin' for a fine walkin' dude like yaself."

"Reckoning? What the hell does that mean? Freddy and Fargo at it again?"

"Naw,naw,naw," he said, shaking his head. He leaned forward conspiratorially, and whispered "Ro-buts. Deadly robuts."

I realized that this old hobo was telling the truth. He was scared to death, and not just of me. I decided to press the matter just a little.

"What do you mean, robots?"

"Deadly robots, mistah! Watch out! They sneak right up on ya, like a tank with an armored warrior! Oh Gawd!" He sneezed heavily, and wiped a huge green string of snot on his sleeve. "And then there was another fine walkin' dude like yaself."

I froze.

"What do you mean like me?"

"Nothin', nothin', aw it's nothin'. Squeezin's?"

I gave him the bottle. He snatched it right away, and was worrying the cork (actually just waxy wads of bandage) from the bottle, all the while mumbling in his strange way. "Yeah, yeah, yeah, come on, you ain't never done ol' Billy no harm, not like that dude, oh no, ain't never seen somebody move so fast, aw no. Shucks, puts hair on your chest, he's a real badass. Squeezin's, squeezin's..." He tipped the bottle back, downing it in one gulp.

A strange light grew in his eyes, and he drew himself up as tall as his spine would let him. "It's Latimer." His voice was stronger, much clearer than his usual whine. "There's the man. There's Latimer!" He pointed behind me, back behind the alley, before falling over into a squeezin's coma.

I spun, looking for Latimer, who must have been the 'dude like yaself', but I didn't see anything, nothing but a fleeting shadow in the alley on the opposite side of the street.

The rest of the day was uneventful. I spent it pumping information, and having no luck. I did run into the deadly robots the hobo had mentioned. They were just Sentry Bots of different Mark numbers, and in crappy condition. No one took pride in their robot death machines anymore, just letting them do their thing with no upkeep. But I wasn't about to take in the abandoned metallic darlings. Not when they took potshots at me like a good killer robot is supposed to! A well placed shot to the actuation cluster takes out just about any model of Sentry Bot. The exact spot is a secret though, and I'm glad I knew it. Standing in the middle of a Vegas street, in the middle of a smoking pile of Sentry Bots, I heard a strange noise. It was clapping. There were a bunch of half-assed tribal punks huddled in a deadend alley. The robots must have cornered them. Besides clapping, they were smiling with relief and admiration. They stopped smiling when I leveled my Meson Cannon at them, and fired. Then the only sound was the Zzzip! of the Meson and the dry sound of human disintegration. No witnesses. I had agendas.

Heading back to the Volcano for the night, I was plagued by thoughts of something the hobo had said. First, the fact that he mentioned someone like me. There was no one like me in this area of the Wasteland. No one else from SourceGroup was qualified to tackle Florida, much less Vegas. And there were no active agents on longterm assignments. I had clearance, and Mission seniority. I would have known anyone else active. Maybe a few Vault rejects and Enclave operatives made it seem like there were old-school badasses wandering the wastes, but they just didn't compare.

So why did the name Latimer sound so familiar?

Everyone always thought that Ace Maloney was the luckiest guy around. I don't understand why; if he was so frakkin' lucky, then why did he have to live in the Wasteland? Whatever luck he did have, it ran out in Vegas before I got there. That morning, after I woke up, I pulled myself out of the Volcano's bunk, and walked into town. I found out then just what happened to the doomed Ace.

He had his head blown off.

I ended up in an open-air bar on the roof of a large building. I was talking to a Nomad who had wandered in from the desert for a beer and some ammo.

"... and like I was saying, I was just getting some nines for my Uzi when these Rangers come strolling in like they own the place-"

"Rangers?" I interrupted. "Desert rangers?"

"Yeah, desert rangers, so like I was saying they come strolling in like they own the place, buy all the nines and 45s, all the grenades, and pawn a bunch of useless crap on the poor bastard who runs the place. That's when I noticed that Maloney was with 'em."

"How long ago was this?"

"Well, about a week ago. Maloney was there, his usual cheeky self, hittin' on the shop guy's daughter, that sort of thing. Pissed us regulars off, ya know?" He tossed his head back and ran a hand through his dirty hair. I nodded.

"Yeah, I know it."

"So anyway, I was saying-"

"Wait a second." I interrupted again, and ordered another beer. "How did you know Maloney?"

"I used to run with him four, five years ago. I got tired of the lucky son-of-a-bitch. He never got hit! And always rippin' a clip... it's a wonder we ever made any money, what with his ammo cost. But lucky, I tell you."

"If he was so frakkin' lucky, then why did he live in the wasteland?"

"Dunno," the nomad shrugged. "Anyways, we split a while ago, no hard feelin's, and that's how I knew him. Guess he's got a good thing goin' with those Rangers." I cursed under my breath. Always faggot rangers interfering in other people's business. They had the sophistication and skill of those nutter survivalists that barely made it through the nukes. Unfortunately, they were just as resouceful, which meant they were just as armed. I always did my best to stay clear of Desert Rangers.

"Alright, skip a bit. How did Ace get it?"

The nomad, Jerry was his name, actually looked a little grieved, and it took him a second to get started.

I got him another beer, and that primed the pump.

"Well, see, I was in Spade's casino, just pumpin the slots with some money I took off a coupla banditos near the rail camp. And in walk the Rangers sure enough, with Ace. They were packin' serious heat, not just carrying it, they were wielding. They barged in, knockin' people over, makin' crude jokes, a real bunch of jerks. They got to the middle of the casino when the bouncers came over, and then the fireworks started. I was hiding behind a big slot machine, that's how I saw Ace. He was leanin' up against the bar, which was empty. He musta forgot about the bartender or just plain didn't care. The bartender was just a little guy, bald and friendly like a grandpa. Well, Ace is standing there just as cocky as ever, about to take a shot at a big bouncer, when I see the bartender's bald head pop up over the bar, and it was followed by a Mac 17." Jerry swallowed. "The little old guy grinned and pulled the trigger, full auto. Ace's head just exploded, spraying everywhere. The other rangers got the old guy, but... there was no more Ace. When the smoke cleared, I didn't see anybody living. The rangers were gone, and I just hightailed it on out of there. Just practical, you know." He tipped a beer back, but it was empty, and he started to get up.

"Hey, thanks for the info. Sorry to hear about Ace."

"No problem, ya know..." He shrugged. "Negative sweat. It wasn't like he was Supreme Jerk or something."

"The Supreme Jerk is a frakking myth and you know it." I only noticed when he pulled away that I had gotten up and grabbed him.

"Hey, hey, jeez... I know. Just makin' a joke, ya know. No such thing as Supreme Jerk." He brushed himself off and let a hand slip to his clip pistol. "Damn, lay off the coyote chew."

I sat back down as he left. Why did that bother me so much? Maybe it was just I didn't like the idea of fairytales and myths... we had enough problems as it is, and enough assholes with guns and know-how. Nobody out there had anything on Source Group operatives, which made the Supreme Jerk myth just a little bit more annoying. The myth went that the Supreme Jerk was immortal, a hardcase from pre-Wasteland days who could shoot, fight, drink, and repair a toaster better than any man alive. I knew the classics; He-man, Batman, Superman, Tick. They were chock full of stuff like that. The Supreme Jerk myth was supposed to be sinister, and that was pretentious and annoying. It must have just been that that bothered me. But why did it seem stranger than that? Why did a combo of superhero and bogeyman that was exaggerated by each generation of new squeezin's virgins shake me up so much? It couldn't be more than that.

I would soon learn that it just might be. I was on my way to see Ol' Billy.

I found Ol' Billy in the alley where I first met him, the bottle of squeezin's that I had bought broken on the ground. Billy was face-down in a pool of blood. One more semi-reliable source of info gone. Kind of sad, though his was a life I would gladly escape from in death. I flipped the corpse over, not expecting what I saw. I figured that he had probably just hemorrhaged in the night, from squeezin's, no doubt. I didn't expect his head to be half torn off, is face in a rictus of pain and fear. I looked at the old face. He didn't even find peace in death; the face was scary itself. I checked his limbs. They were already in rigor, so he must have died in the night, alright. Then I checked the wound, and that's when I saw something strange. A large portion of the top of his head was gone, the tearing of the skin suggesting that it had been smashed off. That in itself wasn't unusual; any chemmed-up tribal could come along with a sledgehammer and knock someone's block off. But not with a... my God.

I had seen a few strange markings near the wound, which would have been the print of the object that killed him. And at first I figured it was just some large pipe with and odd fitting on the end. I was thirsty suddenly, and when I brought out my canteen, something clicked. I put the rubber cap assembly to the wound. The black rubber nubbin of the canteen matched the prints of the wound.

This was scary. I know I didn't do it. The Volcano had perimeter alarms that would have gone off if I were sleepwalking. And the canteen wasn't just any old model. It was unique to SourceGroup, made back in the '60s for contaminated waste areas. I'll say it again; there were no SourceGroup agents in Nevada. I was the only one. And the chance that an agent would have left his special Hermeticseal canteen was very slim. And who had the strength to tear someone's head off with a canteen?

Before I knew it I was running, God knows why, to anywhere. Thoughts in my head were spinning wildly. I was all the way towards the middle of the city when the ground in front of me erupted. I tumbled to a stop, coming to rest in a low stance with my meson cannon out. About ninety feet ahead, I saw a giant robot. A nightmare of prewar genius combined with the twisted dream of the wastes.

The giant thing, a huge scorpion-like robot painted a gaudy red, yellow, and gree, was poised in the middle of the street, its enormous tail tipped with an energy weapon of some unkown designation. That was what knocked me down; it was big. As I saw now that I wasn't running headlong, the rest of the street ahead of me was cratered and pockmarked from the Scorpitron's fire. I took a couple shots at it, towards the head, tail, and servo-motors, but I must have been in bad shape, because I didn't hit the damn thing once. It fired at me again, and the only way to dodge shots like that is in great big leaps and bounds. I kept doing that, trading fire with it, and I noticed that I was just jinxed. I couldn't hit it worth a damn. I was getting frustrated, and that meant it would probably hit me sooner or later. Probably sooner. I started retreating in leaps and bounds, still shooting, hoping to get a good shot or two in.

As I fell back, I noticed something. The Scorpitron had advanced during our fight, trying to get a clear shot. It had moved down the street about two buildings, and one of the buildings it faced looked familiar. I cursed as I retreated out of the Scorpitron's range of fire. That building had been described to me by my SourceGroup logistics agent. I could hear him now.

"In prewar days, this building was tenanted by a rare and exotic arms dealer. I know most everywhere has been looted, but you might check anyway while you're there. Some rare and exotic arms don't exactly look like they are. You might get lucky."

Of all the places to put a Scorpitron!

I knew that I could get in, though. I don't know any killer robot that can't be taken out by a properly skilled fighter in Johnson Servotech power armor. It's just a fact of life. I suppose I'm overly proud, because I'm Johnson too. Johnson Servotech was my Granpa's company. I'd have brought my hovertank in to do the job, but I'd have attracted too much attention, and I didn't want a lot of questions. As soon I settled whatever mystery it was that was bothering me (and looted that building!), I was out of here. Maloney was already dead, and there was plenty to do in the other surviving pockets of humanity all over the country.

I beat feet back away from the Scorpitron, and I left Vegas. I went back to the Volcano and waited. I wanted to sort some things through. But wouldn't you know it, I fell right asleep.

That night I had terrible dreams. My granpa, who I remember as a tall man with long, curly white hair, was chasing me through the desert. Like all good nightmare monsters, he would pop up out of nowhere. It went on for about ninety minutes- that's how long dreams usually are- and when he finally caught me, I woke up with a scream on my lips. I never really liked my granpa. He never actually did anything, really, but he was always scary somehow. And he told scary... that was it! I pounded myself on the head for being a fool. He always told me scary stories as a kid, and they were always about the Supreme Jerk. I could have kicked myself. I was so worked up because I was remembering the stupid stories my creepy old granpa told me.

I was laughing as I assembled the inner suit for the power armor, laughing as I put on the actual armor. I laughed while I ran a diagnostic, laughed while I hooked the meson cannon into the suit's nuclear battery. In fact I laughed all the way to New Vegas, shooting everyone I saw. No witnesses. I saw the Jamaican barkeep, and before his first 'Jah' I sent him spinning into a dance of death.

I laughed all the way to the Scorpitron, and I was actually beginning to wonder if maybe I was going mad. What was there to laugh about, really? I got into the fray of battle, the Scorpitron firing at me, me firing at it. We both took some hits, my shots bouncing off it and its shots knocking me back, but I got to my real goal. The doorway of the old arms building. I was about to enter when I saw something absolutely insane.

I thought I was going crazy? No, this fellow was purely bonkers. He was young, late twenties, maybe, with curly brown hair and no armor, just a coverall. He was running forward, right into the Scorpitron's way. It was only when he did a very strange thing that I noticed something was just a little more out of the ordinary than I thought. He was armed with a hand mirror.

Confidently running forward, the man began flashing beams of the bright morning sun from the mirror at the Scorpitron. And it worked! The Scorpitron wasn't aiming right, and its tail was even pointing backwards. This guy was luckier than Ace! Then he did something that showed it wasn't luck. He did something I couldn't even do. He did a standing high jump all the way up to the Scorpitron's head. I had powerful muscles and reflexes, from nerve accelerators at SourceGroup and, more importantly, experience. But this guy moved like a flash. He was on the Scorpitron's head, tearing away at wires and actuation clusters with his bare hands. Nobody could do something like that but the Supr- I cut myself off before I thought that stupid name. I caught myself again, to think 'But who else could do it?'

I barely got my thought together before the Scorpitron exploded.

I woke up in darkness. The power armor had failed, and I didn't have helmet sensors, but more importantly I didn't have power from the suit to lift the beam and rubble that pinned me. I thought about what had happened. The Scorpitron exploding must have knocked me inside the building, which then collapsed onto me and knocked me down into the basement. Great.

After a moment my eyes adjusted, and there was a trickle of light from the rubble. I noticed a glint to my right. Turning my head to the right as far as it would go, I saw it. The Proton Axe.

It was just that; an axe. But it was also an energy weapon, and considered one of the most sophisticated technologies developed before WW3. It would cut through anything. And it was only two feet away. I reached, but the joints of the suit, frozen without power, stopped the motion of my arm. I couldn't reach it. I would have screamed, but I heard my name called.

"Sonny, sonny, wake up goshdarnit it!" It was the weird, gravelly voice of my grandfather. I didn't even bother to look, because I was sure that I was hallucinating. When the voice was followed by a kick to my helmet that shook the whole suit, I looked.

It was the man who attacked the Scorpitron. I could see him just barely in the low light. I hadn't recognized the hair before, because it was long, curly, and brown. Like mine. Not white. The man was tall and strong, vital and full of energy. Not old and bent. But it was my grandfather all right. The eyes were the same, and the voice.

"Let me out, granpa. I'm trapped." I didn't care if my granpa was a ghost. I wanted out.

"Hell no, Sonny. I didn't raise no weak sons, and neither did my sons. You gotta do it yourself."

"What's going on, granpa?"

"Well, Sonny." He knelt in front of my helmet so I could hear better. "I hope you didn't think that your little sourcegroup was the last word on things. There are some agendas that are hidden but still being carried out. And I'm keeping track of them. Why just last year your dad got out of hand, and I had to snuff him and destroy his clone program."

"Bastard." It was all I had strength to say.

"Heh. Well, I bet you wonder why your old granpa is still around. I betcha thought that all those I stories I told you were make-believe. Well, they were reminiscence, not fairytales!" He laughed and I moaned. "Well, I'm still alive because of beatiful, beautiful clone technology. One body wears out, make a new one. And so on. So I can just keep going, doing the things I do." He gestured around him. "The Wasteland is a bit of a handicap, mind you, but I always loved a challenge."

"Why..."

"Don't be melodramatic, Sonny. You're pinned under several tons of rubble. It doesn't work. Tell you what. I'll give you a chance at the family business if you meet me somewhere. How about... the West Coast. The southern tip of Highway 101, right before it drops off to where northern California was. I'll meet you there in a week." He pondered a moment. "No, make that two days. Latimer Johnson never raised no weak grandsons."

"Latimer?" I croaked.

He rose- I could see the name embroidered in gold thread on the front of his, yes, Johnson Servotech coverall- and nudged the Proton Axe closer to my arm with his foot. Then he was gone.

"Two days, Sonny. And don't even think about snuffing me the way I did your dad.

"You may be Photon Stud, but you're no Supreme Jerk."