I woke, chest was heaving, gulping for air like a fish out of water. Sweat poured down my face and soaked my t-shirt, which clung to me like a second skin. When I tried to move a wave of nausea flooded over me and I vomited pathetically off to my side.

The heaving continued long after my stomach was empty, and I laid there convulsing and shivering for hours until I fell back asleep

I could hear voices. They were faint, coming from all directions. I recognized one from my dream, but there was another now; not quite as deep, but many times more cold.

I tried to open my eyes to see who was talking, but light flooded in, hard and fast. It hit me like a truck and I gasped in pain and physically recoiled. The movement sent a wave of dizziness that shoved me back into unconsciousness and the voices faded away.

I woke up, struggling to breathe and shivering violently. Coldness had taken its place in my chest, freezing me to the bone. I felt weak and light, disconnected from my body. I tried to push myself off the ground, but once I did fire shot through my arms and chest. I fought against the pain, thrashing my arms out, breathing hard, and clawing the ground. I fought for what seemed like an eternity until a pleasantly relaxing feeling washed in through my arm, loosening muscles as it passed, and chased away the pain. It filled every crevice of my body and in only a few moments engulfed me completely.

When I came to again, the pain had returned as a dull throb. I felt light and weak as balloon that had lost its tether. I wasn't grounded anymore.

I opened my eyes and was greeted by an endless expanse of blue stretching above me. I turned my head and saw mountains, hills, sand, all beautifully cast in the evening light, but my eyes kept returning to the sky.

I would have stayed like that forever, staring at the sky, but a voice broke through my trance.

"Finally up now, are ya?" A voice, the one from my dream, coming from my right.

I jumped in surprise, as far as you can jump while lying on the ground. Just basically lifting up and then crashing back down.

"Sorry, didn't mean to scare you" The voice chuckled.

I struggled to get on my right side, and once I did, I was met with an honest-to-god cowboy. He was sitting casually on a rock, twisting a knife in his hands. From his vest to his boots, he was the poster boy of every stereotypical Vid cowboy. He even had the beard and accent. His skin was a deep brown from time spent in the sun, and his brown eyes matched the tone exactly. There was a herd of Brahmin some 30 feet behind him, walking aimlessly in circles, head butting each other

"Is your name Alex?" He asked, sliding his knife into a small sheath.

"How did you-" I tried to ask, but my voice cracked and I fell into a coughing fit.

He rose from the rock and kneeled by me in one smooth move. He pressed a canteen against my lips and trickled some precious water down my throat. He kept pouring water through my cracked lips until finally I could talk again.

"We found your duffle bag. It has your name stitched under the STE logo." He explained.

"I heard your voice in my dream" I whispered, unable to get louder than that

"Yeah, I helped you get back to good health. Only took a couple of days."

"WHAT?" My voice cracked again. He handed me the canteen and I drank thirstily.

"Calm down, it was a serious wound. It took some recovery time."

"Okay, Okay." I whispered, unable to get anything else from my pathetic throat. "Where am I? Who are you?"

He sat down next to me "Well, my name is Jacob. As for where you are, we're about 20 miles out from New Cedar. We were on the road when we heard sounds of gunfire, and once we tracked it down to the source we saw you get stabbed. I shot the girl assaulting you and we dragged you out of there, grabbing as many things as could guess were yours."

I looked away from Jacob and back to the sky as my hand reached down and traced the place where I had been stabbed. I could feel a scar outlining the wound. "Who's 'we'?" I asked, still confined to a whisper

"Me and my bodyguard, he's out scouting right now. We've been on the road for over half a year now, trying to get to New Vegas before too much goes on without us."

"What's going on in Vegas?" I hadn't heard of anything going on since the Ncr held the dam from Caesar.

"Tensions are high between the Legion and the Ncr right now. I'm bringing supplies," He gestured behind him, towards the herd "to see what kind of good the Ncr can do with them."

A fight was new to me. I guess there WERE disadvantages to living under a rock. Go figure. I remained silent for a few minutes, and then asked "So how did you save me? You a doctor?"

I heard him clear his throat "Well, erm, no."

"Your bodyguard?"

"Nope, neither of us are doctors."

"How'd you do it then?"

"Well, he held you down while I, carefully, administered a, um, Stimpak. Carefully.

The color drained from my face. "WHAT?" I whispered as violently as I could.

"You were bleeding out when we found you! We cleaned your wound and got you back to camp, but you needed professional help and we were nowhere near some. We did what we had to do.

I fell silent. "No wonder I was out for so long." I murmured. That explained why it hurt so much before I passed out at the raiders base. It must have been the Stimpak kicking in.

"So I'm not recovering from a stab wound, I'm recovering from Stimpak Sickness."

He sighed "Basically. You'll be walking within a day, you're going to be sore for a week or so. You'll constantly be tired, much of your body's energy was taken from storage by the chemicals. We didn't give you a full syringe, you didn't need it, and so you probably won't have to need any physical therapy."

"Probably?"

"You never know."

I sighed. It was the best I'd get. I pinched my t-shirt. "Where'd my clothing go? Where's my Jacket?"

"We put them in your duffel bag. The Leather Armor you had on has some bloodstains, your jacket doesn't though. Anything in the pockets of either should still be there."

I felt a tug of fear in the pit of my stomach "Did you look inside the duffel bag at all?"

"No, we just shoved your stuff in. Why," He asked, suspicious "Is there something I shouldn't be seeing?"

I tried to wave my hand nonchalantly, but it came out as more of a spasm "Nah, just didn't want you to have to sort through all of my dirty underwear."

He remained silent for a moment, scrutinizing my face and judging my answer. Finally he leaned forward and asked "Now for the thousand cap question. Why were you in a raider's base?"

I stared at the sky and tried to think of a good answer, some excuse. No way could I tell the truth, he'd kick me out now and I'd be helpless.

"I don't remember." I lied

He squinted at me "You don't remember?"

"No, I don't remember." I whispered "I remember entering the base and being stabbed, that's it. I don't remember what I did or why I did it."

He mulled over my words, judging on whether they're truthful or not. Finally, he spoke again "You remember where you come from?"

"I… used to live at Richard."

"Used to?"

"It was destroyed."

His face softened, losing its suspicious edge "I'm sorry."

"Don't be" I said, trying to sit up "Best not to dwell on the past."

"Were you doing anything besides going to the base? Travelling anywhere?"

"Yeah." I said "I was trying to get something to the Ncr. Hand me my duffel and I'll show you."

He reached behind the rock he had been sitting on and pulled out my old nylon bag. Its deep green color was fading, but the STE logo was still easily visible a small globe with two arrows curling around it, pointing upwards.

He handed it to me and I ratcheted around in it until I was rewarded with a black disc vaguely shaped like a UFO. I held it up for him to see and whispered triumphantly

"Tada!"

He stared at it in confusion "What is it?"

My throat somewhat recovered, I began to explain in a normal voice "It's a Holoplayer, a rare piece of tech. My father collaborated as much information from the Old World as he could, books, vids, anything he could get his hands on."

I showed him the underside of it, which held the STE logo "It was released pre-war as a mass storage device, and it was said that a few of these could theoretically hold the entire Library of Congress."

Jacob stared at it "How much data is that?" He asked, his voice tinged with amazement

"Too much to count. There were plans to back up all the worlds data on an enormous collection of these Holoplayer units, but The Great War got in the way. Only a few Holoplayers survived. My dad found one in his childhood, and he obsessed with filling it with all available information. He sent out Holodiscs with traders that came to town, he went on journeys for months on end to find a particularly valuable terminal, and finally reached a point where he was satisfied with it."

"How much did he collect?"

"This unit sustained damage from so many years since it was built, so its file counting feature doesn't work. I know it doesn't hold a library of congress, but it holds enough that my dad thought it was ready to be brought to the Ncr."

I held it out for him, and Jacob tentatively reached forward and grabbed it, holding it gingerly in his hands as if it was made of glass. "What will the Ncr do?"

I stared at the ever-declining sun "Hopefully they'll try to duplicate the information. They'll look through it, find things like textbooks and schoolbooks, and start shipping that information to the rest of the wasteland on Holotapes. This could start the re-education of the wasteland."

He stared at it. "Show me." He said suddenly.

I blinked in surprise "Show you the wasteland?"

"If you want me to believe you, show me something to prove it." His eyes were intense, focused solely on the Holoplayer.

"Oh, of course." I said "Watch and learn."

I grabbed the Player, flicked a switch on the side, and scanned my thumb on the top bump, the glass dome where a pilot would sit if this was a UFO. The dome flickered red, then turned a bright green. A holographic projection shot out of it, showing a three-dimensional version of the STE logo in full color. It revolved for a few moments, continents and oceans covered with thin clouds hanging in thin air, before flashing out and being replaced with a list of categorized files.

"What would you like to start with?" I asked, laughing internally at his awestruck expression.

"That one." He said, pointing towards a file labeled 'Education'

I tapped it in mid-air and it expanded, bringing out a whole new list of files. I maneuvered through a few more files, until I got to a textbook on surgical procedures.

"This one you might find useful," I said, turning the projected image towards him "next time you can stitch me up instead of resorting to chemicals."

He looked at it with the same stupid awed expression, using his finger to scroll through pages of projected illustrations and texts.

"Some of the data from these books had gone corrupted, and were difficult to recover" I explained as he scrolled "But this Holoplayer is very good at recovering the corrupted data. Sadly, it couldn't do it with everything, so you'll probably stumble across missing exerts occasionally."

"I've seen enough" He said, his voice shaking.

I turned the Player off and the image disappeared, but Jacob kept staring at the air where it used to be for several minutes. His mouth hung open slightly.

"So?" I asked, "What do you think?"

He closed his mouth and sat silent for a few more minutes. When he spoke, his voice was just above a whisper "I think… I think you're certainly right about the good you think your player can do. I think that, if you get it to the Ncr, it can do all the good you think it will. But most of all, I think that I have to assist you in getting that Player to where it needs to go."

"Excuse me?" I asked, confused "What do you mean?"

He looked at me, his eyes determined "You say you have the key to the re-education of an entire planet in your hands. I was meant to meet you here and assist you on your journey. I'm going to lead you to McCarran so you're not hurt along the way."

I shook my head "No, I wasn't trying to persuade you to let me join, I was just-"

He interrupted me "This is my last caravan. I ferried supplies all over the eastern seaboard for most of my life. I carried weapons and rations for the Bos in their war against the Enclave, and once they won, I carried their fresh water for them. I helped with that and I loved it, but everyone else was doing it too. There was enough help. I had enough caps I could retire, but I heard about the troubles in Vegas and knew I had to help there, make a difference. So I sank all of my caps into one final trip, picked up a bodyguard who wanted to make the same difference I did, and we've been travelling for 8 months now, and we just so happen to stumble across someone who could make an enormous difference in the wasteland." He paused.

"Where are you getting at with this?" I asked

"Where am I getting at? I'm getting at the only conclusion that is possible. I came out on this journey to make a difference one last time, and I'm given the chance to make one by helping a young man finish his father's work. If it's not obvious to you that I'm supposed to help you out, than you need your head checked." His eyes bore into mine, so intense that I averted my gaze. A few moments passed and his stare softened, waiting for my response.

I shrugged "If you insist, then I must give in and grace you with my presence." I said dramatically, sighing heavily "If it so pleases you."

He laughed his booming cowboy laugh, seriously how could anybody be that big of a cowboy? "No need to be an ass about it" He chuckled.

He stood up and brushed off his jeans. "I've got to get the Brahmin situated together for the night, or we'll have to gather them together in the morning." He reached behind one of the rocks nearby and pulled up a blue roll. "You can use this to camp in, and we'll wake you up in the morning for breakfast. Sleep well and build up your strength, we'll be on the move tomorrow and it'll be hard for you to keep up in your condition." He tossed the roll at me.

Of course, it hit me in the face and landed on my lap. Jacob turned and began to leave.

"Hey, wait!" I called after him.

He turned and looked at me "What is it?"

"Thank you."

"I should be the one thanking you"

"Why?"

"Because now I have hope that the world can finally, truly, recover after 200 years. Because now I have someone to put that hope and trust in, a remarkable individual.

He left me there in the fading light.

When he left, I grabbed for my duffle bag. I held it in my lap, tracing the worn nylon exterior and reached for the zipper.

I wouldn't do it.

My hand shakily unzipped it, and the other began parting the belongings that had been stored inside. It sorted through repair supplies, clothes, tools, until finally it reached the bottom.

I stared down at a dozen small metal cases, gleaming in the days last light. Jacob's words curled around my ears as I reached down with a shaking hand and picked a case up. Now I have someone to put that hope and trust in.

I opened the case I pulled up and stared at the 5 Med-X's, lined up in a row.

A remarkable individual.

I shut the case and returned it, closing my duffle bag. I curled into my sleeping roll and tried to ignore the vials that taunted me.

I fell asleep like that, my duffel bag against my back, hearing over and over the lullaby of Jacob's lies.

My duffle bag was off to my right. I grabbed for it, dragging it towards me. My hand traced over the worn nylon exterior and reached for the zipper. I wouldn't open it. I won't do it.

My hand shakily unzipped it, and the other began parting the belongings that had been stuffed inside. A few sets of rolled up clothes, misc. repair supplies, tools, the Holoplayer, until finally I was staring at the exposed stack lying underneath it all.

A dozen small silver syringe cases shone in the light of the setting sun. I knew what I would find if I opened one, five Med-X's lined up like ducks in a row, taunting me. Calling me. I sat and stared at their shine until the sun disappeared and I could no longer see them.

I closed the duffle bag and fell back into my roll. Jacob's words were turning around in my head, dancing and chanting around in circles. I trust in you, you're going to do great.

I fell asleep to the lullaby of that lie.

WORK ON YOUR SETTING

Dialogue you're OK at, but you have got to work on how characters are reacting physically, and where they are. It's essential to a reader visualizing. Get your descriptions better, make one of the main character, and make them shorter and more to the point so your dialogue is pre-dominant while you still have a large amount of visual