Dinner Guests
I walk now to The Elder's quarters, in full realization of my fate. And even as my perishing will sustain the others for a time, their fate is not any safer. I've heard there was a saying: "desperate times call for desperate measures." That's how all of this is justified and It's the only kind of times we've ever known. A part of me would like to surrender- to just get it over with. Yet somehow, this phrase still means something to me. The will to survive, though condemned still burns through the pages of my mind.
"Come in," The Elder says, interrupting my reflection of this notion. "This is the hardest part of my job, trying to make peace with those whose number has come up. What you have to think of is that it is not the end of you, but the continuation of the tribe. People before the war had no such honor in their deaths. Please, take comfort knowing your life has not been in vain, even in its ending"
It's a nice speech, but it's of little solace. She sits safely behind the desk across from me, knowing that as Elder, her number can never be drawn. My mind flashes back to significant times in my file. My first memories as a child, my first love, the days when my parents' numbers were drawn- these faces and events play out in my minds eye so vividly that I almost don't notice the console to the left of the elder has a red light flashing. All along the corridors, lights follow suit. Their lighting sequence urges you to follow them. I've never seen these lights illuminated in all of my years and by the look on The Elders face, neither has she. And then, over an intercom: "Elder Cyan, the vault doors…. They're… opening!" I don't waste time waiting for the elder to instruct or dismiss me. This entire underground universe has just changed. I race down corridors that are littered with perplexed onlookers. I want to be amongst the first to reach the vault entrance.
Light pours in through the once static portal so brightly that all who witness it cover their eyes and feign away. Lowering my hand and squinting, I can make out the silhouettes of our visitors.
"What the hell?" One of the figures steps out of the sunshine and into our rusty dank world. "I thought they were supposed to all be dead by now!"
"Yes, sir the archives…….." begins a man in a red robe, "the archives show this vault was to fail due to over population. They should have run out of food almost thirty years ago."
"Is the war over? Is it safe to return to the surface?" The Elder queries, feeling that her title still amounts to something..
"The Great War? That was almost 100 years ago." replies the first man. "Ain't nothin' up there now but raiders, monsters and sand, lady."
"Which one would you be?" I ask, stepping from the shadows. "And what's with this 'supposed to fail' noise that your friend in the dress was talking about?"
"I am Paladin Westin, Brotherhood of Steel. It's our job to make sure all this tech you've got down here isn't going to waste." Westin explains that they had just got back the raw data from some encrypted data they had downloaded during a recent recon mission of an Enclave base. The location and details of our vault were part of that data, along with the over-ride to open the doors from the outside. I listen for a time trying to get myself up to speed about what's been happening in a world that I've never seen.
"Look kid," continues West, "damn shame what those bastards at Vault-Tec did under the orders of the old government. We are only just beginning to understand their motives. All over the wastes, there's little science projects like this one going on. Hell, one vault didn't even close. Poor bastards never stood a chance. They roam the earth as ghouls now. Skin falling off, unable to uh… reproduce. The kicker is that they live for a real long time."
Questions fly out of my mouth almost as quick as they come into my head. "You say the 'Enclave' had this info on our vault? How did they get this data? Wasn't everything on the surface destroyed? Just who is the Enclave?"
"While it's true the old world governments are long gone," explains Westin "Some of the U.S. officials and politicians made off for a safe haven. Some say they were amassing the Enclave as a shadow army before the bombs even fell. Their powers of persuasion influenced far and wide, corrupting governments and multi-national conglomerates, including Vault-tec's administration side. This making any sense, now? Hello?" Westin waves his hand in front of my unfocused eyes. All of those people. The ones who perished down here, and in places like it. What did they die for? What could this suffering amount to that would benefit this Enclave?
"Where can I find them?" I demand of Westin.
"Whoa, kid. You've been though a lot." Westin points out. "Don't you want to collect yourself, get some tings together- you know take some time to process all of this?"
With a cold blank face I turn to him and reply, "Do you know how we survived down here this long?" the look on his face says he's afraid to answer my question, not wanting to confront the grim truth. I tell him anyway. "We are all cannibals here, forced to either die outright, or slowly kill off our numbers by feasting on each other. Just this morning, I was on the menu. And now that we can leave, you're telling me to collect myself? You'll have to excuse me if I say I won't spend another minute in this place"