"Clones." said Doanette, "It has to be a cloning experiment. I saw one in Vault 108, once, but it went a bit wrong. I guess the Enclave must have got hold of my DNA..."

"Whoa there. Wouldn't we be identical if we were clones?" asked Doanette the slaver. The newest Doanette looked different again – the same basic face structure but nothing like the same hairstyle. Paladin Doanette's PIPBoy kept wavering between registering her as a human and a machine, suggesting that she had quite a substantial degree of cybernetic augmentation. "The changes appear more environmental than genetic." said Paladin Doanette,."However, it would be impossible to tell without the Brotherhood's most advanced supercomputers. I'm not even sure if they could tell us, actually. Successful cloning isn't something we..."

"Let's steal the Enclave's computers!" said Doanette.

"AGREED!" Doanette-the-slaver almost squealed with delight at the thought of robbing somebody.

"Who are the Enclave?" asked Paladin Doanette.

The other two stared at her.

After a few moments, Doanette said "Well, if she were a clone created yesterday, I guess she wouldn't have heard of..."

"I thought you said it was the Enclave what did it!" protested Doanette-the-slaver, "She'd have been born in their lab! Of course she'll have bloody..."

Paladin Doanette fired at their feet.

"Enough talking about me like I'm an idiot who isn't here." she said, "We're all in a new situation and we're all very confused..."

"I think I'm on a Jet trip." said Doanette-the-slaver.

"... The first thing we're going to do is eliminate confusion. I am Doanette-1. You – the nutcase – you're Doanette-2..."

"I WANNA BE DOANETTE-1!" yelled both Doanettes at once.

"Well, you aren't! I came up with the system first so I get to do the numbering!" yelled Doanette-1, "You, invisible girl, you're Doanette-3."

"Your ass is mine once we get back to the Den." muttered Doanette-2, jumping onto a boulder and curling up into a ball, her wild eyes staring at nothing visible to any other human on the planet.

"Now, I'm going to make a fire and we're going to sit around it and introduce ourselves like nice, civilised people." said Doan-1, crossing her arms firmly, "That way we'll have more of an understanding of where we're all coming from and it might clear up a few things."

By the time the last clump of gnarled twigs was burned up and the fire died down, Doanette-3 had polished off her fifth bottle of beer and had ten stolen from her pack by Doanette-2, neither of them were any less confused.

---

"So you're, like, two hundred years old? You don't look a day over twenty-five." said Doanette-3 with her mouth full of Iguana Bits.

"Watch it, bitch!" snarled Doanette-2, "You think I wouldn't sell your ass just 'cause you look like me? I'm Guild, man, I'm a professional."

"You call being that easy to wind up 'professional'?" she laughed.

"Why?" screamed Doanette-1, a primal scream that shattered the past and the future more thoroughly than the Bomb ever could. Doanette-2 and Doanette-3 looked at her.

"Oh my God... What the fuck happened to our future?" screamed Doanette-1, "What happened to the Wasteland... to the Brotherhood... to my children... to you... YOU... YOU!"

Doanette-1's eyes fixed onto Doanette-2's. The slaver stepped back involuntarily. So far she had behaved the most rationally of all of them. Now that she was actually showing emotion other than vague irritation at them, she was all the more scary.

"What'd I do?" demanded Doanette-2.

"What do you think, you moron?" snapped Doanette-1, "You're my granddaughter! How would you feel if you had a granddaughter and she turned out to be a depraved psychotic bloodthirsty savage? Do you even understand me? I am VERY... disappointed... in... you!"

"Gran'ma?"

"Don't you dare ever call me that again!" she growled, "I haven't even told Ian how I feel about him yet, never mind had grandkids, you clearly don't remember me and I'm going to make damn sure you're not going to exist! The first thing I'm doing when I go back is form some new order of the Brotherhood and demand we all take vows of celibacy!"

"Aaargh! Don't change time! That's a really REALLY bad..." began Doanette-3, but the other woman just pushed past her and disappeared behind a boulder.

"You've really gone and done it now, idiot. Nice work." she said to Doanette-2.

"What? HOW is this my fault? I didn't say or do ANYTHING! Isn't she satisfied that I broke into the fucking Enclave compound and found the only working GECK? Don't I deserve a little fun? What did SHE ever do? Fix a faulty pipe and get thrown out of a Vault."

"And you restored what exactly with the GECK?" said Doanette-3, "If you must know, its not the ONLY working GECK anyway, I've got one. These little missions don't mean a thing. You should know that by now. Its the wandering. The journey. It doesn't end. Its our duty, our life. Besides, there is absolutely nothing wrong with being kicked out of a Vault."

"Fine words coming from you." she sneered, "My evil won't hold a candle to your raging furnace. I'm just humanly evil. You're a monster. I saw it the moment I looked at you."

"What the... what'd you mean? What'd I do?" Doanette-3 looked around, paranoid. Had someone secretly put babies in her dinner last night? Maybe her Commie stealth armour was telling her to do things.

"Hold out your PIPBoy." ordered Doanette-2.

She was uncomfortable trusting anyone with her PIPBoy, never mind Doanette-2, but she held her arm out anyway. There was a manic quality to Doanette-2's voice. Her eyes, which disturbed Doanette-3 at the best of times, looked like she was in the grip of a nightmare. If nothing else, she wanted it to go away in case it came after her next.

"Now we're both going to switch them off and on again."

Doanette-3 shrugged and did as she was told. The PIPBoy went 'eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee' in a pitch that could have shattered glass, the screen went blank then filled up with a solid green bar which flashed on and off a few times.

"See? Evil." whispered Doanette-2 in an eerily child-like voice. The corpse of a smile had creased her features. She pointed to her PIPBoy and to Doan-3's. Her own had a picture of some kind of fruit with a bite taken out of it, while Doan-3's had a wavy flag made up of squares.

"What's that supposed to..."

"Will you two stop making that damn noise with your PIPBoys?"

It was Doanette-1, poking her head back around the boulder. She had placed her helmet back on. Doanette-3 wondered if it was so she wouldn't look like Doanette-2 any more.

"Doanette-3, what the hell is wrong with your PIPBoy anyway?"

Doanette-3 looked down at the machine again. A warning box had popped up. It said 'critical cyberware malfunction, please reboot.'.

"Oh great..." she sighed. Doanette-2 shushed her and put a finger to her lips.

They all fell silent. The other two had heard it too. Footsteps.