By my count, I spent just shy of three weeks at the Slog. I woke up each morning hoping that somehow I'd be back home, but I found myself in the same narrow bed surrounded by the three other women who shared the room with me.

And maybe I should've been more distressed, but apart from the ever-present anxiety that I had really just gone insane, things weren't that bad. I was kept busy enough during the day that I didn't have much time to wallow in an existential crisis; and by the time night fell, I was usually so tired that I passed right out. I suppose it helped that I didn't feel like I was missing much, not being at home. I had no real family to speak of… my father had run off when I was a child, and my mother had been dead for nearly a decade. I had a few friends, but no one really close; working two or something three jobs since I was 17 meant I didn't have a lot of time for socializing.

I'd always been more of a "in the moment" kind of girl anyway, and trust me, there were plenty of new challenges to help keep my mind in the present. Like keeping clean, for example. The Slog had running water for the two showers and toilets that had somehow survived the apocalypse, but the water pressure for both was terrible. Showers had to be used sparingly because the water purifiers could only filter water at a certain rate, and we couldn't pull too much from the tarberries without risking the plants. But homemade soap was a thing, and evidently plastic toothbrushes had been hardy enough to survive the nuclear bombing in plentiful numbers, so I could still make myself feel somewhat presentable at the end of each day.

Each of the bathrooms actually had mirrors- cracked ones, but useable nonetheless. I don't know if I was relieved or not to see my own face looking back at me on that first day. I don't know why I might have expected anything different. It was very easy to tell from the get-go that I was in my own skin; I'm pretty well covered in tattoos, so it's not like I could really be mistaken for anyone else. Besides video games, body modification has really been my only financially-draining vice.

So it wasn't much of a surprise to see my own face in the old, tarnished glass. Same dark hair, same boring gray eyes. All the piercings in my ears (and one in my nose) present and accounted for. I was going to have a hell of a job blending in with the rest of the locals looking like a Hot Topic manager's wet dream, but oh well. Wasn't a whole lot I could do about it at this point.

I was learning a lot. Wiseman did indeed convince Eddie to teach me how to shoot. The standoffish ghoul did so begrudgingly at first, but I kept cracking stupid jokes until he had no choice but to laugh. After that, we got on alright. I wasn't a great natural shot, but I could hit a can or bottle at ten yards more often than not, which was progress in my book. He told me that if he could teach me to shoot half as well as I could swear, then I'd be able to kill almost anything that came after me.

I also learned more than I had ever dreamed (or wanted to) about the process of farming tarberries, along with other crops like corn and tomatoes. I was a terrible farmer; I had a body that was used to long hours spent standing and slinging drinks, not hunched over pulling weeds or digging. After one day spent "working the land" I was sore in places I hadn't actively felt in my entire life (or at least not since mandatory P.E. in grade school). The only good part about the physical activity was that I didn't really have the mental capacity or energy to think about anything else. I had no feasible way to get back into my own reality, and dwelling on that for too long made me slide dangerously close to panic attacks.

Wiseman figured out pretty quick that it was more counter-productive to force me to do farming chores than not, and found another task that I was actually good at: cooking chems. Turns out that the Slog wasn't only the main supplier of tarberries for the Commonwealth, but held the market on berry-flavored mentats too (apparently the tarberries were the main ingredient, as least as far as flavoring goes). My soft, lower-middle-class upbringing made me totally intractable as far as hard labor goes, but perfectly capable of following a recipe. Which, ultimately, was all that making mentats consisted of.

"Mr. Walker always warned me I'd end up in a meth lab," I reminisced ironically to myself, as I measured out portions of various chemicals and mashed-up tarberries. "Guess he wasn't wrong."

(Mr. Walker was my hilariously inappropriate older neighbor in my apartment complex. On the first day I moved in, he'd taken one look at me and proclaimed me to be a "wayward child seduced by the long cock of sin," and then invited me over for coffee and a critique of Peter Jackson's "The Fellowship of the Ring". Before I was Twilight-Zoned into this world, lively debate and increasingly creative insults had become our regular Thursday nights.)

As I was industriously experimenting to find a way to make the berry flavor of the drugs stronger, Wiseman sidled up next to me. I could tell that something particular was on his mind, so I stopped what I was doing and faced him with an arched eyebrow.

"What do you want, old man?" I had started calling him that as recompense for him using my full name all the time. Truthfully, I had no idea how old Wiseman was- it was near impossible to accurately estimate the number of years on a ghoul- but I knew he was older than me, and that was enough.

"Got another job for you, Cassidy Mae. If you're up for it."

"If you're going to ask me to work patrol with Eddie again, the answer is no," I said, turning back to my chems. "Last time he startled me so bad I almost put a bullet through my own damn foot, and he laughed his ass off for ten minutes."

Wiseman chuckled but shook his head. "Had something different in mind actually. I need to make another trip out to Goodneighbor to do some trading, and I want you to tag along."

I frowned. "Goodneighbor?" I knew that was a rough town from playing the video game… and it wasn't exactly a leisurely afternoon stroll from here to there, either. "Isn't that kind of dangerous? Wouldn't you rather take Eddie or someone else who's more reliable with a gun?"

"The walk ain't so bad now that the minutemen are around again," Wiseman said. "Mostly just gotta worry about the wildlife, and I don't run into a whole lot bigger than mutts or ferals, usually. And you ain't got nothing to worry about in that town, so long as you stick by me."

"My hero," I simpered sarcastically, batting my eyelashes.

He gave me a look and crossed his arms. "Look, kid, not like we don't like having you around here- we've never said no to an extra pair of hands, and for some reason people seem to like you." I wrinkled my nose at him and he grinned. "But you've still got a hell of a hole in your memory, and you're not gonna find any answers cooking chems and harvesting tarberries."

He was right, of course. I hadn't bothered looking into solving that mystery yet because frankly, I didn't have a single notion of where to start searching for answers. That, and I felt safe at the Slog. I knew what this world would hold for me: vicious irradiated monsters; anarchic raiders; and limited food, water, and shelter. I wasn't necessarily totally safe from the first two at the Slog, but at least I had a roof over my head and a host of other people who'd be willing to help fight back if anything came looking for trouble. I knew nothing about surviving a literal wasteland, even one as populated as this one. If I were on my own, I'd give myself a day tops. Maybe two.

But I couldn't just sit on my ass (figuratively speaking) for the rest of my life and hope that I'd somehow skip back over into my own reality. Something had been the catalyst for me coming here. And I had to believe that if I could figure out what that was, then I'd have a chance of reversing it.

So I sighed, and made a big show of being bothered.

"Wiseman, I never knew you cared," I teased. "If you really can't stand to be away from me for that long, then of course I'll come with you. You've made me the happiest girl in the Commonwealth!"

He rolled his dark eyes. "Kid, I've got at least three decades on you."

"I've always had a thing for older men," I shot back with a wink. "Robbing the grave, and all that."

"Christ." He shook his head and laughed, walking away. "We'll leave tomorrow morning at first light… best to get most of our walking in before the sun gets too hot."