The simulation just begun. Please enjoy.


Damian opened his eyes. The bright blur he had before his eyes faded and gave way to a grey sky and a mountain clifftop, battered by the winds. Small white stars swirled in the wind and fell on and around him. Damian felt something icy beneath him. His hands sank into a strange, cold material. He straightened up and noticed that he was lying on the ground, on a cliff.

In the distance, towering white mountains stretched as far as the eye could see. Damian looked at his feet. He wore a gray and white military outfit, similar to his Ranger armor. He also wore a pair of leather gloves and felt a heavy object on his head. A US Army helmet also painted grey.

All around him was snow. Damian took off one of his gloves and reached out his hand. He felt the flakes land and melt on the palm of his hand.

The simulation was more real than life. Much more advanced than the one Braun used. He didn't have that hideous sepia tint in front of his eyes and he could feel everything, from the snow beneath his feet to the wind on his face to the bitter cold that gripped him.

He looked around him. He was afraid to see Betty's face or to hear over the howling wind, Braun's voice and his strong German accent. There was no little girl on the horizon, only a mountainous landscape, covered with snow and whipped by gusts of wind.

Behind him he could see a river and a snow-covered forest at the foot of a mountain. Not far from him, clinging to a rock, the grey and beige cloth of a parachute was undulating in the wind.

Suddenly Damian saw it, motionless. A human head, staring at him with a piercing gaze. The head floated in the void and approached him. Damian moved backwards and felt as if his entrails had just fallen into a bottomless pit.

The head approached him, and it was then that Damian noticed that it was resting on the body of a man wearing the same armor as him. If the man hadn't had his face uncovered, Damian would never have noticed him, as the camouflage of the armor blended perfectly into the landscape.

The man, in his forties, with short brown hair and a close shave, approached Damian and looked at him from head to toe. He seemed relieved and smiled at him.

"Hell of a nasty fall that you took. When your parachute bunched up like that, I thought you were a goner."

He turned to the cliffs, mumbling something about other paratroopers.

"You still got your gear?" he asked.

Damian looked down at his belt. He had a holster with a 10mm pistol, and he was carrying a gray pouch. He looked inside and saw what looked like three satchel charges. He also noticed a knife hanging from his thigh. The blade was long and serrated, and the handle had a steel-tipped guard. The weapon could be used as a conventional knife or as a knuckle-duster. In either case, the result would probably be the same and very unpleasant for the victim.

"Well," said the soldier. "Your move. You can be discreet, or you can go loud, but in either case, be careful. Reds take no prisoners. We'll meet at the rendez-vous point, inside the bunker. Then we're gonna blow up those cannons."

The soldier had just finished his sentence, that Damian heard a detonation in the distance, followed by two others. A distant artillery shot. Each cannon shot thundered at regular intervals. The infernal beat for a diabolical symphony that was to be played somewhere on a battlefield ravaged and transformed into a lunar landscape by the shells.

There was no time to answer or ask the slightest question as the soldier rushed away and began to climb the cliff with great ease. Damian watched him climb and jump from one hold to the next until the soldier disappeared at the top.

Damian looked around him. He sighed and began to follow the small cliffside path in front of him. He hadn't really had time to think about it when he was in the Tranquility Lane simulation, but he had to recognize that seeing and feeling his body move in a computer-generated, real-life environment and feeling the cold, wind and altitude, when he knew his body and brain were sitting in a chair staring at a screen, was both impressive and disturbing.

He wondered how many young men and women had sat in that same chair, whether it was to prepare to go to the front or to give the Outcast access to these mysterious technologies.

He arrived at a series of structures, built right on the cliff. The roofs of some of these structures served as ramps to advance over the cliff. They were reinforced with sandbags and wooden and metal crates.

Damian leaned against the cliff when he saw the silhouette of a man. He wore a suit with grey and olive camouflage patterns, a leather belt, black boots and a grey and black woolen uschanka. On the front, a red star set with a golden laurel wreath contrasted sharply and highlighted the Chinese flag sewn on his chest and the red star on the collar of his suit.

His face was masked under a white hood and a large pair of glasses. The soldier stopped at the edge of the cliff and contemplated the landscape, flicking his fingers on the handle and grip of his brand new-looking assault rifle.

Damian drew his pistol and noticed that it was equipped with a silencer. He pointed the gun at the soldier. Damian pulled the trigger. He felt the recoil of his gun as if it were a real one. The bullet lodged between the soldier's shoulder blades. The soldier hiccupped in pain and fell from the cliff.

Just before he fell, a strange thing happened. His corpse lit up with a sparkling blue beam and disappeared. Damian rubbed his eyes, thinking it was a side effect of the simulation. The body had fallen off the cliff and the wind was blowing too strong to get close and check.

Damian continued to follow the small path and crouched behind a rocky recess. A succession of footbridges led to the other side of the cliff. The rock walls had been built to provide bunkers and maintenance rooms for pipelines and shelter from the harsh Alaskan elements.

A metal staircase led to the roof of another of these bunkers. At the top, sitting on a chair and facing the stairs was another Chinese soldier. He got up and started walking down the stairs, speaking in a language Damian did not understand. The soldier pulled the breech of his rifle and spoke again. Damian jumped from behind his cover and shot him. The soldier collapsed forward and just before he hit the ground, his body lit up blue and evaporated, leaving only a few splashes of blood where the body should have been.

Was this a flaw in the simulation? Or did the computer choose to remove what was no longer considered alive in its program?

Damian suddenly noticed something in his peripheral vision. He turned his head, but the thing moved at the same time. He stood still and shifted his gaze to what he was seeing. In the lower right corner of his vision he could see, as written on his retina, a series of numbers, indicating "10/48", right next to the small image of a 10mm pistol. Just below it, he noticed a knife icon. As he looked at the icons, they became bigger so that it was easier to see read them.

Damian looked around him, looking for the silhouettes of Chinese soldiers. Seeing no one, he put away his pistol. The numbers remained in place, but he noticed that they were a little less visible. He grabbed his knife and automatically the numbers disappeared, and the knife icon replaced them.

He took his knife in his other hand and drew his gun again. The numbers appeared again, right next to the knife icon. This was the indication of his ammunition. A standard 10mm N99 10mm pistol had a capacity of 12 rounds per magazine, 13 if reloaded before the gun was completely empty and keeping one bullet in the barrel.

Damian did a quick calculation. Four magazines, five counting the one in his gun. It wouldn't be enough if he was noticed by the Chinese soldiers and he hoped that the simulation would provide him with another weapon quickly.

This reminder of how much ammunition he was carrying was quite nice, although unrealistic, but Damian had gotten into the habit of counting each round fired and automatically subtracting it from the total he had on him.

He continued to advance, glaring nervously up the cliff tops and bunkers. He arrived in front of the large footbridge, supported by cables, which allowed him to cross the cliffs. The metal structure swayed gently, despite the strong gusts of wind.

Damian wiped away the snowflakes that stuck in front of his eyes. He approached the bridge and looked down below. The void was steep for a good hundred meters before ending on a rocky ground partially covered with snow.

Damian took a deep breath and started walking on the bridge. The metal creaked under his weight and the wind whipped his face. Halfway there, he noticed a Chinese soldier on the other side of the cliff. The soldier raised his rifle, but Damian was faster and fired three shots. The soldier collapsed and his body evaporated like the others.

After checking that the way was clear, Damian resumed his ascent of the metal catwalks. Although it was a simulation, he felt every step and the effort he had to make to climb them was real. As he turned to look back to see how far he had come, he saw two Chinese soldiers crossing the bridge.

Damian pressed forward. He went past a bunker and leaned against the concrete wall. He couldn't hear anything with the wind and ventured to look. The two soldiers were only a few meters away from him and had stopped for a cigarette. Damian quickly checked the number of cartridges remaining in his magazine and eliminated the two soldiers.

The simulation was very realistic, too realistic in some ways, but Damian consoled himself by thinking that a real experience on a battlefield like this would be traumatic and wondered what the simulation might hold for him, if its purpose was to prepare the soldiers for this conflict.

As he turned around, he noticed a small sandbag wall facing the path across the cliff. A sniper rifle was placed on it and next to it, on a wooden box, an anti-personnel mine.

The rifle began to glow red as Damian approached it. He picked up the rifle and although he had never handled this model and had only seen it once in the hands of Colvin and a few Brotherhood soldiers, he knew instantly how to use it. The numbers indicating the rounds in his pistol changed like in an old digital clock and displayed the cartridges available for the rifle. Similarly, when Damian took the gun in his hands, an arrow indicated the name and some technical specifications of the gun. A DKS-501 sniper rifle chambered in .308 rounds.

The only available path was through a small metal shelter. The walls still bore traces of film and pinup posters or an American propaganda poster. The Chinese had stuck posters on top of them, depicting an Asian soldier wearing a beige suit, an ushanka and a rifle, and a message written in Chinese.

The Chinese had also appropriated the place by using it as a relaxation area, with a bed, a coffee machine, a table and a chair for eating. Damian saw an assault rifle on the table, which glowed red as he approached. A Chinese assault rifle called the Type 93. He had seen it in the hands of some Super Mutants before and it was Simms and Donovan's favorite weapon.

In one corner, Damian noticed a strange machine. It was also glowing red. Next to it, two other antipersonnel mines were laid on a table, as well as two grenades. Damian tied the grenades to his belt but could only take one of the mines. He turned to the strange machine. He reached for his hand and when he touched the machine, a message appeared in front of his eyes telling him that his ammunition stock was full. He drew his pistol and saw that the cartridges he had fired had miraculously reappeared.

He felt something pass in front of his face and a spark flew from the wall next to him. Damian stumbled back and held his assault rifle against him. He leaned against the wall and looked through one of the slits in the window.

On a large pipeline, two Chinese soldiers were running towards him and a third was shooting at him. Damian fired blindly. One of the soldiers slipped on the frozen metal and fell into the void. The second soldier came to the side of the cliff. He burst into the shelter, shouting in Chinese. Damian fired a burst in his direction and the soldier swung back before evaporating. Damian straightened up and fired another burst towards the last Chinese soldier who was trying to cross the pipeline. His body fell into the void and disappeared before hitting the ground.

Damian exhaled and looked out the window. Nothing moved except the snow in the wind. Damian left the shelter and walked over the pipeline. A collapsed footbridge lay over it and led to another bunker.

Damian managed to climb on the bunker linked to his side of the collapsed footbridge but found nothing except a Stealth Boy. He had already retrieved one from the Museum of Technology but had never used it. When he picked it up, a message appeared before his eyes to use the device.

While he was reading, Damian saw movement on the other side of the cliff. High up on one of the many concrete structures that dotted the crevasse, two Chinese soldiers were inspecting the area. Damian hid behind a pile of wooden boxes. He watched the Chinese soldiers who did not seem to be willing to move.

The simulation was not going to let him continue so easily and unlike Damian, the soldiers generated by the simulation did not feel the cold. Damian grabbed the sniper rifle he had picked up. He placed the first soldier in his sights. He was about to fire but hesitated at the last moment.

He remembered the discussion with Stockholm, Megaton's sniper. The sniper had quickly explained the disadvantages of long-range shooting. Gravity, force and direction of the wind. He didn't know if the simulation took all these factors into account, but since he was able to feel the freezing cold of Alaska, there was a good chance it would. Shooting at an Enclave officer who appeared to be strutting around in the Capital Wasteland was one thing, shooting at an enemy soldier in a windswept environment was another.

Damian lowered his weapon and began observing the area, wondering how he could cross undetected. He grabbed the Stealth Boy he had dropped. The message appeared again.

To use it, Damian had to place it on his wrist, press a button and the device would do the rest.

"Well, I don't really have a choice anyway," Damian mumbled, tying the device to his wrist.

He pressed the button on the Stealth Boy and heard a strange noise. He looked around and didn't see anything abnormal. He understood as he tried to look at his hands and the rest of his body. He had become invisible, well, by invisible it meant that he could see through his body as if he wasn't physically present, but if he paid attention, he could see the contours of his body. Even the rifle in his hands was affected by the field of invisibility.

After a last glance at the Chinese soldiers, Damian climbed down the collapsed footbridge and started to walk on the large pipeline that ran through the crevasse. The metal was covered with a thin layer of ice and Damian walked carefully so as not to end up a hundred meters lower, wondering if in the event of a fall he would be allowed to die before hitting the ground.

He cast nervous glances at the Chinese soldiers who continued to scan the crevasse. When he arrived on the other side, he took a small rocky pass on the cliff side and climbed a series of stairs and finally arrived behind the two Chinese soldiers. Damian took cover behind some crates and eliminated the two soldiers with his silenced pistol.

He didn't know how the simulation program would react if he was spotted. Would he have to face a horde of enemy soldiers who would hunt him down until he was eliminated, or would he be able to keep moving forward without being worried. The appearance of the last two soldiers could be due to the computer's response to the shooting, but it could also be a pre-programmed event to observe the subject's reaction while immersed in the simulation.

A little further down the crevasse, other bunkers had been built, connected by a large pipeline on which several Chinese soldiers were patrolling. The only apparent way to go around was through a passage inside the mountain.

Damian shivered. It was as cold outside as it was inside, but he was relieved that he no longer had to feel the bite of the wind on his face. As far as he could remember, he had never been so cold, except perhaps when the heating in the Vault broke down when he was twelve years old.

The effects of his Stealth Boy were still active, so he moved faster. He walked through a metal corridor that was used to store wooden crates, probably containing ammunition or food. The walls here, too, were strewn with American propaganda posters replaced by Chinese army posters.

The corridor gave way to a tunnel dug in the rock. As he entered it, Damian heard shots fired nearby, right in front of him. He pressed himself against the rock, convinced that he had been spotted. Realizing that he was not the target of the shots, he continued to move forward until he reached a natural formation in the mountain. The cave was probably about ten meters long and nine meters wide, and was also about a dozen meters high. At the top, an opening let the daylight through and from this opening also hung a parachute cloth and its harness, still attached to its former owner.

On closer inspection, Damian realized that it was a man, about as old as he was and wearing a US Army winter uniform. The young soldier wiggled on his harness to reach the knife at his ankle. Another shot rang out against the walls. As Damian got a little closer, he saw two Chinese soldiers standing under the American paratrooper. They took turns aiming their rifles and firing at the soldier. One of them finally shot him and the paratrooper's body was shaken with a spasm before hanging gently, still hooked to his harness.

One of the Chinese soldiers went into a tunnel while the other went deeper into the cave. Damian reached the cave and looked up at the hanged man. This scene, most likely programmed by the simulation, was probably supposed to arouse the simulation subject a desire for revenge and murder against the enemy soldiers, showing them as ruthless monsters doing target practice at living soldiers unable to fight back. At another time, Damian might have been revolted by this spectacle, but he had unfortunately seen much more ignoble things in the Wastes, to care about the possible atrocities committed during a war that ended more than two centuries ago and was represented in the form of computer programs.

The Chinese soldier stood in front of a table in a dead-end tunnel and placed new cartridges in an empty magazine. Next to him was this strange device that folded Damian's ammunition as if by magic. Mechanically, Damian raised his pistol and placed a bullet in the back of the soldier's skull that evaporated in a blue light.

The simulation was made with the aim of turning the pre-war American citizen preparing to go to the front line into a war machine. Within a second, Damian realized that although he didn't enter the simulation for that, he didn't need a computer program to teach him how to kill.

Nor had he become one of those war machines from the pre-war movies, where the hero was able to eliminate entire groups of enemies without suffering a single injury. He had just assimilated killing another man or mutant creature as a necessary mean to survive in the Wasteland and hope to live another day. His lack of hesitation in shooting the Chinese soldiers in the simulation scared him a little. He knew they were a pile of computer data and that their goal was to kill him, so he continued his relentless struggle for survival, the depressing brown setting of the Capital Wasteland momentarily changed into a frozen mountain. But deep down, he feared that one day he would get used to it, that he would no longer feel anything about taking a life and, worse, that he would start to enjoy it.

Damian shook his head to drive these morbid thoughts out of his mind and headed for the ammunition dispenser. As he walked away, he noticed that the corpse of the paratrooper had disappeared. On the ground, where the body should have fallen, Damian noticed a weapon, glowing red. Damian had never seen this kind of gun before. He holstered his pistol and grabbed the gun in his hands. Immediately, the invisibility field of his Stealth Boy enveloped the gun, making it impossible to see. However, the name and characteristics of the weapon were displayed. The weapon was called a Gauss rifle and used microfusion cells, like a laser rifle, with the difference that the weapon did not fire a beam of energy but small 2mm electromagnetic cartridges, that looked like metallic marbles, placed in the magazine on the right. Damian put the weapon down and started to look at it more closely.

The weapon did indeed look like a rifle. A wooden stock, a metal body and a scope. The barrel was surrounded by several metal circles. On the right side was the magazine for the 2mm EC and a crank handle. On the left side, a slot to introduce standard microfusion cells.

With his assault rifle and sniper rifle, he was starting to get a bit overweight, carrying all these weapons. With difficulty, because of the invisibility field, he adjusted the strap of his new weapon and placed it in his back. He wanted to remove the silencer from his pistol and place it on his assault rifle but was unable to do so. With the Chinese assault rifle in one hand and the 10mm pistol in the other, Damian went deeper into the cave.

He avoided or eliminated the Chinese soldiers he passed until he entered a bunker. He climbed a staircase and arrived in a room occupied by a generator. Only one Chinese soldier was there. Damian heard a faint crackling sound and the invisibility field of his Pip-Boy was deactivated. The Chinese soldier turned towards him.

Just as he was about to raise his rifle, a trap door opened just above him and two hands came out of it, grabbing the soldier by the head. Damian heard an unpleasant cracking sound and the body of the Chinese soldier collapsed, his neck broken.

A man came out of the trap door, leading to an air duct, and Damian recognized the American soldier from the beginning of the simulation. The soldier looked around before approaching Damian.

"Glad you're still with us. This place is crawling with Reds. I almost didn't make it."

Aware that this was also a program of the simulation, Damian did not engage in the same pointless discussion he had had with the unfortunate occupants of Tranquility Lane and just nodded at the soldier.

"I've got your back," said the soldier.

They made their way to a door and arrived outside the bunker. A gust of wind hit Damian in the face, and he retreated until he hit his companion.

"Careful near the ledges, that's a long fall," said the soldier, looking nervous.

Damian took a deep breath and advanced cautiously. Several meters below, he could see the path he had taken. Directly beneath their feet, a pipeline ran through the mountain and crossed the crevasse and headed towards another bunker.

Damian and the soldier advanced along the cliff, using the old metal footbridges. Three Chinese soldiers stood guard. Taken by surprise, they posed no problem for Damian and his companion.

If he listened carefully, Damian could still hear the relentless beat of the artillery fire. The detonations came from the left, behind the mountain. On his right was the bunker and the pipeline. He decided to explore the small bunker.

"Do you intend to cross the pipeline?" the soldier's voice said behind his back.

Damian didn't answer. He didn't feel like talking to a computer. The bunker wasn't very interesting. A small room used as a radio outpost, with a computer, a briefcase and a holotape on a table. All three objects were flashing red. Damian touched the case and it disappeared before his eyes, as if it was a projection. In one corner of his vision, Damian could read a message congratulating him for finding enemy intelligence. It was certainly a side mission, given to the subjects of the simulation, perhaps to note them at the end or to observe their reaction.

The tape started automatically when Damian touched it and he heard the voice of a man, posing as a soldier of the US Army, talking about the attack on the mountain outpost where Damian was now. The computer simply contained a translated version of a report of the Chinese troops occupying the place. Damian wondered whether all these notes were real messages and audio diaries from soldiers who had been involved in the conflict, or whether they were written messages specifically for the simulation.

Damian and the soldier returned outside and continued their climb up the cliff. Along the way, they met some enemy soldiers who were quickly eliminated. Damian could feel the weight of his two rifles on his back and was beginning to have trouble walking.

"It's over there," the soldier said, pointing to a shelter built in the mountain. "I don't know what these bastards have planned for us, so be careful."

In front of them was a bunker. The corridor they stood in, led them to a bridge, crossing a large crevasse and allowing them to reach the artillery outpost. Damian got as close as possible and he could see that the entrance was guarded by two pillboxes.

Passing through there was impossible. Damian noticed a door next to them. He pointed to the door and the soldier looked in his direction.

"We should be able to get around the Reds through the caves," nodded the soldier.

The cave was an exact replica of the one where Damian had recovered the Gauss rifle. They went through it after eliminating the Chinese soldier guarding the place. A staircase led them outside. In front of them was the footbridge they should have taken, still closely guarded.

Damian crawled to a sandbag wall. Slowly he raised his head and observed the area. In the pillboxes guarding the entrance, Damian counted four Chinese soldiers. He grabbed his sniper rifle and put the Gauss rifle beside him.

It was impossible to get through unnoticed. He leaned against the sandbag wall and aimed his rifle. One of the pillboxes was on the same height as them. An automatic turret scanned the area through the opening in the structure. The model resembled the one Damian had encountered on the metro on his way to the Mall from Galaxy News Radio. If he destroyed the terminal, the turret could deactivate or go crazy and eliminate the Chinese soldiers for him. But the simulation had to be able to take that into account.

He placed the terminal in his scope and fired. The terminal exploded, but Damian heard no other shots. He tilted his sights to the inside of the bunker. The turret had deactivated, and the Chinese soldiers were looking around, scanning the area.

He heard a curse and a series of shots rang out right next to him. The soldier accompanying him had just opened fire on the other soldiers coming out of the second pillbox.

The shooting only lasted a few moments. Damian and the soldier went down a metal staircase into the cliff. All the Chinese soldiers were dead, as they had strangely decided to run at their assailants rather than stay in the pillboxes where they would be in cover.

The main bunker was built in the mountain and the entrance was reinforced by a wall of sandbags. A double red armored door was used to enter the building.

"Let's blow up those cannons and kill any Commies that get in our way," said the soldier while reloading his assault rifle.

Damian checked the ammunition indicator for his assault rifle and pistol. He dropped his sniper rifle and placed the Gauss rifle in his back before pushing the heavy armored door into the artillery bunker.


Hope you enjoyed. The simulation is basically a video game inside a video game. That's why I thought it would be a nice touch to add the Fallout 3 HUD as part of the story. Until next time.