(+)9

2075 ROBCO(R)

LOADER V1. 1

EXEC VERSION 41.10

32K RAM SYSTEM

13242 BYTES FREE

HOLLOWTAPE LOADED: "THE-BLOOPER-REEL"

INITIALISING…

SUCCESS!

STATUS

Battery Level: 9%

Wireless Signal: (?)

Operating Temperature: 93F

HEALTH

BP: 140/120

SPO2: 100%

Temp: 98.5F

RR: 16

HR: 140

TIME

Day: 26 SEP. 2279

Time: 0:32

CLIMATE

Current Temperature: 73 F

Atmospheric Pressure: 732 mm

Background Radiation: 0.232 RAD

The spine is a fragile thing- funny, considering how much it's responsible for. Hit it just right, and you can take entire sections of someone's body out of commission, instantly and permanently. Even with wonder drugs like MED-X, it's incredibly difficult to repair, because of both its complexity and its fragility. Spinal injury can be caused by any sort of blunt-force trauma, and should always be suspected in the case of severe injuries caused by falling, dropped objects, or people getting hit super hard, even when they don't got any symptoms. Minor spinal damage can become serious if not properly managed.

And that's why I, the world class physician, decided to drag Tyrone up a set of stairs like I would a giant sack of tatos, grabbing him under the arms and hauling his ass into the hospital with Jas's help. I was honestly lucky that I hadn't busted up his entire spine, tugging him up the stairs like that.

How was I going to salvage this? I could try to lie and act like it wasn't my fault, but my reaction had probably sunk that ship already. And, even if I somehow tricked everyone else, I knew that I couldn't slip anything past Gram, and that he'd probably pull me aside for some sort of cynical, "I told you so," lecture, which I really wasn't in the mood for.

That ruled out lying for me, though I probably wouldn't have done it anyways. How could I tell the truth and not also destroy everyone's trust in me? Could I even do that? Come to think of it, maybe I didn't deserve to be trusted- I had just paralyzed a man by violently dragging him up a set of stairs in a state of paranoid stress, which was pretty bad as far as mistakes went!

The more I thought about it, the more awful it seemed- I'd let people down before, but I'd never let someone down so bad that they'd never be able to feel anything below their waist ever again. The Tandi situation made me reflect, but this was an objective mistake. And, when people make objective mistakes like this, its customary that they pay.

I guess that was the question now- there would be no salvaging the situation, so how was I going to pay for it?

"Well… I could try fixing it," I said, trying to ignore all the eyes on me. I tried to organize my thoughts.

"Isaac, what's happening? Is Tyrone alright? Did you hurt him?" Asked Jas, her cheery Californian voice edging dangerously close to anger as her eyes bored into me. I nodded.

"Yes. I'm sorry," I said lamely. Jas bunched up her fists, Savanna looked away from me, and Tyrone just kept crying. I tried to collect myself. "I- see, I wasn't thinking very much when we were taking everyone to the hospital, and he didn't seem like a serious case, and I just wanted to get him out of there so I could start treating the others. But, I think I might be able to fix him, since I have some MED-X in my bag-"

Suddenly, Tyrone let out a guttural scream, and tried to roll out of his cot. He couldn't use his legs, so he just started clawing at the sheets and trying to force himself onto the ground.

I moved to stop him, but he raked his nails across my face, cutting me and knocking off my glasses. I could feel the stinging welts rising up on my cheek and nose as the little tiny cuts started to bleed. My vision swam as I bent down and tried to find my glasses. The pain wasn't bad, but when it was mixed with the loud screaming and the blurry vision, it was giving me that scratchy, hot feeling all over my skin, filling my head with static. I covered my ears.

"Stay away from me!" he said, and I pressed on my ears harder. I tried to snatch my glasses up off the floor, but I was shaking too much to hold onto them. I let out a string of obscenities as I fumbled around on the ground, trying to find where I'd dropped the damn things, with Tyrone struggling as hard as he could to make his way to the ground. "You sack of shit- you know what's gonna happen to me now that I can't walk? What's gonna happen to my family?"

"Yes, which is why I'm offering to fix you!" I replied, finally managing to get my glasses back on. Tyrone snorted.

"Oh- oh, yeah, lemme just let the guy who broke my back fuck it up even more- yeah, that sounds like a fantastic way to die! Hell no! " I looked away. If I knocked him out with something, I might be able to operate, and then maybe he'd forgive me, and he'd stop yelling and making my head hurt so much…

"Oh, but Tyrone, would it hurt to let him try? This is… I can't imagine letting you live like this!"

"If you let me try, I promise that I'd be as careful as possible." Jas gave me an angry look, but I didn't notice it until it was too late. "If- if I get unsure of something, then I promise that I'll stop. Not that I'd be unsure, but, I don't really know the spine very well-"

"For God's sake, stop talking! You don't get a say in this!" she shouted, pushing me backwards with her palm. I stumbled back and fell on the ground, jamming my elbow against the floor. I squealed out in pain.

"Are we hurting Isaac?" Asked Tandi, suddenly appearing beside me in full battle garb. I glared at her. Why was she out of bed? How was she out of her bed? Come to think of it, Cook and her fractured rib probably shouldn't have been up and about either!

"Hell yeah we are! This dumbass broke my spine, and now he wants me to let him operate!"

I threw my hands up hopelessly. "What do you want? I messed up, now I want to fix it, so if you could stop-"

"Don't let 'im. I had some bruises on my chest, so he ripped me open and cut my heart up," said Tandi. I started to protest, but when I tried to make words, they just came out as angry noises- the kind a toddler would make. It was like I was in some kind of nightmare world.

"Y- you know what, I- I…" I started, hauling myself to my feet. I looked around for sympathy, and couldn't find any. Even Cook, who hadn't said anything yet, was looking away from me in a way that people sometimes do when they're embarrassed about me. I grabbed my medical bag from the floor. "You- if you don't want-" I was stress-talking. My words were still coming out funny. I took a deep breath, tried to relax. "If you don't want help, fine. I just had that talk with myself, and I ain't gonna try to force anything on you. I'll stop on the way back- maybe you'll've changed your mind or whatever." I turned around to leave. "In the meantime, I think the rest of us can pack up and leave. Clearly, none of you need any more rest, seeing as how you're both somehow walking around!" It all came out too quickly, I noticed in retrospect, but at least no one was yelling anymore.

As I stormed out the door, Gram stopped me.

"Why're ya leaving so early? Aren't you going to try to help poor Tyrone?" he asked. I shook my head.

"He doesn't want my help," I replied. Gram shrugged.

"So what? Give him some morphine, or whatever, then fix him. He'll be happier in the long run."

"You know, I just had that very same idea!" I started. Gram raised an eyebrow. "But then, this crazy thing happened, and I remembered that I ain't a shitty person like you!"

"You'll be doing the most good overall-"

"Fuck off!" I shouted, pushing him aside. He didn't fight me.

"Your choice. But, we're not gonna budge til sunrise. If you leave, you're leavin' alone ."

I froze where I stood.

Alone? I wasn't in the listening mood, but that connected immediately. If I left alone, I'd die. Mom would probably die too, and the entire point of all of this would be destroyed.

I sighed defeatedly, and walked out the door.

"Where ya going?" Gram asked, his voice steady. I didn't turn around.

"Sleeping outside. I need a break from people."

Gram didn't reply to that, thankfully. Now that the anger was fading, I was just left with the crushing reality of what I'd done, and it was making me do the annoying mopey thing where I deliberately secluded myself from anyone who might care about me.

Since I wasn't in the mood for human companionship, I decided to sleep in the brahmin stables. I had grown attached to Flebe-the-first in the time I'd spent trying to get him fed and watered, and so I didn't really mind the snoring noises he was making. In fact, it gave me some much needed white noise- the kind that I'd expect from sleeping over at Mr. and Mrs. McBain's house, for example. Beagle was always a loud snorer.

I checked my pip boy. 1:00 AM. We'd be getting up early. 6:00 AM maybe? 6:10? If I went to sleep right now, that would give me…

Before I could start justifying being up so late by calculating exactly how much sleep I'd get, I passed out in the hay. I might've been lying on my face in a Brahmin stable in the middle of Nevada desert, and yet I'd never fallen asleep so quickly. Usually, the world had a way of distracting me- I'd be kept up by the light of my computer, or the distant sound of howling animals, or the unexplainable, anomalous noises that always seemed to come from Black Mountain…

Not so tonight. As was becoming a theme, I was too tired to think about any of it. Before I could process any of it, the world had disappeared around me.

-break-

I woke up to irritating sound of frying bacon hissing in my ears. I opened my eyes and lifted my head a little bit to try to find the source of the noise, but found myself blinded by the morning sun.

"Ah, Jesus!" I muttered. I stuffed my face back into the hay. A straw of the stuff slipped past my glasses and poked my eyelid, and I struggled with my unresponsive arm to try to brush it away. Apparently I'd slept on the thing, and now it had that weird prickly feeling.

"Good morning, Isaac," said Cook- no, Savanna. I rolled myself over onto my side to look up at her as she walked over to me and knelt down. She was wearing a different dress today, with that lumberjack looking pattern on it. She was also offering me several pieces of bacon on the edge of a machete, I noticed, but I wasn't in any shape to grab it.

"Put it- put it in this hand," I grunted, weakly extending my functional left hand- the one with the weird finger arrangement. She obliged, sliding three strips of the delicious, greasy stuff into my hand. It was hot, but I'd always had a good tolerance for that sort of thing.

"Don't suppose Tyrone's calmed down any?" I asked, shaking the sleep out of my right arm. Savanna shook her head.

"Dunno- probably not. Everyone but me and Gram are still sleeping," said Savanna. She offered me a hand, and I took it. By the warm color of the light, I was guessing that it was around seven. Considering how late we'd all been up the previous night, I wasn't at all surprised that everyone else was sleeping in. In fact, I was a little bit sour that I hadn't gotten to. As I walked through the frame of the stable, I heard a little beeping noise over by the stove.

"What was that?" I asked.

"Not important," Savanna replied, letting go of my hand as I stumbled out into the sunlight. Even though it was relatively early in the morning, it was already painfully hot outside. It just didn't mesh with that pretty morning light.

"Why'd you decide to make breakfast out here? You've got a perfectly good kitchen inside," I said. She looked at me funny.

"Well, for one, it doesn't smell very good in there. All that dried blood was clogging up my sinuses..." I almost replied, but then she started doing the motions that people do when they're about to start talking, and I stopped in my tracks. "... And, I guess I kind of wanted to see you. I was worried, after all that happened last night."

"Worried?" I asked. The details of last night were still vivid in my memory, and I definitely couldn't recall contracting any diseases or ailments that would require constant monitoring of my morning routine. "Worried about what?"

"Well, I dunno. They were being kind of nasty with you last night, and I was worried you might run away or something…"

I looked over by the stove, and noticed a neatly made sleeping bag, with some sort of box next to it. Had Savanna slept outside?

"What's that… box thing? Did I just set that off?" I asked. Savanna nodded sheepishly.

"Its a motion detector," she admitted. I looked at her incredulously. "What? I keep a few of them around for when we camp in dangerous places. It seemed like a good precaution, given the circumstances!"

"Please don't yell," I said, pressing my hands against my temples. Savanna sighed.

"I'm sorry. I probably shouldn't have done that. But, you know, I felt kind of bad that I didn't stick up for you when you…"

"-Broke Tyrone's spine and then got angry at him for being upset. That was all a series of terrible, permanent mistakes. Carry on."

Savanna looked irritated, I think. "Yeah. That." There was an awkward silence. "Well, anyways, I felt like I should have said something. So, when you went outside and started yelling about how you needed time away from people, I felt like it was kind of my fault. And, since I knew you were upset, and upset people do stupid things, I tried to keep you from doing anything stupid."

I thought about that for a second. Normally, I would have been kind of creeped out by something like that, but something about the way that she explained it made it make sense.

"Well, alright. I can get behind that," I said. I stared at the door frame for a second. "How's the motion sensor work?"

Savanna's face lit up. "I'm glad you asked! See those two little blocks that are sitting at opposite ends of the doorframe?" She asked. I nodded. I did, in fact, see two little blocks, each of which sat at one end of the doorway. "Well, one of them is a laser, and one is a receptor. If anything interrupts the laser for more than one fourth of a second, the receptor sends a signal to the thing beside my sleeping bag, and it-" she waved her hand in front of the first box. "Beeps."

Sure enough, the third box made an angry little beeping sound- sort of like the sound that pre-war cars make when you mess with the lock. Savanna grinned.

"Huh. How many of those do you have?" I asked. Savanna thought for a second.

"Like, five. I've got one receptor that hasn't got a laser to it, after this asshole decided to chew up the lense," she said, motioning towards Flebe the second. Flebe the second basked in the insult, chewing some hay with what I could only assume was sass. Savanna made the, ' I'm watching you ,' motion with her fingers, then turned her attention back to the device. "Anyways, that's one of the ways I keep tabs on stuff. I don't like people sneaking up on me." She scooped up the laser, then the receptor, then started yanking at a long black wire, to reel in the beeping speaker-device. As the device came within her reach, she flicked a little switch on the side, and the beeping stopped.

"Thank you," I said. Savanna gave me a nod of acknowledgement, and started walking over towards her sleeping bag. "Any idea when we're leaving?"

She nodded. "Gram said we'll leave around noon. He wanted to leave earlier, but I convinced him that we needed time to recover." She looked over her shoulder, and gave me a sorry-looking glance. "Are you going to be ready to leave today?"

"Yeah, of course," I said. I lifted up my shirt a bit, and inspected the place where a shard of Deathclaw bone had stuck into my chest. Neatly bandaged, and it wasn't itching or hurting unless I touched it. I had a little cut on my nose, too, but that wasn't of any concern. "I don't even have any wounds that would've needed a Stimpack."

Savanna made a face that I didn't understand. "That's not what I…" she started saying, then stopped mid-sentence and looked away. "Never-mind. Eat your bacon or something. Do you need anything to drink?"

"Don't suppose you have the stuff to make agave juice?" I asked. Savanna nodded.

"I do, actually. We used to make it a lot, in my first tribe. How thirsty are you?"

"Um-" I pushed my tongue against the roof of my mouth, and almost gagged- my mouth was dry.

"Very?" I ventured. Wordlessly, Savanna walked around the corner, and got to work. I could hear the back doors of the caravan opening up, and then the clinking of glass implements, and then the familiar noise of liquid running from a tap, and a spoon clinking against the side of a cup.

For the first time that morning, I smiled, as Savanna came back around the corner, holding two cups of gold-tinted water, each with a sterling silver spoon hanging in the golden liquid…

"Holy cow, I haven't had any of this stuff since I was ten years old," I said, graciously accepting the sugary beverage with both of my hands. I sipped some of it, and my soul warmed up a little bit as the sweet ambrosia ran between my lips.

"I usually put whisky in it, but seeing as how it isn't even noon, I decided that I probably shouldn't," said Savanna, stirring her drink absently. I made a sound to let her know that I thought her joke was funny and kept sipping the desert ichor. She'd mixed it just right- she hadn't put in so little that the taste was weak, but she hadn't put in so much that it was insoluble in the cool water.

I liked Savanna, I decided.

"Well, I'm going to start making breakfast for the others. You can go back to sleep, if you want. We won't be leaving for a few hours.

I checked my pip-boy. 7:23 AM. Yeah, I got time.

"When do you think I should start packing?" I asked, picking some of the dried blood off of my shirt.

"I already packed everyone's stuff last night. Your coat and bag and helmet and stuff are in the wagon," said Savanna, seemingly deep in thought. I was about to take another sip of the Agave Juice, but I stopped at that. "I also packed up all the hospital stuff. I hope you didn't have an organizational system, because I totally overhauled it when I packed up."

That about did it for me. I mean, it's not like I had a system, but at least I knew where stuff was!

"Why did you do all of that? And, more importantly, how? Just how late were you up last night?" I asked.

Savanna snapped her fingers a few times, then said, "Two-thirty."

To be honest, I wasn't even surprised. I took another sip of the agave juice, wishing that she'd put whisky in it.

"As for why… I mean, why does anyone? I have trouble going to sleep sometimes. I sleep easier when I know I'm prepared for the morning."

Couldn't argue with that. Well, I could, but I didn't really want to, because that would mean that I had to remove the edge of my cup from my mouth, and I was in the process of savoring some of the syrupy agave-nectar that hadn't yet dissolved. That had been one of my few pleasures in life back in the bad-old-days, and I still found myself enjoying it all these years later. That and Ramen noodles were two things that I suspected I'd never grow tired of.

"Well, anyways, do whatever you want. If you want to come and have breakfast with us, go for it," said Savanna, walking towards the back door. She opened it up. "If not, then get some rest. If my hunch about where we're going today is right, we've got a lot of walking to do." She seemed like she was about to close the door, but then she stopped, and looked right at me. It was uncomfortable

"And, um, Isaac-" she started. I cocked my head. "Thanks for helping me with the Deathclaw thing. I know that no one else seems to care that you saved their lives, but I do. So… Thanks again, I guess."

I wanted to tell her that I hadn't really saved her life, and that I'd actually just made her broken rib heal faster. But, before I could get anything out, she closed the door behind her.

Was that what had brought this on? It's not as though she hadn't been friendly before, but she'd seemed kind of distant. She was usually friendly with me the same way that she was friendly with Tandi- the fake, polite, way with occasional flashes of genuine interest. The night before though, she'd gone far out of her way to keep me safe, and she'd seemed oddly honest and open this morning.

Well, whatever it was, I almost hoped it stayed that way- It was nice to have at least one real friend.

I started to walk back towards the stables to go back to sleep, then realized that Savanna had made the sleeping roll and left it out for me. I silently thanked her, and moved the fluffy blue roll into the shade of the main building. I removed my glasses.

Was I still stressed and angry at myself? Hell yes I was! The night's rest hadn't taken away the guilt of my mistakes. But, somehow, Savanna had made me feel better about it all. As I tucked myself in and pressed the side of my head into the soft, cool pillow, I decided that I'd have to thank her somehow. Not that I'd know how- I wasn't really used to having friends.

This could be good, I decided. I'd only ever thought about friendship in the abstract, yet it didn't feel particularly alien, even now that it was happening up close. A little too close, right now, but maybe I could get used to this!

-break-

The hot, sandy wind whipped at my grimy white coat and grated against my skin, as the old mining town of Sloan slowly disappeared behind us.

Can't say I'll miss it, I thought as we went around the bend of the highway, and into the valley pass. With any luck, I'd be able to stop by and try to fix the mistakes I'd made there on the way back. But, if that proved to be impossible, I had absolutely no problem with never going back.

"So, where exactly are we going?" Asked Savanna, looking over the map on my Pip-Boy. She scrolled one of the wheels a bit. "Assuming that this little blip is Sloan-"

"It is," I interjected. She nodded.

"Yeah. Well, since that's the place we just left, then we can either go the Nipton route, or we can go back to the fork and take the other way…"

"I'm planning on the latter," replied Gram, shielding his eyes from the 1-o-clock sunlight. He sighed and made a face as he stared down the highway.

"And that means we're going to Goodsprings."

[+] END OF ARC 1