"A doctor's most powerful tool is a Retrospect-oscope."
-An old adage
(+)10
2075 ROBCO(R)
LOADER V1. 1
EXEC VERSION 41.10
32K RAM SYSTEM
14302 BYTES FREE
HOLLOWTAPE LOADED: "THE-CALM-BEFORE..."
INITIALISING…
SUCCESS!
STATUS
Battery Level: 3% (CHARGING)
Wireless Signal: (?)
Operating Temperature: 93F
HEALTH
BP: 120/90
SPO2: 100%
Temp: 98.5F
RR: 12
HR: 70
TIME
Day: 27 SEP. 2279
Time: 20:42
CLIMATE
Current Temperature: 82 F
Atmospheric Pressure: 732 mmHG - 731 mmHG - 730 mmHG...
Background Radiation: 0.232 RAD
"... Barometer is reading lower than normal, and it's dropping fast. We're definitely getting a storm." Savanna's face glowed green beneath the sunset as she deciphered the words and numbers from the pip-boy. My pip-boy, technically, plugged into my backup battery cell, but I was more than happy to let her fiddle with it, considering how I didn't even know how to read anything outside of the HEALTH or STATUS tab. She stared at it for a while longer.
"Is it gonna be tonight?" Asked Gram, peering over Savanna's shoulder to look at the pip-boy. She shrugged.
"I'm not sure. I don't think it's imminent, if that's what you're asking. But, all I have is a barometer. Which is cool, but without something to measure wind speeds, I can't really get any super precise information like that." She scrolled one of the wheels on the frame, and some incomprehensible stuff flashed across the screen, the little green characters reflecting in her eyes. She made a disappointed, 'humph,' and clicked back to the STATUS page.
"Well, I don't wanna get rained on- bad for my skin, and all. We'll camp out by the crashed plane at Jean Sky Diving up ahead. Place is usually pretty safe, since it's already been looted ten times over," said Gram, walking up in front of us and to the Brahmin, who were getting a little bit off the path. He gently guided them back, tugging at the leather reigns and prodding each of them in the necks. Gradually, Hebe and Flebe found their way back onto the asphalt, where their footsteps sounded like the, "clip-clop!" of horses in wild-western movies.
"Would you nerds shut the hell up down there? I'm trying to sleep off all the shit that Sawbones here did to me last night!" shouted Tandi, from on top of the cart. Her and Savanna had temporarily switched places because of Tandi's wounds, which had been kind of nice because it let Savanna and I chat. Of course, it was a double-edged-sword- as it turned out, Tandi wasn't big on sitting in one place, and she took it out on us. She was complaining pretty much constantly about how we were too loud, or too boring, or too weak because we wanted a drink of water or a short rest. She was the only member of the party who hadn't asked me to help pop some blisters yet, because she was still too stubborn to accept help from me. Since the incident, she'd been especially biting towards me- everything I did that wasn't walking silently, Tandi bit my head off about it.
Then again, after what I'd done to her, I couldn't help but feel like I kind of deserved it. I could probably count myself lucky that she didn't straight-up shank me.
"Don't get too comfy up there, Tandi. I'm gonna need your help clearing out the site tonight. Might need your help with the little shed too," said Gram, pointing towards the big crater in the distance, where the small passenger jet had crashed all those years back. Tandi groaned through her helmet.
"Can't I just toss some grenades in there? I want to do teamwork ," she said, dangling her upper body over the edge like a sullen toddler. Gram shook his head.
"No- no, absolutely no grenades! That kind of noise attracts dangerous people. And, if it's all the same, I wanna have a place to sleep afterwards."
"Fine. You're clearing the plane though- I ain't getting the machine gun out of the trunk. Got enough bruises as is."
"Fair point. You'll do overwatch, then, and I'll clear with the double-barrel. Sound good?" asked Gram. Tandi gave Gram a salute, and pulled herself back atop the cart.
" Da ."
Some more time passed; the sun continued to set. By the time that the sun had disappeared behind the mountains, and the sky had grown dark and starry, we finally got to the end of the railroad tracks that we'd walked over to get to sloan. To the left were some boulders and hills that belied our new path, to Goodsprings. We were close enough now that I could make out the details of the skydiving supply-shack that sat on the side of the Goodsprings path, and see just over the edge of the crater where the crashed plane lay.
Straight ahead now, was home.
I hadn't even been gone that long- just over three days, now. And yet, I could already feel my eyes stinging as the tears started to well up behind my glasses. It wasn't far away- if I ran really fast, I could get there in a couple hours. Then, I would throw open my door, and I'd tell my mom sorry for leaving, and then- and then…
...Well, then I'd feel too guilty to leave again, and mom would die of cancer. It was the same reason I'd left so abruptly- any contact with mom might change my mind. Logically, I knew that I couldn't return, not without giving up. But, deep down, I still wanted to, and I couldn't make that go away. As much as I liked to pretend that I didn't feel illogical feelings, I knew as well as anybody else that that wasn't true. Whatever was wrong with me, it didn't make me a robot. As evidenced, of course, by the embarrassing amount of fluids now pouring out of my face.
"You alright, Isaac?" asked Savanna, quietly enough that I don't think the others heard. I nodded and tried to smile. I don't think it helped anything.
"Yeah, I'm okay. Just a little bit homesick," I replied, removing my glasses and wiping away the tears. I cleared my throat like I was done crying, but I could tell that I wasn't. I'd turned the other way as soon as I started getting the chest-ache that accompanies that kind of sadness, but the image had already burned itself right into my brain. The sight of home- so close, and so far- had hit me like a sack of bricks.
"Let's just keep going. I wanna have time to sleep tonight."
-break-
"Plane is empty!" Shouted Gram, from across the way. We shared a collective sigh of relief. Tandi lowered her green-stocked rifle with the funky scope, and looked at Savanna.
"Disengaging. Keep spotting for Gram, alright? He can't see shit in the dark." Savanna made a little, "Mhm," sound, and kept her binoculars steady. Tandi patted her on the head and strolled up to the door of the shed, where she holstered her rifle and folded in in the little legs. After fiddling about with the straps for a few seconds, she drew her massive, six-cylinder revolver.
Immediately, I tensed up. Gram had mentioned that I might watch people die, but I wasn't expecting to do it this close. What if there was someone in there? Would Tandi shoot to kill- and, if she didn't kill the poor bastard, would her and Gram let me fix him? My blood ran cold, and my mind raced with gruesome possibilities as Tandi poised herself outside the rusted metal door.
"I know there's no one in there, but-" I started.
"CLEARIN' THE SHED," shouted Tandi. Immediately, I covered my ears and braced myself for her to kick open the door and start shooting, but she didn't; she just sat there, helmet pressed against the wall, revolver pointed against the door at an angle. After a few tense seconds, she quietly opened the door and waited for a response. I craned my neck and rolled over a bit to try to get a view inside the shed, but I knew it was futile- the door was at a bad angle. All I saw was a bunch of dust blowing out of the doorway as the age-old room was opened. Tandi stepped around the other side of the doorway.
"Oh- ENEMY SPOTTED! ENEMY SPOTTED!" She barked. Again, I covered my ears and threw myself against the ground, waiting for the muzzles to explode and the bullets to go flying. Savanna didn't budge- she just looked mildly amused, which confused me until I realized that no one was actually being shot, and that Tandi was just trying to psyche out potential enemies. I sighed, and dusted the sand and gravel off of my coat. I was starting to get a little bit embarrassed with myself at this point.
"You'll get used to it," said Savanna, scrolling the variable-zoom on her binoculars until she found a setting that was apparently more satisfactory. I nodded absently. "Of course, we've got codewords for actual danger. If she spots an actual enemy, for example, she'd say-"
"POLARIS!" Screamed Tandi. I started to smile, until suddenly the gunshots started going off, and the whole shed lit up with orange flashes and blasts of debri. Three vaguely humanoid figures came rushing out the front door, tails flicking behind them as the .45-70 rounds licked at their heels, flinging up dust and sand and little flecks of blood and bone into the night.
It wasn't until the fifth gunshot or so that I realized that the gunshots weren't nearly as loud as they should have been at this range. That reminded me that I should be covering my ears, and I started to do that, then realized that Savanna had already covered them for me.
"Huh," I said, staring out at the little massacre taking place before me. The dust was settling now, and Tandi was limping out of the shack, holding a big scary knife in one hand and an empty revolver in the other. One of the downed Geckos was rapidly crawling away on three limbs, so Tandi threw the knife directly into its spine. It convulsed on the ground until Tandi put its skull in with her boot. The overwhelming, nail-polish-remover scent of the vintage cordite propellant from Tandi's revolver began to drift my way.
"Are you okay?" Asked Savanna, lifting her hands off the sides of my head. I tried to nod, but found my muscles to be unresponsive.
"Yes!" I managed to say, eventually. I was shaking badly, but besides that I really was okay. Savanna had done a good job muffling the gunshots.
"Are you okay?" I asked, suddenly realizing that Savanna wouldn't have been able to cover her own ears. She tapped the side of her head.
"Yeah, I've got earplugs in."
"Ah."
We were both silent for a second, observing the carnage. Three dead geckos in sight, and who-knows-how-many in the shed. Tandi tore off her helmet.
"You gonna help me or not!?" She shouted, gesturing toward her leg with her revolver. I squinted through my glasses, and realized that she was bleeding through her jeans- dark, venous blood.
"Oh- Oh, 'course! Sorry, I didn't see it in the dark…" I started, trailing off as Tandi came closer. Normally, I wasn't great at reading expressions, but the one that Tandi was giving me couldn't really be misinterpreted. She was doing the angry-squint at me with her good eye, and the lidless, empty socket on the other side. I reached into my medical case, and grabbed my sterile gloves- Or, a catheter tube that I'd forgotten that I had. How had that gotten in the glove spot?
Oh, right- Savanna. I grumbled something about organized chaos and rearranging my things as I peered into the bag, searching for the spot where Savanna had placed my gloves. Once I finally found them, Tandi had already sat down and elevated her injured leg using a little rock.
"Mind if I cut through the jeans?" I asked. Tandi shrugged.
"Just don't cut into my ribcage." I winced at that, which almost made me drop the folded utility knife that I'd been in the process of retrieving from my coat. Blocking out the part of my mind that wanted to let the remark get to me, I flashed her an exaggerated smile, and pried open the knife.
"I'll try my best."
I started to saw through the tough denim jeans, but then was moving her leg and pulling back whenever my knife got too close to her skin, which threw me off. Eventually I opted to just cut two vertical lines and then roll the flap up to reveal the wound- a deep, two-toothed bite mark, right between the tibia and fibula. It wasn't even that nasty, but something about the unfortunate placement of the wound- right through the anterior tibial vein- made me feel it in my own leg. I shivered.
"Normally, I start with direct pressure and go from there. But, I'm pretty sure that won't work here, so I'm just gonna go straight for the pressure dressings," I said. I put away my knife and reached into my medical bag.
"Hold up- what's a pressure dressing? Is it some freaky surgical shit? Is it gonna make my leg fall off?" I shook my head.
"No, that's a tourniquet, and those don't actually make your leg fall off. But that's beside the point. This is just a real tight bandage," I said, drawing my flask of rubbing alcohol and pouring it over a strip of gauze. She smirked at me.
"I'm joking, hack-job. I was a soldier once." I wanted to defend myself, but as I'd realized with her, fighting just caused escalation, and I really didn't want to push it past mean-spirited taunting while I was operating. So, I just gave her another, "winning," smile, and got to cleaning and dressing her wound.
"And stop doing that face. It's fuckin creepy- Makes me think you're about to go all doctor-frankenstein on me, start sewing on Gecko skin or some shit."
Immediately, I stopped smiling, and my skin turned beet red. I was awfully defensive about that smile- I brushed my teeth often, but everyone still told me that it was creepy! It was what you might call disheartening.
"Hey, it's not- I mean, It's not that creepy," Said Savanna, smiling a nice smile that people like her could do without trying. I gave her the most exaggerated smile I could muster, started reaching for my knife...
"See, now that's a scary grin! It's like, the mouth of Sauron if he were a geek!" I wasn't sure who the mouth of Sauron was, but I decided to be proud of the remark.
"Less talk, more fix!" Shouted Tandi, whacking me in the side with her good leg. I laughed and shouted something obscene as I arched my spine, playing it up like I'd just gotten shanked.
"Ah, sweet fuck, she got my spleen! I'm done, y'all, I'm not gonna make it!" I tumbled onto my side and raised one hand dramatically to the sky. Tandi poised her leg to kick again. "The lights- oh my god, I see a light…"
"Bitch, do you want your intestines kicked out through your nose? Fix my leg!"
I quickly pulled myself back up, on the off chance that Tandi might actually do that to me.
"Hey, I was gettin' there! It's not like you're gonna die or nothin." I chewed on my lip a little. "And, just, just outta curiosity, have you ever actually-"
"She has," Savanna said darkly. When I apparently didn't look convinced, she clutched at her stomach and made a dramatic squirting motion just under her nose using her free fingers.
"Just like that!" said Tandi, grinning with the good side of her face.
I apparently continued to look skeptical as I wound the alcohol-treated bandage around Tandi's injured leg, because both of them kept making silent, cryptic references to the gory act throughout the procedure.
"Alllllrighty, that should do it. Geckos ain't poisonous, right?" I asked, tieing off the gauze bandage. Savanna looked mystified.
"Did you… Did you just say, ' ain't '?" I did an uncomfortable laugh. Had I?
"Prolly? Why would that matter?"
"Well, it doesn't. It's just… you have the cowboy-voice thing going on, but you don't usually speak in the vernacular. Is it like, a stress thing? Or do you just do it sometimes?" I thought about that for a second. That was a good question!
"I'm actually not sure! I never even noticed myself doing it until this moment. Have you heard me do it with other words?" I asked. Savanna stared at the ground for a few seconds, presumably scouring her memory, then nodded.
"Well, yeah, but everyone uses those ones. Only cowboys and mobsters say, 'ain't.'" We were all silent for a few seconds. "Oh, and to answer your question about poison- no. Venom, on the other hand: yes, actually!"
My heart sank. "What?" I asked, in a monotone. Tandi raised an eyebrow.
"Do you need to cut off my leg? I've always wanted a robot-leg," said Tandi. I glared at her.
"Tandi, you can't- that ain't- What!?" I pressed my hands against my temples. How'd father told me to deal with venom? Was it- was it the same for all of them? Was the antivenom in my medical case universal? How did I apply it? Was it intravenous, intramuscular, or would she have to swallow it? And, what if the venom attacked the airway, and she couldn't swallow it, and I had to-
"...Of course, their venom is meant for subduing small prey, and one bite won't do anything except for maybe making you feel sort of drowsy," said Savanna, placing a hand on my shoulder. I sat with my mouth open. Despite her reassurance, I was still sort of tense, which I guess she noticed. "Trust me- I've had a few bites before, and I'm still alive." I bobbed my head up and down.
"Uh-huh," I said, turning away and staring out at the old, crashed plane. I saw the familiar red beam of Gram's flashlight darting across the hillside as he jogged towards us.
"The hell happened up here?" Gram asked, stepping up over the hilltop and scanning the scene with his tracking-flashlight. The blood and scales glimmered in the crimson light.
"Geckos tried to fuck with me, I shot em dead," said Tandi. She motioned towards the pile of corpses behind us. The smell of cordite and blood still hung in the windless air, and some flies were already starting to buzz around the corpses.
"That's what I was thinkin', but you can never be too sure. Tandi didn't get bitten too much, right Isaac?" asked Gram. I shook my head and started to explain-
"They only got me once! That's the first time one of them's ever gotten me," interrupted Tandi, picking up her knife and tapping it against the wound. Gram sighed.
"I'm very proud of you, Tandi. You want a band-aid and some Sugar-Bombs?" Savanna brightened up.
"Ooh, My dad used to prescribe Sugar-Bombs and brahmin milk for Gecko bites! Well, that, and the flesh of the Gecko that bit me," she recounted. She looked over at one of the fallen Geckos. Tandi tossed her knife in the air and caught it by the blade. She was also eyeing the Geckos now.
"I could eat a couple of those scaly fucks. You'd have to cook 'em, but…"
"I gotcha! Do you want them filleted, or are we thinking more along the line of kebabs?" asked Savanna, standing up and straightening the ruffled edges of her sundress. Tandi shrugged.
"What's quicker?"
"Kebabs, in terms of the actual cooking, but I'd have to prepare the vegetables first. Isaac, do you wanna help me with that?"
I nodded. I had no idea how to prepare any sort of vegetables, unless you meant brain-dead patients, but I liked being helpful, and I suspected that it wouldn't be very hard to learn. Savanna seemed like a capable teacher, after all.
"Good. I'll get to butchering the geckos- the vegetables are in a little basket hanging off the side of the cart. Go grab those, and we can get to work," said Savanna, pointing to where we'd hid the cart. I gave her a thumbs up, and set out through the darkness on my newfound quest.
Though I was not looking forward to trudging through the perilous darkness for twenty minutes, (and probably falling over at least a few times,) I found myself looking past that and thinking about spending more time with Savanna, which sounded nice. Admittedly, we'd already spent plenty of time together throughout the day, but I appreciated her company. Underneath the oddly narrow role of, "Cook," she was clearly well educated. Probably a good deal smarter than me, which was a low bar but still. Plus, she smelled like she actually bathed regularly, which I can't say for most of the folks I've met in the wasteland.
All in all, she was the only member of the caravan who I didn't despise at least a little bit.
-break-
"Cocka-doodle-doo, cocksuckers! Let's get going!"
Why did I always have to wake up to something loud and annoying? Before I was even done processing that I was awake, I was pressing my palm and fingers into my eyes to avoid having to look outside. The sun was on the other side of the shed, but it was still way too bright for my poor little eyes to process. I heard Savanna mumble something which, while I couldn't understand exactly, I was inclined to agree with on the basis of it sounding angry. Mornings are the worst.
"What time is it?" I asked, sitting up and squinting at Tandi through the space between my thumb and pointer finger. She shrugged.
"Don't know, don't care. Hoplite says we gotta get going early to make up for all the lost time. Said something about a storm, too- If we wanna avoid it, we gotta be at Goodsprings before three."
"That's… manageable, I think. Mind if I borrow your pip-boy?" Asked Savanna, sitting up in her sleeping bag. Squinting to try to see without my glasses, I fumbled around on the little patch of floor next to me until I found my pip-boy, and clumsily passed it off to her. Immediately, she switched to the map tab, and placed two fingers on the screen, presumably on the distance-indicator. I wasn't sure how she could see anything, with how messy her short, spiky hair was in the morning. It practically covered her face.
"Well… we have to travel at the same speed as the brahmin, which is usually about 5.5 kilometers per-hour- plus breaks, don't want to forget those! So, if we leave in, say, half an hour, we should get there around two-thirty or three…." Savanna looked like she was about to start talking again, but Tandi stuck out her palm and turned her head away, which I recognised as a way of telling Savanna to be quiet because it's the same thing that father used to do to me.
"Save it for Hoplite- I ain't a witch. I ain't about to melt." She opened the door back up, and leaned on the doorframe. "We're leaving in twenty minutes. I'll see you at the cart."
And then she left, slamming the door behind her and leaving Savanna and I alone and bewildered in the old supply-shack. The remnants of last night's dinner still lay strewn about the room- pots and pans, vegetable scraps, dirty knives, a pilot-light grill… we'd thankfully had the good sense to toss out the unused gecko meat before we went to sleep, but I was pretty sure I could still smell it rotting outside. Might've just been my imagination.
"I'm going to go get dressed. Do you want to help me pack up all the cooking stuff?" Asked Savanna, picking up her camping-bag and slinging it over her shoulder. I shrugged.
"I mean, I gotta get dressed too." Savanna rolled her eyes at me.
"Well, yeah, but getting into a dress takes a lot longer than putting on pants and a jacket."
"Wait, really? How long does it take?"
"Well, it depends on the dress. Some of them have a zipper or a seam that needs to be done and undone, and I usually wear a halter, which takes time to adjust. Plus, most of the dresses that I can wear have to be baggy to fit me, so I take time to pin and adjust stuff on that end whenever I have time…"
"So why do you even wear dresses, then? I'd get sick of having to do all that stuff every morning." Savanna didn't immediately respond to that, so I wondered if I might have hit a nerve. I looked away from her, and tried to fill the awkward void by putting my aforementioned pants on. Then, just as I finished tightening the belt, Savanna spoke:
"I'm practicing."
And she left it that. Before I could ask any further, she walked out the door in her nightgown, carrying her bag of clothes and supplies with her. Probably for the best, I realized in retrospect- I might've said some very tasteless things, given a few more minutes. But, one question remained in my head:
Practicing?
I'd ask about it later. In the meantime, I used my solitude as a chance to finish getting dressed. Before I had gone to bed, I'd taken off my glasses, pants, shoes, helmet, and jacket, and I'd also unbuttoned my shirt. Since I'd left all of it in a heap by my sleeping bag, it didn't take long to get it all back on, though I always had some trouble with shirt buttons. My jacket had the nice, big-buttons that were easy to slot in, but my undershirt had these annoyingly small ones that I couldn't ever seem to get right.
Once I was finished with that agonizing process, I checked my pip-boy and found that I still had about 13 minutes until our departure. I spent the remaining time packing up the cooking supplies, and cleaning out the ones that still had stuff in them. Since I didn't have anything to put them in, I just stacked them by the door, and waited for Savanna.
A few minutes before we had to leave, The heavy metal door opened and Savanna came walking back in, wearing the same high-cut sundress that she'd worn on the first day. She had fixed her hair, too, which reminded me how messed up mine would be after all this time. Back home, I'd put gel in it and model it after the way that famous actors wore it before the war, with two sections and the little swoosh in the front, and all of it combed to stay out of my forehead-eye region.
"You ready?" I asked. Savanna nodded.
"Yeah, I think. Thanks for getting the cooking stuff together," she replied, stooping over and scooping the stacks of kitchen-applications into her camping bag. I bobbed my head.
"Mhm."
I opened the door for her because I wasn't carrying anything, and then we walked out to the cart. After last night's dinner, Gram and Tandi had taken some time to hide it in the crater, just beside the crashed jet. Hebe and Flebe had slept where we left them, standing up and tethered to the cart.
Of course, when we looked over the edge, there was nothing. No cart, no Brahmin- the motion sensors that Savanna had placed down were gone too.
"What-" I started, my stress levels reaching an all time high. Had someone actually made off with the cart, or had-
"Debil! Over here!"
I sighed. Of course, that was it . Gram and Tandi were sitting up beside a massive boulder that sat against the hillside behind me, eating dried Brahmin jerky and watching us blunder around. I could see the cart poking out from behind the boulder.
"Come on, we're trying to beat the storm! Pick up the pace!" shouted Gram, doing a "come hither" thing with his hand. Suddenly, the sun felt really hot against the back of my neck, and I really, really wished that I was one of those people who just knew these things. Proper protagonists, like Sherlock Holmes, or Grognak the Barbarian. I hated being a Rincewind.
"Coming," I said, driving my gaze into the cracked pavement below my feet as I walked towards the cart. Savanna followed.
"Yeah. Isaac and I thought that we'd get one last look at the cool pre-war plane. Right, Isaac?" Savanna gave me a friendly punch in the shoulder, which scared me at first because getting punched in the shoulder doesn't really feel friendly until you remember that it's supposed to be. I nodded earnestly.
"Definitely. I'm a real big fan. Um, superior engineering, that thing." I blanched at the words that came out of my mouth. I genuinely did think that pre-war planes and cars were kind of cool- when I was like, ten. It had been one of my shortest lived, and yet most passionate obsessions, right next to clouds. After that had been pre-war books and stories, then the stars, and then pre-war Hollywood, and then human anatomy. Obviously, I still appreciated that last one, though I wasn't quite as fixated anymore. I was just grateful that I could still retain all the facts from when I was.
"Well, if you're done ogling that superior piece of junk, let's go. I kinda like my skin- hate to lose it to some Nevada dew."
And so we set off down the road, towards Goodsprings. Up above, the dark grey Cumulonimbus clouds gathered ominously. A bit of thunder crackled in the distance; A bad omen, according to some dumbass boat-people from before the war. Of course, we'd developed our own bad omens by now, but the hairs on my neck still stood up a little at the sound. Maybe it was because, deep down, I was a little bit superstitious. Or maybe I got a glimpse into the future right then, and it had nothing to do with the thunder.
Or, I was being a pussy. Probably the last one. I did my best to ignore the sinking feeling in my gut as we came closer to Goodsprings, the friendliest little town in the Mojave.
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