(+)13
2075 ROBCO(R)
LOADER V1. 1
EXEC VERSION 41.10
32K RAM SYSTEM
11302 BYTES FREE
HOLLOWTAPE LOADED: "THE-DIA-TRIBE"
INITIALISING…
SUCCESS!
STATUS
Battery Level: 99%
Wireless Signal: (?)
Operating Temperature: 92F
HEALTH
BP: 120/90
SPO2: 100%
Temp: 98.5F
RR: 12
HR: 70
TIME
Day: 29 SEP. 2279
Time: 12:24
CLIMATE
Current Temperature: 73F
Atmospheric Pressure: 761 mmHG
Background Radiation: 0.243 RAD
As prophesied the night before, I woke up with an awful, pounding headache that permeated all of my senses; In fact, I was pretty sure that I could taste the pain. Or, maybe that was just backwash from all of the whiskey that I'd downed the night before. I'd probably be able to smell it, too, if I could smell. But, as I was rapidly coming to theorize, my sense of smell had probably been ruined after a large piece of glass bisected the bridge of my nose.
Actually, I was kind of glad that I couldn't smell. Last night's experiments had left the room covered in little splashes of blood, and there was at least one headless gecko corpse in the corner of the room. The bugs hadn't gotten to it yet, but it probably still would have smelled foul. When the stomach acids of a dead animal start eating away at their innards, lots of interesting smells are produced.
"God, what time is it?" I muttered, rolling over on my side and squinting at Savanna's sleeping bag- which was, of course, absent.
Immediately, the memories of the night before came flooding back in vivid detail. Mentats had that affect- all of the memories that you make while you're high on the things are incredibly sharp. Because of the other substances that I had mixed the Mentats with, however, this had the unfortunate side-effect of showing me a high-definition playback of all the dumb shit that I did and said while I was drunk, through the chilling lens of sobriety.
Hellish, right?
"I ain't never, ever, getting drunk again," I murmured to myself, sitting up and cracking my spine over my arm. Supposedly, that's not a healthy thing to do, but I had just slept on the floor. If I didn't pay such close attention to my posture, I'd probably be immobilized with pain from all of the floor-sleeping I'd been doing lately.
After that, I went about my morning routine much as I usually would. I hadn't taken any of my clothes off before I went to sleep the previous night, and I couldn't button my coat up if I wanted to seeing as how Ollie had ripped all the buttons off. There was a cracked mirror hanging up in front of the drug lab, and since I hadn't groomed myself in the past few days, I decided to take a look.
I wish I hadn't. I looked like I'd dragged my face through a rosebush. A couple of deep, red cuts, and lots of little scratches all over my face.
But that wasn't the worst part. My hair, which I usually kept styled in that nice way that actors from the 1950s had theirs, with the little swoosh in front, was just a terrible straw-colored mess. I'd subconsciously been keeping it out of my face, thankfully, but it was still just a spiky, frizzy mess starting around my eyebrows.
This was easy enough to fix. I didn't have the time to properly style it, but it had never looked bad slicked back. Of course, combined with the dark circles under my eyes, and the "I-can't-grow-a-beard-but-haven't shaved-in-five-days" look, I still wouldn't be looking too purdy. There wasn't much I could do about the cuts or the dark circles short of painting them over, but I could definitely shave off the gross scruff that was gathering on my neck and chin.
So, I got to work on that- the shelter didn't have a working sink, necessarily, but it did have one of those cool pre-war drinking fountains. I splashed and shaved under my chin, then took off the stuff that was gathering on my throat. I thought about scraping away the five-day shadow, too, but it really didn't look too bad. It covered up the acne on the lower half of my face, and made me look older- If I was being entirely honest with myself, it kind of reminded me of my father. He'd had a much fuller, more well-groomed beard, but it was a start. Maybe if I could live up to his legendary facial hair, I could live up to him.
Then I went on to the hair. I didn't have a comb, but I did spot a fork lying on the drug lab from the night before, so I used that to get out the tangles and the dried blood. I had a lot of blood on me, come to think of it- I'd been keeping my skin washed whenever I got water from a pump, but my clothes were grimy. My coat in particular looked like one of those horror-movie props, with all the layers-and-layers of bright and dark blood that were spattered over it. Some of it looked almost brownish, some of it was black, and a tiny bit was still vaguely crimson. I was hesitant to use any of my hydrogen-peroxide for something so trivial as having a pretty coat- But, in fairness, it was getting pretty damn nasty. Plus, it reminded me of what had happened to Ollie and Volker, a reality which I'd been avoiding since the moment it happened.
And, now I was thinking about it. I needed something to distract me from the thought, something that occupied my mind more than grooming. I didn't have any games on my pip-boy, and I (still) couldn't read past a kindergarten level, but I did have one thing that I hadn't used in a while…
A radio.
When I was younger, I could only ever stand to listen to classical music, because it was formulaic and predictable. There are no surprises or uncertainties in classical music, just a mathematically-sound structure composed of lots of pleasing noises. Almost all classical music followed a set of rules that I could understand and discern, with few exceptions.
But, let's face it; that shit's kinda boring. Like, if I'm stemming the bleeding on some injured guy while a ranger with a machine gun lays down suppressive fire on my position, I don't want some stuffy Beethoven tune playing in the background- I want something that captures a feeling, makes you want to dance!
I clicked to the seventies channel.
'Do you remember… the Twenty first night, of September?' asked the song, behind some trumpets and drums. I grinned.
"My thoughts are with you… holding hands with your… something! I see you, oh, uh, shit, how's it go?" I listened intently and hummed along as I tried to find a place where I knew all the words and could pick back up. The song was almost over, though, and no such place presented itself until I'd gotten to the part where he just goes, "ba-da-da, da da da," over and over. I decided to be content with humming and snapping along (but not actually snapping, because who the hell actually knows how to snap their fingers) to the beat, until the song finally tapered off and "Disco Inferno" started.
Satisfied with my choice of music, I continued combing out my hair with a tarnished, silver fork.
"I heard this song was supposed to be in a movie- apparently, they mixed it wrong, and that's why it sounds so good," said Gram, his loud, New-Yorkian voice booming from behind me. I whipped around to see him leaning in the doorway, holding the door open with one finger. Grinning like he always was. "Of course, I don't know how true that is, but it sounds credible to me. How you holdin' up, buddy?"
"I'm… better," I admitted, tilting my head back and straining the water out of my hair. Immediately, my damaged sinuses clogged up. A bit of lukewarm water dribbled down my neck. "I had a good time with Sav- er, Cook. We tried to compare human and gecko blood, on account of them looking and tasting similar, but Tandi's rifle scope didn't make a very good microscope. Actually, now that I mention it, I should probably give that back…"
"I'll sneak it into the wagon before we leave. Tandi's still snoozing," said Gram, nodding towards the door. It wasn't raining no more, which made me feel a little bit happier.
"Yeah, that'll work. Is she, like, alright?" Gram made a little waving motion with his hand.
"She'll get over it. She was just being a crybaby back at the bar- not used to getting hurt, least not anymore." I must not have looked convinced, because he put a hand on my shoulder and tried to look me in the eyes with his black, pupil-less orbs. I stared up at the ceiling. "And besides, that crazy old bitch had it coming. I'm sorry that I couldn't stop her from shooting those two guys back there- Volker and…"
"Ollie, and don't make me think about it. I don't wanna hate her."
Gram sighed, and put a couple of fingers on his forehead; sort of like that thing that I always did with my temples. I don't know why he was stressed; It's not like I was mad at him. True, he'd shot someone, but he'd been acting in self-defense. Ain't what I'd have done, but people gotta make their own choices.
"Right. Now, listen, I'm sure Cook's told you all about it by now, but I still feel like I gotta stress this: Those were legion guys, and Tandi does not like the Legion very much. I'm not at liberty to tell you exactly what they did to her, but it was bad; probably worse than anything I could think up, and I'm very creative," he said, indicating just how creative he was with his outstretched arms. I shrugged.
"Doesn't make it okay."
"I ain't saying that it does. Just that it makes it understandable. None of us were having our finest moments back there, either, so don't get me started on how she "had a choice," and all that shit. I don't get the feeling that you like hurting people, but that didn't stop you from snapping a lady's arm in half!"
"I didn't, "Snap it in half," I dislocated it at the shoulder," I said, only I said it quietly because I knew that it was a stupid thing to say. It didn't absolve me of the crime; I'd given in to the urge to hurt, despite the oath I swore all those years back.
"I'm not in the business of semantics, Isaac. Tandi shoots a guy who you wanna help, you snap her fucking arm. Seems like a fair exchange me," said Gram. When I didn't reply, he gave me a wide-shrug, and looked at me as if to ask, "Whadda'ya gonna do about it?" in that stupid New-York gangster voice. Or was it a boat-person voice? Gangster boat-person? Gram's past was confusing and stupid.
On the radio, the song ended, and a new one came on. I still don't know the name, but I'll bet it was called "Survive," or, "I will Survive," or something like that, on account of them saying that a bunch. That new song played for about twenty seconds, before Gram finally decided that he was done waiting for me to say something.
"Alright, I'll leave you alone- clearly, I ain't swaying you any. But, before I do, I feel like I should tell you something that I've noticed," He said. I took a deep breath.
"...What?"
"You and Tandi… Well, I don't know if you realize it, but you ain't so different. Once you get past the whole killing thing, I mean."
"Elaborate," I said, immediately. Gram did a smug grin.
"You're both naive extremists. You're a self-destructive anarchist, Tandi's a self-destructive nationalist for whoever's in control of her life at the moment. Which leads me to my next comparison, which is that you both hate yourselves an unhealthy amount." I clasped my hands together until they turned white. I did not hate myself- I just knew my limits! Clearly, he realized he'd hit a nerve, because his smile got even bigger as he continued. "…And then, there's your idiot bravado. Sure, you freak out sometimes, cause you ain't seasoned like Tandi. But, when you ain't freaking out, you get up to some ballsy shit."
"Gram, where are you going with this?" He dropped the smile. Somehow, his pitch-black eyes seemed to grow darker.
"'Where I'm going with this is that you've got one real big thing in common, and it trumps all the other stuff: you're both working for me. And if I don't see some big attitude improvements from both of you, we're gonna have some contractual problems."
He let that sink in for a moment, and then turned his back to me and walked up to the door. Before he walked out, he took off his plaid hat and looked at me over his shoulder. He was smiling again.
"I'll see you outside in ten minutes. Soon as you come out, you're gonna give Tandi a big hug and tell her that you're sorry for snapping her arm." He put his hat back on and walked through the doorway. "Ciao!"
I stood alone for a moment.
…Oh now, go- just walk out the door!
Turn around now, cause you ain't welcome anymore...
I turned off the radio.
"Hmm," I said, because I wasn't sure how I was feeling.
I went over the conversation over and over in my head, trying to figure out what all I'd missed- the little stuff, like his posturing and tone and the funny words that he'd decided to use. I went over everything, and all I got was one big, mysterious blank, because I couldn't understand Gram. Nothing that he'd told me scanned normally- so many possible double meanings and veiled threats... I felt attacked, and hurt, and kind of scared, but I couldn't really tell you why if I wanted to.
'Hmm' indeed.
-Break-
"Thank-you-very-much!" snapped Tandi, grabbing the rifle out of my hands and scooping up the flashlight. Immediately, she got to work screwing it back in. I sat and watched like a guilty toddler, soaking in the dull, cloudy sunlight on my neck and waiting for someone to say something. So much for sneaking it into the cart.
"…Yeah. Um, sorry about dislocating your arm. Looks like you already fixed it?" I asked, eventually. She nodded.
"Mm. Gram told me to play nice with you. What do you think of that?"
"I think we should stay far away from each other," I said. Tandi nodded again.
"Smart. Guess it'd be too much to ask you to stay away from my spotter too?"
"Oh, definitely! Unless you also want to make some big concession- like, say, doing this without killing any more folks?"
"Sawed-Off limit, sawbones."
"Great. I'm glad we understand each other." I extended one hand. "We good?"
"Not really," said Tandi. She slung her rifle over her shoulder and walked away. I sat there with my hand outstretched for a few more seconds before I realized that she wasn't going to shake it.
Well, no one could say I didn't try.
"You can come out now, Savanna," I said, nodding to my left, where Savanna had been hiding for a while now. I couldn't see her face well, but I was pretty sure that she looked surprised.
"How'd you know I was watching?" I shrugged. She wasn't very good at hiding, but that would be a mean thing to say.
"You were making a lot of noise," I said instead. That was nicer than telling her that she was noisy, or so I inferred from an old trick that Mom had taught me: instead of calling people something bad, tell them that what they're doing wrong. Like, if I want to politely tell someone that they're an idiot, I could tell them that they, "Did something stupid," or, "Made a bad choice." Or, if I really wanted to lay it on them, I could say that they're "being an idiot," which at least implies that they aren't always an idiot.
"Oh, you must be really fun to play Hide-and-Seek with. I'll bet you were the kind of kid who used thermal goggles when you were a seeker."
"No, but I do have a bad habit of flipping the table after a bad game of checkers," I admitted, which made Savanna laugh. My heart always got really warm whenever she laughed, and this time was no exception.
"Oh, word? Didn't know you were a sore loser too." I shrugged.
"Who knows? I only remember doing it because mom told the story every time that we had guests over." I was quiet for a moment. The calm autumn wind blew at my coat and chilled my warm skin. "I'm sorry about last night."
Savanna laughed again, but it wasn't a nice laugh; It was the kind that people do when they're feeling uncomfortable.
"What? No, that's not how this was going to go- see, I was going to say sorry to you," said Savanna, pointing at me with her index finger like I'd forgotten who "you" was. I cocked my head.
"Why? I mean, I don't know exactly what I did wrong last night, but I must've done something-"
"Trust me Isaac, you didn't do anything wrong," interrupted Savanna. I ignored her.
"-Because, if I hadn't done something weird, you wouldn't have walked out of the room like that! You don't gotta pretend that I didn't."
"Isaac, I'm not kidding- you're fine. I had a really nice time last night." She put her hand on my shoulder. "That's the problem."
"What do you mean?" I asked. She turned me around, guided me down the road with her.
"Come on, walk with me- It's kind of a long story..."
And so I walked with her, grabbing my medical bag from in front of the shelter when we passed by it. We were heading towards the cart, apparently, the same way that Tandi had gone. She wasn't talking, at first, but as the cart came into view, I guess she finally worked out what she was going to say. She took a long, deliberate drink from her canteen, wiped her mouth, and did a big old sigh. I waited patiently by.
"Gosh, alright, so, let's start at the beginning: When I was a kid, I was part of a nomadic, rice-growing tribe. We had little celebrations every harvest, and worked like dogs the rest of the time. Once every six harvests, we'd have a really big celebration, right? And then pack up and move somewhere else. We had a lot of stuff- weapons, food, tents, bedrolls, you name it, and every time that we moved, we had to move it all with us. And, since we were a merchant tribe, we pretty much had to keep perfect track of every single item, every bottle cap, every paper dollar… As I'm sure you can imagine, it was a total logistical nightmare. So, they trained one person in each new generation the art of accounting. At any given time, they'd have two fully trained accountants, and one in training. When I was four years old, the newest girl in training died of leukemia. They took me to replace her."
We were walking downhill now, towards the cracked back road that led through the valley which we'd been perched atop. If I turned around, I would've seen the Yangtze memorial disappearing over the horizon. "They called us, 'Number Girls,' because that was all we did. All of my earliest memories involve counting, or learning to count. By the time that I was ten years old, I could run stats in my head, and solve complex calculus problems with a pencil on paper. I had a good sense of space, too, and I rarely had to do much individual counting when I looked at a room full of stuff. Dimensional analysis isn't that hard once you can do it in your head, and I hadn't had to use a calculator since I was eight."
Near the bottom of the hill, things suddenly got very steep and rocky. Savanna started helping me down, taking my hand and guiding me through the footholds and crevices. "Accounting was my life- my mentors, they were my best friends. We spent like every day together, going over the day's deals, double-checking supply counts to make sure that no one had stolen anything. It wasn't as exciting or involved as the work that the farmers or hunters did, but Mian and Chou made it bearable. Mian was the fun one, but she wasn't as nice as Chou. Actually, I think that Chou knew me better than my own mom, since mom was always too busy tending to the crops to visit me."
"That kinda stuff made me sad. But, I was a happy kid- I had friends who loved me, and everyone was proud of how good I was at my job. Our tribe made sure to take time to appreciate every worker during the celebrations, and our chief usually made a special mention for me."
We reached the bottom of the hill. The cart wasn't far away now, so we stopped to catch our breath. Savanna offered me a drink from her canteen, and I took it. Eventually, she continued. "So, one day, just before my eleventh birthday, we had just had our sixth-harvest celebration, and were getting ready to pack up. I was in the little accounting tent with Mian and Chou, running numbers and making sure that everything had been counted. Then, suddenly, I started hearing fireworks going off outside, which I thought was strange because we usually didn't do fireworks until it was darker. Of course, they weren't fireworks, and soon people started screaming and the gunshots got closer and louder. Mian, Chou and I just huddled in the tent, too scared to try to figure out what was happening. At some point, Chou grabbed a gun from one of the supply boxes. I asked what it was for, and she said that it was for us. I thought she was being a little dramatic- surely, our guards would stop the invaders. Our drunk, drunk guards…" She stared at her feet. I sat in complete silence while I waited for her to continue.
"Then we heard footsteps, and one of them came bursting into the tent with a machine gun. Chou and Mian threw themselves in front of me and started shouting at the raider, until she got tired of their shouting and opened fire. At the end of it, both of them and the raider were laying on the ground, bleeding in so many places… I was the only one who hadn't been shot."
"When the dust settled, I was the only one in the whole tribe who survived- and over the next few months, I found that every person had been replaced by a stinking corpse. Mom, dad, Chou and Mian… They stole or burned everything else, but the bodies sat there forever. I wasn't strong enough to bury anyone, so I just had to watch them rot. I tried to cover the people who I had cared about, but the sheets kept blowing away or getting ripped up by the animals that came at night. That was the worst period of my entire life."
"Eventually, some warriors from a little Puritan tribe nearby ventured into the ruins, and found me sitting alone. Naked, skeleton thin, and gnawing on something disgusting. They were just going to euthanize me on the spot, but then one of the people in the group- Saul, the chemist, the only person in the whole tribe who didn't have their pink skin, volunteered to take me in. He'd been an adoptee, too, so I guess he pitied me. The rest of the tribe already thought that he was completely insane, so they didn't stop him. They got me some clothes, fed me a warm meal, made me look like a human again… I don't remember much from that time, just that I felt hated and alone. Everyone except for Saul looked at me like I was some sort of animal, and it probably didn't help that I couldn't understand them or speak their language well yet."
We'd started walking again, but we were intentionally going very slowly, so that she could finish her story. Plus, Gram and Tandi looked like they were having some sort of argument up at the cart, and neither of us wanted in on that.
"So, I was with them for a while. I learned how to speak English and read books from Saul, who became kind of like a new dad. I'd say his wife was like my mom, but she wasn't- she hated me, and when she wasn't berating me about whatever useless skill or word I didn't know, she just stayed away from me. I called her, 'mum,' because she wouldn't let me call her by her name and I didn't want to call her Mom."
"Saul and his son Amos were the only people in the tribe who would be seen with me, and even they were always sort of distant. So, I spent most of my time in Saul's lab, making food for the tribe and learning chemistry. There was this book, "The Science of Good Cooking," that I read from a lot. Saul and his books kept me sane."
"Then, one day, Saul and his whole hunting party disappeared. As grateful as I was to the tribe for taking me in, I was getting really tired of them at this point. Their… medieval mindset towards technology and outsiders made them hard to live with. Without Saul, I didn't see any reason to stay any longer. I left with the next caravan, sold myself as a skilled cook, because Gram said he didn't need an accountant or a chemist. It's been four years since then and I haven't looked back since."
She was silent for a little while longer. While we were talking, I'd put on my comtacs, because the wind-tunnel that the valley created was becoming painfully loud. Even with the damn things on, it was still all I could focus on, when she wasn't talking. My coat blew wildly in the wind.
"We're going to be stopping by that tribe today. Gram told me about the change of plans yesterday, so I was already upset. All of these old memories were coming up again, when I'd worked so hard to keep them away." She looked at me, and I didn't look away. I couldn't parse her expression, and yet for once, I knew exactly how she was feeling.
"So, I spent some time with you, because I needed something to distract me, and you'd been nice to me. And, while we were doing all that weird science stuff, and drinking and laughing and bumping into stuff together, I remembered what it was like to have friends again. Now's not a great time to remember that, because it got me thinking about what happened to my old friends. Saul, Feng, Mochou…" She sighed. "If I hadn't drank so much, I would have stayed, but I was scared that I was going to start crying or say something stupid, and I didn't want to do that in front of you. I didn't even want to think about that. So I just walked out the door. I'm really sorry."
She looked down at her feet again. The cart was just in front of us now, and Gram and Tandi were looking at us. If I wanted to say anything, I'd have to say it quick. I clasped my hands together.
"Have you- aren't Gram and Tandi your friends?" I asked hopelessly. Savanna shrugged.
"Not really. I'm just one of Gram's employees, and Tandi is… Tandi." She looked up at me again. "You made me laugh last night- like, actually laugh! Sure, I laugh when the others say stuff, because it's polite, but you made me laugh."
"Well, I've never really had friends who weren't related to me. So, I don't really have these conversations often. Being honest, this is a first for me…" I trailed off. She's kind of pretty, I noticed, and I sort of wanted to tell her about that, but I didn't foresee that ending well, considering the subject matter. I decided to go the way I'd started. "… But, I'm glad that I made you happier. And I'm sorry that I made you remember the bad-old-days. You're- um, you're an awful good friend. If you ever want to talk about stuff like this when we've got more time, you should. Because, I wouldn't stop you. Not that I could, stop you, but, you know. You know."
We were definitely within earshot now, so my verbal floundering was on display to all three of the people currently in my life, as well as two of the Brahmin. If I wanted to salvage this, I would need to do this fast. I wasn't trained for this sort of thing, but maybe-
"Can I hug you?" Asked Savanna. I let out a deep breath that I'd been holding.
"Please do." Immediately, she stepped forward, and pulled me forwards into a quick, tight, hug- the kind where we rested our heads on each other's shoulders, and smelled the soap the other person had washed with or the perfume that they were wearing. I don't know if it was perfume, but Savanna had a very lovely, very distinctive smell, and while my nose wasn't working very well, I definitely smelled it then. It was a refreshing change from all of the bad smells that I'd been exposed to lately.
"What were y'all talking about back there?" asked Tandi, once we had released each other and loaded our stuff onto the back of the cart. Savanna and I exchanged a look.
"Nothing," said Savanna. I nodded in agreement.
"Yeah. Just some talk about the weather, and stuff." I tried to smile. "Did you know that it's probably going to stay this cool all day, because of the cloud coverage?"
"I couldn't give a shit if I tried. You didn't leave nothing behind, right?"
"Not in my life," I said. Tandi nodded.
"Good, cause we're leaving- Gram says we're going to make it to that tax-evading village tonight, and I don't want to make Gram a liar."
So, we spurred the Brahmin, fell into our positions, and spent the evening marching through the valley pass. Tandi was walking again, which I should've expected- she was a veteran ranger, after all. More surprisingly, Savanna had stopped sitting on top of the cart, and was walking with the rest of us. Despite how tired it made her, she seemed perfectly alright with walking beside me, and pointing out to me all of the cool rocks and landmarks that marked the way to the village. At one point, she showed me a rotting wooden sign with a bunch of metal pots and pans hanging off; 'Teakettle Junction,' she called it. I don't know why she decided to keep walking with me, but she did, and I was happy. She was pretty much all I'd been thinking about lately, and it felt nice to be with her.
'Enjoy it while it lasts,' I thought, because, evidently, God had a big old hate-on for me, and anyone else unfortunate enough to be caught in my considerable area-of-effect. Nothing horrible had happened in almost twenty four hours, and I was at peace with the fact that this was, contrary to common logic, actually not a good sign. At this point, I was just waiting for the other shoe to drop, so I could acquire my latest cocktail story, and maybe a neat scar somewhere. I was actually starting to fantasize about my eventual memoir at this point, and all of the great sob-stories I'd have for it!
That's probably not a very healthy way of thinking about stuff, but it was my new default. I didn't have no time to properly decompress, so I had some fun, and forced the bad memories somewhere deep and dark. I'm not sure if I was properly desensitized, or just coping in the short term; maybe I was so completely shocked and overloaded that I couldn't even process it at all. But, whatever my head was doing during that time, it was helping me stay upright, and I didn't know enough psychology to think about trying to stop it.
Years of Therapy, here I come!
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