Straight Talk

Desdemona called for a full emergency meeting as soon as MacCready and I walked into the catacombs. Before I even had a chance to sit down, Tinker Tom was at my elbow, practically dancing with eagerness to scan the findings from my visit to the Institute. I handed him the plastic oblong as well as my Pip-Boy, quickly pulling the sleeve down to cover my forearm as the ecstatic Railroad engineer bustled back to his workstation. Very soon, the entire complement of the Railroad's headquarters (minus Tom, who could listen in from his terminal) were seated at the main map table to hear what had happened at Bunker Hill and the Institute.

We gingerly took our seats in the circle overlooking the map. Deacon approached me with a steaming mug. "Coffee?" he inquired with a neutral expression. Recognizing the attempt at a peace offering, I took the mug with a slight nod of thanks, aware of my partner's suspicious glare. The two men traded a long challenging look, their intense stare only broken when Deacon held out his hand. "Look, I'm sorry MacCready," he said quietly. "I could have handled things better back there."

My partner eyed Deacon with a deep frown on his face. "Yes, you could have," he said coolly in response, adding after a moment when he briefly shook the proffered hand, "The rest of the Railroad is okay I guess, but if I ever work with you again, Deacon, it will only be because the Boss here asked me to." He looked into my eyes, ignoring the spy's raised eyebrows. "I know she would never stab me in the back."

Harsh, if mostly deserved. They're never going to be friends, but at least there's no bloodshed.

Deacon dropped his hand awkwardly, attempting to salve his pride. "Right. Good talk." Fortunately, that's when Desdemona called for our attention, gesturing for Deacon to join her in the center of the circle.

He addressed the group first, as the operation had been his idea. I felt MacCready nudge my shoulder significantly when the spy began to exaggerate, first minor details, then expanding his tale until the participants of the battle sounded like epic folk heroes, valiantly defending the half-dozen runaway Synths from an entire brigade of heavily armed Institute fighters. It wasn't until Desdemona stood up, tapping her fingers on her crossed arms meaningfully that he wrapped up his story with, "And that's when a Courser teleported in with a flash of lightning and thunder, grabbed our friend here," gesturing to me, "and disappeared, taking her with him!" With a theatrical flourish, he sat down.

"Quite a tale, Deacon," Desdemona commented, one eyebrow raised cynically. "It was almost believable until you added magical teleportation abilities." She turned to sweep her gaze across the small group seated around the table. "The important thing is we successfully rescued and moved the fugitive Synths out of the Institute's grasp. Now, Anne, you actually made it inside the Institute? Tell us everything you can remember."

Feeling the weight of attention shift to me, I nervously cleared my throat. "Um, I know it sounds unbelievable, but 'teleportation' is probably the most accurate term for what happened. Their facilities are underground, but I don't know where..." I launched into my own story, giving the best account I could. Several of the Railroad members had questions about my experiences, asking for details about the layout of the building, the people living there, even the food and water. While I couldn't always work out why the agents needed to know about the minutiae, I tried to answer as fully as possible. Desdemona was very interested in getting every last detail about Father in particular, and his plans for the future. Once I exhausted my limited store of memories, the group proceeded to dissect the information. I sat back in my chair, sipping my now cold coffee to soothe my throat. I wonder how much longer this is going to go on. I want to talk to MacCready as soon as possible.

Not long after that, Desdemona clapped her hands to bring the discussion to a close. "We need to get on with our mission, folks. Let's table the discussion for now, and meet again tomorrow to further explore our options. I'm sure Tinker Tom will have some new insights by then as well." She pointed over to the engineer's station, addressing me. "Go see what he's found. He had an extra day before you arrived to dissect, literally, that Courser chip. Deacon sent it along when he and your bodyguard waited for you. By getting us that chip, and whatever your Pip-Boy managed to steal from the Institute directly, you've earned the full support of the Railroad. Good luck."

To MacCready's obvious displeasure, Deacon joined us when we met with Tom. The energetic man was happily humming to himself as we approached, tapping away on his keyboard in a frenzy. "Oh hey! Your little jaunt into the lair of the enemy has netted us enough data to keep my babies here," and he indicated the line of computers on his desk, "busy for months!"

"That's good to hear, Tom." I said, taking some comfort that there was a silver lining among the dark clouds of the last couple of days. "Were you able to find out anything about the, ah, teleportation programming?"

"That's the good news!" he bubbled, gesturing for us to gather around. "I managed to transfer the Courser transmission program into your Pip-Boy! It was easy-peasy once I had the actual chip to work from!"

"You mean..." my head swam at the realization, "I can go home?" The outside world faded as I focused on that single thought.

Home.

I can go home.

I clutched the mug in my hands with desperate strength. I can go back to my family, to clean air and water, to my own house. (What about RJ?) I won't have to kill any more. I can go back to repairing instruments, not shooting mutated creatures. Music. I can play music again! (You can't just leave him.) My stomach will stop hurting, and I won't ever be irradiated again. I can go home!

Lost in the dream of returning home, it wasn't until Tom gently patted my cheek that I came back to the present, three sets of eyes focused on me. "Hey, you in there? Come on back, I'm not finished yet. There's also the bad news."

Bad news? "What?"

Tom explained. With the full program at his disposal, he was able to calculate how the combined capabilities of the Institute and Bethesda worked together to bring me across worlds. "It's a pretty snazzy little automated program, the inter-dimensional transport sequence, but it took a lot of juice," he clarified, simply.

The QuantumEnergy vial was the original key to actual corporeal transmission. It was essentially a supercharged nuclear battery; physical materials from my world using the theoretical engineering developed by the Institute to create an immensely powerful energy source. It was used to initiate the original dematerialization cycle and establish a connection to the Institute's own transmission signal, causing it to lose about half its energy when it did so. "But don't you worry, Anne," Tom assured me, "even at reduced charge, that Pip-Boy's got enough power to keep you going for hundreds of years of regular use, if you live that long. As far as the multi-world transportation is concerned, though? That looks like it was a one-way trip, based on the battery expenditure and the total amount of energy needed to return."

The dregs of my coffee splattered across my boots as the mug dropped from my suddenly nerveless fingers, shattering on the stone floor like my hopes of getting home. My legs went limp, and I dropped into a stunned crouch, my ears ringing. "What did you say?" I whispered hoarsely, barely even noticing when MacCready placed a comforting hand on my shoulder. The blood drained from my face, and I felt light-headed.

One-way trip? What am I going to do? The battery is depleted! The panic threatened to break free in a scream, and I gritted my teeth to keep it down. I don't belong here! I have to get home, where the very air isn't trying to kill me, where I can sleep safe at night in my own bed, my own house. Where my family and friends are. Where I have responsibilities and a career! The only reason I'm even alive right now is because of Hancock's sympathy and MacCready's expertise... and protection... and... my thoughts fragmented into a scattering of random flickers.

"Uh," Tom stammered. "Well, ah, just because the battery is depleted now..." he searched for something to soothe my overwhelming distress, "it's a pretty amazing device... can hold a lot more power than it did..."

Deacon stepped over to crouch in front of me, ignoring MacCready's low grumble. "Hey, hey, Tom's a bonafide genius. Recharging a battery is hardly rocket science. It's more like... computer science, right?"

Tom danced on his toes nervously. "Uh, sure, Deacon." His entire manner told me there was a lot more to the story than that. "Technically any battery can be recharged. You just gotta build the right charger." His grin was weakly confident, and I tried to believe him.

Deacon pressed ahead, "Just because the Institute intended for you to make a one-way trip doesn't mean we can't send you back home anyway." He didn't see Tinker Tom's skeptical expression behind him. "Like Tom said, batteries can be recharged, all right? If not, I guess we can see about powering your Pip-Boy from an outside source."

I grasped at the tiny spark of hope. "Does the Railroad have access to that kind of power?" How much does it need?

"No." Tom's answer was uncharacteristically monosyllabic. "We're too small, working in too depleted an environment. I barely got enough power here to run my own programs. Maybe your Brotherhood of Steel friends have something, but we're talking about a magnitude of energy unseen since the big boom 200 years ago." He pointed to my Pip-Boy propped up on his desk and a new line on the DATA screen, a set of numbers detailing the amount of energy needed to bridge across our worlds; numbers that meant absolutely nothing to me, but looked to have an awful lot of zeroes at the ends of them.

"We're brilliant, not powerful." Deacon added, musing, "I wish I knew what the Institute was up to with that 'saving humanity' bullshit. Their experiments tend to have unfortunate side effects for everyone else."

Tinker Tom returned to his terminal. "Well, since our number one friend here was able to get my little programs inside the dreaded organization itself, we may be able to tease that info out for you, Deacon. In the meantime, I'm in the midst of transferring everything your Pip-Boy was able to steal from them into my own database. Whatever the Institute is up to, I'll find it!" He sheepishly added, "it'll just take time."

I sighed, standing up shakily. "Looks like time isn't much of a problem right now." Another rush of despair hit me and I leaned heavily against Tom's workstation. "Speaking of time, I'm going to need some to process..." I broke off with a choked gasp. Process the concept that I'm apparently no closer to getting home than I was a month ago, even if I now have the data necessary to do so. Knowledge without power- it's nearly useless. There may not even be enough power left in the Commonwealth to send me back home, but I have to go ask around, anyway, just to make sure. Even if there is, somehow, a source of that kind of power, what makes me so special to commandeer it ahead of anyone else? It's just...too much to take in right now.

"MacCready, would you please accompany me to the steeple? I need to get air, lots and lots of air."

"You got it, Boss."