When I see my baby, what do I see?
Poetry in motion, walking by my side
Her lovely locomotion keeps my eyes open wide
Poetry in motion, see her gentle sway
A wave out on the ocean could never move that way.
- "Poetry in Motion", by Johnny Tillotson
It's incredibly easy to devalue human instinct when long removed from danger. Though even when removed from danger, human instinct continues to tick in the back of any given human's mind, and manifests as a multitude of varying neurotic conditions. Said conditions are too often disregarded as complex problems, when the problem is rather simple. Humans are constantly trying to survive, even when no threat is apparent.
In Gomorrah, the threat had been there, but the Omertas had been converted to businessmen. Profit from her comings was prioritized as much as keeping tabs on her, it was their short-sighted ploy that led to their end. They were never meant to be businessmen, but they'd played their part well enough to con most of the Strip, but that would be implying that Eris was different from them. And really, was she?
The overwhelming majority of folk would say otherwise, but she's sure she's not much different from them. Like them, she enjoys the simple things, but she also enjoys the overly complicated and convoluted. She's sure they'd say she's made of different stuff, but she doesn't agree. Her lust for novelty just manifested differently than theirs, and that's why she's in the Hidden Valley's bunker instead of playing slots.
The Brotherhood watched her closely, much closer than the Omertas had. Because of her association with Veronica, she was tolerated, and she was to meet the Elder. They stared at her like she was an unknown quantity, but they were starved for contact with the outside world, and she could sense the questions on the tips of their tongues, and if that was part of instilling some kind of false pretense of friendship, she'd be more than happy to indulge them. There was much to learn down here, and her eyes lingered on the terminals as she was led deeper into the bunker.
Much like House's bunker on Fortification Hill, it was incredibly cold, but fortunately clean from radiation. She'd taken no coat, and they'd offered her none. She wondered how long they'd gone without guests, and soon wondered if that could be used against them. If Layla had taught her anything, it was that lonely people will revert to any unsavory means to be with others.
All around, were sounds not dissimilar from the 38's penthouse – the sounds of tech, of a hundred terminals and a hundred pairs of hands typing on them. Eris was not intimidated, in many ways, she didn't know enough to be intimidated, as lesser and wiser people would've already been quaking long before now. Instead, she managed to keep her cool, even though she felt like she was being watched by a hundred pairs of eyes, and she very well was.
Naturally, she met a few of their gazes, but returned her eyes to the ground at some of the brawnier members, in a show of being shy. Most looked curious, some looked outraged, and others looked relieved. If she spent most of her time down here, in an organization that still used military time no less, she'd be relieved to see someone else, too.
They whispered under their breath, and she pretended to be oblivious to what they were saying. It wasn't difficult. Whoever thought the Brotherhood would be made up of gossipmongers?
Elder McNamara was a regular, silver fox, she thought to herself. He was tall, hunched over a few holographic figures she couldn't make reason out of, yet. It was absolutely silent in the room, and she could practically smell the resentment Veronica had for her Elder. It didn't take someone clever to deduce that others shared the same sentiment.
A few words were exchanged between Veronica and McNamara, nothing warm – Veronica was a babbler, and an annoying one – McNamara must have felt similar in the same regards as nearly everyone else. None of them had seemed particularly pleased to see her return, but that could simply be because they weren't a joyful bunch to begin with. Eris, too, was a frequent babbler, but unlike Veronica, she's confident in her ability to read the room, and sometimes respect that it wasn't wanted.
"Veronica informs me that you're an intellectual she encountered on the side of the road. While she can be… unusually high of spirits, she's rarely ever misinterpreted a threat. Therefore, I welcome you to Hidden Valley." He greeted, looking away from some invisible point on his complex, holographic map, and to her. "But I didn't become Elder by trusting blindly my subordinates."
He leveled his men with a stare, and Veronica soon after, and Eris watched in veiled confusion as they left the room.
"Forgive me, but you don't hold yourself like some of my scribes. It could be an old man's paranoia, but I can't help but think you're here for a different reason entirely. So, what brings you here, to the Brotherhood of Steel? We don't receive much interest, except from the NCR, and you don't have the look of a soldier, scout or otherwise."
Eris weighed her options, each as brazen as the next. Experience taught her that being brazen made people uncomfortable, in a good way. She's fairly certain, as certain as she can be, that she's always been skilled at reading others – depends on it entirely, actually. McNamara seemed likable, in a genial, grandfatherly way, he also seemed like he had very few friends he could trust. Layla had been the same, though neither genial or grandfatherly. Layla had no one, and this had made him vulnerable. Only, Eris hadn't intended to prey on Layla, and had even banked on getting him out of there if he hadn't died so spectacularly.
If she had the option to just skip this process of House's takeover and proceed, she would. Undoubtedly, she understood the logistics of it, understood that relative to House's experience, it had to be done. They couldn't be allowed to exist in a world that was governed by a technological mastermind who encourage liberal usage of said technologies.
"I have no idea, truly." Eris began, sly in a way she often took with tourists in Vegas who she planned on exciting, before asking them who they supported to rule the Mojave. "I told Veronica I was fleeing the hooligans up in the Strip, and that's sort of true. Frankly, I'm not really an intellectual, I just really like prewar books, and discussing them with others." Eris scrunched her eyebrows then, trying to create an air of nonchalance, "Well, maybe discussing isn't the proper term to use, I much prefer pretending to agree with one side, then pretending to be against another. Therefore, I really enjoy politics, and, well, what better place to go than here? I have nowhere better to be, after all."
She smiled at him, a small thing, really. He looked like someone who needed to see a kind gesture, and it was free.
The last thing she expected was for him to relax somewhat, which was exactly the opposite of what she'd expected. Tension in his shoulders melted away, and the severe wrinkles softened somewhat, to reveal a man who couldn't be older than forty-five.
"When Paladin Ramos informed me that Veronica was approaching with an outsider in tow, at first I didn't know what to think." He scratched at some of the gray hairs dotting his chin. "After giving the matter some thought, however, I've decided that an outsider could be of some use to me right now."
He then gave her a calculating once-over, and she felt a quirk of one corner of her lip.
Over the past few days, she's confident she's gained enough traction with the Brotherhood, or the Brotherhood's Elder, to squat in the bunker in the wee hours of the night, something she was doing presently. Long conversations with the scribes had led her to concluding that nearly everyone here was either listless or restless.
Nearly half of her book on programming – Watkin's Guide for Programming: Beginners, truly a title that inspired condescending derision, was finished. She hadn't consumed it in the course of a day, like she had with Hegel or Freud (that latter, in another lifetime, perhaps), but now that the NCR ranger was out of the Brotherhood's hair, she had time enough to focus on it.
Chief among her steadily growing list of challenges, was Hardin. He didn't like her, or didn't trust her, more like. She considered that he may be the only person in the entire facility whose instincts were intact, for she wasn't a particularly trustworthy person anyhow. Furthermore, she wondered what exactly led people to trusting her despite her openly showing qualities usually deemed untrustworthy or unsavory. Keeping secrets was something she excelled at, because she was so selective about what she discussed openly when it could be helped. It couldn't always be helped, though, and she'd already spilled the beans about Mr. House's securitron upgrade from months ago.
They hadn't been made aware of that, and it seemed like something they'd need to know. Or, more like, it was something she needed to tell them to really hammer the last few nails in the 'I am not your assassin' wall. Despite being altogether knowing, and otherwise distrusting, McNamara did like her. It was either that, or he was so desolate for company that wasn't his own men, that he welcomed her company during most times of the day that she came snooping.
Indeed, she felt more like a rat now than she ever had. He had her pinned as a bored socialite who miraculously had a sense for the politics he wasn't imaginative enough to maneuver. Luckily, or unluckily, for him, she had a vested interest in political science and could give long-winded but exhilarating lectures on its finer points. She doubted there were many other people who could argue for the Legion's militant collectivism as a means to bring humanity back from societal stagnation, not even the Legion.
McNamara had implied that he found this objectivity charming, even though he'd revealed it in a much more militant fashion than she would prefer. Whatever the circumstance, she was adaptive. Her employer framed every single metaphor with an unnecessarily simplistic corporate minimalism, though he was not exactly a minimalist himself, he only took complex problems and diluted said complexity to the most basic principles. She could admit to doing the exact opposite.
Her Pip-Boy had little to no signal in the deepest reaches of the bunker, a factoid she'd learned while trying to check the radio for any news from Vegas. It was habit by now, to search for any particularly interesting news from the area, but in between the static, came Mr. New Vegas' voice, and it told of nothing she or anyone else should really care about.
11 PM marked her smoke break, and she was nearly out of breath by the time she got outside. Every single time, the armored guards at the entrance of the bunker quizzed her on where she was going, and without fail, she told them the same thing every single time. She even offered them to join her, but they stubbornly refused, and making some vague comment about how unhealthy it was.
In the beginning, she'd retorted that it was as unhealthy for the body as isolation was for the mind. Humans weren't supposed to live like they did, adrift along some archaic brand of prewar chivalry, completely closed off from the new ideas that had been birthed in the wasteland they seemed to hate. New ideas were nothing to fear, unless they threatened their way of life. But this made it easy for her to befriend them, because fear was a close relative to interest.
Eris was convinced of that herself. Could one really be fearful of anything without first having some hesitant interest in the thing beforehand? Undoubtedly, all the freedom fighters in Freeside who struggled endlessly with their lot in life proclaimed that all was well because they were free, and in the same breath, cursed the Legion, and why? She was convinced that it was because some cunning, yet suppressed, part of their unconscious knew that the Legion would benefit them somehow.
Her cigarette was thrown haphazardly down on the ground, where it sizzled for a few moments before dying out entirely, and she turned her back and stalked back into the bunker, where Veronica was waiting for her.
"Trouble sleeping?" Veronica asked, in that line of questioning that sounded needlessly dramatic.
"Not really." She replied, hoping to snuff out any attempts at dramatics by anyone besides herself. "Traveling abroad always leads me to developing abnormal sleeping patterns, see. It's not so much a trouble with sleeping as it is an aversion to it."
"Oh, me too. I stay awake for long periods of time especially when I'm out on supply runs.." Stairs. More stairs. It was really a minor inconvenience, and despite what she'd told Veronica, she really was quite tired. "Not that it's any fun. If you think you have some sleeping troubles, you should really see what it's like running for supplies in the midst of this war between the NCR and the Legion."
Comparing tribulations was one of her least favorite qualities of, unfortunately, a large portion of the population. Thinking that one's struggles were infinitely worse than everyone else's appeared to be a hallmark of many a human being, and while her opinion on humans is consistently favorable, she can't help but be irked by this rampant quality of victimhood and woe.
She's sure the only exception to this rule thus far has been House, who, besides never undervaluing the struggles of the people, almost never talked about his own to begin with, excepting for the vague tangents he'd sometimes go on at her prodding.
"Speaking of the Legion, what are your people's general opinion on their tomfoolery?" Tomfoolery was an understatement, really a euphemism for the term she really wanted to use, and that was 'generally efficient but flawed system of governance'.
They walked together to the scribes' headquarters, where she hoped that once again, Veronica would want to talk in front of the terminals, where she could casually get on one without drawing any attention whatsoever. She assumed that any friend of Veronica's would be accepted by the Brotherhood under the umbrella of 'endearing hooligan', but she could always be wrong. But that was the best card to operate under so far.
"I can't speak for everyone. Like I told you before we came, most of the senior officials down here take a non-interventionist stance on any conflict going on between the NCR and their enemies, and I suppose that's the only thing they're ever non-interventionist about. My personal opinion on the Legion isn't flattering, anyone with a heart can admit that they're ruthless savages who have no concept of humanity, and what's right."
"I could argue that they do have a concept of humanity, and also what's right, but it's just not the same as yours. Don't you think living down here might also dampen your human experience? Who's to say the Legion don't have the same issue, and just need rehabilitation like this chapter of the Brotherhood?" The seed was planted, and finally, Eris had a way of stimulating herself while down here.
Veronica might have been overly self-assured, and certainly she was self-righteous, but she was also never prepared to formulate a defense that could stand against Eris' so far subtle attacks against her ideology. And rather than admit under-preparation, she was so proud that she would act as though she would consider Eris' new perspectives, which ironically, Eris didn't even hold herself.
"Could be." Veronica replied with a small amount of doubt, looking as though she really were considering that Eris was right. "And maybe if the Brotherhood could end the lockdown, we could all nurse our humanity back, slowly but surely. I can't tell you enough how much it breaks my heart to see all of them acting like robots half the time. Many of them are good men and women, and I can't help but feel like we've all lost something important."
"Mmm." Eris replied vaguely, nodding her head and leaning back against a wall in the empty room of active terminals. "Well, I don't know if you're aware of the saying that anything is lost, can be regained. Maybe it's good that some of your people have lost their humanity, because we all know that anything we lose and regain, becomes all the more precious."
It was a pretty thought, though as with just about anything else Eris said, it was a fabrication on her part. Never did she ever intend on regaining any semblance of knowledge of her past, because the treasure didn't seem as glittering as the life she now led. Likely, nothing good led her to becoming a mail carrier.
This line of thinking led her to proclaiming aloud, "Where does a thought go when it's forgotten?"
Her conversational partner giggled somewhat nervously at that questioning, only vaguely connected to the topic at hand. It wasn't as though she wanted to dangle her infamous amnesia in front of another person, it didn't serve any kind of purpose, and yet she often asked herself the same question.
"Is this a trick question?" Veronica asked, and Eris chuckled somewhat slyly at that, and leaned forward on the desk's top where Veronica sat.
"It's whatever you want it to be. I'm curious about what you think, you know. So spill."
Tanned cheeks blushed at the flattery, though it wasn't entirely an empty compliment. It wasn't entirely a compliment either, Eris liked to know how everyone thought, had even been curious as to how Clanden thought. But thinking about him was futile, she'd never have another chance to psychoanalyze such an incredible mind ever again.
"Can I at least divert to you if I don't answer it right?" Eris shook her head at that, and her coy smile widened at the corners of her lips.
"No, I have the utmost faith that you'll answer me, and by extension, Freud, with the most excellent of ingenuity. It's a question that Freud asked, I suppose in the context of wondering about that mysterious place in everyone's mind, where forgotten inklings go to die. But they never truly die, but live on in various forms. Supposedly." Eris pretended to be shocked by herself and portrayed it in a stunned once-over down her arms. "Aw, shucks. Suppose I answered that for you. But now that I conveniently answered it for you, what do you think about it?"
"Well, it reminds me of how much I dreamed of my girlfriend, even after there were some forgotten moments between us. When you say it the way you said it, it almost makes me think that some of those dreams really were memories!" The other woman smiled, a goofy, excited kind, which made Eris sort of nervous. "Where did you say that quote came from again?"
"A Victorian psychiatrist, his name was Sigmund Freud. I got no doubt that you'll disagree with about eighty percent of what he says, but who knows? If you ever do end up finding one of his esteemed works, try not to judge too harshly the antiquated ways of thinking. They inferred different things from the same data we have, that's all."
"I've always thought the same about prewar literature, you know. The Brotherhood bans a lot of prewar literature because of our leaders' views on consumerism and the like, the stuff that prewar America embodied. But I've always been fascinated by prewar literature, they had so many ideas about human life that the wasteland, and the Brotherhood, needs to see, because I feel like life is meaningless without joy."
There was this quality Eris had, that made her the most supreme bullshitter, even among Vegas' crowd. It was the ability to agree with someone, and develop no affection or attachment to another simply because they agreed on something. For instance, she agreed with a sizable margin of what Veronica said, but that didn't engender any kind of affection for the other woman. To the uninitiated, this might seem indecisive – pussyfooting, even – and perhaps it was, but if she were being a pragmatist (which she decisively wasn't), she would call it downright useful, relative to the work she often found herself doing.
"I think you're getting to the veritable onion, but good luck peeling it. I definitely don't believe joy is the meaning of life, for that would be identical to saying melancholia is the meaning of life. Perhaps for a poet, that's true. But a poet works primarily with presentation and not truth, wouldn't you agree?"
The other woman had not explicitly said that joy was the meaning of life, but something of that ilk was precisely the kind of proclamation that made all the circuits in her brain fire. Besides, she seriously doubted that Veronica would notice the blatant strawman that Eris had just drawn. Hardly anyone ever did.
Christ, she must be extremely bored, given that someone was awake and she couldn't be nosy.
"For instance, I left Vegas primarily because the pursuit of joy renders the result, inevitably, inefficacious." Eris began to spin the yarn from the bullshit ball she had, constantly stuck somewhere in the bottom of one of her pockets. "Let's imagine a haggard soldier who just retired from the New California Republic. Everything that once brought him joy was destroyed by his enemies, whether they be the Fiends or the Legion. Okay, joy is out of the question for him. We may as well crumble it up and throw it in the trashcan, right? So he does the contrarian thing that veterans so often do, and makes revenge his most active pursuit. He goes on his merry way, ripping to pieces all that his ideology allows him to ruin. The first time he does it, he's ecstatic. But by the second time, vengeance really loses its charm, and by the third time, it's a chore. It's really no different from the thousands of gamblers that Vegas sees every month. Only, their pursuit doesn't usually lead directly to the ruination of others. Making something as vague as human emotion an aspiration, removes any manner of novelty from it – which, really, is the appeal to anything that is vague. Disaster naturally follows."
"That gives me something to think about. I know I've heard a lot of people say that the meaning of life is happiness, when you're out on the surface. My people say it is fulfilling duty. For myself? I think it's finding whatever you're best at, and finding love that can't be intruded on by the powers that be." Veronica looked at one of the terminals then, and uttered, "Fuck! I have to go and help Ramos with something. I'll be back as soon as I can."
"I'll be waiting for you, patiently." Inside, Eris was bursting with joy, at the prospect of finally having Veronica out of her vicinity.
As soon as Veronica left the room, she quietly stole to some of the lonelier looking terminals, the ones that didn't seem to be used often. Occasionally, one patrol could be heard making the rounds outside, in the hallway. His steps were loud, and he showed no awareness that someone was checking through the second level's terminals.
An hour later, and Veronica had still not returned, and Eris was beginning to get the usual cravings. Still, she was knee-deep in the mystery now, and she wondered if this had been House's intention when he'd subtly told her to search the terminals in the bunker. Most likely, she looked like a crazed madwoman, which probably wasn't too far from the truth in all honesty, skimming through the different terminals, until she found one, that looked barely used.
She tried her hardest to be gentle with handling it, so that none of the scribes would know that someone had been messing with it. They'd know immediately that it was the charming, if not irritating, outsider that had… somewhat, joined their ranks.
Why anyone would name it the 'Self-Destruct Authorization Terminal', was beyond her. Maybe they didn't expect any opposition to actually survive their vetting process up top, or maybe they really were humans that surrendered to the personalities of the machines they so coveted.
Hidden Valley Network
By order of Elder McNamara, engaging the bunker's self-destruct sequence requires the assent of the Head Scribe, Head Paladin, and Elder of the chapter.
Each of these Brothers have been given a keycard to be produced in case of emergency. When all three keycards are inserted below, the password to the self-destruct terminal to the right will be generated.
Please report a lost or stolen keycard immediately.
Eris nearly laughed at how easy they made it. It was really very absurd, almost silly, how they spelled everything out, step-by-step. Hardin's keycard would be next to impossible to acquire without taking him out, but she got along well with Taggart. It was actually mutual, he had a lot of good ideas about virtual reality. And McNamara? Either way she went, she'd be relying on her own fortune, which had stretched this far.
A pair of footsteps sounded from the hallway. They weren't Veronica's – she'd paid attention, even if that wasn't usually her thing. Eris backed out of the terminal, closing out the window she'd opened previously, and sat at one of the terminals near the entrance to the room, pretending to be idle. There was a little manual on standard protocol for scribes in training, which she opened and skimmed over.
So much for her newly acquired skill of identifying footsteps. It was Veronica. How long had she been gone?
"The Elder wants to speak with you."
"Am I in trouble?" Eris joked back, successfully hiding the crux of the situation, and the crux was that she was plotting the death of every single Brotherhood clown. There was a nagging voice in the back of her head that told her to run far, far away and abort the mission, but she ignored it. So far, only good things came from ignoring it. She's hoping that this time doesn't end up being anecdotal.
"I don't know. You probably know by now that he and I aren't on the best of terms, so he didn't really divulge his purpose."
"Fair enough. Wanna walk there with me?" She asked, and Veronica conceded, leading the way.