6
Craterside Supplies looked more like a workshop than a normal shop. Various pieces of equipment, that Patience couldn't identify if she tried, littered the floorspace in a haphazard fashion. Some against the walls. Some seeming to have come delivered and remained where the deliverer had left it. Workbenches with smaller pieces of equipment lay at odd angles and the shop counter, to the right of the door, seemed covered with so many different things, it was unclear if they were for sale or only trash.
Moira Brown, a young woman of average height with mousey brown hair tied in a messy ponytail, sat at one of the workbenches in a dirty jump suit, bent over what appeared to be a Bloat Fly. One of those large insects that Valrie had avoided with such care.
"Oh! This is interesting!" Moira cooed to herself, unaware of her visitors. "Now what is the point of that?"
"Moira." Valrie called to the shopkeeper. When the young woman didn't answer, Valrie found a desk bell under some the things littering the counter and hammered at it, dinging it several times. "Moira! God damn it! Moira!"
Moira's head raised up, looking upwards, to the sides, even under the workbench. Looking around at Valrie and Patience at the counter seemed to be the last place she thought the noise might have come from. Wearing some kind of contraption, made from several spectacle lenses on hinges that Moira could place one on front of the other, she spun on the chair and stared at them.
"A Bloat Fly has a gland that produces a wildly toxic hallucinogenic, but it doesn't secrete it. Not at all. Why would that be?" It looked like the question was genuine and she stared at them through the complicated series of lenses, her eyes appearing huge and bloodshot. "I'll pay good caps for anyone that will try the hallucinogen."
"We'll pass." Valrie stepped towards Moira, pulling Patience along. "This is Patience. She's a vault dweller. She's lost her memory and we think she might find answers in this Pip-Boy on her arm. Problem is, it don't seem to work too good."
Moira slid from her seat and almost ran towards Patience, lifting her arm, twisting and turning it as she examined every inch of the device. She clicked her tongue a few times, uttered several 'oohs' and 'hmms', switched it off and back on again and then dropped the arm, looking up at Patience through those strange lenses.
"You know you're covered in dry blood?" She turned her attention to Valrie. "Both of you."
"We know." Patience lifted her Pip-Boy up in front of Moira, flicking through the options, showing the young woman the 'Incorrect Location' message. "Valrie says you can fix this?"
"Sure! Well, I can try." Moira removed the spectacle lens device and dropped it on the counter. Her eyes still seemed quite big without the lenses. "I got a good look at another Pip-Boy a while back. The Lone Wanderer's. Do you know them? Anyway, after they helped me write my book ... You know about my book? Anyway, after that and before they mysteriously disappeared, they let me have a good long look at their Pip-Boy, which I thought was real friendly of them ..."
"Moira!" Valrie rubbed the bridge of her nose. "Can you help, or not?"
"Sure thing! You just take it off and I'll give it the old once over while you two shower and clean those clothes." She spun around, her face serious all of a sudden, looking to make sure that no-one could hear. She continued in a loud whisper. "Don't tell anyone I have a shower or a washing machine. Everyone will want to use them."
"I can't take it off. I think it's locked." Patience showed the locking mechanism to Moira who, without saying a word, pulled two hair pins from her head and began trying to unlock the Pip-Boy.
After a couple of seconds the lock clicked and flicked open. When she tried to remove it, however, Patience almost screamed in pain as something that felt like a thousand needles seemed to inject molten lava into her arm. A trickle of blood appeared from under the Pip-Boy and Moira stopped trying to remove it, clicking the lock back in place and holding up her arms as if to prove she hadn't done anything.
"Clearly not the way to go!" Moira retrieved her spectacle lens device and, putting it on and moving several lenses into place, looked closer at the Pip-Boy and where it attached to Patience. She clicked her tongue again, muttered several 'ohs' and 'oh dear's. "Well that's attached to you."
"I know that!" Patience, once again showing little of the word, growled at Moira, staring with undisguised ire. "Why did it feel like you were ripping my arm off?"
"No. I mean it's attached to you. Surgically." She made a claw with her fingers and gripped her own arm to demonstrate. "Like, wires and tubes and things implanted into your arm. That's not coming off unless your arm does and, if I might say, if it ever does, I'd love to get hold of your arm."
"So, you can't fix it? God fucking dammit!" Valrie jerked her hand into her jacket and pulled out her cigarettes.
"Stop your cursing! And I don't allow smoking in my lab. Workshop. Shop. In here. No smoking in here. There's sensitive equipment." Moira snatched the cigarette from Valrie's mouth and threw it over her shoulder.
"Well, excuse me Miss Fucking Fancy-Pants, Duchess of La-Di-Da." Despite the words, Valrie returned the cigarette pack to her pocket. "If it be pleasing her most merciful majesty, can this here contraption be repaired by your noble and enlightened fucking hands?"
"Maybe." Valrie threw up her arms in despair and turned away. "I'll try. You two best get cleaned up first and I'll set up the terminal. There are spare clothes in my room while yours are drying ... Don't tell anyone I have a drier!"
Without showing them where the room with the shower, washing machine and drier were, Moira spun away, searching several places, picking up wires, looking at the connectors and throwing them aside.
Patience dipped her head into a room at the side. Spying what looked like a shower, she hooked a finger towards Valrie. Moira had already appeared to have forgotten about them both as she moved through the workshop like a mini-hurricane.
A shower would be so nice right about now.
The shower, lukewarm and stuttering, gave Patience a small sense of cleanliness. At least she no longer had Super Mutant blood caked to her skin and sticking her hair together. Valrie made a perfunctory attempt at showering, stepping in, giving herself a lacklustre wipe down and stepping out again within a few seconds.
Patience couldn't even begin to guess the amount of things that had emerged from the pockets of Valrie's coat, a sizeable pile upon the floor, before the coat and all the other items covered in blood had found themselves thrust into the rickety looking washing machine. They had each found a spare set of grubby coveralls to wear while their own clothes cleaned. Valrie seemed drowned in hers and Patience found she was of similar proportions to Moira, if a little tight due to her musculature.
In the shop area, they found Moira tinkering away at a computer terminal, the back removed and a succession of wires dribbling from inside and over the bench the terminal sat upon. Even as they entered, a flash of blue light and a howl of pain hit their ears and Moira danced back from the terminal wafting her hand, then sucking her singed fingers.
"Oh, hi!" Moira noticed them enter and gave a half-guilty smile. "Don't mind that. If you don't get electrocuted once or twice while fixing something, you're doing it wrong, I say."
"Thanks for the shower and clothes." Patience stepped towards the terminal, looking at the complex series of new wirings. "Are you sure this is going to work."
"Oh, sure! One hundred percent!" Moira screwed her face up, exaggerating a look of thought. "Well, seventy-five. Well, no less than sixty percent sure. I've had to tinker a little bit, but we'll have that Pip-Boy cracked in no time."
"Well, I'm full of confidence." Valrie sat upon a seat near the shop counter, put a cigarette in her mouth and then returned it to its pack as Moira frowned at her. "I've been singing your praises, Moira. Don't make me look like a fool, now."
Moira stood smiling for a second before throwing up a finger, urging them to wait, and then dived into a crate of gadgets and widgets, to the side. She emerged holding a large circuit board and returned to the terminal, connecting all the disparate wires to the board. Then, taking yet another cable, connected that to the front of the circuit board and stood, holding the other end before her, and smiled again at Patience.
"Now I'm ready. Take a seat." She indicated a stool off to the side of the terminal. "Now, usually I'd say this won't hurt, but with all that stuff sticking into your arm, I'm not willing to bet that it won't. Sorry."
Moira examined the Pip-Boy for a second and then flipped open a small flap at the back, uttering a 'aha!' as it opened. Then, while trying to maintain a distance, she connected the cable into the back of the Pip-Boy, slow and with care. As soon as it clicked into place, Moira almost jumped backwards covering her face with her hands. When nothing happened, she sighed with relief, dropping her arms and sitting on a chair before the terminal.
"Your professionalism, or lack thereof, is not increasing my confidence, Moira." Patience swallowed a laugh at Valrie. The older woman, fidgeting her fingers, reaching for her cigarette pack and then pulling her hand away, seemed to be finding the whole thing less than interesting.
Moira didn't hear, or made a diplomatic decision to ignore Valrie. Either way, her attention appeared absorbed in the task at hand. Flitting between tapping keys on the terminal, then using the dials on the Pip-Boy, she made several hushed utterances. At one point, she produced a pencil from her hair and began writing on a spare sheet of paper. When that soon filled, she began 'drawing' in the air, instead. Making the occasional chew of the pencil.
"This, this is all so fascinating!" She pointed the pencil at the terminal screen, but all Patience saw was lines of text and numbers, all meaningless to her. "Here is the code that's locked the device. That I can bypass. Now, this here is the interesting stuff."
"You'll have to explain it to me, I don't speak computer." Even with that said, Patience found her self leaning forward to look at the screen. "Give it to me straight, doc. Am I gonna live?"
"Ha! No. I mean, yes, you'll live. But, kinda, maybe, not for long." It was a nervous laugh and the words caused Valrie to stand up and join them at the terminal. "See, this code is a release code. For what, I don't know. That's one of the things I can't crack. You reach a certain location and, pop!, something gets released into your blood stream. Could be poison, could be medicine, could be Jet, for all I can tell."
"Well, it's simple. She doesn't go near this location, right?" Valrie pushed between Patience and Moira, trying to get a better look at the screen.
"It's not that simple. Sorry." Moira drew lines on the screen with the pencil. "This code and this code are encrypted locations. One opens up some kind of instructions, that I can't crack, the other switches on the poison/medicine/drugs pump, which I also can't crack. I can't tell which one is which."
"So, I could just happen to run into either of these locations and trigger the code?" Patience lifted her arm, trying to see the tubes and wires connecting the Pip-Boy to her arm.
"Oh, absolutely!" Moira tapped her teeth with the pencil then squirrelled it away, back into her hair. "Could be anywhere. Could be ten feet away, could be a hundred miles away. There's no way I can tell. Oh, and there's some kind of two-way radio in the Pip-Boy, sending and receiving signals. Where the other radio is, I can't crack."
"Someone's fucking spying on her?" Valrie switched off the Pip-Boy, but Moira switched it back on.
"Yeah. And it's signalling even when the Pip-Boy is switched off." For the first time, Moira lapsed into silence, staring at Patience.
For her part, Patience didn't know what to think. What Moira had found out gave her too much to think about. From the chance of the Pip-Boy poisoning her, to the two hidden locations, to the discovery of the surveillance of her. It was all too much. She pulled out the cable from the Pip-Boy, causing a little shriek and cringe from Moira, stood up and strode to the door. She needed air and she needed to think.
"More news about the new vault dweller in our midst.
The Beautiful Stranger and companion found themselves accosted by Super Mutants in the outskirts of Fairfax Ruins. I know what you're thinking and, no, this isn't an obituary.
The Super Mutants and their 'King' (and anyone who knows their history of the World-That-Was knows that we don't take kindly to kings, especially here in good old Washington D.C.!) were engaged in a running battle with raiders as the Super Mutants continued their expansion outside of the D.C. ruins.
Now, the Beautiful Stranger, hero that she is, decided to jump in and Fight The Good Fight against those ugly mothers. Except things didn't go too well.
Outnumbered and outgunned, our avenging angel almost got herself killed, until ...
The Super Mutants walked away!
That's right! The jolly yellow giants took one look at the Beautiful Stranger and retreated!
Now, you know and I know, that just doesn't happen. Those things go toe-to-toe with the armoured boys and girls in the Bee-Oh-Ess, but one little vault dweller makes them turn tail and run?
What is going on there? What do they know about the Beautiful Stranger that we don't? Is she the hero the Capital Wasteland needs or is she something ... else?
As always, old Three Dog will keep his ear to the ground and keep you, wonderful listeners, informed every step of the way."