Things were different before the war. It was a time of uncertainty, of dwindling resources and conflict on all fronts. For most of that time we didn't really know if we'd make it from one day to the next, and yet life went on as it always had. We wrote songs made movies, told stories to our children.
Sure the world was going to hell in a hand basked but we didn't really mind as long as our friends and family were safe.
Back then I was a security tech. I designed computer systems for some of the biggest companies in the industry. Protocols for mainframes, servers everything between. It was good work, and it kept foot on the table so I couldn't complain. The hours were long sure but security was an essential service.
In my downtime I made a different breed of programs. It all started with a few simple games, ports of board games mostly. I always liked making them because the rules made sense, sure they could get complex but they were set in stone from beginning to end of play. I even shipped a few copies through a local magazine company for side income during the slumps at work.
After that lost its luster I started looking for ways to crack my own security. It was just supposed to be an easy way to test for vulnerabilities and seal them shut, but there were just so many loopholes. I took a lot of code from one of the local magazines and twisted it for my own needs. It was just so easy to take over a system and make it do my dirty work.
To start with I'd do simple things. Set off sprinklers here, blare music over intercoms there, maybe logic bomb a few 's and see how they'd cope. The key was never to cause permanent damage, just cause enough chaos so I could be brought in the next week to fix it. Way I saw it if I gave them the perfect code they'd never need to upgrade.
No one was getting hurt by any of it. To be honest my bottom line certainly wasn't hurting any. It was a great way to make some extra cash and put in some excess hours with the mainframe.
I never got much credit from my bosses though. Not that any of the old bastards even knew what a processor was. Some people just didn't care to learn.
Then my Jennifer got sick and things changed for me. It was a slow sickness the kind of thing that crept up on us in the night. At first it was just sweating, a lack of apetite or energy. Eventually she could barely find the strength to get out of bed.
Neither of us wanted to admit it but we'd both seen similar cases before. Blue Flu. A horrific thing that took away Jennifer's grandfather back in 65. We didn't want to admit she could have it but there wasn't much denying it when the contusions started.
The doctors either didn't know or didn't want to say where she caught it. I always suspected it was part of her work at the camps, the sort of thing that snuck its way in while she was helping the clinic.
I hated that clinic, hated every single minute she spent in that god forsaken hellhole. The place was a bunch of god damn commies thinking they could help change the world and make a difference.
But Jennifer, she loved that clinic with all her heart. Refused to give up on it even when the government cut its funding. Spent the better part of our marriage volunteering herself. She was a better person then I ever was, giving up so much to that place day in and day out.
As she got worse the doctors recommended all kinds of treatment. Drugs, therapy the whole nine yards. She might not have wanted to go through it but I was willing to spend every penny I had just to see her get better.
Eventually we built a special room for her. It was sealed off with its own air filter to keep the sickness from spreading. When the doctors visited they did so with full hazmat suits. They didn't want to even breath the same air as her.
It was expensive, but it was worth it. Anything was worth it for her.
The problem was the money. There was only so much of it to go around and every penny of it was spent making sure she was comfortable, trying to see my wife through. You ask my neighbors and they'd tell you it broke me. Seeing her on that ventilator weak as a newborn in her bed.
Well maybe it did, because that was about when I started making mistakes. The first mistake was spending every night out drinking at O'Sullivans just to make the pain go away. If you asked my wife the second would be when I went back to a pack a day habit, mentat laced cigarettes to keep me going.
Self medication is a dangerous thing, and I did it in spades. I got in touch with an old friend from my school days, man by the name of Smith. He had connections with unsavory people, and at the time that was exactly what I needed.
It started with me selling him programs, computer crackers rewiring kits, worms, logic bombs, trojan horses, and for a time the money was good. I'd sell him the malware and the companies would hire me to patch the holes.
Throw in a bit of larceny on the side and it was looking like we could finally get a handle on the bills that were stacking up at my door.
That was when I met Tedros. One of Smiths war buddies who'd seen a bit too much of the action in Canada. Kicked out on his backside for selling armaments out the back of his pickup truck. Waste of an O5 if you ask me, but to each his own.
I had the knowledge of security and he had the knowledge of B&E. It was a match made in heaven. Ted had his reasons for turning, not that he'd ever talk about it. Guy wasn't ever much of a talker, except when it came to football.
One thing we could both get on board for. Just kicking back with a few ice cold Nukas and watching the game made the whole thing feel almost normal. It was almost nice meeting up at O'Sullivans to watch the game and hatch out a plan for our next job.
I've got a feeling we were single-handedly responsible for keeping the doors open on that old place. Not that the owner'd ever admit it. Place was nice. No one bothered us, the food came out hot the drinks cold and it opened like clockwork. Best damn sports bar in town.
Tedros had a souped up police highwayman from back in the day. Cop shocks, cop suspension, and a cop engine over the hood. It was tooled up for speed and all done up with a matt black paintjob.
Nicest damn car I'd ever seen.
Lost it to me in a game of poker with the boys. Which after I'd totaled my car was a damn nice surprise. For all his military training his poker face sucked, and his gambling problem wasn't much better for him.
The jobs were simple. We'd show up at O'Sullivans just before nightfall to meet Smith. He'd exchange a few bills with the owner to secure the back room and we'd get down to business. It started with simple jobs smash and grabs at automotive plants, sabotage on the edge of town the usual.
Every time we made it to that backroom Smith would set us up with a little presentation on that old slide projector. Man had a flair for the dramatic that was a mile long on all sides. Usually brought a few handouts to send the message home on the days job that we could look over.
He was corporate to the core, even if we never found out which company. Always showed up in that suit and tie with the American flag tie pin. Always ordered us drinks before the job to boot, he was nice like that.
It was hard work some might say brutal even, but Smith paid on time, and I'll be damned if he didn't pay well. I could make more money in just one job for that bald bastard then I'd ever get working in the biz.
Then again when you're as good at the game as us? You had to pay well.
Did a lot of travel in those early days. Sacramento, Detroit, New Orleans, Los Angeles, Denver, Anchorage. It'd be easier to list off a place we didn't wind up getting sent. One big cavalcade of paid vacations cross the states.
I'd be hard pressed to say I didn't love every minute of it. It got me out of the house, got me away from Jennifer. As much as it hurt to leave her it felt good even for a moment to forget about her, forget about what that damn plague was doing to her.
She never bothered to ask where I went on my little business trips. Not even once. Part of me thinks deep down she knew full well where that extra income was coming from, even if she wouldn't admit it to my face.
Best part of the job if I had to pick one would be the variety. Every week it was something new, a fresh challenge that really spoke to me. Sometimes we'd be walking into corporate HQ's other times military bases, and it really pushed things to the limits.
Fast cars, new faces, flying one side of the country to the other. There's nothing in life that's quite like it and if there is I sure as hell don't know about it. Best part of it all was that it was on someone else's dime. They never knew us and we never knew them.
So what if the entire world was going to hell? I was living a life right out of a Bond flick. Sure it got tough from time to time, but what job didn't?
And it'd be an understatement to say the world was going to hell. Riots in the street, the Plague running wild in the cities. I still remember opening my morning paper every day finding out about some new breakdown in our american dream.
It got to the point I just stopped watching the news. I couldn't bring myself to watch the crackdowns the food riots the bread lines round the block 24/7.
The red scare wasn't making life any easier. People were turning on each other like rabid animals. I don't know who bled in the water, but the sharks were out swimming in full force. Schools were shut down for their sympathies, restaurants closed their doors every which way you fucking looked there was some new tragedy on the rise.
That was when I switched to two packs a day.
I think I remember the riots the most. Cars overturned in the streets, windows smashed open, a firestorm in the night. It would have been almost funny if it weren't so god damned sad.
Of course it wasn't enough that we had a bunch of poor and starving bastards rioting out in the streets the police had to bring out their heavy armor to quash it down.
You haven't seen terror till you've looked down the street and seen three rows of cops lock step with riot shields and riot gear marching down on your head. To see those blood red eyes glowing out in the depths of the night, only for the tear gas to come flying through the air.
There was a level of brutality in those riots I hadn't imagined before. Some of the rioters were barely anything more then teenagers throwing a tantrum, and the police beat them down hard. The boys never had a chance, and part of me thinks they knew that full well the moment they threw the first rock.
Sometimes the riots were over food, since the shelves were almost all empty. It wasn't that the food wasn't being made, wasn't that there didn't happen to be enough supply out there, we just didn't have any easy way to get it to store shelves.
Gasoline was 1450.90 at the pump. A price no one was willing to pay, even if they actually had the cash for it. Though fusion was an option it wasn't much of one. If you were lucky enough to find a place that was selling a fusion powered car you'd be hard pressed to find one that wasn't back ordered six months or more.
The demand was there, and it was rising all the time but the supply just couldn't match. Sure me and Ted both had our Fusion cars so we were setting pretty through the whole thing, but it didn't change jack diddly for the average American.
I remember seeing the job postings on windows hanging in grocery stores, and on newspaper stands. Places were paying an arm and a leg to anyone who was willing to provide their own truck for the job. It was good money for anyone who had the good fortune to get their hands on the right car.
Maybe if Fusion had caught on better things might have changed a bit, but as it stood that never quite happened.
Things went from bad to worse as time went on. I started carrying heat with me every time I'd leave the house. You'd have been suicidal not to. It was the new law of the land even if the police looked at you funny.
I never had to shoot anyone, but just having that hunk of iron on my hip saved my bacon more times then I'd like to count.
People had gone feral, there was no two ways about it. In desperation they turned to thieving.
It was harder every day to know who to trust as time went on. You didn't really know if your neighbor wasn't just holding out for an opportunity or on the edge of some mental breakdown.
What didn't help matters was the automation of the world. Robots were all the rage, and as time rolled its way on they could do more, and more then humans ever could. Protectrons, , the list goes on for miles.
For starters you didn't have to pay a robot. Didn't have to clothe them or feed them either, and to put the cherry on top of the Sunday you didn't need to worry about giving them time to sleep or having them unionize.
Every day it looked more likely that we were rolling on steady towards a future where there'd be few jobs that wouldn't just be done by metal men. It had a bit of a chilling effect on life I'm not above saying.
People feared for their jobs on a daily basis, most careers dried up as they rolled out more units ready to hop into the corporate world and replace their fleshy counter parts.
A few businesses cropped up selling themselves on an all human workforce. It was something of a back to grass roots campaign. The products they offered tended to be about three times the price and half the quality but they soldiered on all the same.
Onto the scene came Vault Tech. A company that acted like it had all the answers. Building massive underground bunkers all across the country for the rich, famous, and the lucky alike. The opened up operations across the country to re-educate workers along with Robco, give em a new lease on life as it were.
People didn't really know what to make of the move. Be it a PR stunt or something more it didn't matter. There was a percentage of folks getting back into the workforce, and for the first time in a long time we had a genuine sence that should the worst happen and the world go into atomic hellfire there was a backup plan.
Problem most folks didn't really think about was one of logistics. There wasn't any reasonable way Vault Tech could build enough places for America. Sure there was a new one being built every month like clockwork across the country but it still wasn't enough, how could it be?
People certainly built their own underground bunkers, and copycat companys sprang up promising to keep families safe from the fallout. It was an absolute gold rush for some of these companies, and again the work force found themselves back in construction.
There were just so many vaults going up so many new buildings that they had to bring in people to work the jobs. There just weren't enough robots to take all the work. It seemed like we were heading on the right track by prepping for the wrong track.
Of course during this little gold rush I made a few investments into the market. You'd have to be a fool not to. None of us knew for sure if there was going to be nuclear hellfire but it couldn't hurt to prep with the whole nation in the grips of bunker fever.
So I had my own built in the basement of my home. It was a simple place just enough for me, Jennifer and a few friends to wait things out till they calmed down. I couldn't see a reason they wouldn't given enough time.
Of course there were plenty of other reasons the world went bunker mad. earthquakes, tornadoes, riots. The list went on. Hell even the yokels were building their own bunkers for when the worst came. Some people just dug themselves large holes in the ground with a ladder leading out under their house and filled it up with supplies.
I had a few jobs breaking into private bunkers. I wasn't proud of that kind of work, invading someone else's home just to plant evidence or take something expensive. It felt wrong walking into that whole other world just to fence off everything I could carry.
Part of the problem was that it was just so easy. I barely even needed to be there with most of those jobs since the civilians were using the same technology I'd designed, at least in the local area. All it took was loading the holotape into the command console and I could have the entire bunker to myself.
Tedros loved those kinds of jobs because they were quick and easy. The sort of thing you could do in an evening without much more in the way of planning outside of making sure the owner wasn't at home.
I could agree with him that they were quick jobs, but he and I had some philosophical disagreements over the whole thing. Easy didn't always work well with my conscience.
We were working a gig at a local power plant. The job was simple enough. Break in and use their computers to figure out who was using the most power. It was something of a legwork job to keep us busy. The way Smith saw it if a place was using enough power then it was a safe bet it had something worth keeping, and I admit I couldn't argue with the logic.
It took weeks of planning. Working behind the scenes with our fence to get hold of utility worker uniforms wasn't easy but the cost was covered by smith.
I had acquired so many work uniforms over my time working with smith I could have opened a damn costume store. Half my bunker was filled up with different disguises we'd snagged over time.
We found out about a paper mill. Place was on the edge of town way out in the boonies, but it was drawing enough power to fuel half the damn city.
For a place that had been closed down for the better part of a year it struck a chord with us. How could some place that's working a skeleton crew at most be drawing so damn much power?
We had to know.
Lucky for us we found out.
It took a lot of digging but we were able to pin down a military operation right inside.
From that point all we had to do was cause a few... disturbances... with their computer systems and enter our ID's into the database so we could walk right in.