Chapter 13 – Air Filtration System
The investigation of the Overseer's Office would give the most answers to the questions that were bouncing around in my head, and may solve some of the outstanding Vault issues.
To that end, I started to make some preparations: first I persuaded Sarah-Jane to agree to limit her clean-up activities to the areas that we have already visited, such as the Maintenance section, Atrium, and around the Secondary Power Room, until I had at least confirmed that the other areas of the Vault, such as Laboratories and the Residential areas were safe.
This proved to be a little harder than I initially expected, I think that Sarah-Jane is taking her responsibilities as Vault Doctor extremely seriously, and is wanting everything to be brought up to pre-war standards. Surprising considering state everything is after 200 years, but it also gave me hope that things could be improved.
Once that was done, I could set mind back to the problem of the Office door; now before that Raider heavy mob had interrupted me, I had worked out that I need some kind of ear-plugs, or Ear Defenders, in order to bypass that sub-sonic command defence on the Overseer's door, so I headed to Secondary Power Room as it was the nearest most likely place to find some.
When I entered the Reactor Room, I couldn't believe my eyes, it was like I had stepped into a full-colour pictures that you see in glossy engineering magazines. The walls & floor were spotless, every piece of metalwork gleamed, and the brass fittings had been polished until they practically shone. To say that Up-N-Atom had been busy would have been a gross under-statement.
As such, I felt that it only fair to praise him, Up-N-Atom responded proudly "Only part of my job", but as he turned away I heard him mutter "After all, there is nothing else to do in here". 'Great' I thought, now I have a bored robot on my hands.
Anyway, I looked in around the Reactor room, and neighbouring store room, but could find no sign of any ear-defenders or ear-plugs, and when I asked Up-N-Atom where they were at.
He replied that 'Jensen from Air Filtration department borrowed them, and has not returned them'.
As the Air Filtration room was just up the corridor from the Reactor, this seemed a good opportunity to check it out, while I retrieved the Ear Defenders. But before I left, I checked the readings on the Reactor.
With the Fuel Rods reprocessed, the Reactor was now up to 27% capacity, and with the power fluctuations mostly gone, the Vault Main-frame been able to instigate "Power Eco mode – Level 5", which basically meant that all lighting was reduced to 75% brightness, and in unoccupied areas, every second light was switched off. Plus all non-essential equipment was either switched off, or forced to operate in their most energy efficient mode, the Reactor could maintain this power level for another 6 months, maybe a year tops, before the output would start falling again fast. Six months! That seemed a lifetime away, I could have laughed, when I read that dire warning, but for the other more urgent worries. At least I knew of a possible refuelling option: the bomb at the centre of Megaton, but for now it could wait for another day.
A closer look at the Vault Power Status log, did highlight that there were a couple of notable exceptions to the Power Eco mode 5: there was still that mystery power drain, that I had noted in the kitchen area, which seemed not included in any of the Eco modes, and the other was a Command Override on the power supplied to the Science Section, issued by order of the Overseer Leris; The odd thing that the Override priority had been set so high, that it even had priority of basic Life Support such as air & water.
I was able to counter the Override partly, due to my official position as Chief Maintenance Engineer, plus the fact that I was standing in the Reactor room itself, with direct access to everything, as a result I set it so that the two Emergency Generators would continue to supply Life Support, regardless of the labs power demand, which should give us time to do something.
As I double-checked, that my modification would work, I spotted an interesting side-point: the Override was time-stamped as June 2109, which means that Leris had been still in the Vault alive 32 years, after the bombs fell. Since the Vault was supposed to have opened after 12 years, why hadn't he left?
With everything in the Reactor checked out, it was time to move onto the Air Filtration System. As I picked my way along the corridor to it, I called up the Maintenance 'To-Do List' on my Pip-boy to see if there were any references to it. Needless to say, there was a very long list of items, but a quick glance seemed to indicate that most of them were fairly minor in nature.
However when I got to the door, I was astounded to find that the room had been locked down, by order of the Overseer, 'due to a dangerous chemical leak', but there was nothing on the 'To Do' list mentioning this. I was able to countermand the lockdown by hacking the local computer terminal, and convincing it that there was a fire inside, and the automatic 'Fire Evacuation' Protocol had precedence over a mere 200 year old 'Chemical Leak Lockdown', and so opened the door.
I quickly cancelled the Fire Alarm, and then stepped into the Air Filtration Room; I was stunned by what I saw, it was like stepping into the Vault-Tec 'Marie Celeste', for I had expected to see the usual wear & tear, or some sign of the chaos that had enveloped the Vault over the past 200 years, but apart from the thin layer of dust over everything, it looked like everyone had just stepped out for 5 minutes, and would be back soon.
Directly facing me was the large Air Filtration System, with numerous flashing 'warning' lights.
To my left, in one corner, was a workbench, with a partly reassembled filter lying on it, with the engineer's tools next to it, all ready for the guy to complete the job when he got back.
In the middle of the room, was a table with the remains of an interrupted poker game laid out, with all the player's cards laid face-down on the table ready to resume, money lying beside each hand of cards, and even the current game's pot lying in the middle of the table.
To my right there was a desk, with an open work log lying on it; it looked like someone had been using the logbook as his personal journal, so I quickly starting looking through it hoping that it would provide some answers. Annoyingly the hand-writing was appalling, but I was able with some patience to decipher some of the entries.
1st October 2077:
Great News, I have been put in charge of the Air Filtration in Vault 106. It means that my family are guaranteed a place in the Vault, no more messing around trying to get onto one of those special short-lists. We are in!
20th October 2077:
What is Dr Leris playing at? He knows that the Vault has been placed on hot-standby, yet he still refuses to assign me a full crew roster. Hell, he designed this whole Air System for Vault-Tec, so he knows darn well I am supposed to have four teams of six, to take care of it properly. And what does he give me - SIX, and two of them are only half-trained apprentices. We have to do 12-hour shifts, with less than a skeleton crew: a team of four to cover the day shift, and a team of two to keep an eye on things overnight, such has dealing with emergencies, but we can't keep this for long. I have submitted a letter of complaint to Vault-Tec Safety Department for this breach in regulations.
25th October 2077:
What a nightmare! First the Chinese have gone and dropped The Bomb on us, and now Overseer Leris has told me that I will have to make do with few engineers that I have. He even had the gall to give the excuse that this was because the rest of my team failed to reach the Vault in time. IN TIME! I flagged this up nearly a week ago, why was nothing done then. The Arrogance of the man is unbelievable!
He still won't let me recruit any of the Vault Residents to train up myself; my staff are exhausted, and it is all very well, but if the Air System fails, then we will be a worse state than if we lose the Water Chip. You can at least live a few days without water, without air we will literally only have minutes.
3rd November 2077:
There is something wrong with the Vault's ventilation system. We are starting to get build-up of Chokedamp in the lower levels, which can only mean that the air is not circulating properly. It is nowhere near dangerous level, but it shouldn't be happening at all.
I don't think the air vents are positioned properly, but the Overseer says that he has checked them, and they are all correct.
It is all very well for him, he doesn't have old Mrs Harris harping on every lunchtime about how her "little Petey has died of a broken heart". I haven't the courage to tell what I think really killed her canary.
4th November 2077:
Something strange is going on, one of the security guys came in, saying that the Overseer has circulated saying something along the lines that 'If anyone complains about any funny smells, it is due to some irregularity with Air Filtration System', so I ran a 'Level 1 Diagnostics' and it checks out 100% OK. What is Leris on about?
Additional Note: I have had another complaint about Jensen borrowing other's people's equipment, and forgetting to return them. If he weren't my best engineer, I would swear that he was 'missing a few screws upstairs'
17th November2077:
There is something wrong with the Vault's atmosphere, and I do not mean the strange behaviour of a number of the Vault Residents.
After dozens of complaints, I did my own in-depth investigation of the Air System, using a customised program of Jensen's, instead of the official approved Vault-Tec software. The system is working 100% as it should, but the 'Air Quality Monitor' is not flagging up that there is an unidentified gas being released into the Vault; it must be sabotage!
I have told my whole team, and insisted that we have an emergency meeting with the Overseer tomorrow.
Here comes another of the Overseer's useless announcements about something or othe...
The last entry was incomplete, as if the writer had just dropped his pen and walked out midsentence.
Thanks to these journals, I was starting to get a clear view or timeline of the fall of the Vault from hope to chaos. The date of that last entry seemed strangely familiar, then I realised that Monica Sullivan Journal had an entry for the same date, when the first strange deaths in the Vault occurred: 2 suicides and 3 killed by another crazed resident, who was shot down by security. That seemed more than a mere coincidence, so I checked the BMD records that Sarah-Jane had given me a copy of, and looked up that date, to see if there was any addition information.
I was able to quickly confirm my growing suspicions, all six people who had died on that day had worked in Air Filtration department, and in fact it was the whole department who had perished.
The only logical conclusion that I could draw, was that the Overseer had successfully eliminated the one group of people who had been on the verge of discovering Vault-Tec's secret experiment, and would have been the ones to stop it, such as putting the vents right..
It was noteworthy, that no-one was ever appointed to replace the losses, but rather Air Filtration room was placed on lockdown on the 18th November 2077, the day after the massacre; I presume this was to prevent anyone from learning what the writer of this journal had discovered until it was too late, and to prevent any damage to critical equipment from the coming storm of madness and death.
As these thoughts churned through my mind, I could feel a rage; No! More like THE RAGE, a rage against what Vault-Tec had done, and especially the actions of their local representative Dr Leris. It was a rage so intense, that the Red Madness of the psycho-gas seemed mild in comparison with. I do not recall how long I stood their quivering with almost mindless anger, but not daring to lash out, or even move, for if I did any damage I did in here would condemn us all to a slow suffocating death.
Finally the Rage subsided, leaving me feeling mentally & physically exhausted, my hair and clothes wringing wet with sweat. As I slowly allowed myself to move, I found that I was muttering "Damn them! Damn them all!" no other words seemed adequate to express my feelings. Maybe I could blame those female hormones that were no doubt rushing about my body, for the extreme emotional reactions, but honestly I doubt that my anger would have been the same male or female.
To try and distract myself, and give my body chance to recover I staggered over to Air Filtration's computer terminal, and brought up its status log. The initial summary was extremely worrying: The system was down to 15% of its designed capacity, but this was not a cause for any immediate panic, as the system had been designed as standard practice with a capacity to support double the Vaults designed initial population (I suppose to allow for Residents, plus kids); the more worrying reading was that the system's efficiency was down to 7% and falling, the entire thing would fail within a few days.
Fortunately finding a solution was extremely easy, the declining efficiency was simply due to lack of maintenance, such as blocked filters, ungreased bearings & joints, etc, and just down the corridor I had a maintenance robot with plenty of time on his hands. So, I did a quick check through of the area, including the store-rooms off the corridor, which contained additional spares & materials for the Reactor & Air Filtration system and made sure there were no nasty surprises (e.g. booby-traps) about. Then I popped into the Reactor room, to tell Up-N-Atom the good news that his area of responsibility had been extended. I got a mutter of "What did your last slave die of?" but he was clearly pleased with the news, as he shot up the corridor to Air Filtration, as if his tail was on fire, which I suppose technically it is. Also by time, I had caught up with him; he was busy shooting around the room, cleaning this, oiling that, while at the same time humming what sounded very suspiciously like "Whistle while I work".
With that issue dealt with, it only took me a few minutes to search through the late Jensen's workbench, to find the missing Ear-Defenders, which had the original purpose of the visit.
Before leaving the room, I quickly logged back onto the computer terminal, and ensured that the system was now correctly monitoring the psycho-gas levels, noting that in almost all areas that I had visited so far (and modified the ventilation of), the gas level were down almost to zero; other areas however I red-flagged on my Pip-Boy as unsafe to enter, without protective equipment.
On a plus note, Up-N-Atom's efforts were already starting to produce results with the Air Filtration's efficiency having already increased by 10%, and still rising.
I left the room, feeling really pleased with the progress, when I felt .?.?.?.. Well, I not quite sure what... it seemed like it was well, a shift in reality? Afterwards something seemed slightly different, yet my surroundings seemed unchanged; I ducked quickly ducked into the Reactor, and looked at my reflection in the polished metalwork, I appeared unchanged.
It was only when I checked all my Pip-Boy screens that I spotted some differences, from when I last looked:
Some of my skill levels had changed most noticeable: Melee, Small Guns, Repair, Science and Lock-picking.
The biggest surprise was that I had gained two more Perks: Little Leaguer & Comprehension.
The big personal question was: why had they changed? Was it because of my own actions and experience gained, or some other factor? The changes to my skill levels could be explained as being a result of all the practice I have had in those areas, since I last looked at my Pip-Boy, but I couldn't think of any reasonable or logical explanation of why those Perks were selected.
Still there seemed nothing I could do, but try to carry on the best I could.
I passed Sarah-Jane as I entered the Atrium, as she headed for the Maintenance level to deal with bodies down there. She insisted on giving me a quick check-over, before parting with the warning, that I "had better not have any new injuries next time she saw me, as she would be very annoyed, to say the least.", she also asked if I could do something about the Gun Turret upstairs.
When I got up to the Upper Atrium, I could see what she meant. The Gun Turret was still operational, but it had taken some damage from the fight with the Raider Heavy Mob, and had now developed a worrying habit of tracking everything that moved, while giving disconcerting clicks and puffs of smoke. I switched the Turret to standby mode, to prevent any accidents, and did some basic repairs, so that it would available in an emergency.
Now for the main reason, I was up here, so stepping past some body-bags that Sarah-Jane had left cooling, I put on the Ear-Defenders, and approached the Overseer's office door, once more "PLEASE, MOVE AWAY FROM THE DOOR and RETURN TO YOUR QUARTERS" boomed out of Vault PA system, but this time they had no effect, and I was able to finally reach the door.
To my surprise, I found that the lock was extremely easy to pick, for I had expected more security than that. I then opened the door & stepped inside...