The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Capital Wasteland
The Definitive Guide to Understanding, Evading and/or Annihilating any and all Dangers Hiding in the DC Hellhole
The following dedication appears in the book:
for Administrator Amata and Barber Butch
and the last remaining DC Vault, 101
for the life you gave and took freely
Chapter Four
Far out on the unprotected backwaters on the unfashionable end of the western Capital Beltway surrounding the glorious District of Columbia lies a small, unregarded little Vault.
In the near vicinity of this Vault at a distance of not more than a morning's light jog is an utterly insignificant little grey-green town whose inhabitants are – or perhaps were – so amazingly primitive that they tend to think of radiation and the looming threat of war as a problem for other people.
These townspeople have – or rather had – a problem, which was this: most of them were unhappy, afraid and cowed pissants for pretty much all of the time. And that's not just because the lead author dislikes a man who once lived there in the back-when times. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of them were made impossible when the nuclear Final Solution was made a reality and the world was made that boring grey-green shade in all corners of the map.
There was also talk of running away to the moon, but that didn't really pan out well at all. Not at all. Don't try to orbit our planet. It's not safe there yet. Yet. Give it time.
The problem remained. Lots of people, anyone left, were still unhappy, afraid and, while getting better, still cowed into submission by any authority figure that presented itself. Usually with a gun. Or a plasma rifle.
After the passing of the year 2077, many people became increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake in building fallout shelters at all. Others believed this so heartedly that they left the relative safety of those Vaults to venture out into the radiation maze. The Guide has yet to get a return researcher from the west, but we know one of the first opened Vaults was out that way. More to come on that.
And one Thursday, nearly two hundred years after one man had been shot in the back with a combat shotgun in Canada for trying to say how great it would be if everyone would get along and switch to nuclear power, a young man and his ghoul bodyguard were sitting in a bar in a beached aircraft carrier on the Potomac River in America's fine capital city sipping away at three hundred year old scotch and the Kid got it!
He understood all of the world's troubles and knew – knew! – that this time this was it and no one would have to get shot to prove a point ever again!
He proceeded to vomit half of his bottle of his fifteen-score scotch onto the floor of the Muddy Rudder bar in Rivet City. It was a low point, as were many of his involving alcohol. At least this time he wasn't threatening anyone.
This is his story.
This particular Thursday was one which would have gone by without note except for being the beginning of the Kid's third month out of Vault 101, a place of no other importance save it having sheltered the Kid for almost twenty years. As part of the Kid's growing monthly celebration, he finds a bar somewhere in the Wasteland, has the total of God alone knows how many drinks it takes for him to get piss-drunk and starts telling his story. Badly and off key. Colin Moriarty had the bad sense of both insulting the Kid and a ghoul he liked to hang out with this time last month. Almost got his head taken from his shoulders.
From time to time in the recounting of something called the Goat, for which this Guide has six conflicting reports, the Kid would stare off into the ceiling, seeming to attempt to glare holes in the metal latticework so that he might see the sky more clearly.
When asked what he was doing, the Kid would reply, "Oh, I'm just trying to find the sun."
When told that not only was it nighttime, but he is also on the lowest level of a century's old ship, the Kid would just fall into a silence that spread clinical depression through the bar. The barmaid, Belle Bonny made quite a bit of money at that moment selling cures. Kid was good for business, she thought.
These semi-often alcoholic anniversaries tended to end badly for the Kid. He'd get out of his skull on the scotch only he could afford though being a scavving packrat, get into a fight over either the money he's tossing around or his conversation, and end up getting thrown out of town for this or that.
"Charon," the Kid slurred, "what if I told you that I wasn't from Rivet-ton after all, but from a small Vault somewhere in the vicinity of Springvale?"
"I am not sure," the ancient ghoul said, shrugging in that sort of way that says he respects you, but wants you to shut the hell up and stop making a damned nuisance of yourself. "Is this a statement you are likely to make?"
The Kid poured another shot into his stained glass. It was flying down his numb throat almost before the bottle was down. "Drink, buddy. The world's ended."
Of this, Charon thought, I am perfectly aware. The Guide has entries on many individual people in the Wastes. These files include known associates of the Kid from Vault 101. Granted, some files are more complete than others, but even the thin ones have some interest to them.
The Kid drank another shot and though about those entries to be. The idea was gone as the last of the scotch found its way into his liver on an attempt to finish him off via alcohol poisoning.
Charon bemoaned, "Today must be a Thursday. I could never stand behind a Thursday."
It is of note that of the few statements Charon the ghoul has verified of his own past, Thursday was the weekday he'd discovered his body changing into that of a creature from an old monster movie.
Despite the several corrections noted in the entry for the various Vaults in the Washington DC area, there is one entry which stands above them all: Vault 101.
As the lead author on the Guide, the Kid from said Vault knew it well and explained one thing very clearly: 101 is an isolationist paradise. Safe as a mother's womb and ignorant to anything at all going on out here. The other Vault-Tec facilities? Hell. Unadulterated Hell. Don't scavenge in them, don't go near them. You will die.
But 101 is nice.
Vault 101, it says, is about the most massively useful fallout bunker the pre-War world could have come up with. Partly is has great practical value – you can stick thousands of people in it and maintain a positive population for several hundred years; you can protect them from the cold, dark dangers of atomic weapons and the creatures that rise from it; use it to save your society and even test how people eventually fuck up when a less than ideal situation is forced on them for decades at a time.
More importantly, a Vault has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a Waster (a person living in some Wasteland) finds that a Vault is habitable, they will automatically assume the people inside are in possession of food, water, fresh towels, soap, booze, maps, repellent, space suits and a willingness to share these things freely like some goddamn Communist – damn it, Nathan. Don't type on this old terminal. No erasures… shit!
Anyway… people just think that Vaulties are willing to give anything away. They're not. At least the ones from 101 are more than willing to let people die and turn to dust in that tunnel and no one, even the Enclave at their prime, could get past that door without a dozen bonafide atomic bombs.
"Want to take a walk to my Vault?"
"Is the massive steel door of Vault 101 not still closed and locked," the ghoul asked.
"I gutta' message. 'Mata changed the code. Gutta' see what's goin' on? Better yet, you stay here. Don't wan' you getten hurt in there. Gunna' sleep in Vera's place before—"
The Guide says several things about alcohol: where to get the best drinks and where not to get ripped off, but mostly condemning any who abuse it. This entry and its bias come from experience of the main field researcher.