Those of us living in this age of tv and gaming may note a couple of omissions from Bunni's explanation. This is because FO3, like many video games, appears to take place in a world where video games have never existed (except of the terrifying "virtual reality wants your soul" variety). There are televisions and radios scattered throughout the Wasteland, and there are computers, but there's nothing approximating a recreational gaming system.
EDIT: Someone mentioned Grognak the Barbarian in a review. I thought it was part of a mod I'm using. :D My bad. Although I feel sort of sorry for us in 2400 or whenever if all we've got are text-based RPGs...
4
Xen woke up to Bunni patting her shoulder.
"I've made you some dinner, Dear," she said. "You can come and look at the Doctors first, if you like. There's nothing frightening about them."
"All right," said Xen, a little nervously. She remembered the awful pool of blood, though it was now gone. Not even the smell remained, cleansed away by the astringent tang of cleaning fluids. She followed Bunni back through the curtain into the storage room.
Her third genetic contributor was still there, with his fingers even longer than hers and his permanently swollen right eye. Beside him hung Dr. Montalban, curled up as if he were sleeping. His clothes were clean and his eyes were closed. The next station held Dr. Graber. Her lab coat was spotless, more so than it had been in Xen's life. She had been placed in the field so that the curve of her sharp chin and the sweep of her blond hair covered the ragged hole in her neck. She, too, might have been sleeping.
"You see?" said Bunni, stroking Xen's limp hair with a cool manipulator. "Nothing to be afraid of at all."
"Are you sure she's dead?" said Xen.
"Yes, Xen. There's not the slightest bit of doubt about that. Dr. Montalban, too."
"Okay," said Xen. She walked slowly around the stations, looking at them. "They're bigger than he is," she said, pointing to the xenoorganism.
"Yes," said Bunni. "That's why you're small for your age. You probably always will be."
"But I'm not green," said Xen. "Well, not a lot."
"No," said Bunni. "His species is very sensitive to ultraviolet light. Dr. Graber had to make sure you had a little human skin pigment so the lights wouldn't hurt you."
"They hurt my eyes," said Xen. "If they're turned up. Even if I close my inside eyelid."
"I know," said Bunni. "That's why we keep the Lab a little dark, Dear. When you're a little older, and your eyes have finished growing, Tori will make you some glasses to protect them."
Xen turned to the row of jars that stood along a shelf against the back wall. They were too high up for her to see inside them. "Bunni," she said. "Hold me up so I can look at those."
Bunni trundled around to pick her up and hoisted her up to look at the jars. Xen held onto the manipulators around her waist as she stared at them. The first couple had nothing inside that she could see, just clear liquid. The third one had a little blog of a thing. It was wrinkled and green. She could just about make out a tiny speck on one end, like an eye. The things in the other jars got progressively bigger. The last three or four were all a foot or so long. All of them were some shade of green, and all of them were ugly. Some had silver eyes, like Xen's and the xenoorganism's. Some had blue eyes, like Dr. Graber's. Some had brown ones. One had no eyes at all that she could see.
Xen counted the jars out loud. "Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen. Oh." She twisted slightly in Bunni's grip so she could stare down at the robot's brain in its clear case. "I'm Human/Xenoorganic Hybrid Number Nineteen. There's eighteen jars here."
"That's right," said Bunni, and lowered her back to the floor. "A scientist never throws anything away if they can help it, Dear."
"Will I be a scientist?" said Xen.
"Do you want to be?" said Bunni.
"I don't know yet," said Xen.
"Then let's not worry about it. Come and eat your dinner."
Days went by. Xen now had the run of all the Lab's rooms, not just the main lab, the computer room and the bathroom. Admittedly, this added only the back storage room and a couple of rooms full of mechanical things that belonged to Dr. Montalban, but it was very exciting all the same. Bunni packed away her cot and she slept in one of the single beds in the computer/kitchen room. It never occurred to her that a person might have an entire room just for sleeping in. That would have been a waste of precious space.
She went on reading. Bunni began teaching her math and history in addition to the biology and robotics that were her automatic interests. Xen learned that there was an entire world outside, full of people and robots and monsters.
"It's bigger than the Lab?" said Xen, now five years old.
"The Lab is tiny, silly," said Tori, pausing on her way past with her arms full of parts to repair one of the security bots. "It's millions of times bigger."
"Can I go see it?" Xen asked Bunni.
"Not until your eyes have stopped growing," said Bunni. "Then we'll take it a step at a time."
When she was six, she discovered that the computer had an entire archive section devoted to fiction. It was much larger than the encyclopedia. She was deeply startled until Bunni explained to her that the things she was reading about hadn't really happened.
"Oh," said Xen. "Then why did people write them down? It would take a long time to type all this."
"Because they enjoyed it, Dear," said Bunni. "Before the War there were people who made a living doing nothing but typing. Some people even did it for fun."
"For fun?" said Xen. She thought about the things she, personally, most wanted to do. "Couldn't they go out and see things?"
"Well, most of them could," said Bunni. "But you must remember, this was before the War. They didn't think that was as important as you do. And sometimes they would write about things they had seen so that people who hadn't seen those things could read about them. Sometimes they would invent things that no one had ever seen. It was a way for people who couldn't travel to travel inside their own minds. It's a very human characteristic."
"Did they write about robots?" asked Xen.
"Certainly. There were entire corporations who did nothing but write about and build robots. That's where I came from. Most of the surviving robots in the Wasteland are Robco models."
"Can I read about Robco?" said Xen.
"Absolutely. Let me help you find the relevant section."
When she was eight years old, she started having allergy attacks again. This went on for a few weeks of unpleasant epinephrine injections and anxious, choking moments, then Tori thought to check the ventilation and found it clogged with dust. Xen had to wear a mask around the Lab for a few days while the problem was taken care of. The two robots were sufficiently busy with this that she managed to sneak out the door in the main Lab. She found herself, rather disappointingly, in a short hallway with gray walls. Still, she made the most of it. She took a good, long look at the clamshell door at the end and went to get a screwdriver. She was halfway to having the lock picked when Tori caught her.
"Oh, no, you don't," said Tori, and plucked the tool neatly out of her grasp. "The air out in the Metro is dirty as Hell. It'd probably kill you dead."
"But I want to see what's out there," argued Xen.
"Well, fortunately for you, Dr. Montalban just told us to keep you from getting killed," said Tori. "He didn't tell us to follow your orders. Back you go."
Xen complained of this to Bunni.
"Well, if you're really certain that's what you want, we can start leaving the filters off one at a time," said Bunni. "Just during the day time. If you can get used to the air from outside, then we'll see about a trip out into the tunnels. You're not ready for the sunlight yet."
Xen agreed to this, albeit somewhat reluctantly.
She was nine and a half before she could breathe unfiltered air without coughing. In the meantime, she went on with her education. This was also when she started tinkering with Dr. Montalban's large collection of small tools. This process was carefully supervised by Tori, in order to prevent both injury to herself and damage to the more delicate equipment. This led to the necessity of her learning some basic robotics, since that was what most of the tools were for. Tori firmly declined being tinkered with herself - "You're not up for that yet, kiddo - " but promised to help her build another robot. "A little one," said Tori. "And while you're putting the chassis together, we'll start you on some simple programming."
"Bunni says I have to learn more geography first," said Xen.
"Lots of time for that," said Tori.
Her first trip outside was a short one. Tori unlocked the clamshell door, and it folded back into the top and bottom of the door frame. Xen was delighted to find that it was darker outside than inside the lab. She opened her inner eyelid and stared around, wide-eyed. The little lights on the edges of the ceiling glowed with heat as well as with light now; and she could read the bloom of infrared that was the power plant of each sentry bot. They hummed as they rolled back and forth, each on three fat little tires. The tunnel stretched out in either direction. Xen stood on a small sidewalk on the edge of a large depression in the concrete. She recognized the train tracks from her studies, but there was no train. Piles of rebar and concrete and miscellaneous dirt choked the tunnel perhaps a hundred yards away in each direction. There was room enough for a person to climb over them at the top, but it would have to be a slender person.
"I can see a lot more out here," she said.
"I don't see how," said Tori. "There's nothing to see except the bots. Stephanie and Michelle aren't much to look at." Xen heard Bunni roll up behind them, no doubt with an epinephrine pen ready in case Xen had another allergy attack. But that didn't happen; she sneezed a little at the dust, but she was now well acclimated to the air from the tunnels.
Xen turned to watch Stephanie go past. A laser cannon terminated each of the robot's two arms. The grating over the robot's main sensor suggested the visor of a knight from medieval Europe, part of Xen's historical reading. The pointed shoulders to the upper carapace suggested pauldrons. The two sentry bots looked basically alike, but Stephanie had a neat letter "s" stenciled on each shoulder. The paint glowed faintly to Xen's eyes, radiating on the high end of the spectrum that she couldn't see with her inner eyelids shut. She knew without looking that Michelle would have an "m." Dr. Montalban had been very thorough about things like that. All the tools he had left behind had neat labels on them. Xen wondered if she should go back and stencil his name on the base of his field station. Would he like that? Maybe Tori could help her find the paint he'd used.
"Tracking unfamiliar target," said a female voice above her head. Xen looked up. The red eye of a turret looked back.
"I'm Human/Xenoorganic Hybrid #19," she said. "But you can call me Xen. What's your name?"
"Dammit, I forgot about that," said Tori. She hummed for a second, and Xen blinked as the air rippled between her and the turret. The red light blinked once. Xen moved down the sidewalk a few steps, so she could look up at the turret without straining her neck. She pushed her limp hair back out of her eyes.
"New targeting parameters accepted," said the turret. The barrel rotated until Tori saw the red light from the main sensor again. "Hello, Xen. I am a Robco Mark V security turret. Dr. Sherman Montalban designated me Tawnee."
"That must have been a long time ago," said Xen, with a typical nine-year-old view of chronology. "He died when I was really little." Tori scooted off through the air toward Stephanie. Xen saw the air ripple between them, and the guard bot turned to face the Mister Handy unit.
"I received my designation approximately twelve years ago," said Tawnee. "At the time of my installation and programming here."
"Oh, so I wasn't even started yet," said Xen, looking back up at the turret. She thought about this for a moment. "They hadn't even tried for Hybrid #1. She died when she was still too small to see," Xen informed the turret. "It took them a lot of tries to get me. That's why I'm #19."
"I am the three hundredth model of my product line," said Tawnee.
"Wow," said Xen. She turned to Bunni, who still hovered anxiously in the doorway. "What number were you, Bunni?"
"I lost my original product designation code when my artificial intelligence was uploaded," said Bunni. "Dr. Montalban probably put it into the computer records somewhere. Bunni is the only name I recognize now."
"I fixed them. They won't shoot her even if she's out here alone," Tori said to Bunni as she came gliding back. One sensor craned down at Xen. "They'd never seen you before. Sentry bots aren't the brightest Crayons in the box."
"The what?" said Xen, then rejected this in favor of a more interesting question. "How do you talk to them?"
"Shortwave radio, mostly," said Tori. "We've got our own frequency. Why?"
"I can see something move in the air when you do it," said Xen.
"That's not surprising, Dear," said Bunni, patting her shoulder. "Your eyes are very sensitive. That's why you need a second eyelid."
"Seeing radio is pretty unusual, I bet," said Tori. "Too bad the Docs aren't around to see it. But then, I guess that's my fault more than anybody else's."
"It was no one's fault," said Bunni. "Come on, Xen. That's enough for today."
"All right," said Xen reluctantly. "Can I come back out and talk to Tawnee again?"
"Any time you like, as long as we clear it with the sentries first," said Bunni. "They're here to keep us safe."
"Bye, Tawnee," said Xen.
"Goodbye, Xen," said Tawnee.