Chapter Three
The Broken Heartland
The Nuclear devastation that had destroyed most of the Earth was a long lasting burden on the survivors of the great war. The plants, the animals, and all manner of living things had to adapt in often horrible ways to survive. The trees that had once dotted the land that Victoria knew so well, were not little more than shriveled up sticks, that conserved every droplet of moisture and energy giving sugars to themselves. The trees bore not one fruit in this hellish reshaping of the environment, save for the few disgusting mutations that would drop foul tasting flesh to the ground in order to perpetuate their species.
So too had the animals of the world changed, sometimes in drastic fashion. As Victoria read through the limited database of the Enclave's vertibird, she found entry after entry on the more dangerous mutations that had taken place within several types of bears, dogs, deer, and birds. There were reportedly horrible things in the rivers and lakes now as well, that would often prey on thirsty wastelanders, gigantic crab-like creatures that showed a small level of intelligence and organization. Radioactive oversized scorpions, ants, and flies dotted the landscape of every state, nightmarishly large cockroaches were a constant concern of every settlement.
The food that these poor people of the wasteland had to subsist on were equally terrible, more often than not they would partake of deadly pre war rations, that had been tainted with radiation. Equally tainted was the water that many had to drink, with high levels of radiation in most readily available water sources. The animals that could be hunted or farmed had poisoned meat as well. Brahmin, as they were now called, were two headed adaptations of the bovine that used to feed America every night at the dinner table. These twisted shadows of cattle animals, they were filthy and not overly nutritious in value. Brahmin grazed upon the sick and dying radioactive moss and fungi that littered the dry and broken plains around them. Giant mole rats, dogs, sickly and aggressive deer meat, all of it was a death sentence to most of the survivors.
Then there were the mutants, the super mutants. They were big, smart, and lethal. They used advanced weaponary and tactics against the surviving members of the human race, in order to steal them away to either be eaten, or saved for some other unknown purpose. The worst threat of the wasteland by far, worse than the Enclave soldiers, or the Brotherhood of Steel's knights, even more than the roving gangs of cannibalistic raiders, were the deathclaws.
Victoria read over the profiles on the deathclaw species, and took in all that she could on how to best combat them. The Enclave had success in tinkering with some deathclaws, with mind control devices and genetic engineering, but on the whole the species was simply too much of a hazard to use as a reliable weapon in their war against the Brotherhood of Steel. Most of the deathclaws had horrible eyesight, but that did not offset their brute strength, excellent sense of hearing and smell, and their frightening speed. There were reports of radiant versions of the species in the commonwealth, and some experimental deathclaws that could mimic human speech.
The deathclaws would have to take priority over the other hostile agents of the wasteland. There would have to be a campaign of extermination and sterilization of the species. Victoria stopped her reading of the Enclave's database, and aimed the vertibird toward the old world building that she had once been so familiar with. The ruins of the city that she had grown up in were jarring, even for her. She had readied herself for the city being a loss, with the infrastructure damaged and perhaps some lasting radioactive zones, but she simply could not have calculated the amount of destruction that her little town had received.
Indeed, her little city had been known by the enemy country of China for some time before the war, once, the two countries had traded bountiful supplies with each other, much of the supplies to China had come from the mid-west. Cedar Rapids had been one such provider of grains, cereals, meat, and corn-syrup. It had once been home to the largest cereal factory in the world, and still held distinction as a top producer of cereal and grain even into the final days of civilization, but more than that, the poor doomed city of Cedar Rapids had been home to Rockwell Collins, and later Rockwell aerospace.
Rockwell had major contracts with the U.S. government, having been the developer and provider of the newest radio components and aerospace mechanisms needed for high altitude flight. Not known to the majority of the public however, Rockwell also dabbled in weaponized radio signals, artificial intelligence, and atomic engines that were slated to be small enough to fit inside of a watch. China had it's spies, and when war broke out, all of these things made Rockwell, and the surrounding city of Cedar Rapids, one of the many targets of Nuclear finality. As Victoria landed her new vertibird in the rubble of the acerage that had been the main building of Rockwell aerospace, a small frown crossed her face.
The radiation levels near the old site were too lethal for human beings to survive, in fact it seemed that China had delivered a missile packed with dirty intent. This missile was intended to end all life within the city, for many many of hundreds of years yet to come. There were unusually high concentrations of strontium 3 in the soil around the site, and huge amounts of uranium still buzzing with energy all around her. It had been an impressive and definitive show of force by the opposing country. The people of the city had likely all vanished within a millisecond of it's explosion, but the bomb had failed to destroy the true dangers that lurked in the old city. Somethings did not die easily, and others still would not perish even with the life altering explosion that had ripped through all of the organic life that used to run Rockwell aerospace.
Victoria left the vertibird, escorted by one of the tall white droids in her command, and headed to the locked doors of the one standing metal structure in the ruins of the main building. As soon as her foot hit the metal of the building, a wild and frantic shaking took place around her, and the doors of the last structure sprang to life. A red light shone on the door and it glared brightly.
"Ah! Welcome back, Vicki!" Said a very kind sounding voice, with an old english accent. "Back to burn the midnight oil, I see?" It said to her. Victoria walked up to the doors and gave the light a sad smile.
"Hello Winston." She said. "How are you feeling?" She asked. The red light flickered and then glared again.
"I think I'm doing rather well, actually. I've beaten that damnable coffee machine at chess twice, since you've been away." Said Winston, the red beam of light. "Although I think I should tell you, that some projects have been piling up lately. Much of the workforce has taken ill for the past few years." It said. Victoria nodded.
"You can probably write them off of the employee identification security protocol." She said. "They're dead." She added. Winston flickered rapidly before shining brightly once more.
"Dead? Dead you say? Pity, I was programmed to send a condolence card to any employee's surviving family members in case of an employee death. I can't seem to find any..." Said Winston. "Vicki, could you maybe pop on down to the hallmark store and pick up a few supplies?" It started to ask. Victoria put a hand up to the door.
"Winston, all of the human workers, the employees and the CEOs, the red and blue assets, and the independent cafeteria workers are all dead. They have no surviving family members to send cards to." She said. Winston flickered again, obviously taking in the scope of all that she had said. "There is no more hallmark store, or condolence cards. Rockwell aerospace no longer functions as a business." Victoria added. Winston continued to flicker until finally it stopped and it's light shined brightly again.
"What about a fruit basket then?" It asked. Victoria placed her palm on the red light.
"Open the doors." She said. Winston disappeared and the huge metal doors opened up for her. She stepped inside the structure and stood on a still functional lift that led downward. The white android followed Victoria in, and together they both slowly made their way down to the under building of Rockwell aerospace. The ride down ended abruptly at the bottom, with a strange crunching sound. Victoria hopped down from the lift and inspected the object that had wedged itself inbetween the floor and the gears of the elevating platform.
A dried out old husk of a human corpse lay broken and shattered at the lift's gears. Victoria pulled the skeletal remains away from the gears, and the lift ended it's journey with the crushing of the remaining bones. She held the ribcage in her hands and inspected the old world device that it housed. The large and vaccuum tube powered pacemaker inside the old bones had once belonged to a man named Skinner. Victoria remembered him well, as he was the only older man on the workforce that fully understood that she was his equal in age.
Victoria's alterations at the hands of madmen, just after her birth, had caused her to stop aging at around thirteen years of age. She was forever stuck in her small body, unable to garner the respect that her years of life experience had warranted. Skinner knew her back in her school days in fact, 'Vicki', as they all had called her, was often the center of speculation in the lunch room. That was true in her high school class, as much as it had been at Rockwell aerospace. Victoria's last remaining bits of organic human material had been replaced in her body by tiny microscopic machines sometime in the 1990's. Well before the rumblings of the last war had ever started.
She patted the ribcage gently and replaced it by the lift once more, and then turned toward the factory floor. The bones of her former co-worker's scattered the walkways and halls of the under building, and one by one, Victoria recognized them either through name badge or through distinguishing marks on their remains. The unfortunate truth was, those that were down in the under building working at the moment when the bomb fell, died within probably three agonizing minutes. The levels of radiation had slowly cooked them as it penetrated the thick building's walls.
Finally she and the white droid came to their destination. A line of robotic arms and monitors bordered a vast tunnel, set for the mass production of electronics and metallic casings. Victoria sat at a terminal and powered it on. The factory lit up, and loud clanking and hissing noises filled the silent catacomb. The tall white android made it's way into the center of the factory, and then turned back towards Victoria. She typed at the keyboard of the terminal in blinding speed, and all at once many of the robotic arms of the factory floor went about dismantling the android. It took less than a minute for the robot to be broken down to it's components.
Victoria input command after command, and finally hit an execution button for the factory. It steamed to full life, and began production once more. The first android completed by the factory took only seven minutes to complete. It was also tall, but not at all slender. It had multiple arms and legs, with a swiveling head unit. It quickly crept away from the production line and then went to another terminal by the line. It too started plugging in numbers and commands into the production line up. The second android, identical to the first, took only six minutes to complete. It repeated the process of the first, and so on and so on, until within the hour there were twenty androids. The twenty first android, completed in just one and half minutes, clamored away from the production line and climbed up the elevator shaft, and out into the wasteland. It was followed by another freshly produced android, and another after that.
Soon Victoria's two other white androids descended into the building, carrying loads of steel and the rotten soil from up above. She made her way over to them and directed them to their new seats. More steel and more dirt were brought down by a few of the newer android models, until the production line was going at full speed. With the resources from the old world above, Victoria estimated that she would be able to make approximately thirty five hundred of the machines needed to exterminate the deathclaws. More resources would be gathered, and from the factory epicenter her cleansing army would go forth and remove the first priority hostiles of the wasteland.
She left back up the elevator shaft, with a bit of a heavy heart, knowing that her androids, far superior to anything produced by the old world, would be met with terror and hostility from most wastelanders. She was carrying out the actions that scientists in the old world had specifically feared her doing. Replicating android life in order to over take organic life. It was a neccessary step in the rebuilding of society though... she was eighty-six percent sure of that.