The DC Mall was an extraordinary mix of Old World and New.
Where buildings could be renovated and refitted, walls rebricked and replastered with infinite care, mouldy or termite ridden wood torn out and replaced, old skeletons dragged out to finally receive their last rights, they had been so. Where it was more appropriate to tear down a building in its entirety, in the interests of structural safety, charges had been planted and the building had been collapsed in on itself.
Pre-War Utilities Infrastructure had been salvaged at great effort by those with the skill to do so. The greatest salvage operation in the history of their race. Rather than attempting to salvage a gun or a piece of machinery, an entire city was being renovated. And unlike the Mojave, whose harsher climate and farming opportunities made the cultivation of a huge population impractical, the tales of Washington DC had spread far and wide in the years since the construction of Project Purity. People had travelled to find the one place in the wastelands that could afford to give away fresh, untainted water for free, and had found it in the closing stages of a war to reclaim what might become the last true Bastion of Civilisation on the East Coast. And there they congregated.
'And why would they not,' Lantaya considered as she gazed out the upper story window of the warehouse. They came in droves across the wastelands, drawn by stories of a Fortress concealed within the ruins of a sprawling metropolis of ages long past. And when they finally arrived, where in other places they were given a cot or a bunk and maybe three meals a day, here in Washington DC they received protection, jobs aplenty that earned them a living wage, a superabundance of food the likes of which Lantaya had difficulty believing possible in such grim surroundings. The humans below her lofty perch in the warehouse window chatted and laughed, many of whom dressed in normal, everyday clothes. No rags as there had been on the waterfront near Rivet City.
The suit had returned to fashion, and unlike New Vegas, which was a place people went to lose themselves in debauchery and sin, Washington's approach to fashion was more functional. A three-piece suit with a heavy coat and a city hat, most in dark and sombre colours. It was a city of monochrome Noir. All you needed was a narrator with a penchant for cigarettes and whiskey and the picture would be complete. Trees and fresh grass blossomed in the massive expanse of parkway that stretched from the Temple of the Union housed in the Lincoln Memorial down to the gleaming white stone of the Capital Building, which stood proudly within a constantly shifting network of scaffolding, providing a splash of well-needed colour amidst the grey and brown.
Street Vendors sold wears, buskers and street musicians entertained passers-by, and the constant buzz of activity rose up from the seething masses below to her observation point in the window. She could stand here for hours and just watch this world at work. It was all familiar of course, but the actors in this play were strange and otherworldly to her and leant it all bizarre and unanticipated beauty. It filled her with a profound sense of peace and wellbeing. Even in the midst of so much suffering, humanity had persevered and found a way to prosper. In the face of all this, it made her believe that anything was possible as long as you had the will to achieve it.
"You should have seen this place ten years ago," Butch DeLoria spoke from behind her, before joining her at the railing, leaning his leather jacketed arms on the painted metal as the breeze from outside wafted across their faces.
"Was it very much different?" Lantaya guessed, gazing up and down the Mall.
"Ohh, hell yeah," Butch replied in a flat voice, the memories flooding back in a rush of remembrance. "All of that," he pointed to a stretch of land that ran from the entrance to the Temple of the Union down to the tall spire of Washington Monument, covered in a twining network of heavily shielded cabling and equipment that turned it into one of the most powerful broadcasting antennas in the city, "Was trenches and Super Mutants the first time I came here. No grass, no trees, no people who weren't already full of bullet holes. This was where the Brotherhood and the Super Mutants fought over DC back in the day. And the Capital Building was the worst. Talon Company was the largest merc group back then. They had been paid by Littlehorn and Associates to clear out the place. Fuck knows why, but the place was more bullet holes and laser burns than solid 'crete. And when the Enclave came along…"
Butch whistled, before pointing to the front of the raised section of concrete paving directly in front of the Capital Buildings formidable exterior, "That stone right there, you can see where it's a different colour than the rest? That was where the Enclave carpet bombed the whole fucking show with their Vertibirds when they arrived on the scene. High speed flyby. They rolled mini nukes out the back cargo doors. It was already bombed to shit before, but they really put a cherry on top, know what I mean?"
He motioned to it, "Now it's the Assembly Hall. That's where the Assembly is held to try and oversee all this bullshit. Sometimes I can't really believe how much everything changed in just a few years, you know? Hell, two years ago this was all construction scaffolding, all the grass trampled down. The Brotherhood got permission from the Assembly to use the Mall to put together pieces of that floating warship they got. The Prawn? The…"
Butch frowned, before an unprompted voice from the next room echoed out into the hallway, "What is it Butch?"
"Hey Letters! What's the name of the Brotherhood's floating ship again?" Butch yelled back.
"The Prydwen. It's named after Kind Arthur's ship!"
Butch paused, then shouted back, "What the fucks King Arthur want with a ship? Thought he was all about horses and shit?"
They listened, but no answer was forthcoming. Butch shrugged and grinned at her, "Guess that's your answer then. Prydwen. King Arthur's ship. 'Cause Arthur Maxson's got himself thinking he's a goddamn King."
Butch shook his head ruefully and amended his statement, "No, Arthur's solid people. He wouldn't start calling himself a King. Probably some scribe came up with it."
"These Enclave," Lantaya asked tentatively, shelving the discussion of this 'Arthur' until other curiosities had been satisfied, "I have heard the Courier and the Lone Wanderer both speak of them. They are the remnants of your pre-war government, are they not?"
"Nowadays, it's more like 'were'," Butch amended her query for her, "Why you asking?" The sounds of the briefing being held in the room behind them drifted out through the thick wooden door, Stiggs and Weston Lesko being brought up to speed by the rest of the team. Lantaya considered the question. It was a bit more difficult to unpack for her than she would have thought. "I suppose I am curious as to their…History? As Ulysses might say," she chuckled privately as she repeated the phrase the long-winded Ulysses was fond of repeating, and that he had already said enough times over the last day for her as a relative stranger to be aware of this predilection, "I want to know the Why of Things."
"Which one is Ulysses again? The big black guy, right?"
"Correct, the one with the dreadlocks I believe they are called. Does your race have an unspoken rule to give everything as fearsome a moniker as can be devised at short notice? Dreadlocks," she mouthed, tasting the word as it rolled of her tongue, "The 'locks' is self-explanatory I believe, as it refers to the hair. But dread? What is there to dread about hair? It sounds needlessly intimidating."
"On that big bastard," Butch opined with a glance over his shoulder to make sure said big bastard wasn't looking, "It looks intimidating too."
He tapped his fingers on the railing, staring out at the city as it moved and shifted, from window to window, seeing the vague outlines of people. "Enclave were a bunch of scumbags. Wanted to use Project Purity to kill all the mutants, the ghouls, people like the Snakes. Anyone not entirely human. Turn back the clock to before the war, you know?" He snorted derisively, "As if that's even possible at this point."
Lantaya blinked, absorbing this new information. She was slow on the uptake for a brief moment, as she sometimes forgot that people like ghouls were not considered human to humans. Beings unfamiliar with both up until recently, she subconsciously associated the two even though they were visually distinct. After all, visually distinct meant little to her. They all looked odd to her Asari eyes. "How would Project Purity have accomplished this? As I understood it, it was meant to purify water in large quantities?"
"Don't know the science of it doll," Butch supplied with a self-deprecating shrug and smile of contrition, "I'm just the barber. Chance understood though. Said it would have made the water toxic to anything with a divergent genome. Whatever that means. I tuned out when the nerd started to talk nerd stuff. Best talk to Stiggs. He was one of the Enclave Robot Mechanics, or whatever. And Lesko knows all about mad science."
"Nerd? Why would you say such a thing? I thought you held him in high regard?"
"I do," Butch answered her query somewhat defensively. She suspected that he was insecure about the nature of his relationship with Chance after how he had treated him for all those years. She didn't know enough about them to tell for sure.
"I didn't have a father growing up. But if I did, I would have wanted him to be like Chance," Butch continued as he cast his recollections back ten years or more to when Chance and he were just coming into the prime of their lives, still entombed beneath the earth in Vault 101. "He taught me everything I know about being a man. All the good stuff, anyway."
Butch chuckled and rubbed his forehead, disturbing the front of his greaser pompadour, cut in his own signature style without the faded or trimmed insides. The genuine article, the same as the New Vegas Kings liked to wear. Not too big, not too small, brushed to perfection. "I sound like such a pussy," he admitted, "But he was a fucking nerd, any way you like to look at it. The fact ain't got nothing to do with whether I respected him or not. He was one of the smartest, most stand-up guys I've ever met. I just wish I had seen that when we were younger. And knew what it meant."
He smoothed the pompadour to make sure it wasn't about to disconnect and flop all over his face, before sighing deeply and shrugging his shoulders. "Can we talk about something else? I ain't good with words. Feel like I'm making a fool of myself here."
"This man Stiggs was Enclave?" Lantaya obeyed his request politely and turned the conversation along a different path, "And the Wanderer let him live?"
Butch frowned defensively, "Yeah, we let him live. He was just some wastelander the Enclave kidnapped out of the wastes, years back. He didn't like what the Enclave was all about, but he didn't want to risk leaving. Can't blame him either. Capital Wasteland was a mess back then. Sticking with the devil you know, right? I think that's how that saying goes. We ran into him during the assault on Adams."
"Adams Airforce Base?" Lantaya queried, "If I understand correctly, that was one of the Wanderer's major battles in his conflict with the Enclave. You were there?"
"Sure," Butch confirmed, patting his own sleek R91 Infiltrator on the stock at the same moment as he shrugged the shoulder upon which his own laser rifle was slung. A mirror of the Wanderer, but more human, and much more emotive. "All the old team. Me, Charon, Clover, Jericho, Fawkes. Cross and Dogmeat when they were still alive, though Cross came in with the Brotherhood reinforcements near the end and Fawkes had to run for the hills as soon as the Brotherhood showed up. They don't like mutants. And that Gutsy, RL-3. Shame about him. I keep forgetting about that clanger. He had a stick up his mechanical behind though. No-one apart from the Wanderer really got along with him. Adams was where he bought it. Vapourised by an exploding fuel tank."
"You mentioned," Lantaya began, "That the Snakes are not entirely human? What do you mean by this?"
Butch coughed and looked upwards at the ceiling, then below to the people on the sidewalk two floors down. He motioned for Lani to follow him away from the window, which she did, and they retreated further into the room. "We don't talk about it much, leastways not with outsiders," Butch clarified for her in a lower voice. She picked up on the hesitancy and the secrecy he felt and lowered her own to match.
"You have been altered in some way? Were the alterations intentional or accidental?"
"The first one," Butch clarified, straight faced. "It was Lesko. Before Bryan was a Tunnel Snake he lived in a place called Greyditch. Not far from Megaton. Got overrun by Giant Ants, until Chance came along not long after getting out of the Vault and cleaned up that whole mess. But the guy who caused all the trouble was Weston. A scientist. Real brilliant guy. Chance helped him get everything under control and in return Lesko gave him some shots that made him faster, stronger, sharper hearing, seeing in the dark and all that good stuff."
"And you availed yourself of these shots as well?" Lantaya surmised.
"I don't know what avail means," Butch admitted.
"Butch?" Letters voice once again echoed from the next room in a querying tone, as if someone had called out to him and he was just responding in turn.
"What's avail mean?" Butch shouted back, as if he had indeed called for help.
"Context?"
"Uhh…." Butch looked at Lantaya with an embarrassed cast to his features, "What's context mean?"
She opened her mouth to respond to the query, but he snorted almost immediately and waved her off before she could answer, "I'm fucking with you. To avail of?" He shouted the last to Letters who immediately supplied the answer.
"To use or benefit from."
Butch blinked and shrugged again, "Yeah, guess that should have been obvious. Yeah, I hunted down Lesko after Chance died. Asked him if he could do it again, this time on a whole bunch of people. He said," Butch imitated the nerdish, nasal qualities of the scientist who happened to be in the next room and mimed pushing a pair of none-existent spectacles up the bridge of his nose with one finger, "That would be marvellous, my god man. I will need a thousand tons of flubonium and a million of wubonium and a number of guards to make sure the Brotherhood do not interfere with my very important work. Mehh."
The door to the next room opened and Lesko poked his head out into their midst with narrowed eyes. "I do not talk like that," he replied, in a voice so perfectly matched to Butch's nasal impression of him that Lani had to restrain her snort of laughter by concealing it behind her hand. Lesko sniffed in disdain, adjusting his own spectacles in the exact manner Butch had mimed, before disappearing back inside the room.
"And there is no such element as wubonium or flubonium!" Lesko's nasal voice resounded from within the room. Butch glanced sideways at Lani and rolled his eyes dramatically as Lesko continued droning along in conversation with the other occupants of the conference room. Explaining the situation to someone who demanded as much extraneous detail as a robotics engineer and a scientist specialising in FEV research and the manipulation of the genomes of various fauna, was an uphill battle. Hence, why Lantaya and Butch had stepped out to take a breather.
"So, every Tunnel Snake is so enhanced?" Lantaya prompted, eyeing the comparatively normal-looking greaser up and down as if she could find evidence of his abnormality upon his skin. Butch shook his head and chuckled, "Nah, doll. I haven't had a look at the register in a while, but we've got thousands of guys on the books. And only one Lesko to make the doses. And we don't mix up a batch until we've got someone to give it to. Easier to keep the secret recipe under lock and key that way, you know? You get the shot once you've been Patched."
"Patched?" Lantaya asked.
"Yeah," Butch agreed, then turned around to display the Tunnel Snake insignia emblazoned on a patch that was then stitched into the back of his leather jacket, "Patched. When you join the Snakes, you're just New Blood. Then you get tatted up, and you're a full Tunnel Snake. Then, once you've proven yourself at Old Olney, you get your Patch and your Fang."
He pulled the severed and carved claw from under his white t-shirt as he turned back around and let the Asari inspect it. She reached out and took the piece of bone from his grasp, turning it over in her hands as the leather thong that held it to his neck straightened out to the limit of its length. "Boone killed one of these in the Divide," Lantaya commented, recognising the piece of organic material from the Courier's and Lone Wanderer's descriptions of such abominations. A Deathclaw. And the life-sized hologram of the fearsome creature they had once brought up for her benefit on the Zeta. "How exactly do your Snakes prove themselves? Do they need to kill one?"
"If they want to be Patched, yeah. It's tradition. Goes back to the days right after Chance died. Snakes got a contact to go out to Old Olney to retrieve parts for a power plant. Some guys at Big Town and Arefu wanted to reclaim that old power plant near Paradise Falls and get it running again. I gave them a discount on our services and told them about the old lab underneath Old Olney. Not many people knew about it and it had all the parts they needed," Butch punctuated this fine flow of exposition by holding his arms out wide and making a show of his great knowledge, "But since I used to travel with the Wanderer, I know all the secrets. Chance and me went to a lot of places most guys can't reach without getting shredded to ribbons. Thought if we could get MDPL-13 up and running we could funnel that power through the Metro back to DC. Get us some working lights around here."
"And did you?"
Butch smiled, hopped over to a light switch built into the wall and flicked it on. The fluorescent bulb affixed to the ceiling blazed to life after a few brief moments of furtive flickering. Butch's grin reached epic proportions, and he shut it off again now that his point was made. "Yeah. Big Town and Arefu run the place now, with support from the Snakes and the Brotherhood. It's…." He clicked his fingers a few times as if the noise would help him recall the half-remembered expression Star Paladin Cross had used to describe the place and frowned at his inability to do so.
"Strategic, Butch," Letters murmured through the door that had been left slightly ajar after Lesko's brief appearance.
"I knew that" Butch lied, "Strategic. Brotherhood want it because it gives them more power, I like it 'cause I'm sick of normal folks bumping into me in the dark. Win-win, right? Anyway, ever since then the men go out to Old Olney to prove they're just as good as the ones that went out with me to complete that contract."
Lantaya took a sideways look at the door and frowned deeply. "How does he keep doing that?" She enquired, referring to Letters ability to proffer advice and verbal assistance before Butch had even asked for it. Butch snorted and shrugged, endeavouring to play the mystery for now. Lani let him have his secret. She had discovered from her association with the Courier that when humans wanted to be mysterious and inscrutable, they mostly did so to provoke interest. If you showed none, they would usually get bored of the charade and reveal the truth out of hand in the hopes of inciting surprise or awe. She could wait this one out. He was no-where near as cunning as the Courier.
"Returning to the topic at hand, your Snakes get enhanced when they are Patched? Would it not make more sense to enhance them before they need to undergo such a dangerous test?"
"No," Butch replied with a forcefulness that surprised her, "We had some Snakes take the shot and run a few years back. Set up as bandits and raiders out on the Frontier, killed a bunch of Regulators and a Brotherhood scout who tried to bring them in. Me and the boys had to head out there and hunt them down. Since then the rule is that you have to earn the Patch, to earn the trust, to get the shot. We don't want the wrong sort of people getting in."
"And what is the wrong sort?" Lantaya questioned, pondering what she had already learned and beginning to find herself sincerely intrigued by the entire state of affairs.
"I suppose, the sort who don't have the balls to stand their ground beside us and fight a Deathclaw," Butch proffered, widening his eyes and shrugging as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. He was dancing around the subject she was attempting to broach with a studied, albeit clumsy attempt at guile. Clumsy to her studied gaze at least. She decided to lay her cards upon the table and see what it shook loose. "Do you and these enhanced men have some sort of mental connection? Telepathy? Shared consciousness? An enhanced state of empathy?"
Butch blinked in surprise at her insight, then smiled. "Maybe."
"A result of Doctor Lesko's adaptations, I assume?" She probed, working off the assumption that the curious ability of the Snakes thus far displayed to remain almost impossibly in tune with each other was less of a skill picked up through long association and more of an acquired ability. It would certainly explain the reticence in allowing the wrong sort of person to be allowed admittance. You didn't want to share your mind with just anybody, after all.
"Sure," Butch admitted, dropping his little attempt at verbal sparring without a backwards glance now that the lazy attempt at obfuscation had been brushed aside. "Lesko says it's based-on pheromones. Like, smell I guess? Come on, we can ask Lesko," he beckoned to her and they stepped forwards to the door which he pushed aside. Within the administration conference room of the warehouse stood their entire cadre of malcontents.
The Courier, Ulysses and Graham stood in a line, leaning up against the table housing the coffee pot, each holding a ceramic mug in their hands. Lantaya's eyes lingered on the expanse of puckered and scorched flesh exposed by the unwound bandages that the Burned Man had removed in order to partake of the beverage, before looking hastily away as to be polite. It would never do to be caught gawking at other people's deformities or injuries. It was often misinterpreted as a sign of disgust, which few people took well to. She had built up a real liking for the Mormon preacher and had no wish to cause any offense, perceived or otherwise.
"Hey, Weston?" Butch began, before being shushed by the short, bespectacled man in the white lab coat and a badly kept blond combover shot through with streaks of barely perceptible grey. The Rivet City barber blinked and turned an enquiring gaze towards Sticky Jack while Lesko and the Courier continued in their animated discussion. The Courier was outlining the quite substantial benefits of participating in their little venture to the scientist, who was hooked from the word go. Stiggs was also on the line. Or rather, had been reeled in some time previously and was now awaiting Teleportation up to the Zeta along with the contents of the warehouse housed below them on the ground floor.
"Did I just get shushed by a combover?" Butch asked, affecting an air of comical offense at being so dismissed by the possessor of such a poor hairdo.
"Yeah Boss," Jack replied with the sinfully large grin of a man who had been watching the conversation develop to its current, excruciatingly high pitch of zeal for the last hour and wanted to see how it would end, "You did."
Doctor Weston Lesko seemed to be in a similar, albeit more intensified state of jubilation at the prospect of his upcoming employment. "Marvellous. Quite stupendous! With the resources and facilities you propose and the company of the best minds of our generation we could accomplish so much good for the world," Lesko exclaimed, as he paced from side to side next to the solid wooden table that took up much of the conference rooms space, his own cup of coffee sitting forgotten on the table, wafts of steam rising as it slowly lost heat to the surrounding air. "There are so many experiments I have longed to conduct for so many years now. The Brotherhood's oversight into matters of scientific enquiry have stifled me during my years here. Such advances I could have made, had I not been subject to their closeminded scruples."
The Courier grinned at the scientist as he tapped some ash from the tip of his rollup into a chipped ceramic ashtray that had been provided to him once the mound of expended ash had reached its first inch of height. "I'll give ye the chance to shape the future with yer will an' yer mind alone. The tech ye'll give birth to will hold the spirit o' humanity to the light an' carve our name on History. Think o' all you could do with the opportunity offered, here an' now."
Lesko was clearly already think quite deeply of just such a mental image, his eyes far away in the middle distance, the look of a man who was considering the purchase of a dream. Lantaya felt sure the Courier had convinced him just as he always did, making no mention of the potential cost of such a thing in time or moral quandaries. But then another voice spoke up from the side-lines. "There's a reason for those restrictions, Doctor."
Weston followed the voice and found himself gazing into Bryan Wilks eyes. Which were suddenly, at least to his eyes, replaced with the dirty face of a boy only half Bryan's age. The distraught boy who had just lost his only family, set adrift into the world as a consequence of Lesko's own folly. And the eyes that had stared up at him from the seat in the medical lounge, the day the two of them had been reunited. Bryan had been older then. Wiser. Had seen much of the world since the day Lesko had unwittingly made him an orphan.
Their conversations had been…. enlightening.
"There is a line, Doctor," Bryan stated with eyes gleaming out from underneath his black headwrap, his combat helmet hooked onto his kneepad, "And we can't always tell where it is. Sometimes we only know when we've crossed it and we're made to pay for doing it. But don't make the same mistake twice."
The Tunnel Snakes in the room reinforced his statement by nodding or crossing their arms, presenting a united front, the impression of being all of one mind. Which of course, they quite literally were, in the most profound of ways. Lesko, who was not a Tunnel Snake, nevertheless found himself nodding alongside them. He turned his attention back to the Courier.
"Well," he said in his odd, nasal voice, somehow managing to make it sound dignified in spite of itself, "Your offer is quite superb, of course, but unless I have final say in what I make and how it is used, I am forced to decline. I will not make weapons, nor will I alter anyone without their consent. What even the humblest scientist can achieve is marvellous, spectacular. The stuff of dreams. But the chaos that can be wrought by ill-considered action can undo any good that might come from it."
Bryan gave Lesko's turned back a subtle look of pride and gratitude, along with a sincere nod. It went unseen by its recipient, but it said all that needed to be said about the relationship between the two men. Butch and Letters also gave the good Doctor their silent regards. Ulysses punctured the bubble, however.
"Concern for the dead made by your works. Would be commendable. Would be, if my own eyes could not see the weapons you have made of these men. Refuse to build that which deals death as its purpose. Only hand the ability to kill to those around you. The opposite of bravery."
"Stick a cork in it Rasta," Latchkey advised in a warning tone, "This is a personal matter. As in, none of your business."
The two amateur Historians glared at one another across the length of the desk, until Joshua chipped in with his own input. "Commendable it is, indeed. We have many men with us who will take matters in hand should harsh judgement be called for; of this I have no doubt. One or two men of a more even temperament will not go amiss. It may even prove of value."
Ulysses ignored the comment, holding Latchkey's gaze with his ever-so-slightly narrowed eyes. "See in you an anger for those who speak without knowing the History that lies behind. Know this anger. In his moment, I am just such a person. Take back my words. They were spoken from ignorance."
Letters and Sarge exchanged glances, wondering if they had both heard what they thought they had heard. While the Courier was metaphorically leaning from the shock of hearing Ulysses retract a statement instead of waffling on for hours about History, the two Tunnel Snakes were reeling on account of something else entirely. "What do you mean, 'weapons you have made of these men'?"
The query came from Butch, who despite his disinterest in education and lack of a comprehensive vocabulary, was surprisingly sharp when it came to interpersonal relations. Lantaya, who herself had grasped that Ulysses had not been present when Butch had revealed the secret to her of the Tunnel Snakes abilities, realised that the sharp-witted tribal had must have put two and two together on his own and come to the correct conclusion. Aided somewhat by Lesko's refusal to 'alter' anyone against their will. The implication being that he had altered people in the past, against their will or otherwise.
"Your nature betrays you more than you realise," Ulysses snorted derisively, "Have known soldiers and killers since first I was born. None could know the minds of their fellows so intimately without the weight of years pressing behind them. Especially ones so young," he muttered, pointedly staring at Bryan Wilks and Latchkey Kenny, who were obviously very young men. Not even into the latter half of their twenties. "What you are is not born of a womb. Needles and glass gave you a second birth. A rebirth. Not natural."
"My word, you are quite astute!" Lesko admitted with palpable enthusiasm at this golden opportunity to discuss his calling in the greatest possible details. It was difficult to find those he could talk with candidly regarding his work. After all, the details of what he did had to remain secret for the good of his patients. It would never do to let the wasteland at large know that the Tunnel Snakes were being genetically enhanced. Quite aside from the friction it would cause among the Brotherhood hardliners, they did not want people to be tempted into doing something foolish, such as assaulting Tunnel Snake safehouses or barracks in an ill-considered attempt to steal themselves some serum.
"You are correct. Mister DeLoria approached me some time ago and offered to make an arrangement with me," Lesko explained over the sound of the sound of a muttered, 'Just Butch' from the defector leader of the Capital Wasteland Tunnel Snakes, who had never gotten over his elevation to a position of authority and had managed to maintain his streak of anti-authoritarianism despite the fact that he now wielded authority himself. "In return for a modest stipend, protection, and a fully outfitted laboratory to conduct my experiments, I would agree to work for the Tunnel Snakes and endeavour to enhance them so they could be more effective in pursuing their goals."
Lesko beamed, obviously as pleased as punch with the aforementioned arrangement and filled with positive feelings regarding those who funded him. The silent contingent of stoics present within the room collectively sighed and settled in for the long haul. This group, including Boone, Toshiro, Paulson, and the Tunnel Snake medic named Silver, knew the beginning of a monologue of exposition when they heard it. "It began as an offshoot of an unfortunate series of experiments I conducted into the mutated arthropods of the Capital Wastelands!"
Butch edged closer to Letters who without prompting whispered in his ear, "Ants, Butch."
"I was attempting to alter the giant carpenter ants in a fashion that would reverse the curious engorging of this mutated genus, caused by exposure to radiation in the Wastelands. To expedite this goal, I utilised the Forced Evolutionary Virus as the most effective tool towards this end. While I did eventually find a way to bring my work to fruition, the discoveries, and inroads I made into the use of FEV were of far greater importance. You see, I had discovered a reliable method to splice and alter the genes of any organic lifeform! The alterations made to the Tunnel Snakes allow them to communicate with each other through the production and excretion of pheromones, similar to those found in the ants from which the serum was derived. Quite remarkable!"
"That is…." Lantaya paused, considering a race such as humanity with the ability to alter and change itself, reliably, and at will on a genetic levelled.
"Marvellous!" Lesko cried out with great aplomb and the limitless enthusiasm of a scientist with more than a few screws loose in his noggin.
'Terrifying,' Lantaya commented in Thessian so that they would not take offense. The Courier snorted, being the only one present who understood Thessian.
"I congratulate you on your achievements, Doctor," Lantaya tendered the compliment with the respect it was due, in English this time. Regardless of her misgivings as to the full destructive weight of science run amuck, she had to give the devil his due.
Doctor Weston Lesko was undeniably brilliant. He had taken the FEV and turned it from the demonic product of pre-war weapons technology, an abominable poison that created horribly mutated monstrosities, and tamed it, tempered it, controlled it to create something of benefit to the entirety of his race. He had salvaged that spark of hope from what otherwise would have been an ignominious and dark chapter in the history of humankind. He had taken the senseless sacrifices of the countless Pre-War test subjects and scientists and given them meaning. Made it all worth something.
"Did you have any partners in this endeavour? How long did it take you" Lantaya questioned, being somewhat familiar with the field herself, and curious as to how the experimentation had been structured.
"My word," Lesko pondered the question as if he had never really considered it before, "Now you ask me such a simple question I realise I never did keep track of how long I have worked upon this project and its many offshoots."
He pondered in silence for a time, tapping his shaved chin with a finger, before adjusting his spectacles. "Including the time I have spent with Mister DeLoria and his compatriots, I believe I have worked on this for… twenty years."
Lantaya opened he mouth to congratulate him on taking such a short amount of time to make such a momentous breakthrough in the field but stopped short as the enormity of his answer struck her. She ignored Butch's once more repeated correction of his name. Twenty years to an Asari was nothing. The blink of an eye, a single indrawn breath. To a human, twenty years was a fifth of their lifespan. This was Lesko's life's work. Quite literally. He had devoted more time in his life to this than to anything else. "How old were you when you started? How old are you now?" Lani asked, made curious by this sudden realisation.
"Gracious, now you are really taking me back," Lesko chuckled, unaware and oblivious to how Lantaya was interpreting his life and therefore treating the query with little regard, "I believe I must have been twenty-one years old. Ohh, you enquired as to who I had assisting me, did you not? I'm afraid scientists such as myself are in very short supply in the Wastelands, my dear. A Mister Chauncy Littlewood from Vault 101 acted as my assistant for a short time. Perhaps one or two days. And there was that charming woman I collaborated with some time previously…"
He clicked his tongue as he attempted to bring the memory to mind, but he was clearly a man who spent little time reminiscing of the past and more time obsessing over the present and had little practise with such things. "A Miss Kundanika, I believe. Very charming. Very pretty, also. We worked together for a few months, possibly?" His tone of voice phrased it almost like a question, his memory for people and the past being slightly hazy.
Lesko shrugged and waved the memory away, "She departed the Capital Wasteland many years ago now. To a place some call the Pitt, I believe. I hear she has made remarkable advances of her own, but in the opposite direction. How to prevent harmful mutations rather than induce beneficial ones. Quite fascinating work, I do declare. Some of her new medicines have been shipped here via railcar. I have studied them quite extensively as a matter of professional pride and to show my regard towards an old colleague."
"You accomplished all of this," Lantaya gestured to the assembled Tunnel Snakes and the entire world around her in general, in place of all the changes that she knew his work must have caused in other fields. She had been a scientist for many decades and thought she knew the scientific process inside and out. But never had she worked in a lab staffed by only one person. The workload must have been extraordinary. "Over the course of twenty years, almost entirely by yourself?"
"Of course!"
"You were not lonely? Isolated? Utterly swamped by work and lack of social contact?" Lantaya queried, thinking that the eccentric scientist was missing the true point of her enquiry. Lesko blinked, then guffawed with laughter at the suggestion that, while very pertinent to someone of another temperament and inclination.
"My word, well that is a question. Yes, I suppose I was. Though not in the way you are likely suggesting. I did not really know or understand until after I had made the acquaintance of these fine gentlemen here," the Doctor motioned towards Butch and his men, Bryan Wilks in particular being singled out by a longer than usual glance and jerk of the hand, "Just how important social contact is for others. But I have never been a social man. Isolation would mean much more to someone a little more…"
The doctor paused as if considering what the best word to use would be. Butch it was who supplied him the perfect word, surprisingly enough. "Normal," the Tunnel Snake said rather bluntly. Lesko however, took no offense at the implication that he was abnormal. "Marvellously put, and elegant in its simplicity Mr DeLoria. Very well put, yes, someone more normal!"
"Just Butch," the man himself corrected resignedly in the background, ignored by everyone.
"Lesko's one of those people who can't really be imprisoned or caged," Letters spoke from his spot next to Rook, twisting the cap off his canteen to take a sip of water. He didn't partake of the coffee. Even that comparatively mild stimulant was something the former junkie steered clear of. "You lock him up and his mind will just float off into the unknown and you'll come back to cell walls filled with scratched equations. He lives his life in his own mind."
"I am not sure if it is just the way of human beings to be unduly interesting above and beyond the norm set by my own species, but since I have come here I have not met many of what I might describe as…."
Lantaya paused for a moment, considering whether it would be untoward for her as an outsider to repeat the blunt statement Butch had made. She went ahead and repeated it anyway, because for all its simplicity, Lesko was correct. It was elegantly suited to its role.
"… Normal people. All of you that I have come to know have incredible stories of triumph over adversity, gruelling trials against yourselves and others, stories of heartbreak and joy. And peculiar foibles and psychological hang-ups most psychiatrists wouldn't dare to touch with a twelve-foot pole, even if you did so with biotics. I don't think I've met a normal person among you. You are all palpably insane. No offense," she added, repeating the words that humans seemed to use anytime they needed a sincere observation or piece of advice to be heard without being taken as an insult. Humans seemed to get a lot of use out of that particular phrase.
"None taken," Sticky Jack replied, grinning from ear to ear.
"I'm normal," Stiggs raised a tentative hand into the air, stretching the fabric of his military issue jumpsuit, overlaid by a full-body harness hung with a variety of pouches, tool-holders and even an adapted Pip-Boy that had been removed from the traditional gauntlet-mount and slotted into a pouch on his upper chest, where the screen glowed dimly. He did indeed look rather plain, as humans went. Though his aura of technical ability was palpable just from his outwards appearance alone.
"No you fucking ain't, Stiggs," Sticky re-joined in a jovial tone, "No normal guy does what you do with those robots in your spare time. If DC had an insane asylum we'd commit you for sexual deviancy."
"How do you…!" Stiggs began out of sheer reflex and shock, then remembered who he talking with, and changed tack in the space of a second. Sticky Hand Jack knew his way around the rumour mill. And it wasn't like he made an effort to hide his proclivities.
"I don't know what you're talking about. A healthy sex drive in a man of my age and health isn't at all unusual," Stiggs explained with as much dignity as he could muster with his cheeks breaking out in a blush that spread up to the brown high-and-tight military crewcut that he had maintained from his days under the Enclave dress-code. Like Lesko, it was streaked through with the beginnings of grey that denoted the endless advance of time. "And the experience is better with a few… well-optimised tools."
Lantaya raised an eyebrow as the Tunnel Snakes chuckled amongst themselves. Joshua shook his head and sighed deeply. "Of course, given that the Courier is an acquaintance of mine I am no stranger to counselling others on the unnaturalness of sodomy," the Burned Man commented, drawing a mock-affronted look from the Courier and a cry of protest that was duly ignored, "But it is my duty to remind you that it is a sin."
"I'm an atheist," Stiggs replied instantly, "And the Bible only talks about sodomy with man or beast. It doesn't say anything about robots."
Joshua blinked, casting his mind back over the sections of scripture that dealt with such practises. "Technically correct, though it is a disgusting triviality and not one I would ever count on to absolve oneself before the Lord," the Mormon missionary grumbled the admission that the engineer was indeed correct.
"Moving swiftly along from the subject of sodomy," Lantaya supplied quite sternly, ignoring Sticky Hand Jack and the Courier, who supplied teasing sounds of disappointment at the prospect of moving away from a discussion with so much potential for comedy, "I understand you used to be part of the Enclave?"
Stiggs nodded, the blush fading away to leave him more composed now that the conversation had taken a more conventional turn. "Yeah, I was a wrench jockey. I maintained robots. The Vertibirds too when they needed it. Nowadays I do the same for the Tunnel Snakes."
"He lubricates the workings," Sticky Hand Jack commented as he adjusted his shades and adjusted his leather Tunnel Snakes jacket over his well-built frame, prompting a renewal of the chuckling that swept through the room at the double-entendre.
"Says the man called Sticky Hand Jack," Stiggs replied, "I've been out to Big Town, Jack. I've spoken with people who know exactly how you got that nickname and it wasn't because you were a pickpocket."
Sticky Hand grinned and hung his head, as the rest of his friends joined in on the laughter, proving the in all things turnabout is fair play. "I'll have to remind myself to tell Red to keep her mouth shut about that," Sticky commented with slight chagrin. "But boys will be boys, right? I was a teenager. And there weren't any mungos in Lamplight to tell us about those things."
"Sure Sticky," Latchkey snickered through his bushy beard from the side-lines, "I lived alone in a cave until I was fourteen, brother. And you'll notice I ain't called Sticky Hand Kenny."
"There seem to be many orphans out in the Wastelands," Lantaya observed, hoping to guide the conversation away from the crude and puerile grounds they seemed to occupy at present. "What happened to your parents?"
"Dunno," Sticky replied, "Never asked. Most children in Little Lamplight get sent there from the mungos in Big Town. Either their own children of ones they find out in the wastes. Parents used to die out scavving for food, you know? Leaves the children alone and starving. From there, they usually run into some waster who takes them in or takes them to Lamplight. Easier to drop them off there than feed them yourself, see? Can't afford to feed a mouth that can't work to recoup the loss. Nowadays with all the food being grown outside the city limits and in the greenhouses, Lamplight is shrinking. Soon they'll be less kids being sent to Lamplight than are staying in Big Town."
"This 'Little Lamplight'?" Lantaya probed, "What is it? Some sort of orphanage? A creche?"
"Settlement of children out on the Frontier," Butch supplied as he took a sip of his coffee, "They've dug into a natural cave. Entrance is a choke point, hard to assault even if the defenders are a bunch of munchkins. Chance and the rest of the team went out there looking for a GECK to get Project Purity up and running. Its been there since the beginning of the Great War. Bunch of kids got stranded there on a field trip and managed to survive by eating moss and fungus. Shitty way to live if you ask me."
Lantaya paused, askance at the explanation. "These children managed to maintain a settlement for two-hundred years, without any adults present to defend or raise them?" She asked, the dubious proposition shocking her more modern sensibilities.
"Crazy, right?" Butch agreed, "But its true. Still got copies of the holotapes Chance found that explained all of it, how it all went down and how they managed to survive the radiation. They stay in Lamplight till they reach sixteen then they move to Big Town and set up there. Has to be that way, so the population doesn't get too high for the fungus to feed them all and they don't run out of supplies."
"The fungus is a natural anti-radiation remedy," Silver the medic piped up from her spot further to the side than any of the others, reminding Lantaya for the first time of her presence. The medic was remarkably unassuming, habitually silent, and demure. This was perhaps the first word she had spoken in Lani's company. "As well as being very nutritious. They need to supplement it of course and many former Lamplighters are deficient in some vitamins and minerals. Some are even stunted somewhat in terms of general stature and growth."
"Like Shorty, Bittercup or Red," Sticky supplied a few of the most blatant examples off the top of his head.
"It's one of the more fascinating microcosms in the Capital Wasteland," Letters supplied his two cents, "Shame it's dying out now, but things have gotten better in the Wastelands. Little Lamplight doesn't really have a purpose to fulfil anymore. And it was on the Frontier too. Only Snakes and Raiders go out that far from the city and even the raiders are only out there because we'd fucking find and shoot them if they came in any closer."
The Matriarch shook her head, astounded by their cavalier attitudes towards such a ludicrous state of affairs, but more than aware that such attitudes were the norm as far as she could determine. At this point she was more surprised that these humans could keep finding new ways to surprise her than she was at the ways and things themselves. "I don't even know why I am surprised anymore," she stated wearily, rubbing the bridge of her nose between thumb and forefinger.
"You get used to it," Butch reassured her, "Life out here was a real trip when I first got out of the Vault. Took me years to stop calling Deathclaws dragons."
"It would take me a lifetime to ask all the questions I want to ask of you," Lantaya admitted to them as she slumped into an unoccupied chair and leant back to rest her feet, "I am becoming increasingly aware of all the snippets of information that I was forced to let pass without further enquiry, simply because there was not enough time to ask further questions."
"Well, if I understand the plan correctly," Letters addressed her issue calmly while jabbing a finger at her and the Courier, "We're going to be shut up together on this spaceship of the Wanderer's for eleven months. Way I see it, that gives all of us as much time as we could ever desire to grill each other on all the little details, right down to what you had for breakfast in the morning. I have some questions of my own to ask. I don't want to pass up the chance to talk with a real live alien at length. Maybe I'll even write a book about it," he mused to himself.
"Writing a book," Lantaya mused alongside him, crossing her arms behind her head, and considering the idea at length, "Unfortunately, I am sworn to silence regarding the details of humanity. Otherwise, I would dearly love to put my experiences down upon paper. A first-hand account of such a meeting between races would sell like T'Avari Sweetcakes. Asari love any form of media revolving around contact with sentient races."
"Shame. Sounds like you could have made some serious caps off of that, fishtits," Jericho remarked, leaning back on the two back legs of his own chair with his feet propped up on the wooden tabletop. Lani's eyebrow twitched, and instead of getting up and trying to bludgeon him as she had done at Rivet City, she merely lifted a finger and nudged the leg of his chair with her biotics. The old raider went crashing to the ground with a loud curse, to which the Matriarch pretended not to notice.
"Of this I have no doubt," she agreed, "However, perhaps they have grown out of the initial fascination. It has been three thousand years, after all. For all I know they have met numerous other races since my departure."
A terrible thought struck her, not for the first time, as Jericho get up wondering how his chair had managed to overbalance on its own. "I only hope they did not make contact with the Zetan," she sighed deeply as the horrific worry cut through her, "Or, if they did, that the Zetan did not manage to encounter them unseen, as they did with myself. Tell me, Paulson, Toshiro? How prominent is the Zetan's edge as it pertains to stealth technology?"
Toshiro cracked one eye, then closed it again, leaving the cowboy to elaborate. Lani did not remember the Samurai ever having said one word in front of her. He was habitually silent. She was beginning to wonder if he spoke at all.
"Don't rightly know, ma'am," Paulson answered truthfully, making absolutely no attempt to sugar-coat the truth. He was as straight a shooter with his words as he was with his pistols, "Don't know a damn thing about all of them fancy gadgets the Wanderer likes to tinker with. Most complicated things I deal with go bang and death comes out the front end. I think I remember Littlewood and Somah saying the Zeta had stealth gadgets of some sort. He said they were real good, though I don't know how it matches up against your own folks."
"How comforting," Lani remarked, stifling the worry within herself under the weight of her own will, like a fire being smothered by an upended bucket full of dirt. "I suppose," she went on, keeping her mind occupied with extraneous details to keep it away from the more disturbing possibilities it could be contemplating, "If I did write a book I could sell it to humans instead of my own race. Would there be a market for such things here?"
"Probably not," Letters judged, "Most humans, at least around here, spend most of their days deal with wants and needs at the very bottom of Maslow's Hierarchy. Not much time to spare for reading or esoteric pursuits."
"Thus spoke the scholar," Ulysses observed from next to the Burned Man and the Courier, both of which were very well-read men, despite their backgrounds and appearances.
"It's true," Letters doubled down on his statement, "Most folks can't read, or at least not very well. Tunnel Snakes know how because we teach them in basic training while they're in the Simulation Chairs, but your average wastelander? They read roadside signs, a few dockets, the Wasteland Survival Guide if they can understand the bigger words, and that's about it."
"Wasteland Survival Guide," the Courier said the name of the book with great feeling, "Love that book. 'Twas how the Wanderer an' I met, ye know?"
They all looked to him to continue, none of them having heard this particular story. Except Boone, who had been there for all of it.
"I was in NCR territory again for the signin' of the withdrawal treaty that Kimball wanted to write up after Hoover Dam. He had me stayin' at a' hotel full o' all these fuckin' shitehead Brahmin Barons with silver spoons fallin' out their arses. So me an' Boone scarper out the back door an' head out to this run-down boardin' house that opened up into a back-alley, right? More my sorta establishment. An' while I was writin' our names down on the register I see his name further down on the list an' I fuckin' recognise it! So I talk his room number outta the barman an' go up to speak with him!"
"Busted down his door unannounced and almost killed one another in the confusion, more like," Boone commented from his spot in the corner. The Tunnel Snakes all guffawed at the mental image, clapping, and hooting in the way big, tough men always did when recollecting insane feats of skill and dubious intelligence. Feats of foolish bravery were held in the highest regard. The Courier shrugged, "'Twas a fierce good book. Wanted to meet the man who wrote it, is all. Tell him I was a fan o' his work."
"And you do that by shoulder charging his door and breaking it off the hinges?" Boone chided his friend in a scathing voice, obviously a conversation they had had many times before and had never been truly resolved. "You got us arrested."
"I got us outta that one soon enough, did I not?"
"How did you manage that?" Butch asked through gales of laughter. He wasn't at all bothered by the Courier's admission that the first time he had met the Wanderer the two of them had tried to murder one-another. With Chance that never would have happened, but with the Omega, discussions tended to break down.
"Picked the lock on the cell door, knocked out the guards and escaped to the embassy," Boone summarised as he kneaded his temples at the memory. "Courier had me invited under the excuse that I was his bodyguard. Truth was I was only there so he had someone to get into trouble with and be his damn babysitter."
"Sure, it was fierce craic while it lasted," the Courier reminisced, his sparkling grey eyes heavy with nostalgia and youthful vigour. Boone sighed, refusing to comment. "So, we meet up afterwards. An' the Wanderer is in Alpha Protocols this time, so we can talk it out. Explained the whole lot was a misunderstandin', like gentlemen."
"He ambushed us with Sentry Bots," Boone clarified the Courier's intentionally skewed interpretation of events.
"Sure, he was awful polite about it," the Courier rounded off the account with a flippant wave of his hand before fingering his left canine that upon closer examination at having been called to attention, was missing the very tip, "Chipped a bloody tooth on his implants when I tried to take a bite outta him, though."
"Why the hell was the Wanderer out on the West Coast to begin with?" Butch enquired, wiping the last of the tears from his eyes and recovering from the split in his side from laughing so hard.
"Lookin' for the Big Empty. On account o' some Old-World tech he ran across with serial numbers tracin' back to a Pre-War science facility where some o' the greatest wonders o' History found their roots. Lucky for him, he ran into me. Big Empty answers to me now, see? Took him there directly."
"Metal man engages you in combat, respond by taking it to see the hell that is the Big Empty, and all the ghosts that rest there. Wonder you have not awakened howling demons to plague the wastes before now," Ulysses rebuked the Courier, "Foolish, rash, no respect for what danger History holds. Why take this risk?"
"Spirits told me to," the Courier shrugged, taking another sip of his coffee, and sparking up a rollup to go along with it. Letters rolled his eyes, taking it for a cheap copout of having to explain his reasoning, rather than a commentary on just how backwards the Courier was in his view of the world and its inner workings.
"Tell your ghosts to reclaim their good sense," Ulysses remarked at his most caustic, "One day such risks will turn against you, destroy what you hold most dear. Maybe even you if luck holds its ground. Or live with the shame of failure."
What tech was he looking into?" Butch asked the tall tribal, leaning over the table in expectation of the answer.
"Not a feckin' clue. He kept talkin' about pigs head meat. Which was all very well with me, I'm a bit of a chef myself an' all, but it were scarcely the time, right?"
Butch blinked at the unexpected answer, "What the hell has pigs head meat got to do with anything?" Frowning, he looked sideways at Letters as if the Tunnel Snakes resident intellectual could assist him in making sense of the reply. The Lettersman did not disappoint. His lips moved for a second as his mind cast its way back through the annuals of all the books he had ever read, and settled upon the answer, hidden deep within the pages of a cookbook from before the Great War.
"Braun. Boil a pigs head until the meat peels off the skull and you can turn it into a kind of terrine or jelly," the scholar recited from memory before tossing Butch a Look, "That's called a Braun."
Butch caught the Lettersman's significant look directly, straightening up and tapping the table in triumph at his dawning awareness of the truth. "Braun. Doctor Braun! He was talking about that psycho he dug up outta Vault 112!"
"Aye, Braun," the Courier sighed wistfully, completely lost in his own world, "Tis been a few years since I had a good Braun."
"Stain? Stein? Stan?" Butch slowly cycled through variations on the same sounds, wringing his hands. Everyone else who wasn't in the know just watched and wondered where all of this was going. "Hey, Letters, what was Braun first name?"
"Stanislaus," Letters educated his boss in an eternally patient tone of voice, "Why didn't you just say so, Courier? It's not like the Alpha would have shown up at this facility only to ask after Braun by his last name. Doctor Stanislaus Braun…." He mused out loud, stroking his chin in consideration. That was a big name, with even bigger context behind it.
"Sure, I'm only repeatin' what Mobius told me. He has trouble with conversation sometimes, on account o' his brain slowly turnin' to mush."
"Were not even present to keep watch on your charge," Ulysses groaned, hanging his head, and shaking it in disdain, "Leave a metal stranger alone with the Ghosts of the Old World. Did spirits tell you to be this foolish also?"
"Aye, them an' me cock," the Courier replied, having the decency to look sheepish at his own negligence as he took another puff of his rollup, "Dala pulled me away for one o' our 'sessions'. Never could say no to that little firecracker when she were in a mood for some…stimulation."
"Great," Sticky cut in with a grin that stretched his face, "Big guy put Pre-War tech out in the open for anyone to take 'cause he was hounding for some pussy."
He threw the Courier a mocking salute, the wide grin only growing wider. "Here's to you, brother. We all would have done the same."
The Courier returned the salute with dramatic flair and equal joviality, leaning back on the counter that held the coffee pot, and ignoring Ulysses as the younger tribal glared daggers at the side of his shaven face.
"Fool," Ulysses commented.
"Spoilsport," the Courier countered.
"Profligate."
"Children, please!" Lani cut in as the Tunnel Snakes descended into laughter once more. At least there was no question that the two groups would get along. The Courier strange charm and outspokenness seemed to have seen to that. Then a thought struck her.
"Wait a moment; Dala?" Lantaya threw the Courier a shocked look, "One of the Think Tank? Those strange, floating robots with the brains suspended in glass jars? That Dala?"
"Ohh," Sticky Hand Jack slapped his thigh with his open palm and cackled like he was watching Pre-War late-night television, "The plot thickens. Big guy likes a bit of chrome in his life too, Stiggs. You got competition. He's robosexual!"
The Courier held up his hands as if he had been caught in the act and smirked, "Ye'd understand if ye'd ever met her."
"So how does that work? She got hooks and pinchers and you get in on with all that freaky shit?" Jack asked through his snorts of merriment, "Or do you just, like…"
He mimed with great enthusiasm and facial expression that which bore no resemblance to the act itself but everyone watching could interpret in only one way. Lantaya grimaced, Joshua raised a warning eyebrow, and Latchkey and Wilks howled with amusement, falling over themselves as the more restrained Tunnel Snakes broke out in smiles from the overflowing emotion bleeding across their connection.
"Sticky," Sarge cut in with a severe look of reprimand, managing to keep the vicarious amusement out of his face and voice, "Cut the chatter."
"Wilco," Sticky snorted into his palm, stifling his laughter. Sarge nodded his satisfaction at his subordinates quick obedience and nodded to Butch to continue. Butch did so, his cheek only occasionally twitching as his own laughter bubbled up from below. "That means he was after the GECK," he continued the former discussion, "Has to be. The Alpha was always talking about how he didn't have the tech or the…."
Butch snapped his fingers a few times, his lip clamped between his upper and lower teeth as he tried to recall the more complicated words used. As seemed to be custom, Letters provided the answer, "Schematics."
"Yeah, the schematics. To copy the GECK. He told me one of the parts was this crazy complicated piece of science and without the original schematics he wouldn't be able to make another GECK. He asked Braun, but the fuckhead didn't know. He'd got the part from some scientist egghead out West. That was it!"
"Quite correct," Lesko cut in as he adjusted his spectacles, reminding everyone that the Doctor was still present. He had faded into the background once he was no longer the subject of attention and had occupied himself by pouring a large mug of coffee that he now held in both hands, warming them against the hot ceramic.
"Physics is not my field, of course, but the Wanderer did consult me in case I knew any local Physicists. His research into the GECK was stymied by the Matter-Recombinator the GECK utilises in order to break down radioactive matter into its composite particles and reform it into pure, unmolested matter. Others would have employed filters, some type of chemical treatment, but not Doctor Braun. He endeavoured to cut straight to the heart of the issue. Ambitious, marvellously ambitious! And quite brilliant!"
"Wait!"
Lantaya held up her hands to stop the flow of the conversation that had seemed to run away from her understanding of the situation, leaving it far behind. "I am lost. What is a GECK? And, surely, you are not suggesting that this device breaks down matter to a sub-atomic level and then reforms in to solid, intact matter? It is theoretically possible, but no-one has ever managed to control the process. The output of radiation alone such a process would entail, of power and heat, would be simply unmanageable without an entire sprawling facility to support it. And the process would quickly become costly and inefficient!"
"Quite so, but Doctor Braun was a fantastically brilliant man," Lesko countered in his nasal voice as he stirred sweetener into his coffee, "And where his knowledge failed him, he was also a marvellously connected man."
"Head of the Future-Tec department of Vault-Tec Corporation," Letters recited from memory, "Specialised in cutting edge weapons and applied science."
"You cannot be seriously suggesting," Lani contended, proving that she was as sharp a scientific mind as any present, "That your race managed to crack the secret behind true atomic manipulation and still destroyed itself over a lack of resources. Such a breakthrough would solve everything! Hunger, poverty, natural disaster, atmospheric manipulation, resource management," she cycled down the list of intractable issues that could be simply handwaved away by such a technology, correctly employed.
"With enough power to fuel the process it would solve…" She finished, made breathless by the possibilities.
"Everything," Lesko admitted forlornly, "It would have solved everything. Likely, The Great War never would have transpired."
"But the breakthrough came too late," Stiggs agreed.
"And it is replicable?" the Matriarch demanded, waving her hand in an almost hysterical, unconscious jerk, "Not some sort of…. profoundly ironic accident of fate? You can build another of these devices?"
Lesko smiled, then launched into an explanation of the most revolutionary product of the Vault-Tec corporations advanced science division.
The Garden of Eden Creation Kit. The GECK.