"He's here again, Dr. Li."
"Which 'he,' Janice?"
"The man calling himself Dr. Zimmer. He's refusing to leave unless you speak to him. We can call in the city security team, but –"
"I'll deal with it, Janice. I suppose there's no avoiding it at this point. Putting it off any longer would be more trouble than it's worth."
"Alright. I'll call in the security team, if need be. Just let me know."
Taking a glimpse at Janice as she leaves my office tells me all I need to know. Tense shoulders, hesitant gait, and unusually frassled hair, a victim of her nervous habit of tugging at her hair. For a twenty nine year old, she – most of the time – tends to have the poise of someone much older. Any break in her composure is never a good sign. Last time she acted anywhere near this anxious was when she discovered the water had been contaminated by an issue with the reactor powering the lab, an error which she hadn't even been responsible for.
No, whomever 'Dr. Zimmer' thinks he is, this has to be dealt with, and, if it has to be by me, then so be it. The last thing we need is anxiety and disruption among the staff to cause technical errors, carelessness, or absentmindedness. Things are hitting enough snags as it is without more unnecessary problems.
Saving and closing out my session to lock my computer terminal, I wait no more than a few seconds to ensure it does what it's supposed to before sweeping up my keys and heading towards the door. Stepping through and onto the stairs, locking up quickly, I clip my keys back onto my blouse and make my way through the engineering laboratories to the primary biochemistry laboratory. Though the girl doesn't need to keep fending him off, Janice is waiting, arguing with the, I'm sure, lovely 'Dr. Zimmer.' When they notice me, their argument ceases and Janice all but runs off, her face blooming pink, caught between relief and residual anxiety. With what I imagine is a charmingly perpetual frown, 'Dr. Zimmer' takes a rather unnecessary minute apparently dusting off the cuffs of his suit jacket and snapping his fingers at a stiff man to beckon him over. He does so almost instantly and by his posture alone it's clear he's something of a bodyguard for 'Dr. Zimmer.' Typical, given his garish dress and barely hidden ornate pistol, but nevertheless an irritating, unspoken threat.
"There's no getting rid of you, is there?" I raise an eyebrow when he says nothing. "You're obviously here for a reason, and, though it may have slipped your notice, you've disrupted the staff here enough. You wanted to speak with me? Well, then speak."
"I would have at least a week or more ago, but you were unavailable, I was told," He says with a short, hollow, mirthless laugh. "There are so few scientists in this wretched place as is, and most of the ones you call 'scientists' here are by and large appallingly dense."
"Is that so?" I frigidly reply. "Do you know anything on the subject? Or are you just another mercenary wanting to cause trouble?"
"I know a great deal more about science than any of…any of you savages!" His indignant snort is almost painfully ridiculous. "I thought I had made it quite clear to your…assistant, over there, I would not be leaving until I've spoken with you, which requires you abandon your chemistry set and talk real science! The fact you have so blatantly tried to prevent me from speaking to you is insulting."
"And all but saying outright even the most basic work we do here an activity from a chemistry set for children isn't insulting?" My gaze narrows when he sniffs in indignance once again. "I don't know who you are or why you need to speak with me, but I'd get to the point because I have quite a bit I need to get done."
"Do you realise who you're speaking to?" He exclaims in exaggerated protest. "I am Dr. Charles Zimmer, one of the former Commonwealth Of Massachusetts' –"
"I don't care who you are where you come from. You aren't authorised to be here," I sharply cut in, raising a finger in front of his face to silence him. "You are not a part of my staff. No matter how 'important' you may be in the Commonwealth, you aren't so privileged here, and I still decide who goes in and who goes out of my laboratories. So, why don't you run a long and let me get back to work."
"Whatever you're doing, it can wait!" He snaps, seeming to struggle with keeping his voice down. "This is important in a way you cannot even begin to imagine!"
"It is? Say what you came here to say, and then leave me alone."
"How do I put this in a way you'll understand?" His face evens but his 'charmingly' condescending tone far from dissipates. "You see, we, in the Commonwealth, have moved beyond those primitive toys you call robots, and have created advanced, artificial intelligence and, specifically, artificial persons. Synthetic humanoids! Programmed to think and feel and do whatever we need. One of them has gone missing. I require him to be returned."
"You're asking me to find your robot?" I can't help but laugh. "Are you kidding me?"
"I am not!" He whines. "Occasionally, their programming miscalculates, and they get confused and wander off! I've tracked this one to somewhere here in this…Capital Wasteland. He must have done something drastic, like facial surgery and a mind wipe, or else I would have found him by now."
"Not to intrude, but that sounds ridiculous," Anna. The woman has decent timing, I'll give her that. "If you're telling Dr. Li you programmed them to be able so advanced they can be sentient, are you sure they haven't 'wandered off' on purpose, feeling you enslave them?"
"Nonsense!" He angrily cries. "This is a machine we're talking about! Can you enslave a power generator or a water purifier? Of course not! The same principle applies!"
"I don't care what your androids are or aren't capable of, or what you think of or use them for," I'd be more amused if he hadn't been such a nuisance and distraction to my staff for Janice to get to as anxious a state as she is. "We don't have the resources to spare for your search, and, even if we did, we wouldn't waste them on you. Now, will you kindly leave? I have work to do."
"You don't understand the severity of this!" He exclaims with a frustrated glare at his bodyguard. "This particular android, designation A3-21 is…different. Special. The most advanced synthetic humanoid I've ever developed. The others, like my escort Armitage here, are all older models, easily replicated, but A3-21? It would take years to recreate him! This android must be located, at all costs! The others are all acceptable loses, but A3-21 is irreplaceable! How can you not –"
"I don't have to justify myself to you," I turn to Anna. "I'm going back to work. If you could get rid of him, I'd appreciate it."
"Of course, Dr. Li. I'll handle this."
For all her faults, not the least of which being her short temper, Anna is reliable at getting people in line or, in some cases, out of the way. Still, there's a reason, though he's not a scientist, Albert Garza and Janice, one of the best members of my science staff, get put on more sensitive projects, no matter how much Anna may want them. The last thing I need is to go down to reactor room and find out it was damaged because Anna got frustrated and began kicking at it. More to the point, I can't manage her aggravation and be productive at the same time. We all have more than enough to do, and she might as well just do it. Looking back over my shoulder one last time before heading down into the smaller botany laboratory, it's clear by the look on his face Anna has done her job right. If she could put that efficiency into other endeavours, she might –
"Emmett, step away from the microscopes," I sigh, taking the hands of one of my friend's eight year old son and gently pulling him back. "You don't even know what you're looking at, yet, unless Janice or Anna is helping you learn to interpret what you're seeing, so wait for one of them and don't risk spoiling an experiment. Speaking of which, where is Janice?"
He shrugs, shaking out his messy dark curls. "She told me to stay here and make sure no one tries to steal any of the food being grown. I think she went to talk to a man who came in asking about how you got the water purifiers to work."
Damn you, James.
"Do you know why he was asking her about the water purifiers?"
He scrunches up his face in thought. It's almost cute. "I think he said something about scaling them up so they could clean a lot more water a lot more quickly and safely, but she told him to wait in her office before I could really hear what they were talking about. Can you do that, by the way, Dr. Li? Can you really scale the purifiers up to do that?"
"Not at the moment," I reply, taking his hand to ensure he doesn't get distracted or touch anything he's not supposed to on the way to Janice's office. "We're going to…do a bit of a trade. I'll talk to the man, and Janice will go back to your lesson."
"Great," He says with a smile as we walk. "Janice is really cool. She's kind of like my siblings, but nicer. Although she doesn't push me down hills in a sled or anything when we get lucky and there's snow during the winter, so it's not really a fair comparison. I wonder how she'd do in a snowball fight."
"Considering the fact she's a quick study, probably fairly well," I reply, a bit amused. "But the real question is would she get involved in a snowball fight or would she take notes and observe it?"
He laughs and babbles a bit more, and, thankfully no more than a minute or two later, excitedly opens the door into Janice's office. Following him in, I give Janice a pointed but, admittedly, lightly amused look. She gives him a tap on the back telling him to come with her, and, on the way out, hands me her keys. As soon as they're out of sight, I shut the door, slipping her keys into my skirt pocket and narrowly eyeing James. Surprisingly, he has a great deal of things laid out on Janice's desk, and, unsurprisingly, he's calmly waiting to speak. Calm. He may be delusional, about all of this, but he's always been calm. Except about his daughter. Or, at least, never in front of me; leaving out of the blue with her and returning out of the blue without her.
Having him back is strange, and the calm way he's acted when discussing any subject but his daughter would be even stranger if he were anyone else.
Damn you, James.
"Why are you still here?" I say, raising an eyebrow as I walk towards where he's sat at Janice's desk. "If it's because of Purity, I already told you I'm not going back to a project – which failed – from nearly twenty years ago unless you can prove it's viable. So, what's all this?"
"A couple of models I designed concepts for while in the Vault, and blueprints for potential solutions to the issues we had in scaling it up."
"These certainly look better than the last ones I saw," I mildly remark, picking up one of the blueprints. "I won't say I'm unimpressed."
"I couldn't let it die, especially after I got to the Vault, a place where I knew I – but more importantly Annie – could be safe," He startles when I quickly set the blueprint down. "I never stopped working. I knew we'd be able to return to it, one day. Soon after we arrived, I began working while Annie slept. When she was able to sleep through the night, my nightly routine began to include…sneaking into the restricted areas, searching for whatever I could find. It was a Vault-Tec facility, a place built with some of the most advanced technology this country had ever developed."
"And, if I had the time to, I certainly would be interested in taking a look at the technology left behind in a Vault," I pointedly reply. "But what does that have to do with any of this? Unless some of those blueprints are pre-War, why mention it?"
"Because they influenced some of the redesigns, including with the reactors," He says and the excitement in his voice is almost painful to hear. "I'll have to make further adjustments after I find Vault 112 and, of course, with it the GECK."
"Would you care to explain what a GECK is, then?" If he's going to keep wasting time talking about Purity, then he might as well go into the details of it. "Other than the only lead you have on fixing a damn near unfixable project?"
"Of course. Have I really not…"
James, for God's sake, you need rest. How much have you even slept since you left the Vault? Is it the delusion keeping you going like this or is it guilt from abandoning your daughter keeping you from resting?
"Part of why I am certain the GECK has the capacity to be instrumental in a revival and completion of Purity is because of its progenitor," At least he's never lost his way with words. "Dr. Stanislaus Richard Braun. If I may, have you and your team uncovered any pieces of his work over the years? If you have, I'd like to take a look at them. When I find the GECK, any insights into his other work, especially first hand, could speed the process along immensely."
"None of our laboratory equipment, to my knowledge, was ever designed by him or his companies, apart from the supercomputer array which was, as you're well aware, a collaboration between one of his companies and RobCo," I irritably remind him. "And, if there are any documents of his work we've found over the years, I don't know where they are. It's not my job to collect old work or papers or technology, nor is it to file them away. If you want to know if we have anything, I'd suggest talking to Anna Holt, considering she's the one I typically put that responsibility on."
"Dr. Holt is the tall woman in her early forties with the no-nonsense blonde bob and unrelenting frown?" He writes down a note to himself in his damn near perfect handwriting almost the moment I tell him he's thinking of the right person. "I'll speak to her later, then."
"In that case, keep going."
"Absolutely, Madi –" Damn him, after all this time, he reminds me – albeit unintentionally – why I find him so difficult to let go of and why the shock of having him back has left me both happy and annoyed. "– When I learnt of the GECK shortly before leaving the Vault, I also learnt Braun was its creator. If it weren't for that, I likely would have dismissed the concept all together because of how ludicrous it sounds. It was part of his work with Vault-Tec to create a terraforming module capable of producing life from just about complete lifelessness, hence GECK being an acronym for 'Garden Of Edene Creation kit.'"
"Sounds theoretical at best."
"To be honest, I feel the same. The GECK does sound like pure fantasy, even with someone of Braun's capabilities," He says, hesitating a moment before standing up to take something out of his briefcase. "But there's still a chance it's quite real. The information I found suggests it was actually distributed to several Vaults to be used after an atomic war. Though Vault 101 was not on that list, I managed to learn Braun's name on the list of inhabitants for a Vault 112, which is why I believe, if it is anywhere, it will be there, in the same place its creator most likely died over a century ago from age."
I sigh, wanting both to hand him the folder of information he's scavenged on Braun back and to learn more about one of the most elusive pre-War figures in scientific media. James' miracle solution to Purity aside, Braun's work was so diverse it could have God only knows how many potential applications.
"My hope is his collected knowledge remains within the halls of Vault112," He goes on. "Journals, holotapes, computer records, maybe even experiments. If we gain access to Braun's genius, I'm sure we'll be able to find something which will allow us to complete Project Purity."
"And if none of this exists?" I fall silent when he flinches, worry suddenly taking over his face and body. "What are you going to do then, James? Or if, say, your daughter decides to go looking for you and comes here?"
"Annie won't come looking for me," He quietly replies. "She'll stay in the Vault where she's safe and with the woman she loves and who loves her. Besides, she knows enough about my leaving from what I left her with on the holotape. It isn't specific, but it makes clear I'll be gone a little while to fulfil a commitment."
"She's your daughter, your only child, and, from the way you've talked about her with me, one of the few people in your life you allow close to you," I raise an eyebrow when he looks away in either sadness or shame. "If she doesn't try to find and go after you, I'll be shocked."
"She won't. She's going to be alright," He replies before giving me a small smile. "But, no matter what happens with Purity, I intend on helping you as much as possible. I owe you a great deal, not only as a friend but as the woman who saved my infant daughter's life when her mother's body was beginning to give out during…while delivering our baby girl."
So much as I want to embrace him, I know better. He still loves Catherine.
Part of me wishes he didn't. James may smile and disagree on why he's here, now, but we both know why he's really so desperate to finish Project Purity.
He can't let Catherine go, and he needs to find a reason for his leaving the Vault and abandoning his daughter that won't make the endeavour pointless.
At the end of the day, however, all of it is much more simple, if demoralising, because what James can't seem to escape is drowning in sadness and regret.