Begin Recording
Diamond City
Recording by Scribe Ellison
"We entered the city, and Carla seemed to wake up a bit more. "Keep your eyes peeled." she said. It was very quiet. I saw a body hanging inside a building—raider home decorating. It didn't seem to bother Carla but it sure bothered me!
"About the time we started seeing the Diamond City signs we heard shots and explosions. It was a squad of security trying to pry a couple of greenies out of a building they'd taken over. Carla said I should help them and catch up later. So I did. Those were my first super mutants, hideous things. The security guys thanked me for the assist and let me loot the bodies as a welcome treat when they learned it was my first visit to Diamond City. I was too self-conscious to ask what the hell these green things were so I just took their ammo and checked out the building. They'd been there long enough to make meat bags, which told me plenty about super mutants. Does anybody know why they make those? I've heard they grow baby super mutants in them but I'm not sure I believe that. I've never seen a young super mutant, or a female. Doctor Duff told me later that she thinks half the super mutants are female, they just look exactly the same as the males. 'Not much sexual dimorphism' is what she called it. I hauled a few dead super mutants in to the Science Center years later… but I'm getting ahead of myself.
"Anyway, Carla had gone ahead so I reached the gates of Diamond City with just Dogmeat for company.
"As I came up to the gate I saw a girl in a long coat arguing to be let in. She beckoned me over and then, before I could ask why she was stuck outside she was saying loudly, "What's that, you say you're a trader? With enough supplies to keep the general store stocked for a month?" There was a little more back and forth but I didn't speak up because I did want to get into the city. The poor guy on the other side of the speaker was convinced and the gate opened.
"Not a gate like you're thinking, Diamond City's gate is a slab of iron on huge hydraulic arms, a mini nuke wouldn't scratch it.
"And that was Piper Wright. Big bright smile and handwritten press pass stuck in her hat. About four steps past the gate the mayor caught her and they were yelling about slander. I learned Piper is the Commonwealth's only reporter and the mayor isn't keen on what she says. The fight seemed to be about missing people and the mayor not investigating. Piper was very passionate but I couldn't help thinking that there were enough monsters around to disappear people, no conspiracy needed.
"Mayor McDonough noticed me and gave me a big welcome, extolling the virtues of Diamond City—food, running water, sewers, a school, and The Wall. He pronounced it with capital letters.
"By the way, nobody in Diamond City was pleased when the Prydwen went overhead and they realized The Wall wouldn't help if the Brotherhood ever decided to bomb them.
"I told the mayor I was looking for my kidnapped son and he said kind but unhelpful things about finding someone in town to help, then made himself scarce with Piper giving him hell about not assigning security to help me. She invited me to visit the newspaper and went ahead, leaving me to follow.
"So Diamond City… is beautiful in the evening, with all the lights on. The metal structure of the stadium groans in the least little wind, it's spooky but almost musical. You need to go there Scribe, next time a caravan goes down. You'll get so many stories to send back to Arlington Library.
"The next person I met was Piper's sister Nat, a ferocious teenager standing on a box selling papers. She gave me one for free and told me all about the Institute and synths. That was the first time I heard of kidnappings, synths replacing people, gen-ones wiping out whole towns. And that nobody knew why. That was the scariest thing, the Institute was this all powerful menace that couldn't be understood.
"When I reached the Institute I asked about all this. The answers I got—the replacements were tests of synth humanity, and they only replaced people who died or who were 'in critical positions.' Yeah, that's about the look on my face when the good people in Robotics said that. Kidnappings were removals of synths they thought were about to glitch and get violent, and that rarely happened. And the roving gen-ones were survey teams that lost contact with the Institute and went rogue. Synths last for years after all, most of the rogues are from well before the current division heads were chosen.
"So the answers I got later were far from satisfactory and the people in Diamond City then had no answers at all.
"The newspaper was a report on the 'Broken Mask Incident.' You can have a copy. It's one of Piper's favorite stories so she did a reprint.
"So I wandered through the market in a bit of a daze, not knowing where to go. Met Ann Codman, one of the upper crust from the upper stands. Met Pastor Clement who described the institute as the boogeyman. We ended up talking about whether machines can have souls. The chapel is open all hours to all faiths, and Pastor Clement said synths would be welcome to commune with the almighty too. I'm not sure what I believe about God—as a lawyer you find out fast that there are good people and scumbags in every faith. And then the world blew up. I guess God would understand us being a little confused after that. But I went into the chapel and said a prayer, just in case.
"It was dark by then, and everything was closing up. Carla was in their caravan camp, but since we'd made it safely she paid me and said I could sleep wherever I wanted. The caravan camp was pretty crowded, so I bummed dinner and space on a couch off Piper and Nat in exchange for an interview. And Piper had a printing press. We later paid her a huge pile of caps to let Sturges take it apart enough to figure out how to make another printing press. Computer printing may be lost but we have a printing press printing instructions on how to make a printing press. We won't go all the way back to the dark ages.
"When I stepped outside in the morning I heard shouting. One man was holding another at gunpoint, saying he was a synth. Before I could get closer security had shot the accuser—not the accused. That's one way to discourage public suspicion. Security shooed everyone away and did not seem interested in explaining what the hell had just happened to an outsider like me so I went back and bummed breakfast off Piper in exchange for cranking the press, then she ordered me out to "Explore Diamond City, Blue! There's no place like it!" So I explored.
"I met Sheng the very young, bald water seller who scalped me fifty caps for a bottle of water. Doctor Duff in the science center gave me a lecture on radiation and asked me to cut up a bloatfly for her. Moe Cronin told me his idea of how baseball should be played and laughed when I told him how it was really played. Vadim joked that he'd killed a man to get his bar. I met the teacher robot Miss Edna who asked about love. The kids in the school wanted to pet Dogmeat, who charmed them and interrupted the lesson. The kids told me about the detective in town, Nick Valentine.
"I caught another of the mayor's speeches, more blasting Piper's article, more about trust and The Wall and how there are no synths in Diamond City. I'd been enjoying meeting everyone, seeing how alive the city was. It had noise and bustle and characters, things I wanted for Sanctuary one day. But it was also a city full of fear, people who had to say they felt safe when they didn't. And I had my own fear to chase down, so I went to Valentine's Detective Agency.
"But the detective was gone, I found his secretary Ellie mourning over the bills and cases that were piling up since her boss had disappeared. Went out on a case and didn't come back. This detective seemed like my best chance for finding the man who'd taken Shaun, so I offered to go find him. Ellie nearly cried with relief, then told me where Nick had been going, to a vault built in the Park Street train station. I'd been there, Nate and I visited Boston Common for concerts while we were dating. We went skating on the pond one winter, we had to rent skates and neither of us had skated since we were kids so we fell down a lot but we were wearing so many coats it didn't matter. But now all I knew was that the city between here and there was probably full of those green monsters and it wasn't on Carla's route so I'd have to walk there by myself and probably get horribly killed. Or not by myself, because Piper had given me a whole pitch while I cranked the press about how I'd be an endless source of stories and she'd love to come along. Same reason you came with your holotape recorder, Scribe. So I went back to show Piper the map and ask her if she really wanted to come."