Begin Recording

Virgil

Recording by Scribe Ellison

When I climbed to the top of the crater it was dark again, or at least it was hard to see again. I almost had to feel my way down the outside of the crater but my clock said it was only afternoon.

It took another too-long stretch of time but I did find the cave eventually. I heard a deathclaw growling somewhere close but I got inside before it found me.

The cave was just big enough for me to squeeze through in my bulky power armor and there was no way to avoid the hanging can chimes. In a wider area two turrets chugged on shelves build across the rocks, but they didn't open up on me so I clanked on past to look into the wider cave.

Virgil knew I was there. He was waiting looming behind his protectron. Very looming—Virgil was halfway to being a super mutant at the time. Seven feet tall, greenish, glasses tied around his bulging head. He had a crowbar strapped across his chest and it looked small as a toy.

"Hold it! Take it real slow, synth. Where's Kellogg? Sneaking up behind me?"

I spread my hands, keeping them far away from my weapons for whatever that was worth in power armor. "Kellogg isn't coming for you. He's dead."

The mutant roared, "Don't lie to me! ...Hmm. No. Get out of your armor and tell me that face to face. This place isn't so irradiated, even if you are human you'll be safe for a while."

"All right. Give me a minute." I powered down the suit and unlocked it, and my pip-boy immediately told me that the cave wasn't too hot but the outside of my power armor certainly was. I was wearing one of your Brotherhood suits underneath, skintight orange with a hood, not even my normal clothes so I felt super naked face to face with a super mutant. But I turned back to the mutant and said, "Kellogg is dead. I killed him. Are… you Virgil?"

He made a thoughtful rumbling noise. "You know I am… or maybe you don't. Maybe you are telling the truth. Then what do you want from me?"

"I need your help, Doctor Virgil. I need to find a way into the Institute."

"I'm sorry, what?" Virgil snapped and I tensed up again but he just went on, "You want to get into the Institute? Are you insane? Never mind how nearly impossible that is, even if you were to succeed it'd almost certainly end in your immediate death. What reason could you possibly have?"

"I… my son is in the Institute. He was kidnapped."

"I see. And you got this far. Huh." Virgil seemed to finally let down his guard, he turned and gestured to a table and chair, one chair that he had to clear off for me because he was too big to fit in it. He sat down on a crate and offered me a can of purified water. "I can help you get into the Institute, but I want something in return."

I nodded. "Sure. What can I do?"

"Before I had to escape I was working on a serum that would serve as a cure for my… condition. I had to leave it behind. it's still in my lab and… well, look at me. I need it!"

"You weren't always..?"

"No I wasn't always a super mutant! I did this to myself, to come here! The only place the Institute couldn't get to me. The only place I could escape to. But without the serum I will continue to mutate until my mind is gone as well. I need you to find it for me if you do manage to get inside the Institute. What do you say?"

"If I can get the serum to you, I will."

"All right. let's talk details."

And Virgil told me a lot about how the teleporter worked, as much as he understood it. It was the only way into the Institute so the only way I could get in was to kill something with a teleporter chip in it. Not any old synth; they sent those up in batches on a one-way trip and then something with the right chip had to bring them back. The only thing with the right chip installed that ever leaves the Institute is the coursers, the elite hunter synths. Because the Institute assumes nobody's going to be able to kill one, I guess. Virgil didn't have a lot of confidence that I'd be able to kill one, but my only chance was to do just that and pull the chip out of its head. I asked Virgil if I could just bring back the whole head, because I wasn't sure I could make myself dig around in what would probably look like a human brain and even if I did I wasn't sure I'd recognize a chip if I saw one. This did not raise Virgil's opinion of me but he said that would be all right.

Virgil would not tell me anything more about the Institute. I asked, asked why the Institute sent synths to replace people, what it did with the kidnap victims—I asked what they might want with a little boy. I think Virgil really didn't know anything about Shaun, and he had trouble explaining the rest. He said, "They replace people to keep control, of course! The Institute rules the Commonwealth, or they like to think they do. Some of the people who disappear end up being experimented on, but I don't know why they would keep a test subject for so many years. The Institute… The Institute isn't what you think."

"What do you mean? Then what is it?"

Virgil shook his huge head. "You'll find out, when you get there. Except the courser will kill you if the walk across the Glowing Sea doesn't." And he wouldn't say more.

The realization that I'd have to walk through the Glowing Sea again once I had the courser's head and once more if I did get into the Institute and found Virgil's serum was not a happy moment. And while Virgil's cave wasn't half as radioactive as the outside, it wasn't safe for me to stay out of my armor long enough to sleep. So after I repeated back how to find a courser I armored up and slogged back outside. Virgil and his protectron walked me out and it was a good thing, because the deathclaw was sniffing around. The monster tried to open Virgil's protectron like a tin can, distracting it long enough for Virgil and I to dispatch it with our weapons.

And I set my pip-boy to direct me back to Sommerville Place and walked for… some amount of time. I remember the air being more brown than green on the way back, and I saw a church steeple sticking up out of the ground. At last I clanked my way back into the settlement and parked my armor in a shed. They said I'd been gone twenty hours, and once I was breathing real air again I was suddenly parched, starving, and falling asleep on my feet. I got on the radio to tell Preston I'd survived, and went to bed.