Begin Recording

Scientific Proof

Recording by Scribe Ellison

So I was banished by the Railroad, sort of. Desdemona did keep sending freed synths to hide out in the settlements, which felt like the Railroad was happy to use me even though they didn't trust me. Which was what I wanted but also didn't feel great. And of course when I had time I was still visiting the Institute, to see what I could learn that might help synths and humans.

Justin Ayo did not like me hanging around the SRB but he wasn't allowed to banish me. And he was right, I was up to no good.

That had started one day when Carla turned up with a guard, "He offered to come along for free! Strange fella. Always wears sunglasses."

"Ah."

By the time I tracked him down Deacon was already three bids deep at the weapons stall and scratching Dogmeat under the chin with his free hand. "Hey, it's the General! Just let me finish buying these mini-nukes. Had to come all this way; Arturo was out."

"I can guess whose birthday it is."

"Last year I got her a flamethrower." Deacon said seriously, and I thought he probably had. I hoped Glory would like her mini-nukes.

My job for the afternoon was cutting and crushing mutfruit so it could go into the pot for jam, and that's where Deacon found me. He offered to take over the pot stirring job and Jimmy happily accepted and ran off to get some target practice in. "So what brings you here?" I asked between chops.

"Tom's been going over the files we've got and he thinks there are sections missing. He says he saw code meant to trick the network into thinking it can see everything—well, he didn't say it like that but once I talked him into English that was what I got. So! New file scanner. Plug this into every terminal you can get to in courser central and we'll see what the SRB is hiding from the rest of the Institute."

I took the holotape and put it away. "My pleasure. It'll take a while though, Ayo does not trust me around his division. I'm allowed everywhere but most of his people watch me like hawks—like radgulls anyway."

"Almost like they think you're helping the Railroad."

It did take some time to get at all the SRB terminals when nobody was looking. I finally managed with the excuse that I wanted to make a paper copy of the map. Alana saw no reason to stop me and even said I could come in at night to work on it. And I did make a really nice map by tracing from the glowing map table, and I looked at the screens long enough to figure out how they were recording those images when we hadn't found any cameras. And I plugged the holotape into every terminal in the place.

If it had been any other division I think I would have felt bad about spying.

It was worth it, because the SRB had been tracking synth disappearances in a lot more detail than they were telling anybody else. Ayo had told me "we're looking into it" when I met him, but in fact he was tracking every bit of data he could get.

"Well this is interesting." Deacon said sarcastically as he read it off my terminal with his sunglasses pushed up on his head.

I was hovering over his shoulder trying to read it too. "What is?"

"The pattern of 'asset loss.' It spreads like an idea not a glitch."

I blinked. Deacon was clearly seeing something there but I didn't see it. I usually see Deacon in a shooting-things context so I sometimes forget the Railroad actually keeps him around because he's really smart. "Say that again with twice the words."

"They think it's a programming thing, they're tracking system updates like the urge to run off is in the data. But it isn't. It's synths who have seen the surface and synths who work with them. Synths escape because they've heard from other synths that it's possible. It's all right here."

All I saw was a very large table with a lot of rows and columns. A lot of information that I could probably work out to the same answer given plenty of time. "So that means… synths aren't human but they're doing things for human reasons?"

"...yeah." Deacon flicked his shades down. "That's it. It isn't exactly 'proof that synths are people' since they are programmed to be like people but it's something. It's proof that Ayo is looking in the wrong place for his answers. Let's see what else we've got."

I gave up on trying to read and did chores around the house, washed my clothes and swept the floor and things while Deacon looked over the data. He'd been hanging around Sanctuary all week while I filled up the holotape, helping around town like any other guest but making people nervous because nobody knows who he is other than 'one of the General's friends.' After a while Deacon sat back and stretched.

"Find something?"

"Oh did I ever." Deacon said, and smiled a cheerful, terrifying smile. "The numbers don't lie, assuming these are the real numbers. It's costing the Institute more in resources to keep losing gen-three synths than it would cost them to just let the robots do the manual labor and get their humans to do the skilled stuff. Ayo isn't telling anybody how much he's using the coursers so nobody's worked it out. But it's easy to see if you're looking."

I came over to look, and of course I only saw another large table of data. "Can you make that look really obvious and put it on a tape? In case I need to pull it out of my hat."

"Already on it, General." Deacon calls me 'General' in an entirely sarcastic yet also affectionate way. I have a perfectly good Railroad codename that I'm proud of but we don't always use them in person. "Give it to the Director at the most tactical moment. That'll make it worth staying up here this whole time."

"So you're not just in Sanctuary because you wanted a farming vacation?"

Deacon was looking through his sunglasses at the screen when he said, "I'm keeping an eye on you while everyone else moves headquarters."

I groaned. "I get that Desdemona isn't happy with me since I won't help her blow people up but does she really still think I'm going to sell you out?"

"Not by choice."

Oh.

"He wouldn't." No response. "Deacon, he wouldn't." My son wouldn't have me tortured.

"Of course he wouldn't." Deacon said, sounding totally serious and sincere. And I wanted to hit him, of course. But I couldn't be entirely sure, no matter what I said.