I wrote the final chapter, and celebrated by staying up late eating potato chips and playing Dark Fall: Ghost Vigil. Bethesda's great, but there's something cozy about a classic point-n-click adventure game! But then I got a few more ideas for chapters. So you all get a few more postgame chapters before we return to the increasingly emotional main story.

Begin Recording

New Toy

Recording by Scribe Ellison

An early morning vertibird landing has delivered a new toy for the doctor. Half the settlement is gathered around outside the hospital watching through the windows as Sturges and his apprentices set it up. There are no patients under care at the moment so the windows are all open.

Doc Jenna is hugging herself in delight. "This is just what I need for Maya, a bioscanner bed that works vertically or horizontally. Ok, who wants to help test it? Want to see your bones?"

I ask, "Where did it come from?"

The General grins. "Fell off the back of the Prydwen."

"What?"

From where he's checking wiring Sturges calls, "That means we stole it!"

"We didn't steal it steal it. The Brotherhood cleaned out a hospital and they found four of these and I bribed proctor Teagan to sell us one and report that they found only three. We need one of these more than the Brotherhood needs four of them."

That is probably true. I'm grateful that matters of salvage rights are not my responsibility.

The day's work will not wait so I can only wander past the hospital to see the new equipment occasionally. On my first pass Shiloh is sitting very still in front of the panel of the machine, only her darting eyes betraying her impatience. Doc Jenna is saying, "Amazing. I know you have synth parts and I even know where they are, but I can't see a thing."

"Can I see yet?"

"Yes, come see."

Shiloh scoots around and lets out an excited squeal, "My bones! I know all the names!" She lists off a few vertebrae then asks, "You're going to take lots of pictures of my bones aren't you?"

"Yep. You and every synth we know, just in case we can find a safe way to find who's a synth."

Somber now Shiloh echoes, "Just in case."

The next time the new machine is put to use it's obvious to everyone in town, because Maya Long protests at full toddler volume. Between wails I hear her mother say, "You need a new leg baby, you gotta let the doctor measure you."

Maya just wails, "Don't wannaaaaaa!" too upset and too young to explain why.

Shiloh crouches down to get face to face with the crying child. "You can see your bones! How 'bout if we bring Dogmeat, he wants to see his bones too."

"The doc doesn't want a messy dog in her hospital." Marci says and Shiloh scowls, her baby-taming attempt thwarted.

I ask about this later and find that poor Maya's prosthetic leg makes quite a lot of work. She's growing fast, and growing with legs of different lengths will not be healthy so she needs new legs regularly. Sturges talks about making something with a locking screw mechanism that can be lengthened by millimeters as needed. He also has to make feet, a whole new set of challenges. The foot itself is made of rubber reclaimed from the tires that litter the Commonwealth, but there's a whole process to make it soft enough to carve a foot from. Sturges does that himself with measurements of Maya's other foot.

An uncomfortable question comes to mind. "If the Institute has such great medical technology..."

Sturges shrugs. "Em tried to convince them to help since it was a rogue synth that took Maya's leg in the first place, but no dice. Unless it's a spreading plague, our problems are not the Institute's problem. But since the Institute isn't our problem anymore, I'll take it!" Sturges says cheerfully.