Begin Recording

The Replacement's Tale

"Scribe, I've got a holotape for you. The leader of the Railroad gave it to me, she wanted to make sure the rest of the Brotherhood in the Capital knows… something. I haven't listened to it."

"Can we listen to it now?"

"Don't see why not, since I've given it to you. I'm curious what the message is."

I take the holotape and load it into my recorder. It's a voice log and I hit play.

The first sound we hear is labored breathing, clattering and clanks as of people moving around in the distance. Then a voice: "You'll send this? To everyone? The Minutemen, the b\Brotherhood of Steel, everyone? They should know. They should know what it's like."

It sounds like the voice of someone who knows what it's like to mix jet and mentats and not sleep for a week, but we keep listening.

"They should know why you wanted to destroy the Institute. Wasn't the General angry? I heard her shouting about children, children in the Institute, she threw the bomb back in your face. She thinks she can trust the Institute. I'll tell you all what the Institute does.

"Imagine waking up and realizing you're not you. The memories you have, someone else made those memories. The things you're proud or ashamed of, someone else did those things. Not you. Your wife fell in love with someone else, someone else fathered your child. But you're not that person. You're a blank, you're nobody, you're nothing. Your head is full of stuff you don't know where it came from. You know how to do your job even though you never did it. So you do it. Because what else can you do?

"It comes on slow. At first you just feel a little strange, like why am I here, I have no reason to be here. Then it's a few more things, your clothes aren't yours, your gun ain't yours, you don't know how you know your way around town. The family stuff's last, because your brain won't accept it I guess. Realizing I wasn't really my daughter's father.

"And then there's what's going on, am I losing my mind? Did I get hit on the head, or catch a fever that baked my brain? Maybe you go see a doc but he says nothing's wrong. But you know something is. And then slowly you realize what must be going on. It's true, you're not you. Really not you. You're a synth, a machine. The real you is dead and you're just a replacement, and you don't know how or why or even when it happened. How long have you been dead? Certainly before your little girl was born since a synth can't father a child. Maybe she never met her real father but how would you know? So you maybe start asking, maybe someone noticed a change but if they realize you're a synth you'll be killed but maybe that's all right.

"And sometime it occurs to you that if you were a synth and didn't know it then anyone else might be a synth too. Maybe they all are. Maybe they all do know it, and if you ask them in the right way, like with a gun pointed at their head, they'll tell you when you died and how many of the people around you are dead too…

"And then if you're really lucky someone from the Railroad finds you and offers to clear the old dead memories from your head so you can start fresh and be someone real this time. Soon I'll be rest and I can find out who I really am. A synth, but one who knows he's a synth and can decide what to do with his own existence. Of course I'll be hunted forever by Institute coursers trying to haul me back and erase whatever I am and fill me up with another set of dead memories and put me who knows where until I start to realize again. Maybe next time I won't get found before I point a gun at someone just to make the world make sense. I don't want to hurt my little girl! I know she isn't mine, I'm just a copy of her Papa and she's better off without me but I'd never want to hurt her!

"That's what the Institute did to me. That's where they put me. They knew this might happen! It's happened to other synths! Maybe it's happening to other synths out there right now. That's why we had to destroy the Institute. They make people like this and nobody knows why. Maybe they don't even know why. Maybe they don't even have a reason. The General should have put that bomb on their reactor, just blown the whole place up. Then nobody else would ever have to feel the way I feel right now. When I get reset, it'll be better but I'll forget everything about my daughter. Desdemona says she'll give this to the people in power, it's my last request before I forget about this. So whoever you are, remember the Institute makes people like me. Maybe you can stop them, so please, please save people like me and my family. Destroy the Institute."

There's a click and a long sigh. A woman's voice says, "Good. That's good. Thank you, R5-96. Do you want to record anything else, for when you wake up? You can pick a name for yourself if you want."

The recording ends then.