Begin Recording
Weight of the World
Recording by Scribe Ellison
"Mama Murphy said it was on me, to decide which ways of life would continue in the Commonwealth. Didn't sound likely, but that's how it turned out." The General says as we sit around resting our bones after dinner.
"I got to the Institute—which I'll have to tell you about another time, it'll be ten holotapes worth—but I got there and I was the first person since the war to come in from outside. The scientists greeted me with open arms and included me in their planning meetings, as kind of an ambassador from the outside. They needed me to find some parts for a new reactor that would give the Institute power for the next few hundred years. I was already talking to the division heads about the synth problems topside, thinking to trade the parts for some changes to their experiments and some help rounding up the rogue gen-ones wandering around attacking my settlements, and maybe some synth tech to help the people up here. They did float the idea of making me the next Director, but I think they were just dangling the title as a bribe and wouldn't have given me any real power.
"But everyone found out. There wasn't really any way to hide it, Sturges and I were building this giant thing and even though we didn't say it was a way to reach the Institute it wasn't a wild guess. But they found out.
"The leader of the Railroad, Desdemona, who I'd worked with and thought of as a friend, called me to headquarters and she had a very inspiring speech: this was our chance to free the Commonwealth from the Institute's tyranny, and that sounded good, that's what I was hoping for. And then she gets out this thing..."
Em half-stands, leans forward and sets her glass down hard, echoing how her friend must have presented the Railroad's solution to the problem.
"It was a bomb, something Tinker Tom cooked up that would blow the Institute's new reactor into a crater like the one in the Glowing Sea.
"It took me a minute to realize what she was saying and then—I kind of lost it. There are children in the Institute, all I could think of was that Desdemona was perfectly fine with killing not just the scientists but their families after everything she goes through to save innocent synths. So I yelled, and she yelled, and pretty soon all the Railroad leaders were watching us yell and Deacon said maybe we should revisit this later and dragged me outside.
"I would've been happy to find some raiders to shoot right then but instead we found a herd of radstags that hang around near the shore so we sat and watched them for a while while I calmed down.
"I think Deacon saved me, with the Railroad. He reminded me Desdemona has reasons to be bloodthirsty, and later convinced her that I was still on their side for everything that didn't include mass murder. So Desdemona didn't shoot me, just banished me from headquarters for a bit. We exchanged letters at drop points trying to convince each other.
"So I was back up here, farming, helping the Abernathys with their endless ghoul problem. I've gone over that train yard with a flamethrower, Scribe, and it still fills up with ghouls every couple months. Then a vertibird landed and Elder Maxson wants to see me.
"Maxson is a good leader, but I'd call him an ally not a friend. I'm quite sure he's only helping the settlements because a healthy well fed Commonwealth is good for the Brotherhood. The Prydwen is amazing, and I love flying, and there are plenty of your brothers I trust at my back. Including you, Scribe, for the record. It's Maxson I can't always agree with.
"And he had a solution to the Institute problem too, a poison he wanted me to release in the Institute's water supply. Lethal to humans, incapacitating to synths. Made to take everyone down quickly so when the Brotherhood dug down to the Institute all their research and technology would be preserved for collection. Inspired by something they saw in the Capital, apparently, you can tell me later.
"I wasn't shocked this time. Maxson is a soldier after all, and collecting tech is part of the Brotherhood way so it's a reasonable decision for him. So I said I'd think about it if we couldn't find a better solution.
"And I might have. Even Preston thought it was a solid option and he's pretty level headed. I did believe the Institute couldn't go on unchecked. I just also thought we shouldn't destroy it. Beyond the murder problem, the Institute has knowledge we can't afford to lose. Even if they won't share the fruits of their research now, it needs to be preserved.
"Some years back, a stranger staggered into Sommerville Place, dying of the glows. He'd walked across enough of the Glowing Sea that all they could do was make him comfortable and listen to him before he died. He said he'd been a slave in an empire far west of us, the empire of the Kaisar. Sounds like a whole country run on slave labor and conquest. And on the other side of them he said there's another empire in California that's been fighting the Kaisar's back and forth for a few decades. Have you heard of this, Scribe? My friends in the Commonwealth Brotherhood don't know what's happening west of here."
I confess that I've heard things that echo what Em heard from this survivor. The Elders know of an army of slavers, the Legion, but they are far enough away not to be an immediate concern.
Em nods. "The raiders in the bay and the greenskins in Boston are our immediate concerns, them and not starving over winter. But someday the slavers will defeat California or give up on that fight, and look east instead. It might not be in our lifetime but it will happen, and the Commonwealth will need to be ready to meet them as a possibly ally or a worthy enemy not just a population ready to haul off in chains. The Minutemen will be ready, and I hope your brothers will stand with us, but in the end we may need a synth army."
