Achievement unlocked: I have filled the notebook I'm writing this story in! Thankfully I have a pile of half used notebooks around so I pulled out one I last used for Ocean Girl novelization years ago.
Begin Recording
Crater
Recording by Scribe Ellison
So we built this frankensuit… oh. Frankenstein, it's a book about a monster made from pieces of different corpses. It's a good book, one of the better ones I had to read in college. Anyway it means we pulled apart a couple of suits of power armor and put them together into one. Proctor Teagan is probably still looking for a few of the pieces. Sturges took apart a radiation suit to build into the lining of the armor and we wired in a couple of stealth-boys because the suit was so clunky and had such a small field of vision that it would be better if I didn't have to fight in it. It was a lot of technology, stuff we can't replace, and it's all rotting at the edge of the Glowing Sea because it's too radioactive to bring back.
We built in a water straw and rad-x I could get to without getting out of the suit. Because once I was in the irradiated zone I wasn't going to be able to get out of the suit, at all. Like, not even to use the bathroom. But at least the suit was shielded enough that I wouldn't have to be hooked up to a bag of radaway the whole time, which would have been a real disaster on the bathroom front. But we still had to figure out… maybe I should make a holotape about building a suit of radiation-proof power armor, but for this recording I'll just say that the General of the Minutemen has worn some very undignified things.
I paid one of our provisioners to load the suit on a brahmin and we hauled it down to Sommerville Place and I started walking west.
So the Glowing Sea… is awful. The air is thick as soup, this muddy green haze. You can't see very far. And the light is wrong. Not just because of the muck in the air, the light is orange and seems to come from the wrong direction like the ground is glowing even when you can't tell exactly where it's coming from. Walking through there kind of feels like one of those dreams you have when your room is too bright and hot.
I know you can't feel radiation but I didn't feel well. Being sealed in the suit I was getting sweatier and hotter in spite of the cooling system that was supposed to be venting and filtering in clean air. I set my Pip-boy map to direct me to the area of highest radiation expecting that would lead me to the crater. So there was nothing to do but walk and walk and turn on the next stealth boy when the last one ran down and walk some more.
I saw long flat plains with scattered feral ghouls staggering aimlessly back and forth. I walked straight through. None of the ferals had enough brain left to notice me through the stealth field. Over at the edge of the plain a radscorpion burst from the ground. Io swear the thing was glowing orange. It flailed around, took out a couple of ferals, and settled down to chew on them. I kept walking.
I remember pools of orange water and green lightning striking endlessly around the horizon. I saw a piece of wall sticking up from the ground, it was covered solid in glowing radroaches. There were other creatures around, I saw a deathclaw fighting two radscorpions and got away from there as fast as I could.
After some time I found myself walking up, climbing over rocks towards a light that I wasn't sure was the sun. By then I could've been in the Glowing Sea for hours or days. My suit's clock said ten hours but it also said it was yesterday and the light had hardly changed. I hadn't emptied the built in water bottle and I was feeling too generally awful to know if I was sleepy.
I reached the top of what was practically a mountain and looked down into the crater.
There was a pool of glowing orange water at the bottom and a metal structure built out over it. The air wasn't just murky here; little green blobs of light gathered on surfaces and floated up into the air. I stumbled down towards the heart of the crater. Not sure why. Maybe I was thinking of finding people or sheltering in the shack. Or some subconscious impulse was driving me down to the spot where the bomb fell. I don't know.
And there was someone inside the structure, a man kneeling on the floor. He wasn't wearing any kind of protective suit and I was right up to him before I could be sure he wasn't some kind of hallucination.
He looked up, not at all bothered by my heavy suit, which was actually making the floor creak. "The divide is coming."
"What?"
"The word of Atom's glory must be spread to all."
He kept smiling vaguely and repeating things like that no matter what I said so I went to see if I could find anyone else.
No, the guy didn't look good. He was toothless and mostly bald. But alive, which I wouldn't have been without my suit.
When I left the metal building everything was suddenly really bright so it might have been morning. I could see the glowing pool had toxic waste barrels in it—these people had hauled in more radioactive material! And there were a few more shacks around the inside of the crater and I saw people kneeling on platforms and holding out there hands towards the pool.
I walked towards them. A ragged woman with sparse gray hair stood up to meet me. "Stop right there stranger, you enter Atom's holy place! State your business or be divided in his sight!"
"I'm here because I need your help."
"Do you seek division? Have you come to merge with Atom, to be split in his infinite glory, or do you seek to tear down his followers?"
"...neither. What is this place?"
"This is where we commune with Atom himself. I am surprised you have survived to reach it. I am Mother Isolde, one of Atom's chosen worshipers. How can Atom help you, child?"
"I'm looking for someone named Virgil, Mother."
The woman frowned, but her voice was still gentle. "We know of this Virgil. What do you want with him?"
"I don't mean him any harm; I need his help. He might be able to help me reach the Institute."
"Ah. I have heard of this Institute. They hide themselves, trying to avoid the power of Atom. A futile effort. In truth, Virgil has caused some concern among us. Some felt his presence is an affront to Atom, as he is not a follower. He has come to trade with us on a few occasions but we have had little contact with him. It is clear he wants to be left alone. You can find him southwest of the crater, living in a cave. I'd approach him cautiously if I were you."
"Thank you. You… how do you live here in all this radiation?"
The woman's gray hair stirred in a breeze I couldn't feel and little blobs of green light floated around her. "This is Atom's unique gift to us, his true believers. He has brought us here to this place that cannot harm us so that we may worship him, so that we may spread his word to others. That is our calling, to deliver his message to a world that does not wish to hear it. To show Atom's power to all."
For a moment I felt the urge to take off my helmet and breathe in the fresh air. I shook myself, thanked Mother Isolde again, and turned away. I wanted to rest, but there was no place here to get out of my suit. There was nothing to do but keep walking, southwest.
