Oh man, Father is a character I could've taken in so many ways, he's fascinating, and he's so wordy, and turning a game infodump into a story is hard, and this is the pivotal chapter that I have to get right… but no pressure! x_x
Begin Recording
Son
Recording by Scribe Ellison
It took a moment for my vision to clear and I found myself in a small room, rounded like the inside of an egg with lights and panels around the wall. Blue light dripped lazily from the ceiling. There was no sound, and for a moment I thought I'd gone deaf, but my shoes scuffed on the floor when I stepped through the doorway into what had to be the control room for the molecular relay. Lots of banks of dials, crates I later found out were the recall boxes for resource gathering. It reminded me a little of the vault, cleaner than anything on the surface but still looking old and a little dusty, like a place people didn't spend much time.
The air smelled—indoors. Still and scentless in a way I hadn't experienced in two hundred years.
Maybe that was what made the fear subside. Nothing was attacking me and the place smelled familiar.
My pip-boy chirped. Two minutes had passed. I already knew I wasn't going to be in the chamber when Sturges tried to bring me back. But I could send something else. I plugged the holotape he'd given me into the terminal. It found a local network and copied every file within reach. When the tape was full I put it in the molecular relay chamber and turned away, toward the control room's other exit.
"Hello." Said a voice. I jumped and looked up, remembering Kellogg. This voice was calm and almost familiar. "I wondered if you might make it here. I'm known as Father, and the Institute is under my guidance. I know why you're here and I'd like to discuss things with you face to face. Please, step into the elevator."
Familiar because it reminded me of my own father's voice. And sounding so unsurprised that I'd reached this place.
Just down the only hallway a glass elevator came up into the center of a round room with more control panels on the walls.
The molecular relay went off behind me, returning the holotape. No going back.
I stepped into the elevator and it began to sink slowly through the floor. Father's voice spoke again from a speaker above my head. "I can only imagine what you've heard, what you think of us. I'd like to show you that you may have the wrong impression. Welcome to the Institute."
And the elevator passed into a glass shaft above a beautiful place. Bright green trees bursting with life, clear water falling into stepped pools. Clean white walls and glass bridges arching up and up. It was a world untouched by the war. There were people too, tall and healthy looking and dressed in white because they never had to kneel in the mud weeding. They stood without fear and I don't think any of them noticed the grimy stranger in the elevator.
I had my hands against the glass, looking out through the reflection of my own stunned face, gaping at all this beauty where I hadn't expected it.
Father was still speaking and some part of my mind heard the words. "This is the reality of the Institute. This place, these people. The work we do. For over a hundred years we've dedicated ourselves to humanity's survival. Decades of research, countless experiments and trials, a shared vision of how science can shape the future. It has never been easy, and our actions are often misinterpreted by those above ground. Someday perhaps we can show them what we've accomplished but for now we must remain underground. There's too much at stake to risk it all. As you've seen, things above are… unstable."
The elevator continued down, below the level of the trees, and stopped at the opening to another plain hallway.
"I'd like to talk to you about what we can do, for everyone. But that can wait. You are here for a specific, very personal reason. You are here for your son."
I couldn't speak, after what I'd just seen I could barely think. Father's last words brought me back and I nodded jerkily in case he could see me. Shaun. Shaun was here and here was so far from what I'd imagined.
I stepped into the hallway. White—the Institute is very white. Clean walls, neatly rounded edges. A second, smaller elevator took me up a level and when I stepped out of it I saw my son on the other side of a glass wall.
He was dressed in white but he looked just like he had in Kellogg's memory. Just like me. He was in a glass-fronted cell with a bed and chair, like an animal on display but with half a dozen science magazines scattered around him.
"Shaun? Shaun!" And I was running over, hands on the glass wall then tugging at the door. "Baby it's me, it's your mom. Who locked you in there?"
Of course he didn't know me, and I frightened him. He scooted back from the glass, "Who are you? Leave me alone! Father!"
Another door hummed open and Father walked in. Calmly, unafraid though I was holding my pistol ready to whack the lock off the cell someone had locked my son in. I must have looked like a madwoman.
Father was an old man, with salt and pepper hair fading to silver and a neatly trimmed beard. He, as much as his home, looked like the war had never happened. Familiar. Father barely glanced at me, turning instead to Shaun. "Shaun. 59-23, recall code cirrus."
The boy slumped, seeming to go to sleep standing up.
I spun, my pistol coming up even as my mind recognized the words. A synth command code. Shaun was- "What did you do to him?"
But Father didn't look at me. "Fascinating but disappointing. The child's responses were not at all what I anticipated. Well, he is a prototype, we're only now beginning to explore the effects of extreme emotional stimuli..."
Father seemed to finally realize I was pointing a pistol at him and raised his hands slightly in a gesture of peace. He still didn't sound afraid. "Please try to understand. I realize that you're… emotional, and that your journey here has been fraught with challenges. Let's begin anew. I am Father. Welcome to the Institute."
The things I'd seen in the past ten minutes had left me more 'emotional' than my year in the wasteland. I forced myself to take a deep breath and lower the gun. I wasn't going to shoot him. I was going to get answers, all the answers, and there would probably be yelling and crying involved but then I'd know. I looked at the boy, shut down. "Help me understand what's going on here. Where's Shaun—the real Shaun?" My voice was almost steady.
"I promised you answers, and answers you shall have. But I need you to realize this situation is far more complicated than you could have imagined. You've traveled very far and suffered a great deal to find your son." Father paused, took a breath. "It's good to finally meet you, after all this time. It's me, I am Shaun. I am… your son."
The world went gray for an instant, the pistol dropped from my hand, and Father reached out to take my arm to steady me. I didn't doubt what he said. Looking back I should have. He could've been anybody. He could've been a synth. But he looked—I could see my own father in his eyes, I could see Nate in the shape of his face. So I believed it. "How? You're..."
"I know this is hard to take in." My son said gently. He gestured to a chair but I shook my head. I'd hear this standing on my own feet. When I didn't say anything he explained, "In the vault you had no concept of the passage of time. When you were released you learned your son was no longer an infant but a ten year old boy. So you believed ten years had passed since I was—lost. Is it too much to accept that it was not ten years, but sixty? That is the reality. And here I am, raised by the Institute and now its leader."
"But why? Why you?"
Father himself sat down, something in his manner suggesting that explaining things like this was something he did often. "Ah, that's a question I can answer. In the year 2227 the Institute had made great strides in synth production, but it was never enough. Scientific curiosity and the goal of perfection drove them ever onward, in search of the perfect machine. So they followed the best example thus far, the human being. Walking, talking, fully articulate and capable of anything."
"Human synths? Really?" In my memory Deacon said, with human dignity and deserving human rights.
Father shook his head. "Humanlike synths. An important distinction. Synthetic organics, created with human dna. Plenty of that available of course, but it had all become corrupted. In this wasteland radiation effected everyone. Even here, the members of the Institute had been exposed. But then the Institute found records from vault 111, found me. An infant frozen in time, protected from the radiation induced mutations that had crept into every other human cell in the Commonwealth. So it was my dna that became the basis of the synthetic organics, of every humanlike synth you see today. I am their Father, through science we are family. The synths, me… and you."
He sounded so proud, so happy to be able to tell me all about it, to share it with me. I was feeling a lot of things, mostly I just wanted to cry a lot and something else was starting to creep in. He'd been here, all this time he'd known I was searching for him and the boy synth… the word bait flickered in my mind, then was gone. This was my son, and I wanted to know everything about his life, and this place. "So they took you. It wasn't right."
"To you that certainly seems true, but to them it was the only option. And to me… I find myself with few regrets. What else can I tell you to help you understand?"
Everything. Everything I've seen in the watseland. "So you're in charge of the Institute?"
"I'm the acting Director, yes. I spent decades working to reach this point, it's a responsibility I take very seriously. The Institute… it's important. It really is humanity's best hope for the future, no matter what those above ground think of us."
"Shaun, they're scared of you, scared of the Institute! Did you know that? The people of Diamond City..."
But Father brushed it off, an actual gesture brushing the idea out of the air. "People are always frightened by what they don't understand. Ultimately the Commonwealth has nothing to fear from us! Whatever you've seen or heard, I know I can convince you of that. Just give me time."
"Nothing to fear from people like Kellogg? What the Institute did to him—and used him for?"
"Kellogg was an Institute asset long before I arrived here. It wasn't until I became Director that I learned of all the things he'd done, what kind of man he was."
"But you used him anyway."
"Would you have preferred I turn him loose upon the Commonwealth? At least keeping him on a short leash kept the collateral damage to a minimum. Institute technology prolonged his life and… usefulness far beyond any normal human lifespan but his cruelty became more apparent with every completed objective. I won't lie—it's no coincidence your path crossed his. It seemed a fitting way to allow you… us… to have some amount of… revenge. I know what he did to our family"
The people pulling the strings, Kellogg had said. I'm a puppet just like you. I could almost pity him. "He killed your father."
Hardly a flicker of emotion. "I know. I've gone over the records of the incident of course. It seems that what happened to him was an unfortunate bit of collateral damage. For many years I never questioned who my parents where. I accepted my situation and that was that. With old age comes regret, and wondering what might have been…"
Father stopped and shook his head. "But that's in the past. What matters is that you and I have a chance to begin again, now. The Institute is on the verge of certain breakthroughs, and your presence would be appreciated as we approach them. I've been a part of something amazing here, I've helped to build a life for myself and the people of the Institute, something I think you know about. Now after all these years you have an opportunity to help build a community with a real future! We can work together, isn't that what you want?"
I blinked, startled. "You want me to stay here? Live here? In the Institute?"
"Yes, that is what I propose. Is it so unthinkable? The Institute can provide a better life than anything above ground. You've been in the Commonwealth, you've seen what it's like. I assure you, you're better off with us."
Anger was sudden, and a relief from everything else I was feeling. "How can you say that? How can you be so dismissive of all those people? Everything they've done? If you've been watching me, you've seen..."
"Because it is the simple truth. And I believe you know it too. I simply ask that you give the Institute—me—a chance. A chance to show you what I've been telling you. We really do have humanity's best interests at heart. Will you take that chance?"
How could I not give him a chance? Not just a chance to show me the Institute, but a chance for him to learn everything I knew about the people on the surface. "I… all right, a chance. I don't know if I can live here. There are people counting on me." The same thing I'd said to Danse. Was my son asking the same thing, just asking me to sign up?
"You have time to decide. The Institute is now your home, as much as it is mine. Please take some time here, get to know it. Meet the people you'll be working with. The division heads have been notified of your arrival, and Doctor Lee has a chip ready to install in your Pip-boy that will allow you to come and go as you please. Did you think you were a prisoner here? No. We'll talk again after you've had some time to look around."
I wanted to ask about the synth boy, but I was done. Empty. Unable to form another sentence. So I picked up my pistol and went through the door, into a room I don't remember where a polite synth invited me to get a medical exam to make sure I wasn't carrying anything contagious. I think the autodoc may have slipped me something, because when I got out I felt a whole lot clearer and spent another day exploring the Institute before I came home—and then everything caught up with me and I had hysterics, which I guess I'll have to tell you about since breakdowns seem to be part of a story.
But that was how I met my son. He… he did care, I think. He did want to have a family relationship, to invite me to share everything he was so proud of building. But I don't think he understood… I don't know. That was how we met. He didn't call me mother, and we didn't hug.
