So yeah, it's the quest with the giant pumpkin that really shows the Institute's true colors. When your go-to option is "first we'll murder a dude" then you are the baddies.

Begin Recording

Lost

Recording by Scribe Ellison

We had a little time. I had more dinners with my son, he invited me regularly. I think he'd read somewhere that family dinner was important before the war. He gave me a mat—it looks like a rubber placemat actually—that's full of circuits that the molecular relay can send things to. I put it in a mailbox, across the river and in full view of all of Sanctuary's turrets, in case someday things went wrong and the Institute decided to send in a lot of synths. But all I received were notes inviting me to come to the Institute for dinner or to see some invention or other.

…Then, after I'd refused to help my friends and my… allies destroy the Institute, I almost regretted it. I hadn't told my son, it had only been a day or two since I had it out with Maxson and he threatened to shoot me because better dead than working for the Institute. I wasn't sure just how to say, 'My friends want me to kill you, and I won't do it, and I won't kill for you either.' The moment that conversation started, our relationship would change forever.

I was fooling myself, of course. Desperately trying to believe my son and I could at least be friends, because that was all we had left. So I didn't ask any hard questions, hoping we could have just one more day. Amazingly, this self deception didn't get us all killed.

Father had invited me to come to a Directorate meeting, he said he had something important to talk to me about, so I sent myself down quite early in the morning.

The kid caught me as I stepped off the elevator. He always seemed to be around. "You came back!"

"Yep, back again. Father wanted me to come to the big meeting."

"Why do you want to listen to the division heads grumble at each other? Come explore with me! Something's happening in synth processing today, I heard Doctor Holdren say so when I was watching the gorillas and he didn't think I was listening."

"Well that does sound interesting… can we look fast? Before the meeting starts?" I'd come early, so we had some time.

"Sure! I know a back way in, come on!" He grabbed my hand and pulled and I let myself be dragged.

"Hey kid, how do you know the back ways into everywhere?"

"I can go wherever I want, nobody notices me."

We stopped for food and as we ate our nutrient bars the boy asked what I did on the surface so I tried to explain, "All the groups of people made a deal, whenever anyone calls for help everyone else comes to help them. We call that the Minutemen. I'm the leader, like Father is the leader here—but people argue back to me a lot more than they argue back to Father! So I have to run around helping people all the time, sometimes with fighting raiders or mutants, sometime with farming or building a new barn."

"That's neat!"

I smiled. "Yeah it is. It's a lot of work too, but I have plenty of friends to help me."

The boy nodded, sad suddenly, and I wondered how lonely he was here. He always found me when I came to the Institute and wanted to follow me around. And I let him because he was good company and I felt sorry for him. My son didn't invite the kid when we had dinner together, one of the many things I didn't ask about.

We went under the arch into robotics, where a couple of lab techs were setting up. The boy tugged me down behind a bank of machinery out of sight. He pointed to a door I hadn't been through before, grinning now because we were getting away with something. He was such a normal kid.

Unnoticed, we ducked through the door into the kind of storage corridors we'd used to get into the FEV lab on my first visit. "Hey kid, where are we going exactly?"

"Back into processing. Doctor Holdren said a courser was bringing him something from the surface and put it here and I want to see what it is."

And suddenly I was worried. So I knew something was wrong before we got to the door. We heard banging and muffled shouts. A man's voice with an edge of panic to it. The boy hesitated. "Maybe someone's angry."

My stomach was clenching. "No, someone's scared. I'd better go see what's wrong. You stay in the hall in case it's dangerous."

I opened the door and saw—

One of the synth programming chairs with a synth in it, back to back with a different kind of torture device. Straps held the wastelander's arms and legs bound while a white helmet covered his head. He couldn't see but he was shouting to the empty room, "Let me up! We can talk about this! I've got a farm, my family can pay! Caps! Plenty of caps! Just talk to me!"

The voice was familiar. For an instant I just knew familiar, then my mind flashed back to helping the Warwick family with their super mutant problem and then all of us being disappointed when the water treatment plant at their farm proved to be broken beyond hope. Someone I knew.

For an instant it was too much, I couldn't move. Then the boy said, "that's a real outsider!" and I jolted back to life.

"I have to get him out of there. Mr. Warwick, is that you?"

"General? I can't see! Get me out of this thing!"

There wasn't anyone else in the room; we had a little time. I rushed to the closest terminal. No password, thank goodness, and I found the command to release the 'original.'

The man wrenched the helmet off his head and it was Roger Warwick, white as a sheet but standing up and patting himself down as if his weapons might appear. "It is you! Last thing I remember I was home in bed. Is… this the Institute? Oh my god, that's me! They're making a synth of me!"

I nodded. I'd found the project proposal on the terminal and my eyes skipped from line to line. Acquire and replace. Run experiments. Erase all signs of Institute involvement.

"General? Are we going to survive this?"

"...I don't know."

Proposal approved by the Director.

I'd still been able to hope. My son was an old man, we couldn't be mother and child but we could still be friends. We could still care about each other.

We could still be all right if my son was an old man, but not if he was a monster.

I couldn't collapse now. "Roger, the only way out of here is through half the Institute and up the elevator. We can't sneak and we can't shoot our way out. If Father-"

The main door of the room opened and a female scientist rushed in. Not someone I'd met. "What are you doing? Just because you're Father's guest doesn't mean you can disrupt operations! The scan will have to be started from the beginning!"

I started, "Wait, tell me-"

"X4, please return the subject to the neural scanner. Uninjured. Incapacitate her if she resists."

The courser advanced and Roger sensibly backed up with a muttered, "'The hell is that?"

The courser looked back and forth between us. It didn't draw a weapon so I assume it would take us down by hand.

At least I had a minute to draw a gun that wouldn't do any good. "We're dead. Sorry."

Then the boy shoved in front of me, shouting out a string of words and numbers.

The courser stopped suddenly, looking down at the boy. "Sorry sir, ma'am. I won't bother you." And it went back out the door. The scientist fled after it.

I fell to one knee and hugged the kid. Just for a second, but long enough for Roger to grab the laser rifle off my back and blast his copy into a pile of ask. The kid wailed at the sudden violence.

"They were going to send that thing back to my family! To pretend to be me! Why me?"

I stood up and reclaimed my weapon. "I don't know. Something about the farm. Let's go before she comes back with backup."

The kid tucked himself next to me. "Mmhm!"

"I'll follow you, General. What was that thing?"

There wasn't much point in sneaking now, since the scientist had no doubt run to tell everyone, but I couldn't help peeking through the door first. Nobody in the main room; the synth creation machinery was still. I wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not.

The boy said, "That was a courser. Father gave me that code because I was afraid of them. Um, are you friends?"

"Roger's family joined the Minutemen so when he's in trouble I have to help out."

"Father's going to yell at you."

"I'm going to yell at him."

The kid's eyes went really wide. "You can't yell at Father! Nobody yells at Father!"

We stepped through the archway onto the floor of flowing water. Roger actually stopped moving, he was that shocked at the sight of the trees and water and the great white arching bridges above us. "My god. This place..."

There are always people in the heart of the institute, but this time it was empty except for Allie Filmore frowning at us from beside the elevator. But since it was just her and not a lot of coursers I let myself hope. "Allie."

"I'm here to escort our guest back to the surface. The Director wants to see you. And the boy."

I nodded. "I'll ride up with you." I didn't entirely trust that something else wouldn't happen, and I didn't entirely trust that Roger wouldn't attack Allie, though he was giving her a look of great confusion. A polite, unarmed, pretty blonde woman was not what he'd been expecting.

So we all piled into the elevator and rode up into the Institute's simulated sky.

Roger gaped, just as I did when I first saw it. "People who live in a place like this… why?"

Why are they doing this to us?

I couldn't answer that so I said, "When you get home, don't tell anyone what happened. Think of some excuse. I'll come down and tell you everything when I can."

"They won't come after me again?"

I looked at Allie. She looked at the ceiling. I said, "I'll do my best. I don't know what's going to happen."

"General why are you even talking to these people?"

I couldn't tell the whole truth so I waved at the beautiful world underneath us. "If people with technology to build this allied with the Minutemen..."

A slow nod. "I won't tell anyone. I want to keep living."

Allie's eyes went wide but she didn't comment. I wondered if she was scared of the outsider. She wasn't showing it, if she was.

We arrived at the top and Roger stood in the molecular relay and got sent home. I wondered how scary that was for a guy who'd already had a terrifying few hours. How would he possibly be all right after this? When not scared to death Roger was a hot-tempered impatient person and trauma couldn't possibly do him any good. Before the war there were doctors for this kind of thing, but these days 'take med-x until you don't care anymore' was a popular option.

Quietly Allie asked, "Why did he say that about not telling so he wouldn't die?"

"If anyone finds out he was here and came back out they'll assume he's an Institute agent and kill him, or assume he's a synth and kill him."

"Even his own family?"

"Of course!" I said, harsher than I meant to but fear is exhausting and the worst was still to come.

Silence.

I let out a long breath and poked the kid, "Hey. You should go hide somewhere so Father can just be mad at me. This isn't your fault."

The boy shook his head. He looked really scared.

"All right, if you want to. Let's go."

Allie, looking thoughtful, waved us to go ahead. The elevator took us all the way down to the back entrance to the Director's quarters.