Begin Recording
Visit
Recording by Scribe Ellison
On her box, Nat saw me and waved both arms over her head. "Em!"
"Hi Nat! What's the news?"
"No scandals today so it's part two of Piper's article on Quincy. Here Mister, visiting Diamond City? Keep up with the latest news! You can have one too. Wait here a minute ok?" Nat hopped down and raced inside.
I read the headline: Beyond Quincy: The Fall and Rise of the Minutemen. Preston would want a copy to put on the wall in the Castle so I'd have to be back and see if Nat had any leftovers later.
Nat was back with a letter. "Can you give this to Lucy Abernathy? We're writing a book with letters, like Dracula but in ours the vampires are the good guys. Piper says she'll serialize it in the paper but not until it's finished."
"I'll look forward to reading it." I tucked the letter with my newspaper in my backpack. "Is your sister in Diamond City?"
"She's around someplace, she was talking to the caravans about buying more blank paper. Hi Dogmeat!" Dogmeat had caught up with us and demanded Nat deliver ear-scratches. "Who's the old guy?"
Shaun, who could absolutely hear that, smiled faintly. I wondered what he made of Nat, with her layered clothes and fierce smile and declaration that she was writing a book. They're still writing it to this day, by the way, and by now it has a vampire lord with a deathclaw army attacking Diamond City.
I said, "Just a friend from one of the settlements. It's his first time in Diamond City so I'm making him follow me around. Catch you later."
We left Nat to go back to hawking papers with Dogmeat lounging at her feet.
All Faiths Chapel was filled with the warm light of candles. They're made from brahmin tallow and herbs so the smell suggests backyard barbecues rather than anything spiritual, at least in my mind. I don't mention this. The chapel was quiet, only us and two people talking quietly in the back pews. Pastor Clements was sweeping the floor meditatively but looked up when we entered. "General, good to see you."
I handed over a bag of caps. "Tithe. If you're talking to the man upstairs, tell him I didn't want to shoot all those raiders."
"This week already I've heard a solid, and very long, argument that the 'man upstairs' is in fact a woman. But I'll pass on your message and give this to Mister Zwicky for textbooks." He turned to Shaun, "Haven't seen you around before. This is the All Faiths Chapel. Always open, anytime you need to talk to whoever you think is up there or somebody down here. Donations are not expected unless you're a general trying to help out without causing politics between the Minutemen and Diamond City."
Shaun looked at me sharply but he just said, "I'm afraid I am firmly skeptical and have little use for matters of faith."
"It might be bad for business but I applaud that attitude. People around here are a little too quick to believe every bit of news they hear. At least things have been quiet lately, maybe the Institute's decided to reflect on its ways." The pastor chuckled.
"The Institute?" My son asked innocently.
"You must be from outside the Commonwealth, sir. The Institute's our boogeyman. They built synths, humanoid robots, and instead of stepping back and solemnly pondering if machines that can't be told from human are perhaps human enough to have souls of their own, they went straight to replacing people with them. People are afraid to go to bed at night, wondering if the Institute is going to switch them with a double. Or if the loved one they went to sleep next to is going to be different when they wake up. It weighs on the soul. Of my flock, of this city—of the synths, even."
I hadn't known that. "You've met synths, Pastor?"
"One or two. Came to ask me whether or not they have souls, as if that's a question I could answer for them. If a synth can recognize itself as an individual, long for a better life, and care for more than just itself, what more would you look for in search of a soul?"
I offered, "I think that's an answer even skeptics like us can believe in." I hope there's more, of course I do. I hope somebody up there is watching over us and that when I die I'll see Nate and my parents again, but that's not something I'll know until I get there.
Outside we found Carla's brahmin standing placidly in the street by Myrna's stall. Myrna was saying, "Are you sure you're the real Carla?"
"Same as I've ever been." Carla replied.
"Say something only you would know. What's your brahmin's name?"
"Hasn't got one. Never bothered to give it one." Carla spotted us and assured Shaun, "Don't mind crazy Myrna, she's always like this. Don't let her spoil your visit."
Myrna scowled. "I'm not crazy, I'm careful! When the Institute comes after you you'll wish you'd listened!"
"Sure sure, you want to trade or not?"
I scooted around the brahmin and beckoned, "Let's not hang around; Myrna will definitely think you're a synth."
Shaun asked, "She seems to think that of everyone. Why me in particular?"
"Your hair is neat, your beard is trimmed and you have all your teeth. She suspected me for that too."
Shaun didn't reply to that but his hand came up to his face. We walked around the market a while. My errands were just an excuse to be here and look at things, but I traded some ammo with Arturo, let Becky Fallon talk me into overpaying for a couple of clean prewar shirts for Preston, and gave Doctor Sun a package from Doc Jenna. She used to be a traveling doctor and wanted to keep in touch after settling down in Sanctuary.
After our slow walk around the market we sat down at the bar at Power noodles, at the end by the noisy cooking stuff where we wouldn't be overheard. It was late afternoon, not quite the dinner crowd but the few who got off work early were trickling in. Takahashi said, "Nani shimashouka?" and I hand over two bowls' worth of caps.
"You don't have to eat it." I told Shaun when he looked at his meal with great uncertainty.
"What is it?"
"Razorgrain flour, beef broth, fat and salt. It tastes better than it sounds." I demonstrated proper chopstick technique.
"This food has no nutritional value."
"You don't eat it all the time. It's comfort food."
"The child did mention enjoying this when he lived in Diamond City." He tried a bite. "It's not bad." He ate a few more bites before putting his bowl aside. "I don't understand what you wanted me to see by being here."
I wasn't sure myself. Wanting him to come here had been an impulse, more felt than thought. "I wanted you to see… the people. See that they are people."
"I do know that people are people."
"No you don't, or you wouldn't approve killing them. I've talked to Doctor Virgil about the FEV program. It continued thirty years after it hit a dead end. How many test subjects? How many people have those mutants killed?" I was angry, but a rush of steam from some part of the noodle-making process muffled my words.
"The aim of the project was to refine a strain of FEV that granted the benefits without the concurrent loss of intellect. My predecessor learned of a society of intelligent super mutants out west and believed those might be the future of mankind."
"Not kidding about the whole 'redefined' thing. Are there really intelligent mutants?" Virgil had designed a virus to keep his mind intact and it hadn't worked. If he was the Institute's best they hadn't even gotten close.
"Several sources say they exist."
Even here worrying about everything about having my son here in the middle of Diamond City, I felt a rush of wonder. What would a mutant society be like? Just like human society or would they be something new? Could I ever meet them? Maybe I could learn something about our mutants.
Piper found us there. I saw her walk out from behind a behind Swatters, looking down at a piece of paper in her hand. She looked up and saw me, saw someone was with me, and went white under her tan. I've been next to Piper in all kinds of dangerous situations and I've never seen her look so scared.
She pulled her hat down low and headed straight for us. I snagged another stool for her. Piper barely looked at me, enough to make me sure I was all right, then looked at my son, sitting on his stool with calm around him like a halo. "...you're him."
"I suppose I am." Shaun looked at me.
"This is Piper. She's..."
"The reporter." Shaun nodded.
"My best friend." I finished, hoping the title might grant some protection.
I'm not sure Piper even really heard it, but she did turn back into Piper, the hesitation vanishing as she grinned her fierce reporter grin. "So, can I ask you a few questions?"
I had not wanted this to happen. Honestly, I'd hoped Piper would be on the road so this wouldn't happen, but I hadn't chosen the day.
But Shaun just looked curious, like Piper was a strange new specimen. Actually… even non-scientists have that reaction to Piper sometimes. So I definitely twitched a bit but I didn't say anything.
"Certainly." My son said with the same gentle smile he always gave me.
Piper twitched a little herself, probably sure this was a trap and not happy that Shaun knew anything about her, but she went for it. "Why did a synth come here and shoot everybody?"
"What synth? When?"
"Don't pretend you don't know! Fifty-some years ago a synth sat down to eat here just like we're doing and then it malfunctioned and went berserk! Shot half a dozen people. It's called the Broken Mask Incident. What really happened?"
Like a coward, I took a bite of my noodles and waited for an answer to the question I hadn't ever asked.
My son shook his head apologetically. "I don't know what happened, I don't think anyone does. I was very young at the time of course, and the reports conflict with one another. The synth wasn't ready for field testing but someone broke protocols and sent it to the surface. It was so long ago that anyone who could have been involved is dead. Does it even matter now?"
Piper flinched and had to take a breath before her next question, "What happened to the Commonwealth Provisional Government?"
"From what I read… It wasn't working. It was a chaotic mess and causing more conflict than it solved."
"So you decided to kill everybody?"
"I was a toddler at the time. But yes, the Director decided that was the only way to maintain stability in the Commonwealth."
Piper gaped. "That's..."
"It is not the solution that we would use today."
He didn't realize Piper was choking on rage, if she hadn't been so scared she would've been shouting. Fear and—she'd planned this, planned the questions to ask if she ever had a chance. So she smiled an almost-real smile and said, "That was all my questions." She stood up and added, "I'm the writer of Publick Occurrences. Just me. My sister doesn't know anything, and she's only fourteen. Thank you for speaking with me." Piper gave me a look somewhere between sympathy and pleading, and turned away.
Shaun looked at me. "Was your friend frightened?"
"She thinks you're going to have her killed and wants to save her sister."
Shock. He turned to look after Piper. "Then why..?"
"For Piper it's worth it to learn the truth." I turned on my stool to face the rest of the market. "This is the Diamond City I wanted you to see."
The daylight had faded just enough. All the lights came on, flickering and crackling for a moment. Takahashi said, "Ban-gohan!" and started filling cups at double speed and frying up strips of meat to add for anyone who wanted to pay extra.
Nat ran past with Dogmeat at her heels, shouting, "I'll turn it in tomorrow Mr. Zwicky!" and turning with no loss of volume to, "Sheng, did you find it? I want to try..."
Someone turned the radio on and soon people were singing along to Uranium Fever with more enthusiasm than pitch.
Moe Cronin came by, "Hey Miss General, wanna explain the 'real' rules of baseball to me again?"
"Some other time, Moe. Come up to Sanctuary sometime and you can play in a game—by our rules, not yours."
"Your rules, pfft!" Moe went on to get his dinner.
