Begin Recording

Hold on To

Recording by Scribe Ellison

It was a week later, and I was back home when I got a holotape in my mailbox. The Institute has white holotapes. I leaned on my front door and listened to it.

"Mother, I have spoken with the division heads about what I saw in Diamond City and your… passionate ideas, and we've come to a tentative agreement. Since we recorded all four hours of the meeting, I'll let you hear the opinions of my division heads in their own words."

There were some clicks and Doctor Li's voice said, "The Brotherhood is an army too stupid to quit. They will hound us forever. If your mother thinks she has a way to avoid that by making some—some!—concessions I suggest we at least entertain the proposal. Anything to avoid having my research interrupted by fanatics in power armor for the next ten years."

More clicks as the tape jumped to a new recording then Doctor Holdren said, "Working with the surface dwellers has gone fine so far, I'm dubious about long-term but it's much cheaper in terms of resources. I'm open to discussion."

Doctor Binet's contribution was, "We could learn a lot by observing the gen-three synth line in a wider range of situations. Of course I can't support anything that would deprive us of necessary workers, but if some small changes could help us discover why the synth loss rate is so high, I'm for it."

Allie's voice said, "Your mother knows the surface better than any of us. If she thinks we can do better we should listen to what she has to say. And experiment. We can always cut ourselves off again if it doesn't work."

By this time I was grinning like a fool and sliding down the door of my house to sit on the doorstep—on dog level so Dogmeat and Goliath came over to see what was going on and stick their noses in my face.

My son continued, "Write up a proposal for what you'd like to see and the directorate will consider and discuss. And argue. And see what suggestions are feasible."

He was not wrong about the arguing part. But in the moment there I was, sitting on my doorstep with one hand holding onto the wedding rings on their chain around my neck like I could use them to send a message, "It's all right, Nate, it's all right, it can still be all right..."