Nora's vision finally cleared and she found herself staring into the shower as Nate cleaned himself, reciting the speech he was fated to never give at the veteran's hall that evening. She felt her heart ache at the sight of him. "These are but shadows of things that have been," she quoted in a low voice, reminding herself that she was staring at a ghost. She then peeked behind the shower curtain to get an eyeful of ghost dick. "Oh fuck yes," she murmured. "Gimme dat ghost dick."
"Here you are," the house doc's voice echoed from everywhere and nowhere. "Just relax. We'll be monitoring your vitals… wait, your heart rate is spiking…" She gave out a choked gasp. "…I see. Nevermind."
"Hey Piper, you seeing this shit?" Nora called out. She reached out and tried to get a handful, but, as she thought, her hand passed right through that gorgeous man-meat that had belonged to her husband.
"Y-yeah," Piper stuttered out. "I, uh, I can see why you married him."
"I know, right?" She blew a kiss at the sight, turned around, and let out a little shriek of fright upon seeing her own pre—war self sitting on the toilet, beating the Chinese to the punch by dropping her own bombs. "Okay, what the fuck? Hey, Doctor whatever, how the hell am I seeing myself?"
"The answer is very complicated," the doctor said. "And my name is Doctor Amari, if you like."
"Well, I've got time. I memorized Nate's speech just as well as he did, and listening to you explain this shit is going to be a lot more illuminating than just watching myself take a monster shit — which I can confirm that I can, in fact, smell, thank you very much — or gazing at a dick that I can never again have. So, out with it."
"…Very well," Amari said, taken back a little by Nora's bluntness. "Essentially, my program scans your memories for as detailed records of sensory information as it can, then assembles it as a virtual reality environment you can travel around in. I only scanned a small part of your brain's memory center, accessing the most recent memories that resonate with you. I could perform a deep scan of your brain and construct a more thorough simulation, one that would encompass a much larger world, but frankly, not only do I not have the resources for such an endeavour, but that's well beyond the scope of this business regardless."
The explanation rang some distant bell for Nora. "…VSS?" she said aloud. "Something to do with Anchorage?"
"…How did you know?" Doctor Amari said, in wonder. "Yes, it's true, I learned a lot studying the ruins of Virtual Strategic Solutions after the Brotherhood reclaimed it, before their… change in leadership… encouraged me to emigrate here."
"She knows a lot of shit she has no business knowing," Piper said, unconcerned. "I've learned it's best to just ignore it and carry on."
"You're probably correct, Ms. Wright," she agreed.
"Fucking gross," Nora said, staring into the toilet as Past Nora stood up.
"Blue, for the love of God, you can just look away!" Piper scolded.
"So can you!" Nora shot back. She did get a good eyeful of her own ass and gave it an appreciative grin. "Damn, I have a great ass," she purred.
"I'm not going to ogle your own poop covered ass with you," Piper said, voice muffled. (If Nora had to guess, Piper had covered her face up entirely with her hands).
Nora watched as Past Nora gave Nate a lustful stare as he exited the shower and toweled off. "Honey, you're lucky we have to get ready for your speech tonight, or I'd just shove you right back in that shower and get you dirty all over again." She pulled him into a burning kiss, and again Nora felt a lead weight in her chest.
"So fucking tempting," Nate replied once the kiss had been broken, lust also burning in his eyes. Instead, he hurriedly finished toweling off and got dressed before putting on his boxers or his pants became a difficult proposition. He walked to the mirror and wiped away the condensation. "War never changes…" he muttered, on the verge of reciting the speech again.
Nora remembered being a little annoyed at this point, and Past Nora did not disappoint, walking up behind him and cutting him off. "You're gonna knock 'em dead at the veteran's hall tonight, hon," she assured him.
"You think?" he asked.
"Unless nuclear war breaks out first," she said with a grin. Nora knew that she'd been whistling past the graveyard with that one, but still couldn't believe how quickly it had come back around to bite her in the ass.
"God, Blue, so you were always like that?" Piper remarked from beyond.
Nora ignored her and followed Past Nora out to the kitchen/living room area, where she could smell fresh coffee. "Oh fuck, I haven't had coffee in months!" Nora moaned, running past Past Nora and shoving her head directly into the coffee pot in Past Codsworth's hands. She got the taste of coffee, alright, and also the sensation of immersing her face in scalding hot coffee. "173.5 degrees Fahrenheit!" Past Codsworth helpfully announced.
"FUCK that's hot!" Nora cried out, whipping her head back. "Bullshit, I can feel pain in here! I can't feel pain in my VR pods!"
"I'm… not sure what you mean by VR pods," Doctor Amari said. "But it's part of the simulation, I'm afraid. Anything your brain knows will hurt you will cause your pain receptors to fire off psychosomatically. There are safeties in place to eject you from the simulation in case your vital signs spike up too high into the danger zone as a result, so don't worry about dying in there."
"Okay…" Nora put her fingertips to her temples and began concentrating really, really hard on the coffee. "It wasn't hot, you dummy," she told herself. "Codsworth let it cool to a much more lukewarm temperature! I can't believe I forgot that!" She again shoved her face into the coffee pot, and found to her great joy that the coffee had indeed dropped down to a much more tolerable temperature. She waggled her tongue around within the ghostly coffee pot, relishing the long-gone taste within.
"Uh, what did you just do?" Doctor Amari said, her voice sounding uneven. "How did you tamper with the simulation? Don't do that!"
"Why not?" Nora called out, turning to watch Nate stride into the room, 'remembering' how he'd come in naked as a jaybird, and how his dick had grown to the size of a baseball bat. Past Nora saw this and advanced towards him hungrily, her own clothes having vanished into the aether, her body having also acquired cartoonish proportion changes.
"It becomes much more difficult for the algorithm to determine what actually happened versus… versus whatever the hell it is you're doing," Doctor Amari warned. "The simulation could catastrophically collapse."
Nora sighed. "…Oh, fine," she finally said, relenting, Past Nora and Past Nate snapping back to their preordained routine and state of dress. She turned away from them, intent on watching TV again for the first time in forever, then glanced at the shelf by the doorway and let out a holler. "MY DEGREE!" she bellowed, making a beeline for it. "Piper! It's my fucking law degree!" She leaned in and caressed it lovingly. "Hey! Amari! Can you, fucking, I don't know, take a picture of this and get it developed or something? I need a physical copy of this motherfucker."
There was some muted discussion from the real world, then: "Yes, it is within our capabilities, but it will cost a 500 cap processing fee," she said.
"Blue, do you —" Piper began, sounding dubious.
"Yes, I do, Piper!" Nora snapped, focusing intently on her degree as best as she could, so that Amari could get the best fidelity for the copy. "I suffered through years and years at Suffolk County to get this fucking doctorate! Do you know how much I owed in student loans when the bombs fell? You don't wanna know! Did you know you can't discharge student loans through bankruptcy? Fuck, I wouldn't be surprised if you can't discharge them through nuclear fucking holocaust! So yes, I absolutely want a copy of my fucking law degree!"
"…You had to pay to go to school?" Piper said, horrified and disbelieving.
"I know!" Nora said, indignant. "Society was shit, through and through. The bombs were almost a mercy."
"…Why are you still staring at it?" Doctor Amari asked after a minute. "We can see what you see, but I can also open a second instance of your memories and capture a much higher quality image than what your head is capable of."
"…Oh, cool," Nora said, a little chagrined. She went back through the house, stopping in Shaun's room. She leaned over the crib and began delivering gentle caresses to her little boy. "Mommy will find you soon, Shaun, don't you worry," she assured him. "And when mommy does, she's going to make sure that the people who took you away go meet a very bad man who lives downstairs. You will never have to see them again, and we can…" Her voice hitched. "…We can try to be a family again." She let her mind swirl with such thoughts — would Preston be interested in being a father to Shaun? What about Strong? Piper was already practically a mom for her kid sister, would she still be interested in a relationship if it meant being an actual mother to Shaun? And then there was the state of the Commonwealth, a place which made the Wild West look like Mayberry, from that really ancient sitcom. Her mind again went over her various plans to tame the wasteland…
And then Past Nora and Past Nate walked in, and Nora realized they must have already talked to that dorky Vault Tec guy, and the bombs were minutes away from falling. So, she walked straight through the wall, took off her shoes, and enjoyed the feeling of grass against her bare feet.
The sirens started going off.
Nora began walking calmly in the direction of the Vault, taking in the panicked reactions of her neighbors. God, she missed them. She barely reacted as a Corvega sped through her, brakes screeching as it skidded to a stop just shy of slamming into the APC at the end of the road. She began walking up the path that led to the vault, with the nagging idea that something weird was about to happen.
Past Nora and Past Nate, Past Shaun in his arms, ran past her, Past Nora dragging a reluctant Past Codsworth behind. "Madam, I don't believe privately owned robots are permitted within vaults!" he tried pointing out.
"Fuck that!" Past Nora shouted back. "We're family!"
As Nora watched, Past Nate ran past a big stone circle, standing erect next to the path. She vaguely remembered seeing it on her flight from the house, but couldn't recall ever having seen it there beforehand. Without warning, the view through the circle rippled, before some clown in sunglasses and an ugly hairdo stepped through it, seemingly from nowhere. He walked up to Past Nora and said, "Do you have a geiger counter?"
"Who the hell are you?" Past Nora snarled, elbowing the man out of the way and continuing on.
"You know, that joke never gets funny!" the man called out after her.
"Who the hell are you?" Nora wondered aloud.
"Hey Nora, I thought the doctor told you to quit horsing around with changing shit!" Piper piped up.
"Yeah, she did," Nora confirmed, watching as the man's image grew fuzzy and indistinct, as Nora's lack of knowledge of where he'd gone after the encounter caught up with the simulated memory. "I didn't change a single thing."
"Then how the hell do you explain Deacon showing up in 2077?" Piper asked pointedly.
"Deacon? That guy from the Railroad? What makes you think that guy looked like him?" Nora asked. She had caught up to her past self, who was in a screaming match with the army guy over his banning Codsworth from joining her and Nate in the vault. The weenie Vault-Tec salesman, who'd been putting up a fuss himself over not being let in, simply stared in awe at Nora's mastery of speechcraft as she proceeded to describe the various family members, farm animals, and forms of excrement that the man had sexually befouled, and their various states of life and death that he had done so in.
"Uh, because I saw his face and it WAS him?" Piper said.
"Nah, that guy was wearing a different outfit," Nora countered. She knew full well that was Deacon, had recognized him instantly — she was surprised she hadn't recognized him when she'd 'first' met him in those church catacombs — but this was just some strange and heretofore unknown level of bullshit, and there were so many mysteries regarding the Commonwealth and its residents that she just simply refused to acknowledge this one, and so buried it deep, deep, deep within her and started deflecting, deflecting, deflecting with the stupidest joke imaginable.
Her statement was rewarded with a groan of frustration from Piper, so mission accomplished. In front of her, she watched Past Codsworth finally engage his 'protect human lives under your charge' protocols by yanking his metallic limb from her grip and shoving her forcefully past the dude in army greens. "Please see to it that she makes it to the vault!" he called out to the soldiers behind him — the ones in fierce-looking power armor — before departing back home with haste.
"Roger, securing civilian," one of the power armored soldiers confirmed. He squatted and plucked Nora from the ground, double-timing it to the vault's entrance.
Nora followed close behind, watching Past Nora whaling repeatedly on the armor with no effect. "Let me go, you big fucking palooka! Drop me this instant! My fucking robot butler needs me!" Her hands actually tried to reach the fusion core release switch, which would have forcibly ejected the soldier from the armor. Nora wasn't sure what she would have done if she'd pulled it off — stolen the armor? Start beating soldiers' heads in? Gone back for Codsworth? It was all moot, since he unceremoniously dumped her onto the elevator platform before she could pull it off.
"We're gonna be okay," Past Nate assured Past Nora. "I love you." And then the world ended.
"FUCK YOU!" Nora shrieked at the mushroom cloud, both middle fingers extended as she and the others dropped below the surface of the Earth.
XXXXXXXXXX
Ah, so I guess I do bring up VSS again fairly quickly, haha.
Nora takes a quick detour to the Fallout 4 Nexus, hahaha.
GUARDIAN OF FOREVER TIME! Also, I couldn't resist the urge to make Tinker Tom's "Deacon is a time traveler" theory correct, hahaha.
My apologies for not updating this in the past month! My mind has been fairly taken over by my Resident Evil movie fanfic series, 'Alice, it's Raining'! I'll try to be a bit more timely in my updates for this one.