Notes From New Vegas 48
Jun. 16th, 2012 04:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
camwynNotes From New Vegas 48: Well, That Went More Smoothly Than Expected
When last we saw our heroine, Janice had persuaded her brain to rejoin her for the final confrontation with the Think Tank. Yes, the brain was a different entity. Yes, it was still in a jar. No, if I say the words again it won't make any more sense than that. Not unless you've read The Tin Woodman of Oz, anyway. That's not the point, though. The point is that Janice had her brain back, and that in order to reinstall it properly they were going to need the equipment used by the Think Tank, and since neither Janice nor her brain trusted them farther than Janice's brain could throw them, they were going to have to either kill them or call on Ferris Bueller, God of Liars to talk their way through it.
Now, understand. Janice had every reason in the world to want the brains dead. They were really, genuinely, utterly horrible people. They'd been doing awful things for two hundred years and they'd imprisoned Chinese-Americans and Chinese prisoners of war for experiments one does not like to think of. She would have been within her rights to plug them all, and it's not as if she hadn't killed quite a lot of people already. Being tired of killing people didn't come into play quite so much when floating disembodied brains were the people in question.
On the other hand, Dr. Mobius had admitted to messing with their behavior to try to keep them from hurting anyone else. That indicated a level of diminished responsibility. Dr. 0 seemed more interested in machines than in things that hurt people, even if he did build Muggy almost entirely to be a jerk. Dr. 8 had actually seemed like a nice guy, although he couldn't talk comprehensibly, and Dr. Borous... had been an awful, awful person, but Janice had been able to induce guilt in him, even if only for a few minutes. It was possible that they, at least, could be poked into doing something to make up for all the horrible stuff that had already happened. Dala and Klein might have to die- Dala struck her as a vivisectionist, and Klein was, well, Klein- but....
Well, she'd try to see if she could pull off the stunt of a lifetime and talk them into repenting and changing their ways. Worst came to worst, she still had the holorifle.
So she headed back to the Sink and had the autodoc put back the body parts it was able to put back, mostly because she didn't want the brains suddenly deciding to attempt a hack on her artificial heart and spine. Then she headed up to the Think Tank to see what she and her brain and Ferris could do. The brains were waiting for her, all five of them lined up in a neatly organized V, and Dr. Thundervoice Klein- as usual- spoke for the bunch:
"THE LOBOTOMITE RETURNS. OUR LOBOTOMITE. HAS DR. MOBIUS BEEN DENOMINATORED INTO SCRAP METAL AND VOICE MODULE PARTS AS WE HOPED?"
Pff, said Janice, I have a brain now, dimbulb.
Yeah, that didn't go over so well with Klein. "I RECOMMEND WATCHING YOUR TONE, LOBOTOMITE>. NOW. "YOUR" BRAIN. HAND IT OVER OR WE'LL EXTRACT IT AGAIN."
Ahahaha, no. They had Things To Discuss first.
"AND WHAT COULD WE POSSIBLY HAVE TO DISCUSS? YOU HAVE THE BRAIN, WE HAVE THE TECHNOLOGY. ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS SURRENDER. WITH IT WE CAN FINALLY LEAVE THIS PLACE. I CAN'T TELL YOU HOW BORING IT GETS HERE. AND WE HAVE SO MANY QUESTIONS TO ASK YOUR BRAIN ABOUT THIS MOJAVE PLACE. A FERTILE TESTING GROUND FOR OUR EXPERIMENTS..."
Janice was starting to think she would need to kill the brains after all, but it caught her eye that 8 was looking uneasy. And, to her surprise, so was Dala. So instead she just suggested to Klein that he consider conferring with his colleagues.
"NONSENSE. CONFER? COLLEAGUES? THOSE ARE TWO WORDS I DO NOT RECOGNIZE."
At which point Dala intervened, saying that the lobotomite was faaaar too interesting and that they shouldn't harm it. Klein snapped back that he wasn't going to HARM Janice, just DISSECT IT UNTIL IT WAS DEAD. (Well, yay.) Dala protested that she couldn't stand the idea of an organism, a living, breeeeathing organism not breathing, and even Klein was disturbed enough by her enthusiasm to call her on her significantly voiced pauses and wonder what was going on.
Dr. Venture spoke up next, saying the Lobotomite had good ideas. Klein? "SILENCE, THIS IS A THINK TANK DECISION. SAVE YOUR OBJECTiONS UNTIL AFTER I HAVE DECIDED OUR COURSE OF ACTION." Zero's response was just too pretty not to record: "You know what, Klein? Stick a straw in your tank and suck yourself! And my name is 0! A big, fat zero. With a slash through it."
Klein was thunderstruck by the simplicity of the zero solution, and asked Zero where he got the idea. Naturally he didn't take well to hearing it was the Lobotomite's idea. Zero sputtered about it for a bit and finally just said, "You know what, Klein? I hate you! And your theory of brainial beam oscillation, the Chinese had it first, you copycat!"
If they started falling apart she'd never be able to get them all to agree to not screwing with people any more. Janice disliked the idea, but couldn't see her way clear to wrangling this mess. Fortunately, 8 spoke up next, in an extended bout of static that apparently disturbed Klein because normally the others never hesitated to commit surgery...
And then Borous spoke up. Oh God. "If I may, I feel as if I must be the voice of reason here..."
... said the brain who had installed an atomic core in his dog.
"This lobotomite is much like us, regarding even animals and pets as nothing more than tools of Science! We should prolong its life, in the name of Science!"
Thanks, Borous. Your approval fills me with shame.
Klein frothed some more at that point and thundered about how his vote counted as five, LIKE THE MIGHTY HUMAN HAND I ONCE HAD, WITH ITS FIVE PENISES CLENCHED IN A FIST.
Dude, Janice pointed out, bad math. Bad.
"NONSENSE! THE MATHEMATICS OF THE SITUATION ARE ON OUR SIDE, LOBOTOMITE! I BELIEVE- no wait, carry the two... HUH. IF THIS WERE A DEMOCRACY I WOULD BE CONCERNED. BUT WE'RE TOO SCIENTIFIC FOR THAT. SO JUST SURRENDER."
Well... maybe she could get something out of it. She pointed out that no, it wasn't a democracy, it was a research facility. And over half his colleagues disputed his findings.
"YOU DARE USE LOGIC AGAINST ME!"
Well, yeah, Janice kinda did dare. Here was the deal. She wasn't going to surrender. Klein was.
"THAT'S NO DEAL AT ALL! THERE'S A WHOLE WORLD BEYOND THE CRATER! WE COULD'VE ESCAPED, SEEN IT ALL FOR OURSELVES, TESTED IT PRODDED AT IT MADE IT SQUIRM-"
Ugh. Ew. Yuk. How about Janice just brought it to them and they'd be safe right there and able to experiment? For her? Not like she didn't carry all kinds of crap anyway. Granted, she was thinking mostly of machine scrap and butchered animal parts, but still. There were a lot of things in the Mojave these guys hadn't ever encountered that could be tinkered with without committing atrocities.
"FOR YOU? FOR SCIENCE?" said Klein. "I HAVE A STRANGE SENSATION THAT I WOULD LIKE THAT. VERY WELL. THE THINK TANK IS AT YOUR SERVICE AS LONG AS YOU DO NOT DESTROY US."
And... that was that. He was... that was really that. Huh. All hail Ferris, man. Time to go get her brain put back....
Well, as Janice stepped out of the Think Tank door to go back to the Sink and get her brain reinstalled, the Here Are The Consequences Of Your Actions script engaged and narration started rolling. I actually rather liked what I got, and someone was kind enough to transcribe every possible ending text, so I'll share it with you here. What follows is taken directly from the Fallout Wiki's page on the Old World Blues endings:
As it had been in the years before the Great War, Big MT... the Big Empty... became home to one of the brightest minds of the 23rd century. The Courier watched over the Big Empty for years to come, caring for it, and keeping its discoveries safe until they were needed to help others. Which had always been Big MT's purpose. Past the laboratories and Science, it had always been intended as a place to build the future of all mankind.
The Sink Central Intelligence Unit was impressed by the amount of exploration the Courier had undertaken. Facilities believed lost, destroyed, or ones that had simply gotten up and walked to new locations had been re-discovered by its intrepid new master. Internally, the artificial personality debated as to whether it preferred the old management to the new... and concluded that the Courier's thorough approach to research and investigation was admirable and worthy of its respect.
Dr. Mobius continued his research undisturbed in the Forbidden Zone. As much as he had attempted to create better scorpions, he tried the same with humanity, with considerably less success. These failures didn't bother him overmuch. Once the rush of Mentats wore off, he forgot he had failed in any event. After all, the bright young mind who had come to visit him in the Forbidden Zone had already exceeded his expectations.
The Sink atop the Dome bustled with the voices of a small town, constantly chirping, arguing, and snarling at each other. Still, this all happened productively in the interests of its new owner. The Sink Central Intelligence Unit discovered, despite its inversion code, it was comforted by the sense of community the other personalities gave it.
The Biological Research Station, obsessed with seeding everything in sight, requested a transfer to the X-22 Botanical Garden... so that it might, in its own words, "sensually fertilize the garden's smooooth contours." The Garden sent back a polite refusal, saying it had prior commitments with a Vault it had helped infect before the war.
The Book Chute continued to devour all seditious materials until it nearly choked on a paper clip. It adamantly maintained it was a Chinese paper clip, and the whole thing had been an elaborately orchestrated assassination attempt. Whatever the reason, it slowed down for a while, carefully appraising each document and clipboard that came to it.
The light switches continued to bicker and flicker. This persisted until the day someone dropped a flashlight in the Sink, and the two of them united in their hatred of the "showboat." One of them eventually transferred to the Lightwave Dynamics Plant - and began a long, unrequited affair with one of the holograms.
The Sink continued to ruthlessly scrub any particulate matter that came near it. Eventually, it gained access to the Magnetohydraulics Plant and nearly flooded all the Big Empty in an attempt to scrub the crater clean. Once it learned of the Innovative Toxins Plant, however, it gained new purpose. It sought to develop anti-toxins to flush into its drains and counteract the poisons bleeding into the soil.
The Toaster continued its psychotic spree, reducing all appliances in range to scrap electronics and spare parts. After one of its more psychotic episodes, however, the other Sink personalities decided enough was enough, and dumped the Toaster in a bathtub. Sparking and hissing, the Toaster swore its enemies would rue the day when they had bread - and no way to toast it.
Muggy did his best to collect coffee cups, although in his quest, he accidentally trapped himself in Higgs' Village. It might have been the end for poor Muggy. Except... he found it peaceful there, tidying up the kitchens of the Think Tank Professors back when they had been flesh and bone. Well, except for Dr. O, who was an asshole for having created Muggy in the first place. Muggy left O's house deliberately dirty, punishing the dishes and cups that lived there in blind revenge for serving Dr. O.
Blind Diode Jefferson, with sounds the Courier brought him, created a symphonic counter-frequency that saved Big MT from sonic invasion in 2910. If you didn't hear about it - good. It was rumored by the other personalities that he had a brief fling with the light switches. Although he forgot their names once too often and was soon left in the dark as punishment.
Auto-Doc, always gentle and methodical, kept sewing up the Courier in all the right places when the skin split open from repeated wear and tear. The Auto-Doc was just glad to have purpose again. It heard its simpler brothers and sisters who got shipped to the Sierra Madre were bored out of their skulls in that toxic, dead city. In time, the Auto-Doc found a way to deactivate the Y-17 Trauma Harnesses, releasing the corpses they had held prisoner for almost 200 years.
As the Courier ran through the X-8 facility multiple times, the computers analyzed the test subject's movements. Rather than performing a superficial observation, they realized the subject barely knew what Communism was - or even what a high school was. This confused them for a time, until the facility finally realized that its research had... succeeded. So it let its cyberdogs out into the wastes to help protect small communities from physical aggression rather than communist propaganda.
The infiltration program in X-13 felt spent, having repeatedly upgraded the Stealth Suit until it could upgrade it no more. It felt warm, fulfilled, and a bit sluggish. It realized not long after, the Stealth Suit had left it without so much as a note on the nightstand. So the infiltration program sent out robobrains into the wastes looking for its wayward technology. It eventually found REPCONN HQ, and set up a new research center, testing and murdering Fiends who kept breaking into the facility.
The Courier, organs intact, continued onwards, a little less heavy of step, but with all the organs in the right places. As they should be. After all, brains can develop a life of their own when left to their own thoughts, and the Courier's brain was more clever than most.
Dr. Klein and the Think Tank remained alive, unaware of the world outside. They looped through their daily routine, none the wiser about the world beyond... although perhaps "wiser" was the wrong word. The world outside belonged to the Courier, and if anyone would shape it... well, the Courier had already called dibs.
Doctor Mobius: There is an expression in the Wasteland: "Old World Blues."
Doctor Klein: It refers to those so obsessed with the past they can't see the present, much less the future, for what it is.
Doctor Dala: They stare into the what-was, eyes like pilot lights, guttering and spent, as the realities of their world continue on around them.
Doctor 0: Science is a long, steady progression into the future. What may seem a sudden event often isn't felt for years, even centuries, to come.
Doctor Mobius: In the times following the Second Battle of Hoover Dam, however, Old World Blues took on a new meaning.
Doctor Klein: Where once it was viewed as a form of sadness, nostalgia, it became an expression describing the potential for the future.
Doctor Dala: It can be easy to see Science as evil, technology unchecked as the source of all ills, all misfortunes.
The Courier's Brain: With the Courier at the helm, Science became a beacon for the future. There was Old World Blues, and New World Hope. And hope ruled the day at Big MT.
Sink Central Intelligence Unit: We could say more, but the stories in the Big Empty speak for themselves. Now armed with the Transportalponder, the Courier could return to the Dome at any time and crack open the secrets of the Big Empty, one by one. The Sink sat vigilant, waiting for its master to return, shoes covered in Mojave dust. Only one road yet remained, and it was one the Courier had to walk alone.
So... yeah. That was pretty much that.
More next time, as Janice returns to the Mojave and either deals with her fantastic new set of issues, or doesn't. Haven't decided yet myself.
When last we saw our heroine, Janice had persuaded her brain to rejoin her for the final confrontation with the Think Tank. Yes, the brain was a different entity. Yes, it was still in a jar. No, if I say the words again it won't make any more sense than that. Not unless you've read The Tin Woodman of Oz, anyway. That's not the point, though. The point is that Janice had her brain back, and that in order to reinstall it properly they were going to need the equipment used by the Think Tank, and since neither Janice nor her brain trusted them farther than Janice's brain could throw them, they were going to have to either kill them or call on Ferris Bueller, God of Liars to talk their way through it.
Now, understand. Janice had every reason in the world to want the brains dead. They were really, genuinely, utterly horrible people. They'd been doing awful things for two hundred years and they'd imprisoned Chinese-Americans and Chinese prisoners of war for experiments one does not like to think of. She would have been within her rights to plug them all, and it's not as if she hadn't killed quite a lot of people already. Being tired of killing people didn't come into play quite so much when floating disembodied brains were the people in question.
On the other hand, Dr. Mobius had admitted to messing with their behavior to try to keep them from hurting anyone else. That indicated a level of diminished responsibility. Dr. 0 seemed more interested in machines than in things that hurt people, even if he did build Muggy almost entirely to be a jerk. Dr. 8 had actually seemed like a nice guy, although he couldn't talk comprehensibly, and Dr. Borous... had been an awful, awful person, but Janice had been able to induce guilt in him, even if only for a few minutes. It was possible that they, at least, could be poked into doing something to make up for all the horrible stuff that had already happened. Dala and Klein might have to die- Dala struck her as a vivisectionist, and Klein was, well, Klein- but....
Well, she'd try to see if she could pull off the stunt of a lifetime and talk them into repenting and changing their ways. Worst came to worst, she still had the holorifle.
So she headed back to the Sink and had the autodoc put back the body parts it was able to put back, mostly because she didn't want the brains suddenly deciding to attempt a hack on her artificial heart and spine. Then she headed up to the Think Tank to see what she and her brain and Ferris could do. The brains were waiting for her, all five of them lined up in a neatly organized V, and Dr. Thundervoice Klein- as usual- spoke for the bunch:
"THE LOBOTOMITE RETURNS. OUR LOBOTOMITE. HAS DR. MOBIUS BEEN DENOMINATORED INTO SCRAP METAL AND VOICE MODULE PARTS AS WE HOPED?"
Pff, said Janice, I have a brain now, dimbulb.
Yeah, that didn't go over so well with Klein. "I RECOMMEND WATCHING YOUR TONE, LOBOTOMITE>. NOW. "YOUR" BRAIN. HAND IT OVER OR WE'LL EXTRACT IT AGAIN."
Ahahaha, no. They had Things To Discuss first.
"AND WHAT COULD WE POSSIBLY HAVE TO DISCUSS? YOU HAVE THE BRAIN, WE HAVE THE TECHNOLOGY. ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS SURRENDER. WITH IT WE CAN FINALLY LEAVE THIS PLACE. I CAN'T TELL YOU HOW BORING IT GETS HERE. AND WE HAVE SO MANY QUESTIONS TO ASK YOUR BRAIN ABOUT THIS MOJAVE PLACE. A FERTILE TESTING GROUND FOR OUR EXPERIMENTS..."
Janice was starting to think she would need to kill the brains after all, but it caught her eye that 8 was looking uneasy. And, to her surprise, so was Dala. So instead she just suggested to Klein that he consider conferring with his colleagues.
"NONSENSE. CONFER? COLLEAGUES? THOSE ARE TWO WORDS I DO NOT RECOGNIZE."
At which point Dala intervened, saying that the lobotomite was faaaar too interesting and that they shouldn't harm it. Klein snapped back that he wasn't going to HARM Janice, just DISSECT IT UNTIL IT WAS DEAD. (Well, yay.) Dala protested that she couldn't stand the idea of an organism, a living, breeeeathing organism not breathing, and even Klein was disturbed enough by her enthusiasm to call her on her significantly voiced pauses and wonder what was going on.
Dr. Venture spoke up next, saying the Lobotomite had good ideas. Klein? "SILENCE, THIS IS A THINK TANK DECISION. SAVE YOUR OBJECTiONS UNTIL AFTER I HAVE DECIDED OUR COURSE OF ACTION." Zero's response was just too pretty not to record: "You know what, Klein? Stick a straw in your tank and suck yourself! And my name is 0! A big, fat zero. With a slash through it."
Klein was thunderstruck by the simplicity of the zero solution, and asked Zero where he got the idea. Naturally he didn't take well to hearing it was the Lobotomite's idea. Zero sputtered about it for a bit and finally just said, "You know what, Klein? I hate you! And your theory of brainial beam oscillation, the Chinese had it first, you copycat!"
If they started falling apart she'd never be able to get them all to agree to not screwing with people any more. Janice disliked the idea, but couldn't see her way clear to wrangling this mess. Fortunately, 8 spoke up next, in an extended bout of static that apparently disturbed Klein because normally the others never hesitated to commit surgery...
And then Borous spoke up. Oh God. "If I may, I feel as if I must be the voice of reason here..."
... said the brain who had installed an atomic core in his dog.
"This lobotomite is much like us, regarding even animals and pets as nothing more than tools of Science! We should prolong its life, in the name of Science!"
Thanks, Borous. Your approval fills me with shame.
Klein frothed some more at that point and thundered about how his vote counted as five, LIKE THE MIGHTY HUMAN HAND I ONCE HAD, WITH ITS FIVE PENISES CLENCHED IN A FIST.
Dude, Janice pointed out, bad math. Bad.
"NONSENSE! THE MATHEMATICS OF THE SITUATION ARE ON OUR SIDE, LOBOTOMITE! I BELIEVE- no wait, carry the two... HUH. IF THIS WERE A DEMOCRACY I WOULD BE CONCERNED. BUT WE'RE TOO SCIENTIFIC FOR THAT. SO JUST SURRENDER."
Well... maybe she could get something out of it. She pointed out that no, it wasn't a democracy, it was a research facility. And over half his colleagues disputed his findings.
"YOU DARE USE LOGIC AGAINST ME!"
Well, yeah, Janice kinda did dare. Here was the deal. She wasn't going to surrender. Klein was.
"THAT'S NO DEAL AT ALL! THERE'S A WHOLE WORLD BEYOND THE CRATER! WE COULD'VE ESCAPED, SEEN IT ALL FOR OURSELVES, TESTED IT PRODDED AT IT MADE IT SQUIRM-"
Ugh. Ew. Yuk. How about Janice just brought it to them and they'd be safe right there and able to experiment? For her? Not like she didn't carry all kinds of crap anyway. Granted, she was thinking mostly of machine scrap and butchered animal parts, but still. There were a lot of things in the Mojave these guys hadn't ever encountered that could be tinkered with without committing atrocities.
"FOR YOU? FOR SCIENCE?" said Klein. "I HAVE A STRANGE SENSATION THAT I WOULD LIKE THAT. VERY WELL. THE THINK TANK IS AT YOUR SERVICE AS LONG AS YOU DO NOT DESTROY US."
And... that was that. He was... that was really that. Huh. All hail Ferris, man. Time to go get her brain put back....
Well, as Janice stepped out of the Think Tank door to go back to the Sink and get her brain reinstalled, the Here Are The Consequences Of Your Actions script engaged and narration started rolling. I actually rather liked what I got, and someone was kind enough to transcribe every possible ending text, so I'll share it with you here. What follows is taken directly from the Fallout Wiki's page on the Old World Blues endings:
As it had been in the years before the Great War, Big MT... the Big Empty... became home to one of the brightest minds of the 23rd century. The Courier watched over the Big Empty for years to come, caring for it, and keeping its discoveries safe until they were needed to help others. Which had always been Big MT's purpose. Past the laboratories and Science, it had always been intended as a place to build the future of all mankind.
The Sink Central Intelligence Unit was impressed by the amount of exploration the Courier had undertaken. Facilities believed lost, destroyed, or ones that had simply gotten up and walked to new locations had been re-discovered by its intrepid new master. Internally, the artificial personality debated as to whether it preferred the old management to the new... and concluded that the Courier's thorough approach to research and investigation was admirable and worthy of its respect.
Dr. Mobius continued his research undisturbed in the Forbidden Zone. As much as he had attempted to create better scorpions, he tried the same with humanity, with considerably less success. These failures didn't bother him overmuch. Once the rush of Mentats wore off, he forgot he had failed in any event. After all, the bright young mind who had come to visit him in the Forbidden Zone had already exceeded his expectations.
The Sink atop the Dome bustled with the voices of a small town, constantly chirping, arguing, and snarling at each other. Still, this all happened productively in the interests of its new owner. The Sink Central Intelligence Unit discovered, despite its inversion code, it was comforted by the sense of community the other personalities gave it.
The Biological Research Station, obsessed with seeding everything in sight, requested a transfer to the X-22 Botanical Garden... so that it might, in its own words, "sensually fertilize the garden's smooooth contours." The Garden sent back a polite refusal, saying it had prior commitments with a Vault it had helped infect before the war.
The Book Chute continued to devour all seditious materials until it nearly choked on a paper clip. It adamantly maintained it was a Chinese paper clip, and the whole thing had been an elaborately orchestrated assassination attempt. Whatever the reason, it slowed down for a while, carefully appraising each document and clipboard that came to it.
The light switches continued to bicker and flicker. This persisted until the day someone dropped a flashlight in the Sink, and the two of them united in their hatred of the "showboat." One of them eventually transferred to the Lightwave Dynamics Plant - and began a long, unrequited affair with one of the holograms.
The Sink continued to ruthlessly scrub any particulate matter that came near it. Eventually, it gained access to the Magnetohydraulics Plant and nearly flooded all the Big Empty in an attempt to scrub the crater clean. Once it learned of the Innovative Toxins Plant, however, it gained new purpose. It sought to develop anti-toxins to flush into its drains and counteract the poisons bleeding into the soil.
The Toaster continued its psychotic spree, reducing all appliances in range to scrap electronics and spare parts. After one of its more psychotic episodes, however, the other Sink personalities decided enough was enough, and dumped the Toaster in a bathtub. Sparking and hissing, the Toaster swore its enemies would rue the day when they had bread - and no way to toast it.
Muggy did his best to collect coffee cups, although in his quest, he accidentally trapped himself in Higgs' Village. It might have been the end for poor Muggy. Except... he found it peaceful there, tidying up the kitchens of the Think Tank Professors back when they had been flesh and bone. Well, except for Dr. O, who was an asshole for having created Muggy in the first place. Muggy left O's house deliberately dirty, punishing the dishes and cups that lived there in blind revenge for serving Dr. O.
Blind Diode Jefferson, with sounds the Courier brought him, created a symphonic counter-frequency that saved Big MT from sonic invasion in 2910. If you didn't hear about it - good. It was rumored by the other personalities that he had a brief fling with the light switches. Although he forgot their names once too often and was soon left in the dark as punishment.
Auto-Doc, always gentle and methodical, kept sewing up the Courier in all the right places when the skin split open from repeated wear and tear. The Auto-Doc was just glad to have purpose again. It heard its simpler brothers and sisters who got shipped to the Sierra Madre were bored out of their skulls in that toxic, dead city. In time, the Auto-Doc found a way to deactivate the Y-17 Trauma Harnesses, releasing the corpses they had held prisoner for almost 200 years.
As the Courier ran through the X-8 facility multiple times, the computers analyzed the test subject's movements. Rather than performing a superficial observation, they realized the subject barely knew what Communism was - or even what a high school was. This confused them for a time, until the facility finally realized that its research had... succeeded. So it let its cyberdogs out into the wastes to help protect small communities from physical aggression rather than communist propaganda.
The infiltration program in X-13 felt spent, having repeatedly upgraded the Stealth Suit until it could upgrade it no more. It felt warm, fulfilled, and a bit sluggish. It realized not long after, the Stealth Suit had left it without so much as a note on the nightstand. So the infiltration program sent out robobrains into the wastes looking for its wayward technology. It eventually found REPCONN HQ, and set up a new research center, testing and murdering Fiends who kept breaking into the facility.
The Courier, organs intact, continued onwards, a little less heavy of step, but with all the organs in the right places. As they should be. After all, brains can develop a life of their own when left to their own thoughts, and the Courier's brain was more clever than most.
Dr. Klein and the Think Tank remained alive, unaware of the world outside. They looped through their daily routine, none the wiser about the world beyond... although perhaps "wiser" was the wrong word. The world outside belonged to the Courier, and if anyone would shape it... well, the Courier had already called dibs.
Doctor Mobius: There is an expression in the Wasteland: "Old World Blues."
Doctor Klein: It refers to those so obsessed with the past they can't see the present, much less the future, for what it is.
Doctor Dala: They stare into the what-was, eyes like pilot lights, guttering and spent, as the realities of their world continue on around them.
Doctor 0: Science is a long, steady progression into the future. What may seem a sudden event often isn't felt for years, even centuries, to come.
Doctor Mobius: In the times following the Second Battle of Hoover Dam, however, Old World Blues took on a new meaning.
Doctor Klein: Where once it was viewed as a form of sadness, nostalgia, it became an expression describing the potential for the future.
Doctor Dala: It can be easy to see Science as evil, technology unchecked as the source of all ills, all misfortunes.
The Courier's Brain: With the Courier at the helm, Science became a beacon for the future. There was Old World Blues, and New World Hope. And hope ruled the day at Big MT.
Sink Central Intelligence Unit: We could say more, but the stories in the Big Empty speak for themselves. Now armed with the Transportalponder, the Courier could return to the Dome at any time and crack open the secrets of the Big Empty, one by one. The Sink sat vigilant, waiting for its master to return, shoes covered in Mojave dust. Only one road yet remained, and it was one the Courier had to walk alone.
So... yeah. That was pretty much that.
More next time, as Janice returns to the Mojave and either deals with her fantastic new set of issues, or doesn't. Haven't decided yet myself.
no subject
Date: 2012-06-16 09:11 pm (UTC)