Grease and Guile - Chapter 9: Calculated

• Posted by Mottyskills February 10, 2017 - Filed in TSC: CB Story - #TSC:Fallout  - 1,876 views

  

  Ada and I checked out early from the Dugout Inn, fresh and full of supplies. The holotape I’d recovered from one of the rogue bots at Wattz Consumer Electronics had enough embedded data to suggest our next location.
  
  South and east of Diamond City was the old General Atomics Factory. This destination was going to be as far east as I had been since waking to the nightmare in Vault 111. I won’t lie, having a nearly indestructible companion gave me confidence I’d yet to find running solo missions.
  
  Ada’s biometric scanners kept us a safe distance from ghouls and supermutants almost the entire way. We picked our way carefully, but steadily through the wasteland toward the target. The one fast moving mongrel that did manage to ambush us on final approach was met definitively by Ada’s newly mounted laser rifle mod.
  
  A guy could get soft with this kind of help around.

  
  I checked the spikes and safety on Salvation, fearing I’d let my guard down and subconsciously wanting to let Ada know I was ready to fire too. But alas, we made it to the factory unscathed. We circled the surprisingly intact structure and found a door. Pausing for a swig of purified water procured in Diamond City, I addressed my new companion.
  
  “Any idea what we we’ll find in here?”
  
  Her head unit lit up and spun toward me, “Statistically, this is the most probable location to obtain more data regarding the Mechanist.” Her vocal processor was obviously robotic, but unexpectedly pleasant. The straight-forward answer and direct delivery struck me as oddly familiar.
  
  She sounded a lot like the voice in my head.
  
  My inner dialogue constantly calculates probabilities, predictable outcomes and makes conclusions based on the variables at hand. And while my life with Nora was so well balanced by her innate ability to live on feel and instinct, my new companion seemed more like a mirror. Indeed, the decison to investigate the so-called Mechanist was deliberate. Everything I had seen so far led me to believe that in order to have any hope of finding out what happened to my son Shaun, I would need to have the best technology I could get my hands on.
  
  His kidnapping. Nora’s…murder. The way I woke up, and the fact that everyone else in Vault 111 was dead. None of it made any sense outside of a coordinated plan from a powerful entity. I didn’t have the answer to who was behind this yet. But more importantly, I knew I wasn’t ready to find out. Sure, I was surviving in this irradiated wasteland. But I was in no position to take on whatever or whoever was at the end of the glowing brick road.
  
  Not without some more tech. And that’s exactly why Ada and I were about go dumpster diving in an abandoned robotics warehouse. My motivation to track down some deranged fool re-programming robots into killing machines was…well less than selfless. This isn’t about saving the Commonwealth. And as much as I'm growing to enjoy the company, this isn't about avenging Ada's friends.
  
  This is calculated.