Twenty minutes past three o'clock in the morning and the alarm clock goes off like any other day in the normal life. Reach forward and slide the alarm off and sit up in bed. My Wife doesn't notice my awakenness yet, so I tried my best to keep it that way. She isn't too fond of my job at the restaurant, but that is all okay because today is my last day. Today I am free of this world of getting up for shit money and shit hours and shit life every fucking god-damn-mother-fucking-day. I cannot wait to get the fuck out. The only thing separating me from happiness is eight hours of cooking for people I hate. Neighbours dog didn't bark when I went outside to smoke my morning cigarette. I looked up at the sky and say a street light half covered by a maple tree, the light barely shining through. There have been countless mornings when I get up much as I have today and looked at this light and wondered why me, why me? Why does it have to be me that has to be getting up at this time and fucking off to such a dead-end job, with a life spiraliring out control, going absoultely nowhere. Why me? The first smoke didn't go down as well as I would have liked it to, so I said fuck it and had another. I started pacing around outside. Fucked around too much and setup off the motion sensors next door, and that sure as fuck alarmed the dog. Scattered off to the garage once again to avoid the dog from actually seeing me and in turn-keep barking. Its been months since I've actually spoken with the neighbours. I've done my social-end of the deal to the husband (I assume its the husband) by nodding to him and all that as he passes in his auto. To the Lady to the same. Except in a more "unmanly" fashion. I'm old school like that. I represent all the good things that came from the late 20th/early 21st century. Perhaps that is why I'm not the way of the rest of the world. Because I'm stuck on the past too much. Only one day will I be happy when the world is in a more friendly place, when people smile to others like I do. The way they nod their head to people, Acutally meaning it. Sincerely caring about the concern of others. Not concerned about what is important tomorrow. Who is going to be on top. I don't care about this "Modern American Good" and all this materialism. I don't care if my lawn looks the best, and does the least amount of harm to the enviornment. I'm tired of all this "green and proud" fucking bullshit. I love the dirty ways of the twenty-first century. The way people just lived so lavishly, fucking off any and all things in their paths. Their was once a time when people could go to a gas station and buy a pack of cigarettes and a bottle of soda-pop and fuck off in just a few minutes. Perhaps I'm lazy. I don't know what is wrong with me. Look at the time, better get into the house and get into work clothes and prepare for work. A big part of me wants to go to work dressed in all black, kind of a symbolic representation to my end at the restaurant, and my career of cooking in general. I'm so fucking sick of cooking for money. The only thing that cooking for a job for all these years is the love for cooking at home. I love trying out new things with the Wife at home, cos she seems to really appreciate the things that I try and make. When they are new, and even if they are not - she just seems so happy to eat when I cook and that makes me want to cook. But at work it seems like its not for the passion of cooking its the paycheck. I've been cooking at this restaurant for so long that I've surpassed almost everyone here in skill years ago. The others haven't been around long enough to matter. So the things that bother me about cooking at work, are things that even some of the most anal waitresses could give a fuck about. They (like me) just want that god-damn money. You've got the best of them in the cooking industry. Its funny to even assume I have the authority to say such a thing. I've never seen a shit shining day outside of Pandora's Box in a long fucking.. ever. But out place isn't a shit run of the mill-restaurants either. Some of the guys who passed through those walls will grow to be Chefs one day, if your into that sort of thing. For the rest of us it was supposed to a stop in the job-highway. A rest-stop until we found something better. I've been trying to get out since I started back in '69. Once people started suggesting that I was "stuck in Pandora's Box" I made a personal (and private goal) to get the fuck out by the ten year mark. I failed at that too. But success happens in eight hours. The temptation of wearing black would make everyone laugh at me, and by the time the lunch crowd came in I'd have had it, and I just want the last day to go as smoothly as possible. The commute to work as a horrible nightmare as always. The interstate system has become quite a nightmare for months, driving the city streets would make me have to leave for work nearly twenty-five minutes earlier, and that would never happen. The routine in the morning is too delicate, too sacred. To shave off an additional twenty-five minutes of any day would be pure blasphemy. I parked in the absolute farthest spot in the lot, to kind of make the final-walk a long one. Before getting out of the automobile, I put my mushed penny from the County Zoo in my pocket. A picture of a Koala. Once after a horrible lunch service, the Wife and I went to the County Zoo, to sort of "clear my head" of the chaos that I had just gotten out of. When we were there I gotten all excited about seeing the Hippotomous. I'm not sure what it is about them, but they are just such intriguing animals, everytime we went to the Zoo I made it such a special event when we saw the Hippos. Each time we made our way past the Hippos I would get one of the mashed pennies made to symoblise our trip there. I kept these mashed pennies lined up on top of my dresser. The Wife thought it was such a silly idea at first, but eventually it became quite a thing for her. She'd start to suggest "getting a new penny" on the lazy weekends, and go out of her way to save the "shiny" pennies she would find along her days. We had gone out to the Zoo this particular day to sadly discover that someone had jammed up the machine, and an "Out of Order" sign hang from it. The machine not working was how the entire day was going for me. My "machine" was not working today during service, a lunch even -- and now here the fucking machine doesn't work for a simple Hippo-Penny-Maker. "We should go" I suggested to her, only have been in the Zoo a little over a hour. The Wife insisted on making the day right, forcing me to the food area of the Zoo -- pushing a bier down my throat with a greasy hamburger, the kind you can only get in a makshift kitchen at a Zoo. We had only eaten at the Zoo Food Court once or twice before. The first time I joked about how we are eating the animals who had "passed away" at the Zoo, and the Wife got all funny about it ever since. I'd prefer not to eat it either, working in a kitchen and all, god can only imagine what 'these' cooks are doing in thier kitchen. You get funny about the What and Wheres when your a cook. After choking down the burger I drenched in yellow mustard to mask the mess of cooked meat, and polishing off the bier, which was warm in its recycled plastic cup, hand-in-hand the Wife and I enjoyed the rest of the Zoo. We took our time. One of the Wife's favourite animals at the Zoo was the Koala. When we saw the gray furry climbers this time, the Wife took me over to the Koala-Penny-Maker and insisted I get a Koala Penny cos I couldn't get my prised Hippo. Went we approached the machine someone had either forgotten for intintally left a Penny in the machine. So we each got one. The Wife had saved the shiniest Penny she could fine and the one in the machine was quite beat up looking. I demanded that she keep the Penny she had kept aside for me. Telling her that it was her that she was the shiney one between the two of us. I put the rusted Koala in my back pocket for the rest of our trip to the Zoo. Leaving, work called me -- and I was backed into a corner that I could not get out of. I was forced to return to the restaurant and work the dinner service that night. Although not a 'member of management', I seemed to always end up with the perks of those who were. Going back into work to pull a double shift, getting put in the shit every time the opportunity arose. The others who were members of management always had a special and unique way to get me to do their 'dirty work'. I was infuriated about having to go back to work and go through another service, especially after having gone through some shit already. But I was put in a corner I could not get out of, and there was no choice. Still in my work pants, I had the Wife drop me off at the restaurant on the way home from the Zoo, I didn't even go in with proper attire under my whites. Oddly enough the service went remarkably well. As if I had even worked a shift already for lunch that morning. It was amazing. I hitched a ride home from one of the aspiring cooks, who not only gave me a ride home but offered to smoke some of the locale areas finest with me while driving home. Typically I wouldn't partake in such activities while in an automobile, but who could resist the temptation of making this kid thinking this is going to get him somewhere "higher up" in Pandora's Box. And it smelt like a skunk went bonkers soon as he pulled it out of his glovebox. The temptation was too large to resist. While endulging the smoke en route, I noticed that the Penny from the Zoo earlier was in my back pocket the whole time during the nights service and ever since then it has been in the same pocket whenever I've been in the kitchen. I need it to get through a service. Shocked the back door was not open upon my arrival at work, I leaned up against the back wall by the door and lit up a smoke. Its illegal to smoke in public, but nobody in this restaurant gives a fuck about that. I have keys to the restaurant as well. I could open the door and get a start on the things that should be done for the morning prep. Buts its my last day. Plus if the other cooks could give a shit about being here when its necessary to get a go at the work, then why should I? Its why Pandora's Box isn't employing Chefs and people honourable about their whites, cos they could give a fuck. The owners love the money, but they do not love the business. That is why I need to get out. I put my smoke out against the wall and tossed it into the parking lot and reached into my pocket and got my keys. The restaurant was dark only service lights of some of the equipment provided any illumination. I walked back into the back of the prep area and walked into the cooler and turned all the lights on. The cooler light did its typical triple flutter before turning on to a solid steam of light. After scanning in, I made way over to the steaming radio and dialed in some Billie Holiday. There is something great about listening to ancient music such as hers, while I'm alone in the restaurant. Everyone likes more of the modern stuff. I went into the cooler and pulled out some of the vegetables to be washed. I had planned on getting most of the soup vegetables cut up before the main cooks got here and we fucked off down to the docks to get some fish for tonights dinner service. "The Same Old Story" plays on Last.FM. Billie Holiday is so great. I am singing the same old story here at Pandora's Box. Knowing that this is the last day I'll be washing vegetables, I'm going the extra mile with everything. I always paid extra close attention to everything I do, but I'm going out of my way to make sure everything to perfect. Extra close examination of all the produce, not letting an off onion, carrot or pepper slip past my senses. An onion fell on the floor, and I tossed it in the bin. This would not normally happen. Normally as long as you "washed it" it would be all good, but today I threw it away. Today is the last day those bastards I hate cooking for are going to get an absoultely amazing experience as part of my hard work. The last time they will taste any food made with a sense of perfection. As I finished up washing the onions and peppers I started to wonder where the other prep cook was. I washed my hands and step outside for a way-to-early smoke. Standing outside I pulled out my Comm and send Calvin a message. I didn't even get it sent off before he had responded. "Glued to the news be in soon" Without sounded silly I opened up a web browser and scanned the headlines. Our heavy concentration of American troops being deployed to Alaska has everyone on high alert. There is talk outside of the country that China plans to invade Alaska and take what little oil known to man exists. Nobody wants to think about the possibilities of America and China going to war again. We as a country have been walking around in denial about this inevitable situation. Its too early to talk to the Wife and see what she all thinks about this. For the most part we are realists. It doesn't take a genius to know what is going on everywhere online about the China/America conflict over oil but for the most part unless it would affect my daily life, I could care less. The Wife pretty much shares the same philosophy about the whole thing. We got so much going on with life otherwise that we don't really talk the politics much. Our dinners are spent discussing what we want to do over the following weekend and what we want to do the weekend after that. We never really sat down and said something along the lines of "So do you think China will ever invade Alaska!?". But apparently it has the time of my fellow cook entranced away at home. I guess despite knowing how horrible things are in the this world, and all this talk of "the world ending", I don't think that any of it will happen. People of the world may hate each other a lot, but is it enough to make them end their existence as we know it? I doubt it. There would be nothing beneficitial that would come out of that. Looking at the clock on my Comm, its only a few minutes after five in the morning. Why not make the last day of work a little special? I had brought a little bit of pot to smoke with anyone who would have been willing to do so on my last day, after work. But seeing as how I got at least until six before management gets here, and probably at least that long before Calvin will make it in, why not right? I run back into the restaurant and turn all the ovens on to get the heat nice and ready so its got some good temperature by the time I get back in. I put my hat on, but skip the jacket just in case I gotta make a quick dash back into the restaurant if someone comes in all the sudden. I suppose all the commotion with the international tension may cause the higher ups to get here earlier. I make a quick dash back to the car. I pop open my trunk and open by secret stash box that I had my pipe and pot in. I already had a nice solid bowl packed with a single hit taken out of it last night when I prepared it. Couldn't resist, much like this smoke. Can't resist. Soon as the idea is there, and possible, it is impossible to resist. I just find some deep enjoyment out of smoking a bowl. It goes well with the restaurant business I guess too. You don't mind being covered in blood or having your hands coated in raw chicken.. stuff for hours and hours when your high. You have a cloud protecting you from knowing what your "really" doing. But that is only truly necessary for the real noobs out there. Many of us just smoke pot cos it goes well with kitchen culture. I hop back into the car and take a deep, chesty hit off the bowl and hold it in as long as I possibly can. I hold it until I feel like my eyes are going to pop out of my head, sweating a little. I've still got some super fast electronic music playing on Last.FM out in the car and for a moment my heart stops as a car pulls into the lot. The early Wednesday morning air is still thick and dense, fog makes it hard to classify what kind of make and model that car is. I put my hand on the shifter of the car in case I need to quick bang my shit up to the front and make it look like I was going out to the car to "get my knives" or something to the boss. But just as soon as I started thinking of excuses for why I was fucking off outside, the automobile that came into the lot quickly jetted back out into the thick fog of the morning. Coast is clear, take another hit. This is going to be the best last day of work ever. This is the kind of session you don't smoke a cigarette after because it would just ruin the moment. I'm feeling it so good that I could go back in and try to come up with some new and crazy idea for the lunch menu. But I wont. I'll just use the perk from this to polish my chrome. I take another tap off of the bowl and set it inside of my centre concil and turn around and take a look around the lot. Nobody yet. Twist the keys out of the ignition and put them back in my pocket. Open the door of my car and jog back back into the restaurant. I've got the a filter of hazed happiness over me now. Ready to face the prep work with a little fire under my ass. Forty minutes later its already past six and there is nobody in the restaurant still. I'm the only one there doing any work. I'm the only fucking guy here working. Calvin texted me and said he was on his way, but there is no word yet from the "the Captain". Unless this place starts on fire, or the cops show up looking for people would we dare call up the Captain. If he wants to sleep in an hour late -- you just take it. No matter what the situation, you go off his schedule or you get the fuck out. Part of the reason I've been around for as long as I have is because I learned young, and early-on that this is how this place operates, and I could deal with it without too much fight. Many of the other cooks that have come and gone over the years have seen this and wanted to go cry to some Human Resources Department about being treated unfairly. Although I wasn't too excited (anymore) about cooking, I did appreciate what Pandora's Box was. It was one of the few family-owned restaurants in lovely South Eastern Wiscosnsin that had any sense of keeping it family owned. Our establishment hollered old school 21st century to the fullest and that is what I've always loved about the place. They stream older music out onto the floor, none of this newer shit that people consider music. They get more shit about it than they get thumbs up, but thats only because the majority of the clientelle here are spoiled college kids, and rich twenty-somethings who are getting raped by their school bills but trying to also impress a date by taking them out to dinner. As far as that crowd goes we are in the heart of their daily network. Smack dab in the middle of the most expensive college in the area and the highest paying engineering firm in the area. Some of the kids who go there spend their childhoods hoping to go the school, and then dream of working at the firm. I find it hilarious. Six-forty-two rolls around and the sound of the back door squeaks through the hallway. You can hear these sounds from a mile away when your smoked. And I was. The loud stomping through the hallway lets you know its Calvin's football player looking ass coming through. But there was no typical shit-eating-grin on Calvin's face this morning. He was holding up his Vault Pass up to me like a police officer when he came walking past the prep area towards the timeclock to scan in. Panic ran over me for a moment as to wonder where my Vault Pass was. The glove box, I think. Calvin came walking back towards the prep table to grab a fresh shirt and apron. He slips his Vault Pass in his back pocket. "Morning. You got your Vault Pass, right?" Calvin asks me. "Its in the car I think." I respond to him while slicing tomatoes. "Guaranteed if that shit goes down today, you'll be caught with your pants down, and I'll have to take care of your Wife while your dying of nuclear radiation!" he says with the shit-eating-grin that is his trademark. "You better go outside and make sure you got that shit!" "Fuck off, I'll be fine cos that shit ain't gonna pop off. And if it does, well, I'll just have to take your Vault Pass if I ain't got mine!" I said jokingly. "You ain't gonna ever get this Vault Pass, baby!" Calvins says as he reaches back into his pocket and pulls out his Vault Pass again and holds it within inches of my face, just like a police officer again. I could have taken it if I wanted to. His Vault Pass with all its Platinum glory. I just had my standard government issued Vault Pass that would get me into the Vault that was designated for my residential address. Calvin's Platinum Vault Pass gets him into any Vault he wants to go into without hesitation. You had to pay a good dollar to get yourself a Platinum Vault Pass. Calvin and Calvin's family were all waiting for the day to get their hands on a Platinum Vault Pass. He's been speaking of the end times since he started here. The idea of Vaults came to be back in the year 2016. Eastern countries fed up with the "New America" started testing nuclear bombs shortly after our country reaffirmed President Barack Obama a third term as President. It was not allowed to have a President serve a third term as President in this fine country of us, until during his second re-election campaign there was an assasination attempt made on Obama and after intense invesigation it ended up being on of the higher up Republican Senators from down south who tried to take the life of a President who seemed to be making the next generation of eager voters happier and happier each day. He did things Presidents of this country would have never done. Shortly after taking his second term he redid the Health Care plan that he spent a majority of his time trying to create during his first term, and Nationalised it. For a time our country was everything it set out to be, a thriving example of all that was possible in this world. The country with splitting edge technology was finally one of the healthiest. Obama swayed the entire country to motion towards other means of transportation. While many of the oil-based cars still existed, all of them ran on fuels that were not oil based. Biofuels fueld the 10's and 20's for the most part all thanks to Obama's strict and steadfast approach to the energy crisis. Americans were not the only ones in the world who realised that oil was a dying resource, used too sloppily by the generations of the past. The European Union switched to Biofuels and focued on wind energy, while other EU nations tried all sorts of off the wall energy ideas. Sweden even fueled a majority of their country off algae that they had grown. Going green was a major part of the world in the 10's and 20's. When the first nuclear tests were done in Iran it made the world's heart skip a beat. While it seemed like the entire world was focued on making the world a cleaner place, some countries were not focused on going green, blue or white. China, the "red bastards" as many Americans new and old were beginning to call them, where seeing "red" during the peak of America's quest for a greener earth. China being so closed off to the rest of the world, being cut off from the internet completely back in the early 60's, didn't really know what the rest of the world was up to. Nobody outside of the country really knew what its administration was telling its citizens about the rest of the world. Despite their already crushing numbers, China had already successfuly cloned human beings and were cloning some of their best military officiers and adding them to the already largest standing army in the world. Despite all the progress made in the enviorment, energy and health, the United States wasn't spending too much of its time concentrating on its military. An establishment maintained but not exercised by the President since he initially took office. He had kept the miltiary out of heavy work for the twelve years he was in officie, something he felt obligated to to do after having them over there for so many years after George W. Bush started the war in '03 on fale pretenses. Shortly after Obama took the office for the third time in 2016, nuclear tests were done in the Idian Ocean. This brought the President to speak about Vaults publically to the nation in his State of the Union address. He told the country that "in the event of a nuclear war" Vaults would be created to keep all Americans safe. They would be built underground and they would be filled with resident at the first sign of a serious nuclear threat. These Vaults were going to be created to be a self-sustainable entity, providing its citizens with everything "life above ground" could offer, "and more". The "and more" part is supposed to be the cute way of saying "keeping you from being melted by nuclear radiation" something that you would not have the luxury of if you were above ground if the bombs fell. Obama insisted that America wouldn't fire any of its nuclear missiles into Mother Earth, a planet he promised to improve, not destroy. So on Valentines Day in 2016, the country started to pound out Vaults anywhere there was an open plot of land. First Vaults where made in the Washington DC area to help "preserve government" in the event of nuclear fallout. There was one built to house the Governers and Senators who may be in Washingston at the ungodly hour. Then Government issued vaults started to be built around Washington. The idea was to have enough Vaults built in the country to house 80% of the population. No matter how grim the other 20% are planned "not to make it" to the Vaults by the time they need to. Vault tests were conducted to see how quick they could assemble a Vault together with its citizens and get it locked down. Loud sirens rang thoughout cities in the country, people running frantically to get to thier assigned vaults before the sirens stopped. The idea of Vaults being controlled by the government didn't settle well in the stomachs of some. Most of whom were part of big business, which is where most of the Republican party rallied to after their failed assassination attempt. They used their political influence and power and help big business, cos that was pretty much all they had left. You have former Senators taking high up positions in companies of which they had no experience, but they were used as power players to help their respective companies bury the competititon any way possible. Stores started bashing other stores like they did during the election seasion in the earliest part of the century. Mudslinging commercials during the Christmas season, while the country is supposed to be celebrated "old Saint Nick". Much support was gained by Big Business to start building private Vaults to sell to the highest bidder. At first the government didn't support this idea because they feared that Big Business would only contour to the overly rich when building their Vaults. The costs of admission trumped some of the finest Universities in the homeland, and the industry defended their high costs to the 'overwhelming cost of safety' citing their Vaults were ten times better protected than those made by their goverment. With thier heavy influence on the media, the Big Business industry really created an element of fear amongst the wealthiest of Americans. Many middle class people fled the country to Canada hoping that if the world did end by means of nuclear armageddon that the harshest of effects wouldn't reach them at full potential in the most northern parts of Canada. Areas once considered unlivable by some back in the earliest parts of the 21st century became metropolian-like area by the time I was born in '51. By the year 2075 having a membership to the Vault was more imporant to any American than anything else in their life. When a couple would marry they wouldn't rush off to have children anymore. They would first apply for a vacancy in the Vault they are assigned to and wait to hear back if there was a spot for their child before going ahead with having them. Couples faced with the burden of having twins or triplets were oftentimes forced to give up their 'extra' children up for adoption to those who had Vault vacancies to give, or relocate complete to an area where Vault vacancy wasn't hard to come by. This wasn't viewed as horrible as it sounds back then, at the time it was just a 'way of life' for the average American. Having college money tucked away for your children was given a back seat compared to saving money for a Platinum Vault Pass. By the year 2075 almost everyone was guaranteed a Vault Pass. The government in collaboration with Big Business had assumed they had 97% of the population "underground" at the time the bombs dropped. However carefully planned this system was with the Vaults, it was built around the premise that everyone was at home, probably sleeping when the bombs dropped. People were assigned to Vaults based off on their geographical location on the map in relation to their Vault location. Meaning if you lived in Washington DC when the bombs dropped, you were assigned to a Vault that was in Washington DC. If for some reason you were out of the city, out of the state, you woldn't have a Vault to get into. Barely anyone left their hometowns when Vault membership became the majority. It caused a huge tension on the economy of almost every area of the country as people had pretty much given up on working ouside of 'walking distance' of their house. Apartment and house listings on the internet cited their close proximity to Vaults that were either being built or build already. Life "in the Vault" became commonplace. Nobody every thought of it as our actual living place, we all kind of thought of it as our "just in case" home. But in the tradition of all things American someone came up with the idea of the Platinum Vault pass. The Platinum Vault pass essentially was proof the to rest of the world that you were better than they were. For a god awful price you could get a Platinum Vault pass that not only worked for all privatly built Vaults but also the Government built vaults. There were a limited number of Platinum Vault passes created, but once a new wave of them were completed it was not long before they were gone. People have sold their houses to get a Platinum pass, couples divorced cos they could only attain a single Platinum pass. Platinum became hated. "Blood is thicker than Platinum" was often heard as a modern-day idiom. Calvin and I had the soup prepared, vegetables prepped and most of the idea for lunch thought out by the time the Captain came in. Rolling in just before eight o'clock. Calvin and I just needed to get a few minor things done before we could go down to the docks and trying to get fish from Lake Michigan's fish mongers. "We ain't goin down to the docks today, boys." said the Captain with a down look on his face. "I don't think we are going to be all that busy today. Its going to be another one of those days where everyone is glued to the television." Captain's white hair was tossed about from the wind outside. He was fixing it with his hands and talking with Calvin about the luch course with no fish on the menu when all the sudden my music on Last.FM was interrupted by an urgent radio message from President Calahan. "Last.FM is haulting is streaming service to bring you an urgent message for all listeners of Last.FM from President Calahan, joining an already in progress web confrence live from Washington." some automated voice over the speakers of our kitchen radio. "Good morning everyone. I have called this immediate web confrence to alert all Americans and the world that our intelligence agencies nationally have come to discover that there has been a huge surge of New China forces concentrated near the Alaskan borders. As the world has become well aware, China is interested in the oil that is housed in its natural state within the snowy confides of Alaskan soil." President Calahan said with a firm yet concern voice "China has every intention of obtaining that oil by any means necessarily, and they have not shown any indication that they want to prove that they want to do it diplomatically. The United States of America has every intention of preserving this dwindling supply of oil, and safe-guarding it until our very dedicated scientific community comes up with a solution to keep oil a part of our lives. Oil cannot go into extinction, for it would be a sad truth in mankinds history to be known for being the ones responsible for making such a possibility a sad truth. China claims to have come up with a way to "clone" or "manufacture" oil, but has not shown any intention to the United States or its allies that they plan on using this last of Alaskan Oil to help the global community, but rather keep it all for themselves. China ignored the advice our our leaders in the past and ignored the transition to being a Green Nation, and ignored the presense of the Global Green Alliance when it was formed in 2050. China's denial of these basic enviornmental truths that the rest of the world acknowledged, and addressed decades upon decades ago proves that they have no intention of thinking about anyone but themselves in regards to this oil issue. Many of its factories, heavy machinery, and power is ran off oil-based motors. They're are still cars in China that run on gasoline. They're national dependance on oil became clear to world when they invaded Russia in 2075, claiming up to 25% of what was once Russia's prised "Motherland" as their own to this very day. To every man, woman and child in this blessed United Stated of America, hear me with full attentiveness when I tell you that your goverment is unsure of China's next move but we have every intention on defending America's homeland. I cannot make this any more clear without speaking simply. China will not take a drop of oil from Alaskan soil without going through one hell of a nightmare. America is prepared to show China and the rest of the world just how serious we take our countries peace. We also assure the global community of any pre-emptive nuclear attack on China. The United States of America has no intention of launching a nuclear attack of any kind unless we ourselves are threatened with nuclear attacks." Captain, Calvin and myself all stared at each other while the President continued on. We had heard enough. Grief washed over me for not knowing more of the seriousness of the situation. Captain looked at both of us and then the floor. He sighed and walked away to the office. Calvin kept slicing tomatoes. I washed some potatoes in the prep sink. I've got my hands elbow deep in water when my Comm starts ringing. I look up at the clock. Its too late for the Wife to call and say a quick goodbye before going off to work, but its her ringer. I slap my hands againgst my work pants and grab into my pocket and grab my Comm and flip it open. "What's the matter darling!?" I answered in a frantic while heading out the back door. Are you worried about the web confrence they just had on? "You need to come home! Everyone in the neighborhood is started to get out of control. There are people running past the house saying they are going to their Vaults cos China is going to attack us at any minute. They're outside screaming about how what the President just said was his way of telling us to get ready for the run to the Vault. You gotta come home, you remember what they said about being far away from your house when those sirens go off!" my Wife said quickly like an auctioneer. "I don't care if you get into the shit with your boss, who the fuck cares about your job if the world is going to end anyway!?" My Wife sounded genuinely concerned about what the President was speaking of. She had never spoken so seriously of this stuff before. It had gotten me a little worked up hearing her get all riled up about it. "You don't honestly think this is going to happen do you!?" I asked. "Who cares if it does or .." and my Comm cut out. And suddenly out of nowhere the lights cut out in the parking lot. Then a ground-rumbling howl that sounded like it game from the gates of hell started to pound the ambience of the morning air. It was for real. The sirens were going off. Calvin came running out of the restaurant and looked at me. "Oh my fucking god!" he said "What are we going to do!?" "I need to get the fuck out of here!" I said to him. "The power is out and my Comm doesn't fucking work man!" I ran to my car to see if my Vault Pass was in my glove-box. "Your not going to make it to your Vault!" I heard Calvin yell, as he ran back into the restaurant. I assumed he was going to see if Captain had heard the sirens. You would have to be dead to not hear these sirens. I tore apart my entire glove box but I cannot find my Vault Pass anywhere. I'm ten minutes away from the house on city streets, and almost half of that if I were on the highway, but the test runs of Vault assembly said to stay off the highway system during the actual event due to its almost assured bottleneck of traffic, making anyone on the highway vulnerable to not make it in time. We all had our little routes planned out how to get back home if we were not. Most of us. I hadn't really thought about it too much. I figured I'd just take the way I did on the way home from work. Now as an ear piercing siren blows your mind to pieces, it becomes obvious that this should have been better thought out. Too much faith in the better half of human nature. What a fucking joke that had been. Damn me to hell for not being more aware. I slam the door shut and run back to the restaurant door. Its time to say goodbye to Calvin and the Captain. I open the back door and run to the office to find both the Captain and Calvin hugging each other, crying. "He wants you to have his Platinum Vault Pass" Calvin said to me, with one arm still around a crying Captain. "He said he wants to die here." "Captain you can't do that! You must go. We all must go. Stop fucking around you guys, lets go!" I said while turning back around heading towards the door. "Listen here son.." Captain said but he was interrupted by me. "NO! You listen here you son of a bitch. I've ate your shit all these years its time for you listen to me. You can't take pride in this place the day the fucking world is going to end, talking about wanting to die here." saying almost in tears myself "You never gave two fucking shits about this place, why the fucking you going to pretend any of it mattered now. Some fucking restaurant owner isn't going to get special recognition in the end, sorry to say, you may have well fuck off to the Vault like we all should." "I do love this place, and I put every god-damn breathe of my living soul into this place!" Captain said to me, stepping within kissing distance of me. "It was mother fuckers like you that could never grow up that kept this place down. I have no control over you guys. You've all been walking all over me for all these years, and your probably the worst out of them all. You make a mockery out of the restaurant business but always expected me to take you fucking clowns seriously. I let it happen for as long as I have because I loved all you fucking guys. Each and everyone of ya. I have given my last to see you guys were kept around. You two sons-of-bitches have made it what it was. I can't do it all myself, I'm getting too old to matter back here in the kitchen anymore. I never wanted anything else. I just wanted to see you guys grow up to be somebodies, and I would have given you each anything I had to offer. This was going to be your last day. You have no idea how sad that has made me. You have no idea how many nights I have gone slepless thinking of what will happen to this place if either one of your two left. For me one of you leaving me is the end of the world. Outside there are sirens going off telling all of us to get into a big fucking metal cave because some fucking Red Commie Bastards are nuking us cos they can't drive a fucking Mitshubishi. Son. My god-damn purpose is expired, no son take my pass and get the fuck out of here." "Take it man." Calvin said "Your never going to make it back to the Vault your supposed to be in, you and I bro, we got this. I never wanted to think of actually going into the Vault, but I'd rather go into that mother fucker with you than alone. "But.." "Your Wife will be there when the Vaults open back up. If you go back to the Vault your supposed to go to your better off just going to sit in the street and wait for it to come to you, cos that is your fate if you try to get there." Calvin said. And he was right. The documentation sent to us by our Goverment said that when the sirens go off we are supposed to be at the Vault Gates within a half-hour. Ten minutes have already passed, and the Wife is probably already at the Gate. I'd had given up anything in the world to hear my Wife finish her sentence. I cannot imagine not seeing her. Trying to get back to the house before the Vaults open and close is almost guaranteed suicide. You can hear the chaos already starting to break loose outside with traffic blasting off in all directions. I held out my hand, and Captain handed me his Platinum Vault pass. It was a lot heavier than my pass. Maybe there is actually platinum in the pass itself. I put the pass in my back pocket and held out both my arms towards Captain. He hugged me for a very long time. It was a hug you would get from your Father. It was genuine, sincere, yet strong -- not soft. The Captain wouldn't let too many people he had feelings down in that stone cold heart of his. Before letting me go he kissed the back of my head. A single tear rolled down my cheek. "See your not all stone!" Captain said. "No get out of here you too, I wanna have a good stiff drink alone before the world comes to an end!" "I love you, Captain" I said. He looked stunned. He closed his eyes and nodded but didn't say anything back. Calvin hugs the Captain as well and we run out the back door. "Hey!" the Captain yells. "What the hell, take my car!" he says as he tosses his keys towards Calvin. "You serious!?" Calvins says "Oh thanks Captain!" We run out into the lot. Calvin instructs me to get anything out of my car that I would need. Most people had a Vault Bag prepared of vital items they needed if they were ever to hear these sirens going off. I at least had one of thoes. A few basic things, nothing too important. You were assured that basic survival things were going to be provided in the Vaults. While I'm assembling the few things from my car, Calvin does the same from his car and tosses it in the back of Captain's large truck. "Holy shit!" Calvin yells as he pulls out an enormous shotgun from the trunk of the truck and holds it up. "We got firepower!" "Holy shit! What are you going to do with that!?" I asked "The world hasn't ended yet." "No it hasn't my friend, but I swear to god.." Calvin says while cocking the shotgun "Aint a mother fucker getting in our way between here and the Vault!" We get into the Captain's truck. Calvin is riding shotgun, with a shotgun on his lap. "Lets roll out Cowboy! Woo Hoo!!!" He actually looked happy with what was about to happen. I don't know how he could be, because he has no idea what IS going to happen. Nobody does. His overwhelming enthusiasm does seem to help soothe the pain a little bit. It kind of feels like we're going on a field trip for work, and we'll be back in a little bit. The reality of it all has not set in. We get to the street outside of the lot and Calvin looks at the street of cars that is packed thick going both directions. "Son of a bitch!" Calvin screams "They are not going to let us out! Why the fuck is everyone paying attention to the god-damn road signs!?" Calvin rolls down the window and starts screaming at a car packed full of people blocking us from getting into the street. The driver looks over at Calvin and doesn't make much of an impression. He is panicked just as much as I am. Calvin pulls the shotgun out of the truck and flashes it to the driver and threatens him to back the car up a little bit to let us out. The driver rolls up his window and nods his head "No". "Get ready to hit it" Calvin says to me, and he pulls the trigger of the shotgun and lets a buckshot out into the front quarter panel of the guys car. Freaked, the driver almost immediately puts his car in reverse and pounds on the gas, slamming into the car behind him. The driver gets out of the car and starts barking at Calvin, and Calvin takes another shot at the ground to scare the guy off and it sure worked. He hopped back in his car like a dog given a command. The whole world is going to different from this point forward. A repeat of history, that's how it goes. I slammed on the gas, plowing through the land that was blocking us, over the median and into the other lane of the traffic. I'm up on the sidewalk. Calvin starts hooting and hollering, screaming out directions, as I plow into park benches and street lights alike, until securing a spot on the actual road. "Were headed to the State Street Vault" Calvin says to me "I'm not sure how well their underground network got, but they are connected one of the cities networks. We'd have a good chance of getting real close to your Wife's vault before we get back above ground." "Whatever you say, I'm with you on this one brother." I said while holding out my fist, and Calvin strikes it back. "So where's the smoke!?" Calvin asks "I know you got some." "I know you know I do." I said, pointing to the back at one of my bags. "I know you brought something good to smoke out out of too." searching around in my bags "Oh yeah baby its the glass sherlock!" Calvin packed up a bowl of some of my pot and passed me the freshly stuffed bowl. I nodded back to him as a sign for him to 'spark it up', and without taking those 'cautious' looks out the windows, Calvin leans his head off to the right and sparks the bowl. He rolls up the window he had previously been hanging out of like a wild bandit with his shotgun, as to keep the good smelling smoke in the interior of our atuomobile, and in our lungs. He takes a second, deeper hit and starts coughing like something horrible. His whole face was stop-sign red from the collar of his whites up. In the middle of his righteous coughing he manages to pass me the bowl back, but I saw a little burning ember fall onto the floor of the drivers side. Calvin noticed it too. "Ah well, its not like we're giving it back right!?" he said with a smirk on his face "Spark that up brother, I got the wheel" as he reaches over and holds the right hand side of the wheel so I can concentrate on smoking on the bowl like he had just been. I took two deep lung-busting hits and passed it back to Calvin and we continued to smoke the bowl together. The busted up normal city life of Milwaukee had already started to look grim. Power was out in all directions, but people in thier habitual ways, tried moving through traffic as if all was still well. I had taken enough 'lessons' from Calvin to feel safe with him. The only member left in his family was his Grandfather, and he had passed away almost a year ago. His Grandfather was part of the military as a younger man. He was a respected Marine and when he came to retire he didn't stop there. He and a bunch of other semi-retired Marines had kept close-knit relations with not only the Marines, but higher up government officials out of Washington. Due to their aging roster, the close-knit group of Marines eventually became recognised by the Marines and they were once again taken on as full-time Marines to participate in non-combat, diplomatic missions for the Marines and US Government. It was because of his involement with this group of men that Calvin knew so much about Vaults, what to do when the sirens went off, and what NOT to do, which was almost most important. His Grandfather's faction was dubbed the United Enclave for American Marines, the UEAM. While we prepped during the week and the Captain was not around he would tell me the these tales that seemed very tall at the time, but now they all seem like they need to be reconsidered. Calvin kept speaking of "when it happened" not "if it happened" almost like he knew the people who were going to be responsible for throwing the first bombs. He spoke of 'rebuilding America' after the Vaults opened back up under the guidance of his Grandfather. He said that his Grandfather's life work became focusing on "life after the Vault". He said that his Grandfather's "Enclave" were working with world leaders to focus on helping "Mother Earth" become reborn after nuclear apocalypse. I used to get so tired of hearing him go on and on about this crap, it seemed so 'over the top' the things he would speak of. He claimed that before the United Nations disbanded in 2075 they had put in place several Vaults that housed nothing more than bombs and missles of of a none destructive nature. Meaning they were full of oxygen, nitrogen, all these other chemicals that would help "bring back" Mother Earth after an ineviable nuclear collapse. We arrived on State Street to a hectic crowd piling up outside the entrance of the State Street Vault. The State Street Vault was supposed to be one of the best Government built Vaults in the Milwaukee area. The Wife & I were supposed to be housed in the Milwaukee Avenue Vault, which was only minutes of walking distance from our house. Although not really spoke up, it was common knowledge that the Government-built Vaults were also attached to a lower, underground networking of tunnels that are supposed to "network" the other Government-built Vaults in order to keep the rationed supplied housed within the Vaults kept tranquil between its brother and sister Vaults. It was uncertain which Vaults connected to where, but being only fifteen or so minutes of driving time from the entrance of the State Street Vault was the entrance of the Milwaukee Avenue Vault. So even if the Vaults are not connected there is always the undying hope that we "get out" at the same time. We parked as close as we could. It was unadvised in our Vault Manuals to park anywhere too close to the Vault as to prevent from the Vault's entrance being damaged by explosions. Once we opened the doors to the car, you couldn't hear ANYTHING other than the sirens. You could see people screaming, and you could see people running, and cars going in all directions but you couldn't hear it until you right up next to it. Calvin walks to the back of the truck with the shotgun in hand, like he's part of the military on a hostile mission. He motions with the the shotgun for me to get our bags out of the trunk. I do and put them on the ground. He hands me the shotgun and pops the floor out the bottom of the trunk. I was taken back by how heavy the shotgun was. It would take all the strength of mine to walk around with this thing all day, holding it like Calvin just was. A part of me wanted to shoot something. Calvin pulls spare ammunition from the holding cabinet under the floor of the trunk and slams the door shut. He put the ammo in his bagpack and gives me this funny look. "Never had a gun in your hands before!?" he asked "You gotta be shitting me! Who in the year 2077 hasn't held a gun in his life!? Fire it off! Shoot the tires of one of these cars or something man, get it out of you!" "No way!" I screamed to get over the sirens "What about the police!?" Calvin rips the shotgun from my hands and cocks it with ease, assuring you of his strength "The mother fucking police stopped mattering after those sirens went off son!" He takes a few steps back and blasts one shot into the back tire of Captain's truck, cocks it immediately and lets another one rip again. He walks over to me and slugs me in the right breast so hard I almost cried and hands me the shotgun. It took every ounce of courage to hold that gun up without making it look like he paralyzed my arm with that hard strike, but I pushed the pain aside. Took three steps back and cocked the shotgun and held it up and shot out the back window. "SHIT!" Calvin said. "There you go son!" A wave of adrenaline washed over me like something I have never felt in my entire life. I cocked the gun three more times letting bullets loose in all parts of the truck. Nobody really seemed to look at us strange. The strange ambience lingered in the world near the end times. Calvin screams for me to calm down "Ammo doesn't grow on trees anymore!" he said. A harsh reality. Too bad for me, I suddenly feel like I could fire this weapon all day. I handed Calvin the shotgun, and we started to jog towards the entrance of the Vault. The people looked sad and scared that were standing out front. Many of them holding up signs with last names on them, like they were at an airport waiting for a flying in party to arrive. When we close in closer to the standing crowd, Calvin leans into my ear and says "You don't tell a fucking soul we got Platinum Passes, NOT A SOUL!" I nodded. "Wait here." Calvin says as he walks away. I wasn't afraid he wouldn't return, I have all of his things. He's walking through a crowd of people with a shotgun and that is everyone's least of cares. I lean against a wall and fire up a cigarette. What does it matter now? It was a poor mistake. Three people came running up to me almost immediately and asked me for one. I didn't hesitate. Typically cigarettes are a prised possession in the year 2077, but something has me feeling connected to each and everyone I am standing around right now. Reality is starting to set in. The sirens keep the yelling and screaming from those not immediately next to you drowned out. I take a seat on the ground, waiting for Calvin. I start to wonder what he might be doing as I finish my smoke. I stare off in the distance to this group of three people. One middle-aged women stands there with a teenage male and very young girl. One would assume it would be a family. The teenager is holding onto the young girl with one hand as she is wrapped around his midsection crying, while he drapes the middle aged women who I would presume to be his Mother. Mother holds a tissue to her nose as she is greiving, looking into the distance that Calvin and I just came from. I stand up and look toward the entrance of the Vault and see Calvin standing there talking to someone who standing by the actual entrance to the Vault. Seeing this lady stand there trembling, makes me think about my Wife. She is staring off into the distance and I wonder if my Wife is doing the same, waiting for me. For a moment I thought aobut maybe running back to the truck, leaving all my shit here, and just trying to get to the Milwaukee Avenue Vault. The truck is immobile, but you could assume that you'd be able to steal one right now with all the chaos going on. We've only been here about ten minutes or so, but already you cannot see the truck we abandoned. Its surrounded by more cars, and there are people lined up all the way back to the actual street. Incredible. There must be three hundred people standing there waiting. Calvin puts his hand on my shoulder and turns me around. "Alright we're going in!" he says to me. He walks over the wall where I had set down our things and grabs his bag and tosses me mine. He starts walking towards the entrance of the Vault and it must have been the dominating presense of Calvin walking in front of me, but the middle-aged lady who is looking for her Missing Husband looks at both of us. I noticed her look over and look away. As we walk, I cannot take my eyes off of her. She looks at me again, we make eye contact. We walk through these iron gates that must be thirty feet tall, and under the "State Street Vault" sign. All the Vaults had iron gates in front of them. At least the ones in this city did. All we have ever seen all this time is a big iron gate and a sign with the a name. That is all we really know of what the Vault looked like. We got Vault Manuals from the Government about "life in the Vault" the assurance of how we will have our clothing, food and bedding all provided for us. We got paperwork on what to bring with us to the Vault, and what not to bring. We didn't get much instruction on what we will be doing while we wait for whatever it is to happen, to happen. It was all quite unclear to all of us, but we all given this idea that 'everything will be okay'. We were told that once we were 'assembled' in our Vaults we were going to have a video introduction to the particular Vault we are going to reside in. We were told that money wasn't to be a factor either. Within the confides of the gate, there is just a plain looking building that that has four sets of double doors. Somehow I thought that the Vault would be 'smaller'. Calvin and I walk through one of the door and into a gigantic lobby with just as many people inside of it as there are standing out front. There is a slight damper put on the sirens. "Hey is there going to be room for us!?" I asked Calvin "From what my Grandfather told me, this Vault is supposed to house almost 30,000 people comfortably" he said to me with a very serious look on his face. "Comfortably?" "This aint going to be no fucking hotel stay brother." Calvin says "Its going to be quite personal. No room to fuck around and let people think they're going to ride all over us. Let me tell you brother, from the moment that Vault closes until the moment it reopens the only thing that matters is you and me. You need to remember what it was before this all happened. It was you and me. Strange things are going to happen to all of us once we are in there for a long time. Something about being human. We ain't meant to live underground man, and I need you to know that no matter how fucked up I might get, just keep it fresh in your mind that I always got your back, and I need you to always have mine." I held out my hand for a handshake. When he shakes my hand I pulled him in close for hug and I said to him "I've got you until the end. Promise." "You got a smoke for me?" Calvin asks "Need to let loose a bit" I handed him a smoke. "I hate to sound like a fucking moron that read his Vault Manual but don't we need to check in or something? Look at all these people, shouldn't we be worried that we wont get in?" A prematurely exhaled cloud of smoke comes from Calvin's mouth. He walks in close to me and speaks into my ear. "Typically you would have to and you can safely assume that everyone in this room is already checked in. We are going to go inside and stash our stuff in a minute, but cos of our Platinum Vault Passes we don't have to really check in, we just need to flash our Passes to them whenever they require it." He steps away a pace. "Be honest, I'm just so fucking glad we made it. I can't tell you how many sleepless nights I've had about thinking about dying en route to the Vault." A sour muscle turned in my stomach. My Wife's location being uncertain is troubling me again. It's easy to get caught up in Calvin's enthusiasm about everything he does, but thinking about my Wife is all I can think about if he isn't talking. What if I never see here again? What if the conversation that ended abruply earlier is the last time I ever hear from my Wife? The possibily is almost too much to bare. I would have done anything to have gotten a picture message or an email from her telling me that she is leaving for the Vault, or that she is going to be waiting for me. Anything other than a conversation that ended mid-sentence would have been absolutely wonderful. Instead I'm going to enter the State Street Vault with the running hope that my Wife has made it safely and that she will be waiting for me. The only real concern is that she made it there safely. The only plans we did have in case this happened was to assure one another that no matter we would wait for each other. There was a general concensus that believed that when the Vaults DID open back up they would be opened all at the same time. Or at least a whole city would unlock theirs at the same time, depending on how good Mother Earth was doing after man had drawn out all their aggression on one another. This was the hope that the Wife & I lived off of. All of the sudden these red lights started shining in the room. This anyone with a Vault Manual was familiar with. These lights meant that we were supposed to get into the Vault cos within twenty-one minutes time the Vault doors would be sealed shut, and the waiting game starts. Calvin waves me towards him and we start walking towards the humungeous circular door, the actual Vault door itself, and people around us start to follow suit. We walk up the Vault doors and this guy asks us for our pass. Calvin turns around and takes a quick survey of the situation. There is no real safe spot to be standing with a Platinum Pass, the guy standing at the door is strictly instructed to execute anyone who tries to slip into the Vault under false pretenses. But once those Vault doors close, United States law no longer matters. There wouldn't be a government official that would agree to that statement, they would insist that no matter what, if your on American soil, our laws are your laws. Many people pushed this aside to their own thoughts. Calvin always said "Soon as I get word that our institutions have fallen, that is the day we will finally be free. Free to make it all right where we went so horribly wrong." The idea was tempting, living in an actual "free world" not "free democracy" our leaders speak of, but actual freedom. The freedom to actually do whatever it is our hearts desire. Calvin quickly flashes his Platinum Pass to the guy standing near the door, as do I and we make our ways into the Vault. After passing through the large circular opening we were in what looked like half of a computer lab, and half a cave. Almost something out of the classic Batman movies. Nobody was in the room, which was a little eery. Calvin takes a look around the room and sees a sign that says "Living Quarters". We walked towards the sign and were greeted by three sets of staircases that all went down. "So we are going to sleep in Hell." a random person behind me in line says "Hope they got comfy bedsheets!" For the amount of horrible things going on, the strangers comment make me laugh. Giddy laugh. I turned around and said "I don't know why that is so funny to me right now, but I hope they got some comfy sheets too!" After making our way down the staircases we were once again approached by another door. When you get up close to it, it popped open all by itself. This was technoloy that most of these people were not used to. Many of the high end office buildings in the area now were switching over to the motion controlled doors, but many people looked at them as if they came straight off an alien spaceship. Despite the uber-technology, the strangers were very welcoming of the Vault. They found it comforting in all its dull metal gloriousness. The hallways exposed by the self-opening door were long and narrow. Everything was metal, or at least that is what it felt like. "So what do we do just start picking rooms!?" another stranger shot out into the crowd "I guess I didn't read my Vault Manual all that well." Calvin turns around, as now he and I seem to be 'leading the pack' into the hallway. "Yeah we are just supposed to start filling rooms and worry about the details later. Ladies and Gentlemen I'm nothing more than a common man like any one of you. My name is Calvin, and I want you all to know that its going to get really tough in the coming days, weeks, months and years. We shouldn't allow ourselves to be caught up in petty political jargon that has kept us separate for all these years. The moment those doors close we are of one family, so don't feel like you can't sleep next to someone who is black, white or purple. All of that stuff stop mattering in less than twenty-one minutes." An eruption of applause came from the crowd standing behind me. Once it seemed like almost everyone was applauding what Calvin had just said, I joined in on it too. Perhaps they are applauding him cos he has a shotgun in his hands, but something tells me it was more than that. He spoke in a tone that was conforting yet firm with the crowd and at a moment like this, that is all the people needed. Nobody has seen or heard from the "Overseer" as the Vault Manual called them. They are the sole person in charge. They are the single-handed autority figure within each and every Vault. Every Vault has one Overseer. Every Overseer has a Protege. The Protege has no real purpose other than following around the Overseer everywhere he goes. In the event of an Overseer passing away by any means would result in the Protege taking over where the Overseer left off. The Overseer may and will have staff that can 'carry out the Overseers orders' if he cannot handle them himself. The Government assured Vault Residents that the staff would not be of a biased nature, and to assure everyone of this the 'staff' the Overseer select must be Vault Residents themselves, not some pre-determined squadron. Calvin advised the crowd to start taking the hallways until they couldn't anymore and start filling the rooms at the back so the people coming in wouldn't clog up the hallway and would only have to come down as far the next avaiable room. This guy really did his Vault homework. People started to assemble in rooms, stirring up conversations with their new roommates. Calvin saved the last room in one of the hallways for us. I walked down the hallway looking at all the people who have setteled in. When I get to our room there are two bunk beds, a couch, a chair, a table with four seats and an intercom by the door. The room was solid dull-metal like the hallways. There wasn't much to look at, other than each other. "Top bunk or bottom?" I asked Calvin "Don't fucking matter to me." "Take the top." Calvin said with a smile "I'm sure we'll have plenty of time to swap places." He was right. I tossed my bag on the top bunk and took a seat at the table. Now what? Its entertaining to think that we are just going to sit down in these metal rooms for a few hours and this intercomm is going to announce that this was just a false alarm and we're all free to go back home. "We should smoke or something" Calvin says. "Now that were home and all." "Shouldn't we wait til we find out who is going to join us in the room first?" I asked "Can't we get in trouble with the Overseer or something?" "Fuck the Overseer. If we smoke then nobody who comes in this room will not be okay with it, so I vote we smoke." He had a point, and I guess my rationalisations are all based on United States law. I've not had too much experience in an Anarchic-like state before. So I stood up and walked over to my duffel bag. I reach up into the bag and pull out my dope and my pipe. Just as I start making way back to the table to pack up a bowl, two people stick their heads in the room. "Got room for us?!" a tall skinny black man says to Calvin and I. He's with another guy just as tall as him. "Of course, come on in." Calvin said while motioning them to enter the room. "We're gonna sleep on this bunk, and if you don't mind, were going to smoke on some skunk!" "Definitely picked the right room here brother." the companion says to his friend. "I'm Calvin." he extends his hand. "This is my long-time collegue and dear friend Liam." he motions to me and I extend my hand. "Elijah, nice to meet you." the guy who asked us if he could stay in here with us says. "This my best friend Caleb. We were downtown job hunting when the sirens went off." "Imagine that. We were at work. We typically don't walk around in Chef whites all day otherwise." I said with a smile. "Ya no doubt there, I'd rather be walking around in my pajamas than these fucking whites!" Calvin said. "Too bad you guys didn't make it up to the restaurant, we could have gotten you guys a job without a hassle." "where ya'll work at?" Elijah asks as he and Caleb enter the room and drop their stuff on the other bed. "We were both Chefs at Pandora's Box." Calvin said. "Chefs?" I asked. "CHEFS!" he shouted. "If you line us up with anyone else Liam you know for damn sure we were busting our ass on that line like some Chefs, so ya.. we were Chefs." Calvin said. "Not that any of that matters anymore anyway." "So how do we close the door anyway?" I asked randomly. "Not to be greedy or anything but I'd like to keep our initial Vault session to a minimum as to keep our quality of "high" up there." Elijah and Caleb both start laughing out loud. "Well said brother, well said." Caleb says. "How do we close those doors anyway?" "I don't think we will be able to shut it until after our initial Vault orientation." Calvin says "That should not however be a determining factor about if we should smoke or not." "Yeah. What do we have to loose?" I said while I pull out my stash of pot out of hiding and start packing a tight bowl. "Here ya go Elijah" I said as I pass the pipe to him. "Sorry Calvin, gotta let our roommates spark it up brother." "Overstood man, overstood. Idda done the same brother." Calvin says as he takes a seat at the single chair in the room. He puts the shotgun on the floor and rests it against his leg. Suddenly a large buzzer noise took over the ambience of the metal-clad rooms and hallways and echoed throughout the Vault. After a few minutes of ear-piercing noise a voice comes over the intercomm as the buzzing stops. "Good morning. I am the Overseer of the State Street Vault. My name is Tyler. Within the hour we are going to require all Vault Residents report to the orientation room for your Vault Orientation and Assignments. The buzzer you just heard indicates that within five minutes we will be shutting the Vault doors until further notice. "Until further notice!" Calvin says with tone of sarcasm in his voice. "Fuck me." Caleb and Elijah laugh a bit, were all a little stoned. "This is it man!" Elijah says as he passes the pipe to Calvin "They really gon' shut the Vault closed." Minutes later a monster slamming noise echoes throughout the Vault. Almost immediately following it did you hear a wave of crying and yelling from the other rooms. People must have been thinking this was all going to just stop and we were all going to be able to go home. Or maybe the people are breaking down because they just heard the Vault slam closed and they have not found their relatives or loved ones. Once the echo settled down, we all kind of looked at each other blankly. This was for REAL. We all take turns passing the pipe back and fourth and exchanging our past lives with one another. It seemed like hours had passed. I for one was trying to smoke myself into a state of haze. For the first time since the sirens started going off outside have I felt at ease. Possibly its all the pot smoke but being with other people who share the same concerns really does seem to help. Elijah is married and has two children. He and Caleb had been out job hunting all morning and neighter of them have any idea where anyone in their family is at. They were assigned to the State Street Vault, they didn't have Platinum Passes like Calvin & myself. Both of them are holding onto the hope that their familes make it to the Vault as well. Due to the fact that the Vault had been closed, Calvin felt safe enough to disclose to Elijah and Caleb about our Platinum Passes and we explained the hows and whys about ending up in the State Street Vault. "So what would have happened to you guys if you didn't have your Platinum Passes?" Caleb asks "Where would have you guys been assigned anyway?" "I would've been at the Milwaukee Avenue Vault." I said. "I'm not even sure where I would have been. My Grandparents started saving for a Platinum Pass for me once I turned six. I never filled out papers for any Vaults." Calvin says. "I'm sure I would've ended up at the Franklin Drive Vault though. Dead for sure had those sirens gone of and that was my destination." We were all discussing smoking more pot when all the sudden the intercomm started talking again. Tyler the Overseer requested that all Vault Residents report to the Orientation Room for our orientation and assignments. We all assembled in a fairly large room called the "GOAT Room" according to the sign on the door. Soon as we all got seat the Overseer introduced himself and told us that only a "wing" of the Vault had been assembled here, as no single room in the Vault could hold everybody. So the orientations were done in waves. The hallway that Calvin and I and the others were in before were just one of several hallways. Each hallways of rooms and residents were giving orientations separetly. Orientation took about an hour and left everyone quite shocked. While we would have all liked to have thought that life in the Vault was going to be comprobable to our last Hotel stay on the outside world, we were all given quite a reality check. The Overseer made it quite clear instantly that he was in charge. Once we were all seated and orientation had begun he walked up to this random person in the room. He asked them their name and asked for them to stand up. The forty-something male stood up. The Overseer said "Eric, my favourite colour is Red. What is your favourite colour?" The gentlemen said "Blue". The Overseer said "Did you hear that ladies and gentlemen? Eric's favourite colour is Blue." He then told Eric to walk to the head of the room. He didn't make it two paces out of his position before the Overseer pulled out a Laser Pistol and shot him twice. In the blink of an eye, a man named Eric was reduced to a pile of ash and burning embers. A scream let out in the room. "I don't want to hear a fucking word out of any one of you son of a bitches, you heard me? My favourite colour is Red. I am the fucking Overseer. What I say goes. Your new favourite colour is Red. Do you understand what the fuck I'm saying?" I could see the rage building up in Calvin. He was sitting in the same row as I was just several aisle over. He is powerless right now like the rest of us. I have rarely seen Calvin in a situation that he cannot stand up and take control of. Nobody was looking around the room, all the eyes were on the Overseer. After what just happened nobody has the courage to look around. Most of us had thought Laser Pistols were fictious weapons rumoured to be used by our highest of military personnel. He walks up to a teenage girl who is whimpering from what had just occured. "Stand up." he barks. She pops up like a snapped rubberband. She's having trouble standing there still without letting out whimpering noises. The poor girl is scared for her dear life. She has just saw more violence in the last thirty-seconds than she has for her entire lifetime. Its one thing to see death in a movie and to see death happen before your eyes. He did it without thinking twice. For a guy saying his favourite colour was Blue. Fucking blue! "What is your favourite colour young lady?" "RED!" she says in a broken voice. If I were an armed man, I would have worked up the courage to stand up and take this mother fucker out by now. But were all just sitting here stunned by what we are witnessing. Myself and I'm sure so many others around me are thinking that dying in a nuclear apocalypse is a whole hell of a lot better than this. "You guys are a hell of a lot faster learners than the last group!" the Overseer said. Orientation followed the same agenda of horror and fear-instilling messages from the Overseer. We were dismissed after about an hour. The Overseer said that aside from speaking himself that he should ONLY be referred to as "the Overseer" never by his god-given name Tyler. He said that such "honourable speak" needs to be earned, and that nobody to his knowledge in the Vault (with the exception of his as of yet unknown Protege) has the right to speak to him in such a manner. We were told that for three days we were allowed to 'roam free like children at recess' and at the end of which we were going to be taking our "G.O.A.T. exam". Nobody laughed when they heard about taking a "G.O.A.T." once we heard it stood for "Generalized Occupational Aptitude Test". Suddenly the words "G.O.A.T. Exam" loose their level of humour. \--- EIGHTEEN MONTHS LATER --- All hail the Overseer. For it is without his guidance and his wisdom that we find peril and vanquish. We would all be stuck to the wall of a destroyed building if it wasn't for the Overseer. We would starve without the Overseer, we would have no place to sleep, and we would have no clothes if it was for the Overseer. Ha! The Vault is now everyone's home. We have been in the Vault now for a year and a half. Each day is the same, in and out. You could miss a day and not notice the way things run around here. Despite the horrific orientation, life in the Vault is not all that bad. The Overseer may have murdered someone the first day we all met him, but most of us have come to believe that he's just as soft of some of the cutest bitches in this Vault. Calvin and I got shuffled off to the kitchen upon taking our GOATS and most of the Vault Residents call us both "Chef" instead of by name. Even the Overseer said "Good Morning Chef" to me once in Hallway 12C". Our living situation got shuffled around a bit. Three days after the Vaults all closed this epic heat wave came through all of the ventilation sytems. Some rooms got to 140 degrees. A few elders died within a week of the 'heat wave'. The heat wave, was in fact, the heat from everything burning on the surface. The Overseer told us during orientation that the Vault had been equipped with technology to help sense the "outside conditions" and that they would be able to tell when man had indeed started tossing a magnitude of nuclear arms. On October 27, 2077, from what our Vault readings had indicated to us, man had succeeded in destroying the world. The earth's surface was unlivable. While we could not actually see out into the world from inside of the Vault, how the world looked outside was always a topic of hot debate. The overpowering introduction to the Vault by the Overseer really spawned a strong sense of community within the Vault Residents. With the exception of one occurance, there has been no real tension between Vault Residents. The only exception was during the 'heat wave'. One of the Vault Residents who had taken the transition to the Vault particularily hard, reached the end of their wits when the heat wave (alas the reality of the apocolypse) came. The young lady had taken her own life by means of Calebs pistol. I remember the day he came into the room and told us about it. We all agreed that if this is what the girl wanted to do then that is what the girl wanted to do. Caleb gave her his pistol that he had brought in from "Above" (as we now commonly called where we used to live) and she went back into the Bathrooms and shot herself in one of the stalls. Apparently there was some guy who was bunking in with her in the same room that had become emotionally attached to her once he realised he was separate from his significant other. When he found out that Caleb was who owned the gun that had been used, he rushed into our room one day during a card game and with a single blow to the back of the head with a mini-sledgehammer, killing him instantly. This was quite a turning point for our "life in the Vault". Instead of instantly retailiating on this guy, whose name was Thomas, Calvin and Elijah instead tied him up. They stuffed him in a maintenance closet directly across from our room, gagging his mouth, and taping his eyes closed. They instructed me to get the Overseer as we were instructed to upon the death of a Vault Resident. When asked who was responsible for this, I told him it was Thomas but as planned, I told the Overseer that he had fucked off hiding somewhere in the Vault. This caused the Overseer to look high and low for Thomas. He assembled a party to start at one end of the Vault and work their way to the other. Once the party had started their search we dragged Thomas to the Vault Entrance. This is an area almost never occupied by anyone as it holds no real purpose other than reminding you that on the other side, hell does exist. Calvin pulled the tape off Thomas' eyes. "I'm not taking the gag out of your mouth cos all your gonna do is scream like a bitch!" Calvin says with his hands balled up around the collar of Thomas' shirt. "Now your gonna learn what it means to harm the Family bitch." He pulls out Caleb's switchblade and starts waving it in his face. Tears start flowing from his eyes like a faucet in the kitchen. We dragged his weaping body to the very entrance of the Vault and Calvin propped him up against the wall, as we still had his feet bound with duct tape. Calvin untucks Thomas' Vault shirt to expose his belly. "Slow and painful, the opposite of how you did our Brother." Calvin lodges the switchblade into Thomas' right hip and rips his stomach open to the left hip. The screaming was almost hard to conseal with the gag in this mouth with the amount of screaming he was doing. Calvin was careful to stand off to the side because blood came squirting out like a Fruit Punch Fountain used at one of the catering gigs we used to do for Pandora. It makes me wonder if he thought this out very well before doing this, or if his has actually killed people from Above. We bailed and let Thomas rot in misery. I have never felt so good for doing something so horrible in my life. Before leaving the entrance area to the Vault, I even walked over to Thomas who was already starting to slip from the pool of his own blood to kick him in the face. I felt bones crack under my shoe, and I never felt so alive in my life. I felt like God. For that moment, I was. Nobody ever found out "officially" what happened, but every single Vault Resident knew what happened to Thomas. He fucked with the Family and he got dealt with. From that point on, Calvin, Elijah, and myself were all looked a bit differently. From the other Vault Residents and from the Overseer. The Overseer knew one or all of us were responsible for Thomas' murder but something deep inside his fucked up little mind he either understood and condoned what we had done, or he was scared shitless at the nature of how we handled it. He told the other Vault Resident when he spoke of Thomas' death that he was found "somewhere" in the Vault, butchered and his head was "smashed in". As the months turned to years, Elijah, Calvin and I became closer and closer. We never got a new roommate once Caleb had been murdered. Its not exactly like new people were moving into the Vaults or anything. The three of us redefined "three being a crowd" always walking around with three sets of feet, but only one voice. Calvin was our unofficial "leader" as he had always been. He was always the guy I turned to at the restaurant, the guy I turned to for "manly advice" and the guy I turned to, just to turn to. We were friends Above, and we became more than friends Below. We connected on almost a spiritual-like level. Its not everyday that your side-by-side someone when the world ends. There is a bond formed there naturally whether enacted by self or not, a connection will create itself and grow under those set of circumstances between any two people. There isn't anything the three of us hadn't discussed in our time together. We were able to secure some dirt from the Garden Patch to keep growing pot. We ritualistically smoked every night, just talking, playing cards, passing the time. We disected every element of mankind from "Why do we fall in love?", "Is there really a God?", dismantled the race issue -- everything. One of the other Vault Residents was a tattoo artist Above, and he scarred all three of us with the word FAMILY on the middle of our backs, just below the collar-line as so the Overseer didn't see it. We promised each other that we would be there for each other until our dying breath. At this point in my life, I love both of these men as much as I love my Wife. They are of equal blood in my world. Many of the Vault Residents were convinced that we were going to die in the Vault. Our Family had faith that we were going to live to see the light of the "Above" once again in the future, we just were not sure when it would happen. Each of us were happy to know that no matter if the Vaults opened or not that we had two people watching over out back. That was the best reassurance anyone would ask for in a situation like this one. So while many focused on "life in the Vault" as their destiny, many had forgotten just how long we had been in the Vault. Nobody in our Family was clueless. Each and every one of us reminded ourselves of the day count when we woke up each morning. We have been in the Vault for 62 days short of six years. It had been a late night of playing cards and Goban, all of us were thinking of tucking it in for the night because there is no such thing as "sleeping in" in the Vault. The later you stayed up at night, the higher your possibly to completely fuck your next days work. And you don't want to fuck your work. Good Work is Happy Work! The Overseer was a strict bastard when it came to 'hard work' but nobody within these metal walls have ever seen the Overseer sweat in all his time. We were all hazy eyed and lazy-mouthed. We were playing four-player Spades with the Overseer's Protege. He had the blonde-hair, blue & wide eyes white kid who had silky, bright skin. The way the kid carries himself, and the way he talks you can tell he hasn't seen too many 'rough' days in his life. His name, ironically, is Tommy. You dug into this guys past you would find silver spoons and lining everywhere. Elijah suggested we "Smoke then Sleep". A mutal nod amongst the Family, and Elijah is packing a bowl on the table next to his face down hand of cards. "Oh I don't know if I should smoke any more guys, you think?" Tommy squeaks, rubbing his eyes and running his hands through is hair. "I'm fucking torched!" "Torched!?" I said with a curved eyebrow to Calvin. "You torched?" Smiling. Calvin looks at Tommy and laughs. Elijah passes the pipe to Tommy and says "Either hit it or quit it! Don't you go getting soft on us Tommy." Tommy takes the pipe and lighter in his hands and looks at us all and says "You guys are really good people you know that." He takes a deep as hit that impresses the rest of us. He tried to go too far by holding it a little bit too long, but eventually he burst into an avalanche of coughing and gasping for air. Elijah said "Kid" and nodded his head. We pass the pipe between us, and we continue to play our final books of Spades. Tommy takes another hit and passes me the pipe. Out of nowhere, Tommy says "You guys ever get sad thinking about the fact that we are probably going to die in here?" We all said No. Calvin speaks up "I knew that was a possiblity that second I walked though that iron gate." "Word." Elijah says. Then seriousness washed over Tommy's face. "We are going to die in here." He looked down at the table. "I know that for sure, and it sucks." Us three all looked at each other. "Please don't tell anyone!" Tommy says. "Oh fuck. I shouldn't have said anything. I'm a dead man." "How do you know that for sure!?" Calvin asks in haste. "Nothing, I can't say anything. I have to leave!" Tommy says as he gets up. Elijah hops out off his seat and stands, blocking the doorway. Calvin gets up too and walks around the table and gets in Tommy's face. "You ain't going nowhere." he says. "Come on you guys, why don't you just forget I said anything?" Tommy says. Elijah grabs Tommy by the collar of his shirt and pushes him up against his bunk. "I may have gotten used to the fact that this is my life's destiny, but I got a Wife and a Daughter that had Platinum Passes, and if there's a spitting chance of me seeing them again I wanna know why some skinny, wide-eyed devil wanna tell me he knows FOR SURE that I'm not." "Alright, alright." Tommy says. "Fuck!" Tommy walks over to the reclining chair and sits down. "Can I hit that fucking pipe again?" Elijah grabs the pipe off the table and practically tosses that sacred piece of glass at Tommy. He takes a quick hit, as he knew it was not welcomed to just be sitting around smoking pot with friends anymore, the three of us are ready for fucking storytime. "You guys know anything about the United Nations building those missiles that supposed to 'bring back Mother Earth' when and if the bombs fell?" Tommy says. He was suprised to hear that all of us were quite clear on what he was talking about. He didn't know anything about Calvin's Grandfather or the things Calvin had told us. He continued. "Those bombs and all those enviornmentally friendly, post-apocalayptic plans were a total fucking success. If what I'm reading from our mainframes, I'm almost certain we could have opened that Vault like a year or so ago." I almost puked. The thought of my Wife roaming around up Above for a year made the bones in my body ache. The possiblities are endless as to what could have happened. Tommy continued to tell us that when he told the Overseer that the levels of the outside world, he wouldn't hear it. "Do you guys remember when I 'fell down the stairs chasing someone who went into the Overseers office'?" Tommy asked us. "The Overseer kicked the shit out of me one night when I got on him about why he didn't want to open the Vault for us. The day after he got all apologetic about beating me up and told me that if the world was livable on the outside world that it would be unsafe for any of us that it would just be 'better' if we lived out the rest of our days in the Vault." "You gotta be fucking kidding me." Calvin says. "So what is it going to take to make the Overseer open the Vault?" "You ain't gonna get him to open that thing. It will not happen in his lifetime. He told me that before the Vault, nobody respected him up Above, he had a shit job and a shit life. He swore to change all of that the day the Vault closed." Tommy hit the pipe again, but this time a more concentrated-deep hit. "He doesn't even know how to open it." "WHAT!?" Calvin said. "Only I do. He came in here with the blind hope that someone else would be able to operate those computers that run the Vault Systems. Up Above, I basically sat in front of a computer all day as my job. Nothing that was as technologically advanced as this stuff, even some of it I don't understand now, but it wasn't hard to pick up what was needed to understand the system." "So we're never getting out?" I asked Tommy. "Don't worry guys, what do you think one of my first orders of business will be, when I become Overseer?" he says with a patient and calm voice. He stands up slowly. "Look guys, I've really overextended myself here. Due to the fact that I have told you what I have, you guys have to assure me of some sort of loyalty, don't you think?" "Not really." Elijah says to him almost instantly. "The only loyalty you need is knowing we haven't told anyone. You have any idea what would happen to the Overseer AND You if we actually told a single sole?" Elijah lets out a deep-laugh "You don't want to have nightmares about what they MIGHT do to you, cos trust me kid, that ain't the half of it. There's your loyalty. Your alive." Tommy starts walking towards the door. He puts his hands over the button to manually open the door, but turns to us first. "Trust me guys if I could have opened those doors, I would have." He left us with a small level of certainty. "If I discover anything new about up Above, you guys are the first to know. The Overseer doesn't want to hear it, and its too much to keep bundled up inside." He said goodnight to us and exited the room. "The only question I have for both of you is.. When?" I said. They both knew what I was on about. "Soon." Elijah said. "Yeah, we should take a few weeks and rally supplies before the rest of the Vault Residents raid the food panty before we all leave. Best have our own supplies stocked up good before we leave." Calvin suggested. "Fuck that bullshit!" I said. "From where I'm standing I see three sets of hands and three sets of feet. I don't know what you guys think we can actually all take with us, but it can't be any more than any of us three can carry. We wait a little while, until we're certain the Overseer is asleep. We go to the food pantry and grab anything we can get our hands on. Come back here, pack it all up, get our shit together, go kill the fucking Overseer, prefereably with our bare-hands, loot any and all his shit. Go get Tommy and open that fucking door." Elijah and Calvin looked at me in a way they never have before. They both looked at each other and Elijah said "Well I guess there isn't really a point of waiting." "Yeah your right the world has had a year plus of looting ahead of us. We need to get the fuck out." Calvin says "Lets rally up Family." It was twenty-eight minutes past eleven. The Overseer is always sleeping by midnight. We know this for sure because we transport the marijuana we grow in the water cellar at night after he has gone to sleep. So us three got our shit together. We're rushing around like pack-rats that just had the lights turned on them. We were trying to make too much noise, we didn't want anyone to hear us. Quarter after twelve Calvin and I went down to the food pantry and filled up three large bags of food that maybe didn't all make sense when taken a first glance, but it was all food that was very filling. Cooking probably wouldn't be a top priority up Above. Elijah went down the the water cellar and got all the marijuana we had grown, and anything that we had stashed down there that was quality material "for the road". The Family was back in their room by twelve-forty. We were ready to walk out the front-door. There was just two things standing in our way. One murder and one button. The murder of the Overseer, and the magic button that Tommy will press to open the Vault doors. Nothing else in the entire world even mattered at the moment. "I'm so excited I could kiss you guys." Calvins says. "Wait.. What if he's bullshitting?" Elijah says. "Who!?" "Tommy. What if he CAN'T open the Vault and the Overseer can?" "To be honst, that's a fucking chance I'm willing to take, you!?" Calvin says looking at me. "Yeah, I can almost say with almost absolute certainty that Tommy knows how, he looks like a fucking geek that would know to do some shit like that. The Overseer on the other-hand.. Not so much." I said. "Plus were all dead in the morning for raiding the food pantry anyhow." The other two guys in the Family agreed that what I said had a valid angle to it. We all agreed that tonight it was do or die. If were were caught up with stealing the amount of food that we had stolen from the food panty, we wouldn't get to breakfast without the Overseer demanding to find out what happened. Calvin and I being in the kitchen, we would be the first suspects. The whole operation of the kitchen has pretty much been left to the hands of Calvin and myself, as we had the most experience within the entire Vault cooking for the amount of people, at the level of professionalism that we have. Sure there were plenty of housewives, or single Fathers that know how to cook like its art, but they fail when they start cooking for more than two people. "Due to wanting to speed up the process I think we should just shoot the Overseer instead of actually doing it with our bare hands, I just want to get the fuck out." Calvin says. Elijah and I nod to this. "Let me do it!" I said. "You got to do Thomas, and I've never had a chance to truly express to the Overseer how much I admire him." "I can let you do that." Calvin said. "Look at the look in his eyes, looking like a kid at the Gamer Store." Elijah says. We pop open the door to our room and all grab our packed bags and jog down the hallways towards the Overseers office. His personal living quarters was three hallways length away and two short staircases. The Overseers door was never locked, he lived in a state of total peace with his surroundings, where each and everyone around him is in total fear of him. Nobody in this Vault would ever stand up to the Overseer. Until Tommy squeaked that we were living in this Vault for no god-damn reason there was no reason for the Family to have beef with the Overseer. Someone would have always been in charge, and that person would have never been one of us three, so there was no need to cause unecessary rivalries with any Authority we could never really fuck with. But tonight is a new night. The Family is lurking outside the Overseers door. We're like blood-thirsty dogs, silently stalking outside the quarters of their prey. Sniffing the floor for trails of the whos and whats are on the other side of the door. I've got the shotgun in my hands. Over the years I've really had time to play with it, and I've did a little weight-training with Calvin and Elijah, because, well, we did EVERYTHING together. So I didn't look like a child carrying something too heavy for him. We all set our bags outside of the door and Elijah stood in front of the door, causing it to pop open. The Overseer had three rooms actually, and to nobodies suprise, had quite the lavish setup. There was carpeting, the only in the Vault I had seen. There were two gigantic red fluffy looking couches facing each other with a massive glass table in between them. There was a WOOD kitchen table, very reminiscent of the Above, not the plastic/metal piece of shit that we had in our rooms. There were doors on both sides of the wall opposite of where we come in. The room was dark and silent. A small line of light was coming out of the right hand door. This we presummed was the Overseers bedroom. Elijah pulled out a pocket flashlight and turned it on. It provided minimal light but he pointed at the glass table and there were articles of womens clothing on it. "What the fuck!?" Calvin said quietly. "Girlfriend?" I asked. "Doubt it, who in here would fuck the Overseer." Elijah said. Then suddenly there was a short scream and a loud crack noise that come out the room with light coming out from under the door. Calvin turns around alerted, not ready for hearing a scream or seeing panties on a glass table belonging to the Overseer. He looked stunned. Elijah pulled out a pistol that used to belong to Caleb. "Lets just rush in." Calvin said. He pulled out some some brass knuckles that had razors on the top of the knuckles. There are no words to describe what could happen to someone if Calvin went balistic on their ass with those things. Calvin's Running Back Football Playing stature only got more defined the longer were in the Vault. He used the punching bag for so many years that eventually he punctured a hole in its exterior. I cocked the shotgun. I meant business. I'm going to kill this mother fucker. I walk over to the door, but it doesn't open. "What the fuck? Its locked?" I said. Elijah walks over next to me and points towards the wall to the left of the door, signaling for me to stand up against it ready for someone to come rushing out. Elijah kicks the bottom of the door and quickly stands behind me. A brief moment of silent then a defiant "WHOSE THERE?" by the Overseer. "Hit it again!" Elijah said. I took the ass end of the shotgun and bashed it into the door, then stick to the wall once again. The door pops open but nobody comes rushing out. I wanted to peek in but I wasn't sure if I would get my fucking head blown off. Plus there is a good chance there is a female who doesn't deserve to die inside of the room with the Overseer. There isn't a single female I can think of in the Vault that would be in there 'willingly' with the Overseer, and I sure don't know any female in the Vault who deserves to die. Nervous, I'm staring at the open door from the wall next to it with one eye closed, focusing like a sniper. All the sudden the lady I saw outside the Vault the first day, with those two children, came tip toeing out of the room, bare naked. She almost immediately laid eyes on me, but pretended not to look like she noticed to the Overseer. "Who's out there Juliet?" the Overseer says. Elijah come standing right next to me and puts his finger over his mouth as to tell Juliet to not say anything. She looked frightened. She is naked as the day she was born. She is beautiful. She is the first naked female I've seen since I started dating my Wife. "I can't see anybody, its so dark out here." Juliet says. "God damn it I'll kill somebody I swear to god Juliet, find what made that noise." the Overseer said. I could imagine he's in bed still naked with a gun pointed towards the door waiting for someone to come rushing in. Elijah took his shirt off and handed it to Juliet. Calvin came up and put his arm around her and pushed her up against the wall behind Elijah. I shot the floor in front of where I was standing. Juliet screamed, but I didn't care. Maybe the Overseer thought his girlfriend has been killed and he will come rushing out. I heard shuffling around in the room almost immediately, and within moments the Overseer came running out in nothing but a pair of silk briefs. He didn't even see all three of us before I had his brains splattered up against the wall. I unloaded three more senseless rounds into his chest, belly, and crotch. He was a pile of flesh, mush, and bone when I had finshed. For a few seconds, parts of him fell off the wall that had sprayed out from the back of his head. "Oh my God you killed the Overseer!" Juliet said "Why did you do that!?" "Were going home, wanna come with us?!" Calvin said "Are you serious?" Juliet said "Yes, but were going soon, were not letting anyone else know. If your gonna wanna come with your going to have to come with what you have, you can't go back to your room and alert the others of what you are planning on doing. We want a little bit of a head-start." Calvin said "I understand. Oh my god, how in the hell do you know we can get out of here?" Juliet said "How do you know its safe outside?" "We got enough information just a little bit ago from fuck-face's Protege and we couldn't do nothing but seize the immediatley opportunity. Calvin said. "This is the best day in my entire life." Juliet said. We spent the next couple minutes looting what was left of the Overseers body, his bedroom and living quarters before rallying back up in the hallway. "We got off to a odd start." Juliet says. "I'm Juliet. I typically don't meet many people fully naked, and it feels good to finally meet you guys fully clothed." Elijah laughed and extended his hand. "Elijah, I've seen you around here and there, but never got a chance to really meet you." "Calvin." Calvin says. "Us three are responsible for everyone in here not going hungary! Liam, Elijah and myself are the Chefs here at the State Street Vault!" he seemed so proud of what he was saying. "Although something tells me that making a resume wont be my biggest concern once we get back up Above." "Indeed. Now lets go wake up Tommy before he comes finds a dead Overseer." Elijah suggests. Now the four of us walk down the hallway towards Tommy's living quarters. Because he is the Protege, he lives in his own room as well. "Family!?" Juliet says as she notices the tattoo on the back of Elijah's back, as he just had put his shirt back on as we were walking down the hallway. "Family!" Elijah says as he turns around. "These guys. They are my family. They have it too. We've been struggling through the good and the bad since the days the Vault closed, together. We've shared almost every breathing moment together, and Family is how we represent that to everyone else." "You guys must be pretty close." she said to us. "Did you guys think we were gonna die in here too?" "We were all ready for anything I guess." Calvin said. "Well if we really are leaving I'm going to be quite happy. I've been the Overseers slave for the past couple of years, and I was at wits-end. I was ready to die. I barely know you guys but I feel like I owe you each everything." "We're all in this together." I said to her. "Your Liam. You don't talk much?" Juliet says. "It's not that he don't talk much, he's just shy. Once you get this guy started, he won't shut the fuck up." Calvin says. Elijah laughs. "Yeah I guess I'm not much of a talker." I said to her. We continue down the hallway and approach the Protege's door. Calvin pounds on the door, as it was locked. Tommy comes to the door almost immediately. Perhaps he too was used to getting late night 'summonings' from the Overseer too. The kid looks a little too goofy to be straight anyhow. "What the fuck are you guys doing here? Get out of here before the Overseer finds you out here." Tommy says. "But Tommy, the Overseer has already seen us in the hallway." Elijah said. Juliet let out a guilty giggle, then quickly covered her mouth. "What are you doing with these guys anyway, Juliet?" Tommy asks her. Perhaps he knew of the engagement the Overseer and Juliet had. Or the engagement that the Overseer had ON Juliet may be a better way to put it. "I made some new friends Tommy" she said. "What do you mean the Overseer saw you out here? You would all be in big trouble if he saw you out here." Tommy said. "Do I have to spell it out for you?" Calvin said. "Your the fucking Overseer!" Soon as Calvin said that I cocked the shotgun again. Elijah interrupted. "Now let's go open that Vault, son!" "WHAT!? Are you fucking serious? You KILLED THE FUCKING OVERSEER?" Tommy's face got flush. We kept staring at him but Juliet looked around for other people who may have heard what Tommy just yelled out. Nobody came out of their room. After a second of looking like he was going to throw up, Tommy all the sudden came to the realisation that he was now the new Overseer. Relief washed over him. "Now we just can't go opening the door just yet we need to have our evacuation process properly in line first." I held up the shotgun and step an inch closer to Tommy. "Tommy the evacuation process stopped fucking mattering the day you realised you didn't have the balls to step up to the Overseer when you know there's a large populace of people that want out more than anything else in this world. You have robbed us of time. If you rob us of any more, I will personally kill you myself." "Why would you do that, I'm the only one who can open those doors anyway. If you kill me your stuck in this Vault forever anyway." "Who said anything about killing you? I'm going to peel your finger-nails out one by one and sprinkle salt on your bleeding fingers. I'm going to tape your eyes open and drip gasoline in your eyes to keep you awake. Then I'm going…" "OH MY GOD! Stop it already. Fucking Jesus Christ!" Tommy interupts me "I thought we were friends." "It's called tough love." I said. "I can't believe we are going to open the doors," Tommy says like a slave who just got put in his place "Let me put some proper clothes on and we'll be on our way." Elijah grabs the back of Tommy's collar as he turns around. "This ain't no mother fucking fashion show Tommy, your going there like this." Tommy is wearing his Vault assigned nightware. "Alright fine, whatever." Tommy says. "I assume you guys are all packed and ready to go?" He looks at all us with our backpacks bursting full. Tommy leads us down to the Vault entrance. It seemed like the longest walk ever. I kept our shotgun close at hand in case Tommy tried some sudden unfamiliar shit with us. But he didn't. Perhaps he was genuine in all the things he said and soon open these gates again when everyone is prepared to leave. As we approach the Vault Entrance, the three of us got a eery feeling of rememberance in our stomaches. This is where we laid out Thomas for doing in Caleb. I've been here a few times since the incident. I know that Calvin has avoided this area like the plague since he killed Thomas. Despite the enthusiasm I saw in his eyes that night, from that point on it knew deep-down that it really bothered him how horribly he did Thomas in. What Thomas did to Caleb, both for reason and the nature of the act itself were completely fucked, but Calvin got pre-historic on him. "As soon as I iniciate the sequence to open this door, alarms will go off thoughout the building, just to give you guys a heads up. I'm sure there will be tons of people that flood this room the minute it starts. None of us gave a fuck. We had what we needed to get the fuck out of the Vault, we were ready for the open world. We wanted to see what was in store for us. We all stood behind Tommy like we knew what he was doing at the terminal. He was typing two hundred miles an hour. His hair was all messed up, as he had been awoken from sleep. You could tell he knew what he was doing on that machine. He probably is the happiest person in the world to be sitting at a terminal, throwing commands here and there. To him he probably feels like he is at 'home'. This is probably how he could suffice not being let free, cos he had all the luxuries he had at home in the Vault, and mind-blistering technology at that. My respect for him and his ways, takes a backseat to the Family being released up Above once again. "Alright guys, here we go!" Tommy says. I walked towards the door. Tommy started pounding on the buttons even faster than he had been, and all the sudden those rotating red lights started going off in the Vault Entrance room. Then the alarm. Steam burst from the seal around the cog shaped door and a deep rumbling that surely woke up every single person in the entire Vault let loose. Calvin and Elijah stood next to each other, they looked at each other and they high-fived each other. Juliet went to take my hand and I instintivly pulled away. I looked at her, I felt bad for pulling away, but I don't want to make her feel like I'm trying to fuck her either. She looks over at me and holds up her left hand, showing me her wedding band. She has one too. I looked at her and smiled, and took her hand back. I looked forward with her, and the Vault door started to come towards us. It came forward a few feet and then slid to the side. Through the hole in the wall that the door made, hell exposed itself on the other side. We proceeded forward through the door and we stood near the entrance to the Vault on the other side. We were standing in the large lobby area that looked like an arena when we came in. It is a dark, black room now. Light is coming in from a hole on the opposing wall, but the entire room looks like it has soot on it. We all turned around and saw that Tommy had gotten up and walked out behind us. "Oh my god." Tommy says. "Its worse out here than I thought it would be." I turned around and walked up to Tommy. "Thank you." I said. "You left me no choice. It's not going to be anything good out there. I hope you guys realise that by leaving your not welcome back." Tommy said. "Yeah we know that." I said. "Alright! Elijah, Calvin, Juliet, Liam, safe travels." Tommy says "It was a pleasure to know you guys. This is quite possibly the last time we will see each other." Adrenaline overcame me. What if this guy didn't let the rest of the Vault Residents out? True the Above ground life does not look promising, but is is worth not giving a chance? I pulled up the shotgun and cocked it. "This IS the last time you see anyone Tommy. You can't be trusted with the lives of those in the Vault. I saw two people back in the Vault Entrance looking out at us, right before I shot Tommy in the chest. "HOLY SHIT!" Calvin said. "Liam your a fucking animal!" "Thanks." I said. "I suppose he's got nothing on him. Let's get the fuck out of here." Juliet seemed shockingly calm with all the killing she has seen. I wonder what she did before the War. We walked towards the other end of the large lobby area to see what was on the outside. Our shoes had become quite dirty already from the shit that was all over the ground. "What the hell?" Elijah says as he trips on something that was on the floor. He looks down at what tripped him up and saw that it was a long piece of wood. He leaned over to pick it up and we all saw that it was a picket-sign. The side facing up was covered with soot like everything. The other side had text on it. "LET US IN -- WE'RE GOING TO DIE OUT HERE!" As we all looked at the sign we all felt a little bad. "Wow." Juliet said. "I wonder how many people were out here when the bombs fell?" Elijah tossed down the sign and we continued on. Calvin screams out "SHIT!" and points to in front of his feet. Bones. Lots of bones. Entire skeletons. Several of them. Laid out on the floor like they were on display in a museum. "We must've been in there a little too early if there was time for people to try and come in." Elijah said. For a moment life in the Vault seemed a little comforting. We've seen quite a deary look of the world so far and we haven't even made it outside. We continue on yet again, avoiding the skeletons on the floor of the Vault's main lobby. "I can see it, I can see outside!" Elijah says and he starts to run forward. What is left of the iron gate that was in front of the Vault has been reduced to what looked like half-melted plastic on top of a campfire. It was amazing. You didn't think such a thing was possible. It looked surreal. When we ducked down and squeezed through the mangled bars of the iron gate, reality checked in, full-impact. The world looked like nothing we imagined. I'm not sure what any of these three expected to see, but when I had imagined that the world was destroyed I had this idea of everything being "gone". The world that us four were looking at was much like it was before. Some of the buildings were still standing, but they looked like they had been vacant for many, many years. Also of the buildings that were still standing, it looked like one of each of their four walls had been removed. It almost looked like the buildings all looked like ones that they would use to record a sitcom in. They look like fake buildings with half of it missing so that the cameras can get in there and record. I had taken a tour of one of the "movie blocks" in California while on vacation with the Wife back in the day after we were first married. "I can't believe it." Calvin said. "We're outside, and its not what I expected." "What did you expect?" Juliet said "I'm not sure, but THIS wasn't it." Calvin said. "Yeah, me too. I wasn't expected to be greeted by people waiting for us to come out, but I guess I expected to see SOMETHING different." The world looked like it had been painted in soot several times over as well. Everything was dirty. There was garbage and paper and shit everywhere. You couldn't tell where the street once was, and where it turned to grass. There wasn't grass to be seen. You didn't see green trees that circled the parking lot. Of the 'trees' that were still standing they looked like metal frames that were built to look like trees. Everything looked like it was burnt. It was night-time, but there was an eery orange/purple glow to the skyline. None of us really knew what to do next. "So, now what?" I asked the group. "Well it doesn't really help with it being night-time." Calvin says. "I'd suggest we just camp out here but I'm afraid that people will start leaving the Vault and I don't want nobody looting our shit while we are catching some ZZZ's. "Lets just find some cover over our heads then, somewhere close, until the day-light comes and we'll start moving then." Elijah said. We all agreed. "Before we go, we should make sure we're all armed with something to defend ourselves with. We have no idea what is out there." Calvin says. "I'm good." I said. "Good here too." Elijah said. "I've got those brass knuckles, but we also got those two firearms from the Overseers office." Calvin said, crotching down and opening up his bag. He pulled out both of the guns and walked over to Juliet and handed her one. "Are you sure?" she said "Will you trust me with it?" "I trust anyone who lived through what we just escaped from." Calvin said. "Family?" "Family." she said. Calvin hugged her. Elijah walked over to her and so did I. Elijah hugged Calvin and Juliet at the same time, so I joined in. I could feel the power, pain, adrenaline, and anxiety channeling through us like a bolt of electricity. We could have powered the Vault for a day with the energy running rampant through us. We all stepped away from each other after a genuine and pure moment of love shared between each and every one of us, and we looked towards where the parking lot where Calvin and I had parked all those years ago. Skeletons of vehicles lay dormant in the spots they were once parked, a few missing. Their parts scattered about like a gust of wind on a card game played in some Vault Living Quarters. "Which way?" Juliet asked us. "Doesn't matter to me." Elijah said. Calvin suggested we start walking up State Street, which ran East/West. It felt good to think I was ON State Street again, despite it looking like its been through hell and back, twice. We all started to walk very slowly up State Street, taking every slight noise into consideration before moving foward. \--- THREE MONTHS LATER --- Three-months ago yesterday we stepped outside of the Vault in the middle of the night. If you were to measure our progress since leaving the Vault you might think it would have been better if we stayed. We are hungary, Elijah is missing, and each of us have almost died several dozen times. It's especially hard for Juliet, or Jewls as we now call her. We learned early on by a Traveling Merchant named Wolfgang that names that were established "before the War" should not be used in the "Wasteland". The Wasteland. That is widely accepted term used to describe what we once referred to as "Mother Earth". The Wasteland. Or the "Wastes" for short. Wolfgang is part of a network of travelling merchants that try and cooperate in a pre-war like setting. He travels with his Brahmin, and a Merchant Protector. He was actually the first person we came across while venturing into the Wastes, and we welcomed us with open arms. Laughing, calling us "virgins" when he first met us, based on our Vault-issued clothing and our use of Pre-War names. Without any proper time-keeping device, its assumed that Wolfgang passes our area ever three weeks or so. He stays within feasible walking distance from our shack, where on a safe night we could all go and talk with him at the same time without having to worry about getting out belongings stolen while we were away. Wolfgang was about six feet tall, solid built and had shoulder length hair that he kept tied back. None of us have seem him with his hair down. Nobody talks about how old they are, but you could assume Wolfgang was in his middle-thirties, around the same age as all of us. With the lack of a serious financial institution to support an official money system, transactions between merchants and customers were done with bottle caps. Nuka Cola was a popular soft drink from the Pre-War era. Its company, althought not recognised as such at the time, was a true representation of American lifestyle. It was protrayed in their commercials, their company, and in the drink itself. While even Wolfgang himself didn't seem to know how or why bottlecaps started becoming the widely accepted 'money' of the Wasteland, he did tell us that due to their slightly rare nature, massive trading was still done in the prehistoric bartering system. Another part of the Wasteland Financial System was that if a merchant or two selling parties had something both of them wanted to get from each other but there were not enough caps between the two of them to satisfy the deal, material items that had openly accepted values were trades as if they were caps themselves. Perhaps the most common example of this is Nuka Colas themselves. There are Nuka Colas still in their glass bottles that you can find when you go out scaving, and everybody knows that you don't get anything less than twenty-caps for an unopened Nuka Cola, anything other than twenty would be more. This is just Wasteland Nature. Wolfgang taught us all we knew about the Wasteland Financial System. Its easy to take it off the cuff and laugh about it, but nobody's laughing when you ain't got the caps to get ammunition for your weapon. Jewls, Cal and I (I'm going by the name of Six now -- sort of permenant recognition to the years we spent in the Vault) live under the strange sanctuary of two buildings that have fallen over and into each other. It would have been a Pre-War child's paradise of a fort to hang out with his friends. But this was "our" home. This is what we fought for everyday to keep. It wasn't that bad. You were not under constant threat of attack or anything, but if your wits and power was tested, it was almost always tested to its limits. Your daily concern of course was the actual living quarters, first and foremost. Perpetually moving throughout the Waste with your thumb up your ass didn't get you nowhere but robbed and murdered. This was a tip of Wolfgangs. You need a place to spread out your things so when your out about the Wastes moving around you have a very light load, so if you do scave anything you have all the strength and room to carry everything you can. You run around during the day with a small bit of food (if there is any to be had on any single person), some clothing, armor if you can have it, and your weapon. A weapon is an absolute must. You might as well walk around with your pants off if you cannot afford yourself the neccessity of a weapon. If your not getting shot at by random people passing by then your are getting attacked by some of the newly founded wildlife that extists in the the Wastes. Yao Guai, Mole Rats, Radscorpions, and other random creatures all await your next failed move, ready to take you and yours. Elijah's disappearance is a reminder of the other human threats that are out there in the Wastes. Slavers, SKIN, Raiders, Mercs, Mobsters, Religious Freaks, and the Prophets all posed great threat to your livihood on a daily basis. The Slavers were the reason that Elijah was taken from us. One night while we were all asleep, some Slavers came and raided our pad and bagged Elijah and ran off with him before any of us even woke up. With part of the Family missing, a little part of our souls were missing. Elijah has been by the side of Cal and I for years, and to have a brother gone now, is almost too much to bear. With the lack of a formal government, the Wastes pretty much ruled itself in all its anarchic ways. If you wanted something you either traded or took it, you someone takes your stuff you go and get it back. If they shoot at you, you shoot back. If they take an inch your more than welcome to take a mile. Or vice-versa. The Wasteland was no paradise, but it was absolute freedom by its very definition. With crime and punishment absent in the Wasteland as well, certain things that were deemed 'crimes against nature' in the Pre-War era, because commonground once again after the War. The most simple and American example of this the reenactment of openly practiced slavery. Slavers were one of the most horrific forces in the Wasteland. They didn't pack much of a punch, but if you were caught up into being a slave, your life was pretty much over. Race wasn't an issue, if you were caught without your eyes on the back of your head peeled, suddenly you may find yourself a slave. Women were pretty much safe from being enslaved too much, but likely would be hawked to the SKIN, who before the War were the Who's Who of the Porn Industry. While money didn't seem to matter anymore once the bombs fell, money sure played a factor into how people were prepared and endured the apocalypse. Therefore the filthy rich were just as likely to live a life of posh-luxury during the final moments of the War as the common-man was to die during the nuclear fire. The factions that ran through the Wastes had odd relationships and they depended on one another, despite each of thier overwhelming desire to be unique and 'set apart' from the other factions. Raiders were basically just "professional scavers" that scaved as part of a large-network of Raiders who collectively pooled their goods and sold them to the Traveling Merchants and shared the wealth in a Communism-like fashion. The Raiders were a roaming kind, with no real permenant settlements anywhere that our Family knew of. You knew a Raider camp from far away, as they're temporary camps flew red banners to let Travelling Merchants know their had goods for sale. Mercs were people who went around doing 'jobs' for people. Their specialty is violence, and they have a trademark lack of respect for life. Many believe that Mercs started out by Pre-War police officers and other law enforcement personnel as to cure their 'itch' for 'bringing down the hammer of justice' to those in the Wastes. While scaving one day a few weeks back we stumbled across the rotting corpse of someone who was once a Merc. We got some extrodinary loot off the guy, but he had a contract on his person. He was to infiltrate a locale Raider camp and return some stolen property for the person who had hired him. That person will never get their pocessions back, as the Merc laid face down in a dried pool of his own blood. His skull partially chewed away by whatever animal came across it. Relgious Freaks. There were so many different kinds of Relgious Freaks out there, its kind of hard to keep track of. Many of the most popular Pre-War Religions that had very well planted origins, almost all still existed after the bombs fell. Each of them not shockingly have spiritual reasonings for why their respective Gods let this happen to the world without "intervening" in any way. The Catholic Church was probably the biggest force of the religions out there, much like it was before the War. Without anyone but "God" to report to, the Church had definitely taken a more dominant and strict approach to their approach. They instill their beliefs in a much more smash-mouth fashion. Many insisted the Church was "forcing God down your throat" before the War. If that was indeed true, then the reality of today is that the Church has cut into your chest and started forcing God into your stomach, freeing you from the option to make a choice for yourself. Their superior wealth has kept them very soft since the bombs fell and many have continued to live out their days within the confides of the Church without acknowledging what has happened to the world around them. Prophets were some of the big name "Non-Profit" groups that existed before the War. Goodwill, the Salvation Army, St. Vincent DePaul, Hungar Task Force were examples of some of the groups that still exist today. They each take on different names, even some different depending who they talk to. They exist as sort of a 'religious' entity in a way. They function like a faction like the Raiders or Slavers, they have their own 'guidelines' and 'ideal views' for the world, and they don't like outsiders. They look at each other like Family. They do not look at each other the same way that we looked at each other like Family. They couldn't have a single idea of what Family is like, but they have a strong following in whatever robe they wear. Many of the Prophets, not matter what they claim to represent are basically just a bunch of looters and thugs no matter what colours they are wearing. Six-Months into the Wasteland, we considered outselves "weathered" to the Wastes. The sun didn't bother our eyes as much as it once had, people didn't seem as scary as they did when we first entered the new world, and we didn't live in fear everyday. We started to accept living in the Wastes as reality. During our initial months, deep down I know Cal and Jewls wished that perhaps we had stayed in the Vault. The food all tasted like shit, hunting wasn't a specialty of any of ours, and cooking without a kitchen certainly wasn't either Cal's or my stong suit. Twice since leaving the Vault have we attempted to make it up to the Milwaukee Avenue Vault area, but have failed horribly. There are too many Raider Camps, patroling Slavers, random phycotic murders and SKIN lurking everywhere. Because of how far the Milwaukee Avenue Vault was from where we were camping, each time we attempted to journey to the other Vault, we took all our possessions with us. The last attempt was the worst thing to happen to use since Elijah was taken from us by the Slavers. While trying to snake through the rubble to find new grounds for a camp, Jewls was kidnapped from us by some members of SKIN. Luckily Cal and I were able to hold our ground for several hours outside of the remote SKIN shack, and raided it in the middle of the night, freeing Jewl and acquiring some wonderful loot as well. Jewls got herself a sexy hand-gun that the guy who raped her had. He was the first person Cal and I saw Jewls kill. It was reminisent of when I killed the Overseer, the way I saw the adrenaline and animal in her take over. Early one morning, Jewls wakes me up from a rare deep sleep. "Can I talk to you for a minute outside?" she asks me. I sat up from my flat fabric pile of a bed and yawned. I put my fingers through my hair and stood up. Jewls walks out in front of the shack and I follow her out. "What's up?" I asked. "I think I'm going to leave you guys." she said to me. My heart trembled. The idea of it just being Cal and I was too heart-breaking. I look at her with a serious but concerned look on my face. "Why?" I said. "I'm dying inside trying to find my Husband." she said to me as her eyes start to tear up. "I think I have a better chance of finding him if I leave you guys, and try to find him on my own. My husband had a Platinum Pass, and I'm positive he made it safe to a Vault somewhere in this god-damn Wasteland, and its my life's goal to find him and live out the rest of my days with him by my side." "You think I don't spend every moment of every single day thinking about my Wife?" I said to her in a harsh tone "How dare you even think about leaving us? Your part of our family, with you gone your going to put a hole in our lives as well." "Cal could give a fuck about you or me." she says "Can't you see that? If given the proper opportunity, Cal would leave us on our backs in a heart-beat. He reminds me of so many men I knew before the War. He forced us out of the Vault prematurely, and its because of this that we are are sitting within a mile of the Vault we wandered out of SIX MONTHS AGO!" "What are you talking about? How would we have gotten farther if we had stayed? What are going on about?" I said. "Pip-Boys" she said. "Pip-Boys?" I asked. "Yes. They were provided by the thousands to every Vault as part of our evacuation plan. This "Family" of ours was too pig-headed to find out where these Pip-Boys were before we fucked off the Vault. Didn't you read your Vault Manual?" she asks of me. I didn't take the Vault reality seriously so I haven't studied up like I possibly should have. Jewls was serious about the reality of needed these "Pip-Boys". She told me they were specifically designed by RobCo to provide Wasteland wanderers with some for of "headway" as to their immediate surroundings. Jewls and I sat down outside the shack and she discussed the Pip boys with me. PIP stood for Personal Information Processor. She told me they would provide you with a compassing system, had a Geiger Counter on them, could broadcast locale radio frequencies, and had the functionality to load and save information on "holodisks" which were these small matchbook sized disks that had a strong square metal frame and looked like a halographic glass image inside of the box. We had found several of these "holodisks" around the Wasteland and just sold them off to Wolfgang cos they all seemed to fetch a good amount of caps. "For all we know those holotapes we have been selling off to Wolfgang were those that contained messages from our loved ones that said they came to our Vault looking for us but saw we were still 'locked up' and left us clues to where to look for him." she said. The idea overwhelmed me. If my Wife made it out of her Vault and came looking for me and left her voice on one of these holodisks, hoping that it might one day reach me is too much to bear. I'm overcame with the desire to bring this up to Cal, who since Elijah's disapperance been hell-bent on finding members of this god-forsaken "Enclave" faction he used to speak of before the War. The Enclave although not outspoken on their beliefs, were very prejudge against anyone who was "pure American", which to them mean, "not-White". Cal didn't push the Enclave envelope when we were in the Vault, as Elijah was black, or perhaps it was because he had assumed we were going to die inside of those metal walls. When it was apparent to us that Elijah wouldn't be returning to us, Cal started up on the Enclave business again. Preachig to us how "us three will not survive alone" and the need to "join a bigger cause" were common conversations. Jewls never seemed very interested in what he spoke of, and I could tell it was starting to wear on Cal's nerves. "So what do you think we should do?" I asked Jewls. "I've come to a point in my life where I don't really care about what you guys do, but I have made up my mind. I am leaving. I will return to our Vault and get a Pip-Boy and then start back over from the beginning. It may be moving backwards, but I feel like were just running in circles out here." Jewls said. "Do you even know where the Vault is from here?" I asked her. "No," she said "but I will find my way. We did, right?" I nodded to her. She was serious about leaving. I feared for her safety, cos no matter if she planned on leaving unannounced or leaving with hugs and kisses, I knew there was no way in hell that Cal was going to let her walk away with too many (if any) supplies of ours, let alone a weapon. She had the pistol that she had taken from the guy who kidnapped her, but Cal carried all the ammunition. "So I'm going to go in there and tell Cal that I'm leaving, and no matter what he says about it, I'm leaving immediately afterwards." she said "Nobody is stopping me." She walked past me, brushing my shoulder as she passed. She walked into the shack and almost immediately I heard Cal get all loud with her. "What are you waiting for?" he screamed. Then the shouting calmed down a bit and silence persisted. For a moment I thought maybe he had killed her, nothing in the world could bring me to go into that shack and hear them bark at each other. They hadn't really meshed all that well since we started our journey together and I've been convinced since the moment we found her in the Overseers room that the only reason Cal allowed her to come along was because she was at the wrong place at the wrong time. He didn't even let her go back to her room to get proper clothing, she was forced out into the Wastes with her Vault-issued Nightwares on. I couldn't hold anything against her for wanting to return to the Vault to look for these Pip-Boys. The chances of the Vault being raided and looted were very high. The Wasteland was young, it was changing on a daily basis. For all Jewls knew the Vault was burned to the ground, but her crushing drive to return there all in aide of the higher agenda of finding her husband made me respect and honour her in a whole new way. Cal comes charging out of the shack and walking towards me like he was about to attack me. I even took a step back when he got up real close. "Do you get a load of this?" Cal says "This bitch wants to leave us after all we have done for her!? What do you think of that shit?" "I personally can't blame her for wanting to return." I said to him in a defiant voice I've never used with Cal before. "The Wasteland has changed all of us. When we were all in the Vault, talking our Family stuff, you didn't speak of that Enclave business, and now that we've been out in the Wastes for a few months your all the sudden all about it again. The Wastes have changed me too. When we were locked up in a metal room, and before the end of the War, all that Enclave business just seemed like jargon to me, and I only put up with it because I never thought anything would become of it. Now that I've been out here in the Wastes, and I have seen all the things that I have seen I can say with absolute certainty that all that Enclave business is a bunch of shit. Why in the fuck would you want to try and rekindle the kind of America we had before the War when it was those ideal that got us to the point of destroying the world in the first place!?" I said "I mean come on man think about it. What is our plan right now as a group? I'm convinced you've kept up in this little metal shack until one day Jewls or myself basically surredners our pride to you and offers to cozy up to your Enclave idea. If there even IS such a thing known as the Enclave out there, I want nothing to do with it." "I can't believe you." Cal said "After all I have done for you." I cut him off: "I've had a long fucking time to think about that. I've pretty much come to the conclusion that I would have been able to make it to Milwaukee Avenue in time. I could be with my Wife right now." "You always were such a soft bitch." he said to me. He took two steps back and spit on the ground in front of my feet. It took the all of me not to rush him. He would have been able to dismantle me almost instantly. I had beefed up considerably in regards to my own personal self, but in comparison to Cal I would be childs play in hand to hand combat. He turned around and walked back into the shack and suddenly you started hearing all this shit banging around. I ran into the shack to see him throwing everything in a big pile in the center of the room. "What are you doing?" I asked him. "You heartless bastards wanna leave, and every part of me wants me to tell you to just take your shit and leave, but instead of being a selfish pig I want to pool everything together and we'll divide it evenly." Cal said. "So down the line when your suffering your last days in the Wastes you can't say it was me that fucked you over." Despite his harshess about our desire to leave, he was being quite respectable towards us. I'm not sure he would have offered Jewls herself the warmest of departures if she was leaving alone, I think he's giving us a little bit of a break because he knows I'm going with her. How could I not? We've been hanging out in this shack not two, three miles from the Vault we left in, sitting ducks, with our thumb up our ass. I'm not sure that leaving Cal is the right choice, but it seems like a 'better choice' than staying with him. Jewls walked over to me. "Your leaving to?" she asked. "I'm going to come with you, I can't let you leave alone!?" I said. She got very defensive all the sudden and barked: "What, you don't think I can handle it alone out there in the Wastes? You think I'm some of Vault virgin? I've got a lesson or two I could teach you about life." "Its not that I don't think you can't hold you own out there, your intentions for leaving are reflections of my own. I want to find our spouses, together." I said. For a moment I thought she would continue to bark about how I was trying to "care for her" by wanting to go alongside her back into the Wastes. Truth be told, her drive to find her husband is enough for me to want to go with her. Cal didn't have a girlfriend or Wife before the bombs fell, he lived alone for as long as I knew him and he didn't seem to care to much about being alone so why would the world ending change any of that? "You guys can take all of this stuff, and I'll take this here stuff." Cal said to Jewls "Look about fair to you?" Jewls walked over and overlooked the rationed out portions of all our belongings divided in two. Jewls nodded that she thought the splitting of items was indeed fair and she started to pack it into the bags we used when whenever we move around. I went over and helped her. We packed up our things and we all walked outside. "So this is it, huh?" Cal said to me. "Liam (using my Pre-War name), you may have always been a softie, but I always loved you like a brother. It has been an honour to go through the struggle of the Vault with you and Elijah. It was sad to see Elijah taken from us, and its going to be even harder to see you go. I love you like a brother." He walked up to me and pulled me in close for a hug. I hugged him back like you would hug a Father, or a long-lost relative. "I love you too, Calvin." I said. "I really do." Jewls and Calvin exchanged hugs, and she even kissed him on the lips in almost a romantic fashion. Neighter of them looked mad at each other anymore. Cal perhaps was starting to realise that we were actually going to be leaving him to be on his own. "So what is it for you?" I asked. "You really going to try and find the Enclave?" "To live up to my Grandfather's legacy I have to at least find out what happened to them." Calvin said. "If there is any hope of them actually being around, I need to find them. I owe that to my Grandfather. I told him I would." "Well if we see you again out here in the Wastes, let it be known it will be met with the same amount of honour and respect that I leave you with today." I said to him. I walked over to Jewls and I put my arm around her. "We are going to try to find our spouses." "Good luck with that. If we ever cross paths again, let it be in peace Liam." Calvin said. "It will be, Cal. Always." Jewls said to him. I extended my hand and gave Calvin, my best friend on this earth a final handshake. We exchanged a final smile and a tear and we turned around. Taking only a few paces, I get this sudden rush of fear that ran thoughout my entire body. I quickly turned around to see Calvin, who looks like he just got a little rush of fear run through him as well. Perhaps out deeper subconsciouses didn't have complete faith that the other one wouldn't kill the other as we try to turn and walk away. Whatever the case, I waved to him again, and he waved back. Jewls and I walked off in the opposite direction of Cal, and eventually our distances got too far to see, and we faded into the distances of each other. "Well then, I guess this is for real?" I asked Jewls "We're really on our own, aren't we?" "Yes, don't worry. I know how comforting it was to have Cal with us, but I think after a little bit of time alone we'll make due just fine." said Jewls. "I've been thinking about this for quite some time, I think if we head this way, we'll make it back to the Vault." She had a strong sense of direction despite the world being destroyed around us. I was somewhat new the city, as I had just moved to it when I finally married the Wife. I had lived outside in a small town during the time the Wife & I dated. She had a strong attachment to the city, and I let her drive to stay in the city become one of my own after being married a short time. The peace and quiet was nice and all outside the city where I had grew up, but everything else was a big hassle. Going to the store was a mini-adventure, nothing was open twenty-four hours out in the sticks and nothing was easy to do. My teenage years was peppered with criminal activity that gave me a bit of a 'reputation' with local law enforcement. Despite not getting into any real trouble once I started dating the Wife, the cops out where I grew up held grudges better than they "protected" or "served" and therefore I thought getting married would be a wise decision to do with a new county to live in. I'd paid out so much money in fine, and lawyer fees, court costs to the former county that I lived in that I promised to never spend another dime in the county, and swore to everyone I knew that I hated the county so much I would do anything in my god-given power to make sure the county doesn't succeed in anything they do. The highway I used to get into city was right over us, so I knew that Jewls knew that she was going in the right direction. I used to pass over the State Street Vault en route to the then girlfriends apartment, each and every weekend. We continued to follow under the crumbling highway structure, Jewls looking at the grounds in front of us, while she assigned me to keep our backed watched. We traveled for hours before even coming across another form of life. We narrowly escaped some patrolling Slavers. You can spot Slavers from a mile away. They were these awful shirts that are made of strips of brown leather. They look like some bondage porn stars the way they carry themselves. There were two of them that were walking alongside one of the many crumbling buildings that still stood in heart of the downtown area. They didn't see us, but Jewls noticed them from afar and we he hid in what used to be an alleyway, but had been reduced to a narrow crawlspace between the two buildings. We jammed ourselves in the little crevice and put some debris in front of us so that we were completely covered by the wastes of the Wasteland. Those Slavers must have been out looking for something speicific cos they were not acting in their normal behavioural manner. Slavers had just as much of a fear of getting caught up by random wildlife or much worse the members of SKIN. Especially the female Slavers. With their "bondage" outfits, they gave SKIN members a preview from afar as to what they looked like. A member of SKIN would attack a female and strip them nude, assess whether or not they had a good 'market value' and would either leave or take their victim. This explained any dead, nude women you found in the wasteland. If they were not taken by SKIN they were typically looted and left nude, or with clothing but all of their other items gone. An almost certain formula for death in the Wasteland. The Slavers we were hiding from eventually made way to spitting distance of where were packed into a small hole like rats hiding from a blood-thirty feline. "What the fuck!?" a grubby female Slaver voice said to the male Slaver she was with. "Where the hell are these Vault Virgins at?" "They'll turn up, we're more than likely early." the male says "I can't wait to get my hands on one of those Pip-Boys. You gonna keep yours or you gonna sell it off?" "I'm selling mine, the Wasteland is in my blood. I can smell radiation, I know when I'm hurt, and I don't have any use for those fucking holotapes. I didn't depend on anyone before the bombs, so I sure as fuck dont need to hear from anyone now." The Slavers talked about their Pip-Boy desires for a bit longer then all the sudden there was gunfire off in the distance and suddenly the Slavers yelled out something about the gunfire being "SKIN fire" and they took off. Jewls and I stayed in that hole for a little while longer. The gunshots didn't get any closer and I couldn't see anyone from the peeping hole I had in between the debris I pushed in front of our safety. We waited a few more moments, the sky had started to turn colours, which meant the afternoon was upon us. I pushed the debris out the way and we came sliding out like we were crawling out from a tunnel. To our shocking horror when I stood up all the sudden I heard voice from off in the distance. Then gunfire. "Oh my god, stay in there!" I barked at Jewls who was just sticking her head out of our hiding place. I quickly knelt down and pulled out my gun. Bullet started to break the rocks around me. I was so scared. I have never been shot at without Calvin around me, and I'm feeling lonely at this very moment. My apparel doesn't protect me too much, its got a few metal plates in it but it wont take much abuse before killing me, and my legs are completely unprotected. I ran forward a little bit as to make whoever is shooting at me give chase. A few buildings up there is an actual alleyway where two buildings hadn't fallen. As I approach the alley and run in between the two buildings the corner of the farthest building has a enormous chunk of the rock blown off by one of the appending bullets that were coming my way. Fear ran through me like electricy let loose on a pool of water. I felt energized, like I'm getting shot at for all the right reasons. There was this cloud of "protectivness" and "safety" that hung over me all the days in the Wastes from the day we left the Vault. I can say now that, that was not a cloud of anything. That was Calvin's presense blessing me those priceless emotions. I leaned up against the closest building to where the gunners were coming from. Pressed up hard against the wall, waiting for them to come at me. All the sudden what looked like a brown baseball flew past the alley way. "Fuck I missed." I heard someone scream to someone else. Then BOOM. An explosion of dust, debris and gunpowder everywhere. It distracted me. It had blown shit and dust everywhere, my vision started to get cloudy by all the shit that was kicked up by the explosion. Obviously a grenade or some sort of make-shit explosive device, my concentration on what it was was interuppted by a member of SKIN running into the alleyway. He was too close and I was too disorientated to shoot at him. So I sprang towards him, bringing him to the ground. I knew he was with someone else, and that they couldn't be too far behind. I knocked the wind out of the guy, but he was armed. His gun not a foot away from where I knocked him down. With time not on my side I did what seemed the most natural. I was straddling the guy from my takedown, and I took the thumb of my right hand I stuck it in his left eye. I pushed down until I knew my finger had gone into his head. It was a horrible feeling I hadn't felt in a while. Strangley it was familiar, much like removing the necks out of a twenty pound turkey at work. Except it was warm and you could feel life inside once my finger had poked through. Screaming on a level unheard of in my life the guy started shouting painful cries after what I just done. I pulled my finger out of his skull and hopped up. My right finger absoultely coated in warm, red blood. The red blood looked almost surreal due to the extreme lack of colour in the Wasteland. With almost everything shit brown, puke green, dark gray and black, seeing real blood almost looked animated. A second later his commrade came barreling into the alleyway as well. Except this guy I was ready for like I wanted to be ready for the first one. Two shots. One misplaced in the lower neck, and one in the face. I had wanted to plant the first one in the heart and the second in his face, but reagardless he fell like a lifeless manaquin the second I fired the second shot. Calvin would have said I was waisting bullets, but I don't like seeing people suffer like he did so I always fired until I knew. Until I just knew they were gone. Animals too, I still had a hard time dealing with hunting. Still screaming, the guy whose eye I had poked out was still on the ground screaming for dear life. His comrade had a rifle on him, so I picked it up and held the barrel of the gun with two hands and used the rifle like a sledge hammer on the screaming mans head to stop the screaming. It took a good four or five blows before the screaming stopped completely. The gun will have to be kept for personal use, as it is too dirty to be sold to any Travelling Merchant I've ever met. A shame too, I hate rifles. I ran back to the hole were were packing into and moved the debris out the way. "We're good, lets loot their bodies and get the fuck out of here." I said to Jewls as I stuck my hand in to help pull her out. She was crying. When I got her up and out of the hole, I asked her what was wrong. She hugged me very tightly. She was shaking. She had her left ear pressed up against the middle of my chest. She was REALLY shaking. She collected herself and she looked up at me. "I thought that was you screaming. I thought you dead." I shook it off with a little humour to try and perk her up: "Nah, your stuck with me for a little while yet." It worked. She giggled a little bit and we went and looted the bodies of the SKIN members. They had a lot of caps on them, which was good cos we didn't have many at all. We could almost afford to buy food for a few days, not having to hunt, but that's only if we found a merchant or food shack with a cook. They both had guns and a long knife. We really didn't want to have to carry anything else but when your in the Wastes like this you carry everything you can until your fucking arms can't take it anymore. You need to carry as much as you can so you can sell as much as you can. If its not bolted down take it, and trade it or use it to kill something, or sell it. This is natural. Jewls and I had been pretty lucky and almost all the killing had been done by Calvin. I had gone out with him and helped with hunting a few times but not as much as him that's for god-damn sure. The one guys clothing was too damaged to take, but we got the armor off the other guy. It was too big for both of us, but we would take that for selling as well. I am personally carrying two monster backpacks that are both falling apart, bursting with supplies, and two guns, no holsters. One the bloody rifle that we just got from the SKIN member and one cheap ass fucking handgun that I used to kill the other SKIN member. My clothing also has to weigh twenty pounds. My boots are steeltoed leather, my pants match Jewls, some military-grade cargo pants, and my metal-plated leather top above my undrshirt and dishrag scarf make for sluggish travel. Jewls is just as weighed down as I. She was carrying three handguns with no holsters, although she had kept one in her large backpack. She was also carrying two medium side bags as well, and although it may have not looked as much as I was carrying I knew it has to be close to weight cos I knew one of those bags were full of all of the ammuntion we had one between the two of us. Its for the simple task of carrying stuff around like this that peopel join factions. So they get some living quarter basically given to them, and even the smallest storage space -- many are happy with that. We kept walking throughout the day and continued until the light started to slip away. I had thought about suggesting we find a place to camp out for the night, when Jewls suggested that we keep walking into the night because she was certain we would make it back to the Vault before it got too late. "You think so?" I asked. "Seems like it would still be quite a a bit further." We hadn't been walking under the highway for too many hours, it would still be a while I thought. But she insisted we kept on going, setting up camp for the night with 'all this gear' would be dangerous. So we continued on. The afternoon slipped away and the night cast its haze upon us. We didn't stop walking. We walked for so long that eventually I had forgotten that I had been walking. It all became so routine. We didn't talk as much as we did when it was the three of us. We both kinda just kept our heads down and kept on moving foward. During the night your relied more on your hearing than you did on your vision. When it was dark in the Wasteland it was fucking dark. With no real colour to the world, when the sun went away this colourless world went almost entirely black. If you heard anything other than your own footsteps you were croutched on the ground focusing on which direction the noise came from. "LOOK!" Jewls said breaking the silence we had been sharing. "Look over there!" I looked forward and saw the faint outline of the old iron gates. We both looked at each other with a look of amazement, and then together we started running like Pre-War Olympians towards it. When we got the iron gates, we charged through them and into the lobby where the Vault Entrance was. Nothing really had changed from what our eyes could see. We hurried to the Vault Entrance, which was still wide open. What was left of Tommy lay where his body had fallen when I killed him the day we left the Vault. "What do you think is in there now?" I asked Jewls. "I hope nothing." she said. We walked into the Vault to a dark entrance room. We hurried through the room and into the network of hallways. No sign of life anywhere. We kept going through the hallways looking to hear or see anything, but there was nothing. The lights were flickering, as if something had troubled the power supply. "We don't still have a Vault Manual do we?" Jewl asked "No, I don't think so." I said. "You remember those metal boxes that were on the middle of the wall opposite the door of our rooms?" she asked. "Of course." I said. I had kept our deck of cards on top of that box in our room. "I think that is where our Pip-Boys are." she said. So first we made off to her old room. Any room we peeked our head into had looked like it had been looted itself, but with no bodies laying about we both had the safe assumption that our fellow Vault Residents had gone out into the Wasteland to find what they could still reclaim of their lives. We got to her old room. Everything she once owned was gone, clothes, personal belongings, eveyrthing. We walked up to the metal box opposite the rooms entrance and Jewls blew dust off of those small fingerpad on the top of the box. She looked up at the flickering lights and then at me: "I hope this still works." She put her finger on the pad and a noise of a failing computer buzzer went off. "Fuck." she said. She hit the box and all the sudden it made it another noise, and then a poof of steam come from around the box. Much like the Vault door made when we initially escaped. Then the box opened. Inside was four spots for four Pip-Boys. Three were missing, one was still there. It looked like a bracelet or giant watch for a giant. It obviously looked like it was meant to be worn on your forearm. "You know what.." I said to her. "Don't you remember our physicals always included us getting our arms measured." I giggled a little. "I always wondered what that was about." She picked up her Pip-Boy and held it in her hands. "Wow!" she said. She looked like the happiest person in the Wasteland. "This thing is going to come in handy" she said. We turned around to leave the room when all the sudden she stopped dead in her tracks. Stuck to the wall was a picture of who I assumed to be her husband. A pocket sized photo stuck to the wall next to one of the bunks. She walked over to the photo and stood there and stared at it for several minutes. I didn't interrupt her, I let her stand there for as long as she needed. I looked at the picture too and thought about my Wife. I put my arm around her and kissed the top of her head, as we stared at the picture together. I felt so connected to her while we stood there. I wanted to help her find her husband. I knew she was still genuinely attached to her husband and I respected that so much. Almost everyone in the Vault after a certain point had accepted this as their new reality, and they gave up on hope of the lives they had in the past. There were so few who didn't loose hope. Jewls and I never lost hope, and saw each day in the Vault as another day apart from the one we loved. "We should go" she said. She started to walk out the room. "Don't you want to take the picture?" I said to her, pointing at the picture. "No, it will just be too hard to look at." she started to walk down the hallway. I went out after her, but I quickly snatched the picture off the wall and stuffed it in my back pocket. We made way to my old room. Like Jewls old room, our room was looted as well, anything that we had left behind had been taken by someone else. I went up to the metal box and opened it with the fingerpad as Jewls had done with her box. There were four Pip-Boys inside of this box. "Should we take all of them and sell them like those Slavers were talking about?" I asked her. "Your fingerprint is only unlocking one of them." she said. She pulled up on the two that were right in front of here. They didn't budge. I picked up both in front of me, and only one of them came up. I looked at mine in a haze like she had done with hers. We took a seat at the table in the room. We both examined our Pip-Boys closer. There was a small plastic bag taped to the inside of the cuff. I couldn't figure out how to turn it on, and either could Jewls. She stuck her hand through the Pip-Boy and placed it on her forearm, and suddenly the screen popped on. "Oh my god!" she said flipping her arm past me so I could see the screen of her Pip-Boy. The screen was black with white text and it had a single line of text that read: "PLEASE REMOVE CLOTHING BETWEEN PIP-BOY AND FOREARM." "What the fuck?" I said. "What is that about?" She did as the screen said and all the sudden the Pip-Boy became fully fucntional. "Are you gonna put yours on?" she asked. "Yeah, yeah." I said. I put my arm in the Pip-Boy. My screen popped on as well. Both of our screens said "Vault-Tec Welcomes you to the Pip-Boy!" We looked at each other slightly confused, then focused back on the screen as all the sudden a video started playing. The first part of the video was an animation of this little cartoon character with is own Pip-Boy. The video referred to him as Vault Boy. They showed Vault Boy taking the pill that was in the plastic bag attached to the Pip-Boy and the video instructed us to do the same. The rest of the video showed what the Pip-Boy's functionality all included. Aside from its wonderful ability to swap and store data from the holodisks that we have up until this point been trading for caps with Travelling Merchants, the Pip-Boy also had an extraordinary mapping feature that was on every dashboard of every automobile out in the Pre-War era. The video told us that the satellites still work "up in space" and this is how Vault-Tec was able to bring such wonderful technology to the post-apocalyptic world. The tutorial continued on and told us that it would tell us if we were suffering from any ailiments on the screen, meaning somehow it would know if you were hurt. It also told us of our radio functionality, and that radio would be a primary way of communication in a post-apocalyptic world. The Geiger Counter was touted as the most important part of the Pip-Boy. At the end of the tutorial the last screen said something about "enjoying your nap" and that "general pain after the biometric lock has been put in place is normal". Jewls and were not sure of what that last screen meant but all the sudden both of us got really droopy eyed and all the sudden I felt the world collapse around me. When I woke up, almost immediately I was consumed with fear. Jewls wasn't in the room. I sat up, as I had fallen onto the floor. I screamed, there was a crushing pain in my left arm. It was coming from underneath the Pip-Boy. I tried to pull it off to see what was wrong with my arm when I came to the shocking reality of what had just happened. I couldn't budge the Pip-Boy at all. There was dried blood on my left hand as well. Without a clue as to how long I had been knocked out for, it was apparent to me that a "biometric lock" had something to do this Pip-Boy being attached to my arm, permanently. I got up off the floor and slapped myself around a bit, trying to recollect myself. I walked into the hallway, to find my next shocking discovery. Jewls bags were gone from the hallway. Mine looked like they had been rummaged through and indeed they had been. I ran back into our old room and was shocked to see my bloody rifle still on the ground in front of the box that had the Pip-Boys in them. My sidearm was also next to where I had fallen on the floor. If Jewls got up and left, and someone else came through here and looted my goods, whould by no means not come into the room and take my weapons. And therefore loot my body, and kill me if they saw I was still alive. Jewls must have woken up before me and looted my shit herself and left me here to die, leaving me my guns if I did wake up. She didn't leave me any of the ammunition. The only ammo I have for my weapons is what is inside of them already. Son of a fucking bitch. If I ever see her out in the Wasteland I swear to god I will kill her. Now I'm trapped in the Wasteland a lone wanderer. I picked up my bags from the hallway and took them into my old room, slamming them down on the table. I went and laid down on my old bed. I laid there for a few hours. I didn't sleep, I just stared at the ceiling. I thought about what I was going to do with my life. Jewls left, Cal is gone, Elijah is missing, and everyone else I've known for the last six years is either alive or dead outside somewhere roaming the Wasteland. But right now there isn't a single person that cares about where I am, or how I am doing, or is concerned about what I'm thinking. Maybe I should just stay here, I would die of starvation eventually. Or I should take one of my few remaining bullets and take my life in honour here on the bed I slept in waiting for all those years to get outside into a world that's given me nothing but greif and heart-ache. Even moreso than the world ending. I looked down at my Pip-Boy. The screen stared back at me when I touched the screen with my finger. It had a visually applealing interface to it. It kinda reminded you of super old, early 21st century "personal computer" operating system interface. The screen was black and everything else on the screen was white. You could change the colour. The default white, was called "grey". Green, which was called "banker". Blue, called "ocean", A light red was called "Cupid", while a light orange was called "Amber". I personally liked the amber colour the best. When I switched to the radio tab and scanned the area for frequencies, nothing was picked up. I assumed this was because of where my location had been. I sat up on the bed and hopped down. I walked over to my bags and picked each of them up and dumped them each on the floor. There wasn't anything of value that Jewls didn't loot from me. What a bitch. I can't believe she did me in so wrong. I didn't have anything but a dainty amount of caps in my pocket, but other than that I had nothing of any value what so ever. I would be starting over from scratch. She left me with mostly just apparel that wasn't worth shit, but was really fucking heavy. Some of it may have been worth money, some of it not. We didn't know, we just hoped Wolfgang would give up a good price for anything we would bring him. There wans't too much he wouldn't take. There was some stuff he would refuse, but not much. He didn't buy any "Aid" related items, or drugs, and he stayed away from "junk". Of the two bags that I had, one of them was really damaged. So I cut the straps off the poorly damaged one and tied the two of them together. I then used this new longer strap to tie around the bloody rifle I had. This way instead of having to carry it all the time, when I wasn't using it I could tie it around me and let it hang over my back while I walked around. This way I could keep my sidearm on me at all times, and pull out the rifle if I needed it. I looked at my Pip-Boy and noticed that the Vault Boy standing there in the stance of the VIRUTIAN MAN had a little 98% above the left arm. This must mean that my arm is almost healed from the Pip-Boy's initial biometric lock "setup". I continued to rummage through what was left of my things. I took any caps I had found stashed in all the crap we had just tossed inside these bags along the way, kept any AID and drugs, and ammo I found. There was little ammo stashed in side pockets of some of the apparel. No magazines tho. Its hard to fire at someone and have to take a time out and have to fill up a magazine with bullets before being able to refire. You learn to how to shoot good quickly or you learn how to get shot quickly. Fully booked by my own means, I'm stuffed comfortably with gear. I have the clothes I had walked into the Vault with Jewls on, and a spare set of good pants. I had a handful of ammuntion, some AID, some drugs, and a little bit of food. Before I leave this Vault for I hope to be the final time, I wanted to go down to the food pantry just to be sure there wasn't any food down there. I looked at the room one final time and walked into the hallway. I made way down to the food pantry, stopping in every room just to make sure nobody left anything of value inside. I heard a few noises, and had drawn my weapon, but I didn't have to make too much noise or fire my weapon once before making it to the food pantry. I didn't even hide once. I was proud of myself. Everything is so much different when your alone like this. There was nothing in the food panty worth taking. So I headed back to the Wasteland. High hopes for finding at least a little to nibble on were crushed. My body lacked protein, and it was starting to wear on my train of thought. I feel spacey, like my brain is swiss cheese. While walking through the Vault back towards the surface of the Wastes, I stare at my Pip-Boy's "LOCAL MAP" function. I'm amazed at its accuracy. At first glance it is a little hard to figure out, but if you take into consideration the world around us, it is quite a difficult task to something as simple as making a basic map. Its not all bells and whistles however. When I first turned it onto its LOCAL MAP function, there was just a little Amber triangle pointing in the direction that I was facing. When I started to move about the room it started drawing borders and such of the room, and continued to do so as I moved around. There is also a normal MAP function, and right now its to the same little amble triangle sitting on top of a little square with an icon on it that looks just like a typical Vault door. When you hover of it it says "STATE STREET VAULT, VAULT-TEC, INC." Absoulutely fucking amazing. What would be even better is if it had all the areas of the Wastes listed on here already so I could just hover a little dot on my Pip-Boy and find me a good route to Milwaukee Avenue. When I near the Vault Entrance room, all the sudden my Pip-Boy started making a little bit of a fuzzy noise. I stopped walking as soon as I got into the main lobby room before the iron gate and looked at my Pip-Boy again. I hit the Radio tab again, and all the sudden I'm amazed with what I saw. It scanned the area first and then compiled a list of stations that were all in range of my Pip-Boy, and therefore me. There were only three stations listed at the time. "Brew City News", "Enclave Radio", and "Miltown Radio". I also shit myself when I saw the Enclave Station. I turned that one on first. Ol' Cal would have done anything to hear this! But when I turned it on it sounded like some old man talking. He kept repeating himself over and over again about all this patrotic garbage that was only to be interrupted by short songs that sounds like they were from a very, very long time ago. I sat up against the lobby wall and listened to the station for over an hour. Part of me thought I was Calvin sitting there listening to his Grandfather speak. Everything they were talking about were things that Calvin had talked about while our hands were covered in fresh cow blood. I would do anything for a medium-rare Milwaukee-style Strip Steak. Heaven in the form of an edible 15 ounces of once breathing meat. The Enclave is going to "save America" and "bring it back to what she was" and promised to re-open every American school and get all our "children in school again." That is so hard to imagine when there isn't a single building I've seen still standing in all of the Wasteland. The man speaking claimed to be the President of the United States. That is almost as equally hard to believe. How in the fuck would you hold elections out here. The only for of authority that I've seen out here is the Wastes is the Slavers and the SKIN. Of all the things that I've feared since leaving the Vault, the United States government was not one of them. The Miltown Radio frequency was quite different, in such a beautiful way. When I switched over, Dvorak's "Song to the Moon" was playing. Emotion struck me hard, like I had been suddenly lit on fire. I started to cry almost immediately. Hearing those foreign words that I didn't undrstand sounded like the most beautiful words in the entire world. One of the many things the Vault was good at taking away from us was our music. I couldn't believe I was hearing music again. Any songs I had held onto in my head had fallen long along the way. Dvorak ended and the soothing voice of Loreena McKinnett blessed the speakers of my Pip-Boy. I couldn't believe it. Someone in the Wasteland was streaming Loreena McKinnett! I could die here and be happy because at least I got to hear good music. I listened to the McKinnett song and awaited to hear what song Miltown Radio would play next. Then all the sudden a loud voice came over the speakers. "Listeners of the Miltown Radio, this is Kalix, your only friendly voice in all of Miltown!" the voice said. "That last one was 'Marrakesh Night Market' by Mrs. McKinnett, truly one of the Pre-War classics from our lady from the North." McKinnett was a Canadian singer. When America started getting involved with all the international tensions around the globe, Canada spent its last moments in the Pre-War world trying to illustrate to the world how good they had become at all things artsy. In the moments leading up to the Great War, Canadian musicans, actors, and actresses spent their last moments dominating the international music charts. They're actors and actresses lived a life of posh luxry, as they were one of the only countries that didn't focus entirely on destroying civilization. That was until the United States annexed Canada. Then almost all of North America became the playground for the United States of America's military. In what amounted to a short span of time, the United States had destroyed and exploited many of the part of Canada that separated the upper most tip of Washington state to the Alaskan borders. With the entire United States focued on what is going to happen to the oil that is left in Alaska, care for the world around us took a back-seat. Forrests destroyed by tankers, lush green landscapes were scarred by the fires of war, and the unflinching American soldiers kept on marching foward. Stomping hard on everything in their path. Kalix talked for a little while before blessing the Wastes with more music. He said that there have been reports of a new Vault opening up in the area, but he didn't know the name. He's only heard reports of "Vault Virgins" being seen around the area, and gotten confirmed reports of more intense "Raider patrols" in the heart of Downtown. He continued on and said that that Wolfgang had stopped in recently and wanted to have Kalix tell the Wastelanders that he is in big need cheap but quality armor, guns and ammo to help the new Vault Virgins who are starting to appear out in the Wastes lately. "Attention to all you Wastelanders, my good friend and ally Wolfgang the Travelling Merchant would like me to tell everyone that from now until further notice Wolfgang will pay you an extra 10% for your items as there is a huge surge of needed supplies for all your fellow Wastelanders that have just been greeted by the hell of the Wastes. Also Wolfgang has added two new stops to his rounds, both in the lovely city of Miltown. Stop into the Miltown Radio Headquarters to download Wolfgang's new travelling route to your Pip-Boy today!" Kalix said. He contined: "But keep your eyes on your maps, old Kalix would never send you guys north of 'the Wall' for anything!" I switched my Pip-Boy's radio to "Brew City News" to be dropped into the middle of a song that took me back to early mornings at Pandora's Box. The Everly Brothers "I Wonder if I Care As Much". Incredible. I found it interesting that its this really old music that is being streamed on these radio stations, with seemingly all new music new music fallen along the way. Lots of the more modern music was so politically motivated that I'm sure the "DJs" didn't want to hear anymore reminders in song that the world "didn't have to end" by its overly sympathetic musicians. The host on "Brew City News" was a guy named Tzak. Tzak kept repeating that he and his station was reponsible for all "liberated souls" you met in the Wasteland. "Freeing the Wastelander from the Hell of the Wastes" seemed to be their unofficial tagline. With music like this, another tagline wouldn't be doing it justice. This "Wall" was spoken of again on this station. Tzak mentioned something about 'Brew City' and continued on to say that he wasn't sure of what held true 'South of the Wall'. When I loaded my Pip-Boy's overview map, and zoomed out completely as far back as it could go, suddenly it all made sense. Before the War, a majority of Milwaukee county had been surrounded by highways. When looked at from a map, the city looked like someone circled it with a thick marker, but the marker lines were highways. The western most part of Milwaukee had been traced by 45 South, a highway that ran all the way to Florida (before the War). The South traced by 894, the East by 43, and the North was 94. These highways were main arteries of the Wisconsin highway system, and now still served a purpose, in the Wasteland. The northern most highway that actually cut the Downtown area in half for Milwaukee instead of topping it, was the 'Wall' these DJ's spoke of on the radio. My Pre-War political maps should have been tossed out the window. The world may be "laid out" the same, but it sure the fuck ain't under the same name. Milwaukee is now two major cities. Brew City is whatever parts of Milwaukee is north of 'the Wall' and Miltown is whatever parts of Milwaukee was south of 'the Wall'. In the coming hours, while trying to make headway towards my old neighborhood, I jumped between Radio stations while trotting around the Wastes, but I always found myself going back to Brew City News. The music there was absoultely wonderful, and its strange how music in the middle of the 20th Century applies to the Wasteland of today. Their songs are full of sorrow, hope for the future, finding love, heart-ache and economic failures. These are all issues that plauge the minds of those wandering the wastes. The music of Miltown Radio was just as soothing as the music on Brew City New was relative, but you can't trump music that speaks directly to your soul. The only issue with listening to Miltown Radio is that where I'm travelling in the Wastes, I'm actually not stomping anywhere around on "Milwaukee Radio" turf, and so the reports that Kalix speaks of do not apply to me, necessiarly, as most revolve around Miltown. It is good to know about what is going on around the Wastes, however, and its good to hear a little bit of variety in DJ's. Sometimes the over-anxious Tzak can get a little annoying every now and again. The date on my Pip-Boy read December 14th, 2086. The time was 19:47. I'm slowly walking down what looks to be the renmants of an old park before the War. There was a metal swing set and slide off in the distance. For a moment I pondered what it would be like for a child who was born since the Great War. Never being in a park, never playing on a play ground, never knowing what a Sandbox is. I noticed that off beyond the playground looked to be a small pond. Althrough highly irridated, it has been quite some time since I've had any sort of liquid, so I set off to get a quick drink of the metal tasting water. My Pip-Boy's Geiger Counter started going off within ten feet of the water's edge. When I got over to the pond, I knelt down by the edge of the water and dipped my hand in the water and scooped some up to my mouth and sipped it. The taste of the water out in the Wasteland is something beyond the common mans tongue. It's water of course, but it has a strong metallic taste to it. It's almost "spicy" and it if you fuck around and gulp it down it will leave your throat with a burning sensation. Suddenly my Pip-Boy started to beep, and the screen flashed three times. There was a warning on it about irridated items. The screen displays a message from Vault-Tec: VAULT-TEC recommends that you try and have long gaps between times of eating or drinking irridated items. Your equipped Pip-Boy will once again alert you when its once again "SAFE" to eat or drink more irraidated items. Your body needs time to digest your irridated items before you are clear to have more. Your Vault-Tec vitamins that you have been taking while in the Vault have built up anti-bodies in your immune system to help ward off any serious radiation poisioning. These however are only guidelines, as you still must use your best judgement in regards to knowing what is safe and dangerous on freed from the Vault. Species of animals that may evolve once an apocalypse is incurred cannot be pre-determined by your Pip-Boy and althrough on the fly analysis is available it is only on a per item basics. Meaning that if your Pip-Boy suggests an animals you hunt today is safe, doesn't mean the another animal of the same specics is okay tomorrow. I drank the water until my throat was on fire. I didn't regard what the Pip-Boy had said to its fullest extent, drinking water beyond my warning. But I was overcome with thirst, I couldn't resist. When I once again rose to my feet, I looked at my Pip-Boy once again to see what direction I was facing. West. The direction I wanted to be heading. In the Pre-War days, State Street ran somewhat parallel with Milwaukee Avenue. But getting there in the Wasteland will not be as clean-cut. But I would have to be barricaded some of the most powerful forces in the world to prevent me from getting there. I headed through the remainder of the park and got back on the destroyed State Street and followed its crumbling path. Soon it would be dark, and I would need to find a place to camp out for the night, there is no way I'll make it near the Milwaukee Avenue Vault today. I forced myself to keep walking until it was clear I was making it outside of the downtown area. It was almost 23:00 by the time I found anywhere that looked like it would be safe enough to camp out in. With what is left of small residential homes on both sides of the street, I picked a house on the north side of the street with most of the walls still in tact, and went to break in. I was shocked to find the front door still locked. Had this house been untouched since the War? Could it be possible? Or are people in here, and in moments I'm going to get rushed by SKIN or Slavers that live in the basement? Neighter. I walked around to the back of the house to find the back door kicked, standing wide open. I walked into the houses kitchen, and found nothing but broken appliances and a flipped over kitchen table. Two broken chairs lay in pieces on the floor. The living room was the most in order, but still a mess in its own right. A soot covered couch sit in front of a coffee table and a blown out television. The stairs going up stairs was caved in, exposing a hole in the floor to the basement. As dangerous as it looked down in the basement it was a tempting safe haven for sleep. I activated m Pip-Boy light, which was quite an effective source of light if you had its panels fully charged during the day. There wasn't any sign of life down below, and the drop from the living room floor to the basement floor was only about seven feet or so. I was sure I could find something in the basement to stack up to climb my way out. Nestling deep below the surface is comforting to a former Vault dweller like myself, but also a cructial move for anyone roaming the Wastes alone. I dropped my bag down into the basement and then dropped myself into the dark cement room. Without my Pip-Boy light I was in total darkness, and this was great for sleep. Nobody is going to drop down here and fuck around down here. I used the Pip-Boy's light to quickly scave the basement. There were a few magazines on the floor in the corner, so that led me to believe that there could be more stuff to be found down here. There was a bookshelf about half filled with books, all of which were ruined by the clothes washer and drying appliances that stood next to them. I picked a few of the books book up that were on the higher shelfs, they weren't as damaged by the water as much as they were damaged by the soot and general "layer of shit" that everything in the Wasteland has. One of the books were unusually heavier than the others I had picked up. It was a wood chest in the shape of a book. Inside of the book was a single key. Nothing else. I wasn't really in the mood for treasure hunting, but I hadn't really found anything while alone so I thought I would poke around the basement a little bit. There was a small room sectioned off in the corner, whose walls had been caved in from the stairs above it falling through the floor. Inside of the room there was a dresser, a chair and bed. I kicked the chair over and found nothing. The dresser actually quite a few articles of clothing that looked like they haven't seen the light of day since the bombs had fallen. I took almost all of it. There was quality cottons, polyester, and demins everywhere. There was even a few pairs of socks, one of which I immediately put on. I haven't had a pair of socks since I lived in the Vault. The bed was have crushed under the falled walls, but I looked underneath it and found nothing. Out of spite, I slide my hand between the matress and box-spring, and BINGO. A small box, a keyed locked on it. I used the key I had found out on the bookshelf and tried it on the lock, and it opened. Inside was one of the most beautiful handguns I had ever seen in my life. It was a revolver that looked like it was made of black chrome. Next to it in the box was a matching butterfly knife, a large pile of Pre-War money, and two baggies. One filled with white powder, one was my old friend marijuana. I assumed the powder was cocaine, as this stuff all looked Pre-War. I haven't seen or heard of cocaine since the War, I wonder what kind of price it would fetch out in the Wastes. The pot was all mine, I'm not selling it despite its astronomical Wasteland market value. I bagged the items and tossed the box on the floor next to the bed. I continued to search the room and found nothing else of value. I walked back into the room I dropped into and poked around a little more. I found three boxes of ammunition for the revolver, still in their box -- incredible. I turned off my Pip-Boy and let my eyes get used to the darkness. Then I picked what I believed to be the darkest corner in the basement and laid down my things. I sat down up against the wall, switched my Pip-Boy to Miltown Radio and turned the volume down a bit and then laid my head down to rest. Kalix mentioned something about a group of Prophets getting into a big battle with some members of the Admirals, one of the smaller Raider factions. Small-scale Raider factions were commonly discussed on both Miltown and Brew City. Raiders were clan-like groups of people who basically just lived as travelling nomads, living out their purpose for better of the group. By now I'm sure Calvin has either joined or started his own Raider group. Who knows what Jewls got into, but I could see her joining one of the Prophets and serving out their higher agendas. I spent my final moments awake that evening thinking about where my Wife would have found safety in this Wasteland. My Wife was a medical professional before the war. She had originally wanted to become a full-fledged Doctor, but she stopped going to college after getting enough credentials to become a surgery technical assistent. At the time she had just finished up a major degree, and when she got settled into a job she just fell in love with it, and the money was good as well and she figured why go any further if she is already happy with where she was at. We lived that way. We never strived to be millionares, or go to some extraordinary lengths with out professions, we were too into each other to go caught up in anything outside of our little world. I'm not sure what medical professionals all got into since they crawled out of their Vaults, but I would imagine that they are about as looked up to as Jesus Christ himself, so preparing to scour this Wasteland to find my Wife may indeed become my reality. Eventually I fell into a sound sleep. I had a dream about going to the Zoo with my Wife. We were at the Zoo looking at all the animals like we used to, except the animals were all animals you have seen out in the Wasteland. Yao Guai, Mole Rats, Rad-Scorpions. We were walking around like everything was normal. We even went to the Penny Machine and got a penny made. There was a mushroom cloud on the penny, and when the Wife handed it to me, I woke up in a sweat, screaming. The pitch-black basement I had fallen asleep in was now half lit-up from the morning sun. I looked at my Pip-Boy, its quarter after eight in the morning. Way too late for me. I wanted to get up at the crack of dawn and get a good go in on the day before the sun had totally come up. Oh well, off we go. I stood up off the floor and shook myself free of my position my body had been in for the last few hours. I walked back into the room that had the lockbox stashed in it and I dragged the chair out to the room where I had slept. I slid the chair to the most open part of the hole in the floor and I stood on it. I was able to climb myself out without too much of a hassle. I was starving, so I opened my bag searched for something to snack on. I had a few pieces of Jerk, so I gnawed an entire portion in one shot. Jerk is was "beef jerky" used to taste like before the war. Only now its called Jerk because nobody seems to be able to validate whether or not its actually Jerky or actually meat. So its called Jerk because its texture and general taste were within the range of what we all knew as "Beef Jerky". That is how a lot of the food in the Wasteland is named. They are named after what they were intended to represent. If you were eating what someone told you were eggs, you could very well be eating some eggs or you could just as likely be eating Brahmin eyeballs beaten with water. You just never knew. Continuing west, I see two people off into the distance. I quickly dart behind a Wasteland's version of a tree, and take a peek at what they are doing. They are yelling at one another, and I heard gunfire start popping but neighter of them went down. I wasn't sure whether or not to get involved or to let them keep fighting. I croutched down low and peeked around the tree again. This time I saw one of the two men charge the other one with something very long in his hands. From here it looked like a sword but I hadn't seen or heard of a sword since even before the War. It was a sword indeed because after one swing with it the other guy who he had charged had fallen like a wilted flower. My jaw dropped. I was impressed by the grace of that sword, I had never seen anything so beautiful in my entire life. I've only seen swords in the movies, and fake-ass plastic swords during Halloween parties at Pre-War company picnics. I have to have it. I leaned into the tree, sitting on my ass. I took my rifle and cocked it. He didn't see me, as the sun was to my back, and his eyes. As soon as he leaned over to loot the corpse, I came from behind the tree and started to charge him quietly. Soon as I saw his legs start to straighten, I stopped advancing and aimed my rifle. I waited until I knew he was about to turn to my direction and I let two bullets free like doves out of a small metal cage. He fell almost as gracfully as his man did. I ran over to him. He was barely still alive. I leaned over and grab his sword. It was impressive. A long, silver sword with all this foreign language forged into it. Looked like something you would expect to see a ninja with. "Which one you from?" the dying man asks me while pointing to my Pip-Boy. "State Street." I said "Is the Milwaukee Avenue Vault open yet?" The dying man giggled a litle bit, started coughing on his blood. "Milwaukee Avenue was one of the first in the area to open its doors." "Fuck off! Are you kidding me?" I screamed. "No. Trust me, its a waste of your time. There's nothing up there for you man." Before I asked him another question I heard that gurgle in his voice. He had passed. People, no matter who they are always seem to be very peaceful, and easy-going people when they are on death's doorstep. The most shut in man will pour out his heart, the most soft spoken man will tell you who he really hates. That is the magic of death. The special ability everyone gets when they know for sure they don't have to be afraid to speak their mind, because they won't be around to hear what anyone has to say. If this guy is kidding my purpose on this earth is past its prime. If my Wife's Vault opened up before any of the other ones, there isn't much of a chance for me seeing her ever again. Who knows how soon after the bombs fell Milwaukee Avenue opened up. We were locked up for six years in our Vault, what if they came out after only a few years, or months even. The idea is almost too much to bare. I looted the corpse of the guy who broke my heart. He had a good amount of caps on him. He must have been a Merc or something, killing for caps. He had two holodisks on him. One was blank, and the other was the mapping information for the Travelling Merchants route. It added a strange line drawn all around the big map on my Pip-Boy. While I had felt like I've seen a lot of the Wastes, the lines drew on the map really put into perspective how much I haven't. His suggestion that its a waste of time to go to the Milwaukee Avenue Vault is going to be disregarded. He doesn't know what my intentions were for going there, I'm not looking to loot the place, I'm looking for evidence of my Wife's wherabouts. I kept going west up State Street. I was attacked by a trio fo Mole Rats, but it wasn't anything too harsh. I used the black butterfly knife that I had found in the house I slept in last night to cut into the Mole Rat. Wolfgang taught Jewls, Cal and myself how to determine if some meat was safe enough to cook for eating. If there was too much of a tint of green to the meat, then it was too irradiated to eat, no matter how it was prepared. This eyeballing system is almost synomonous with the Pip-Boy's food scanning capababilities. Pre-War meat would have been scanned by the Pip-Boy and gotten a "RADS" rating of 0, and as such it would be "stop sign red". Now any one of those Mole Rats I killed (although I tore into one of them) probably would have had anywhere between 4-8 RADS. The meat would look red still like normal meat, but if you caught it from the right angle with the light you could see almost there iradesceant layer of 'green' atop of it. This layer became more and more apparent with the level of saturated radiation. By the noon hour, I fought off the wave of hungar that struck me because I had been riding a wave of excitement for the last ninety minutes or so. I had just crossed under the old freeway 41. This meant I was very close to the Milwaukee Avenue Vault. Words could not explain how excited I was. I started to run, with amounted to nothing more than a slight jog with all the stuff I was carrying but it wasn't to say I wasn't trying to run. I've already dealt with the possibility that my Wife may not be here, in fact I'm quite sure that she's not going to be inside the Vault waiting for me. But I'm almost certain that I'll find a clue of where to look for her. When I got to the next intersecting road, I knew I was standing at the intersection of 68th & State Street. One block north of there is 68th & Milwaukee Avenue. Once I get up there, I need to back-track a little bit and go east back towards the cul de sac where the Vault is located in. I brought my rifle to the ready as I headed north on 68th Street. There were two grocery stores right here and I could see people still being closeby or inside either of them. I really should have gone into either or both of them and looted some food, but the desire to get to the other Vault was too much to bare. As I approaced the intersection of 68th & Milwaukee Avenue I started to really get full of anticipation. I stopped for a second at the middle of the intersection and looked around I bit. Tempted to find a safe-spot to drop my bag so I could do a quick sprint to the Vault. But I couldn't find anything that looked safe. Milwaukee Avenue sat up higher than State Street, so from where I'm standing you were looking down onto State Street. Looking north of where I was continued to incline as well. So I feel pretty out in the open. There isn't as many "enclosed areas" as there would be with taller buildings in the downtown area. So I decided to take the bag with me towards the other Vault entrance. I just hope I don't get lynch mobbed up there by anybody. When I got up to the iron gates of the Milwaukee Avenue Vault, and I was overcome with feelings of warmth of closeness. This is where my Wife had been for all the years she stay underground safe from the radiation, safe from the outside world, safe from the Slavers, and SKIN members, safe from the hell of the Wastes. The iron gates were open, like they were at my Vault. I walked into the iron gates and into the lobby area. It looked just like State Street too. I wonder if all the government built Vaults were built identically. I suppose it would make design easier, but how would you assume there would be space for the everything at every location you wanted to drop a Vault. Regardless, I walked into the lobby and activated my Pip-Boy's light to see around a little bit. This Vault was free of picket-signs from people who were outside when the bombs dropped like they were down on State Street. No skeletons outside the Vault doors, no dead Overseer outside of the Vault. Confusion. Irritation. Rage. The Milwaukee Avenue Vault door was not open. I had considered the Vault never being opened before, I had considered dying while trying to get here, I even expected to find a "Dear John holotape" hidden somewhere outside the Vault with my Wife telling me she met some important Doctor in the Vault and she was going to live our her days by his side instead, but I never had considered the possiblity of the Vault being opened, and closed again from the outside. The panel off to the left of the Vault door was still lit up tho. The one on the State Street Vault was not lit up or anything, but then again our Vault door was hanging wide open. At this point all I got to loose is what I have in my bag on my back and my life. Nothing else matters. So I pounded on that button as hard as I could with the butt end of the rifle. Nothing happened at first, and silence continued for almost a minute before I could hear the Vault alarms going off from the inside. I wasn't really prepared to start a conversation with strangers. The Vault door opened and nobody other than the Overseer of the Milwaukee Avenue Vault greeted me at the door with his Protege. The Protege's name was Myron. They were some of the most friendly people I've come across since the bombs fell. Both well-spoken, and equally well-mannered. They offered me into the Vault for a warm visit from a fellow-Vault dweller to another's Vault. They were willing to treat me as one of their own, under the conditions that I leave the 'soils' of the Wasteland with thier Security Team while I'm under visitation. Which basically means no weapons, but also no outside drugs, AID, food or water is allowed in their Vault, and I needed to shower before actually entering the facility, and they would issue me Vault-Tech issued clothing items to wear while visiting the Milwaukee Avenue Vault. I tried to rush them into conversation about my Wife, but they said they were not just discussing anything with "anyone" but something told me to go ahead and visit with them -- there was something in the way they looked at each other then I asked about my Wife that made me know that I needed to get inside. Plus I couldn't pass up the idea of the free meal. Even if I gotta stay for a few days for labour, some quality Vault meals would not spoil my mood one bit, in fact it would almost be preferred. When I dropped my bag in front of the one of the members of this Vaults 'Security Team', I dropped the bag in fron of their feet and said: "I know everything that is in this bag, don't try no slick shit." "Whatever you say, Wastelander." the cocky guard said. I stepped into this face. Had I stuck out my tongue, everyone in the room would think me and this guy were dating. "Excuse me, Overseer, is this how you treat all your visitors?" The Overseer put his hand on the Guards shoulder and turned him around. "Excuse yoursef." and nodded for him to leave the room. The failed guard walked out with his head down below his shoulders, and the Overseer turned to me and said: "Noobs!" The Overseer and his Protege promised me that my things would go untarnished and untouched, they just had 'security measures' that they must follow. I allowed them to take my things, and I used their showering system. It had been the first shower I've gotten since leaving the Vault. The first proper shower. I had tried 'washing up' alongside the waters a few times, but nothing beats a steaming hot shower, with a drain, and soap. When I got out of the shower, and put on my Vault-Tec issued Milwaukee Avenue Vault 'Visitor' Jumpsuit, I was once again greeted by the Protege outside of the Men's shower room. "I would like to once again welcome you to our Vault." Myron said "It must feel so wonderful to be clean, no?" "More than words can say, I cannot thank you enough for your wonderful hospitality." I said to him. "It's not exactly 'open arms' and 'friendly talk' out there in the Wastes. "Well assure yourself that you have no worries of the Wasteland while your inside of the Milwaukee Avenue Vault. You have no troubles here." Myron said. "If your ready, I'd like to extend an invitation for a lunch with the Overseer and myself." "Wonderful, of course." I said to Myron who started to lead me down the hallway towards the Overseers office. "So are all the Vaults built the same way?" I asked. "I believe so. Due to their underground nature, they didn't have to worry about space really, you run out of room above ground, not below. Am I right?" he said. "Makes sense to me." I said. "It looks a lot like the one I came from." "Which one did you come from anyway?" Myron asked me while motioning me into the Overseers office lobby. "State Street" I said to him. "Really, I heard that was a really good one." Myron asked me. I wasn't sure how to answer. Do I tell him the truth that the Overseer there was a fucking lunatic and we ended up murdering him the day we forced the quivalent of himself to open the Vault for us by gun-point? Or do we just lay down the "Peaches & Cream" card for him and tell him all was hardy and wonderful at the ol' State Street Vault. Before I needed to assume what story to go with, we were interruptted by the Overseer who entered the room. Much like a Judge in the Pre-War era, you were supposed to stand on your feet when the Overseer entered a room you were in. Out of respect. "Please be seated." the Overseer said as he walked over to me. "I don't believe I got your name." "Six." I said to him. He looked at me strange. "Six." he said. "Well that's quite a uniquie name now isn't it Myron. Most certainly your chosen name. Do you mind me asking what your God-given name was my son?" "My name was Liam before the War" I said to him with a firm tone to my voice. "And with all due respect Overseer I'd like to keep that voice, 'Pre-War' as well." "I respect and honour that, Liam." the Overseer said. "I'm quite aware that your times in the Vault have scarred your persona and when you got into the Wastes you felt obligated to chane your identity as to help you cope with loosing what you knew as 'normal life' before the War." He was shocking spot on in his assassement. I couldn't have said it better myself. The way this guy spoke you would have thought he was well-versed in the Wasteland himself, but you can tell by looking at him that he's not anywhere near Wasteland mentality. I could see him cowering at the sight of a Yao Guai. Running from the crys of a Slaver, duck and covering at the mention of SKIN members in the area. I don't feel like a Wasteland veterern myself, but I'm lightyears ahead of both of these guys. "My Wife was in this Vault Overseer, is that correct?" I asked him. "Her name was.." I'm cut off. "Brea" the Overseer said. "OVERSEER!" Myron said "With all due respect! I don't think you should be discussing Vault Residents with a Wastelander." "Myron, do you see the look in this man's eyes?" the Overseer said to the Protege. "The look in this man's eyes tells me one thing about him. There is a part of his honourable man's soul that is missing without his other half." "Overseer, your letting emotions control the policy of the Vault again." Myron said. By now I'm quite fed up with his bullshit. I stood on my feet and walked up to him. He got a little jittery, and backed up a few steps when I got up and started walking towards him. "How old are you kid?" I said. Before he got a chance to answer I continued: "Doesn't matter how old you are, I'm willing to bet you were just a dream in your Daddy's pants when I was walking down the aisle with my Wife. I don't have to take a lesson in the school of Hard Knocks to know that your probably the softest person in this entire Vault. Maybe you should go back to your room and play with your dolls while the adults hang out in here and talk grown-folk buisiness." I looked at the Overseer: "Pardon me sir, but it seemed like someone has been in need of a place setting. Our Protege was the same way." "Was!?" Myron said. "Overseer do you mind if we perhaps had this lunch alone?" I asked of the Overseer, knowing deep down how against the grain of Vault-life this request is. "For some reason I cannot bring myself to concentrate with children in the room." The evil and unnecessary things said to the kid were just coming out of my mouth automatically. I'm cutting this kid down for no reason. Nobody here knows who I am, and I can be whoever I need to be. With the stories I've heard in the Wasteland you can pretty try any story out and as long as you get people to believe you, your bullshit is just as good as solid stone truth. Nobody is keeping score in the Wasteland. What is known as the 'truth' can only been seen with your own two eyes. Nothing honest was spoke or heard after the first bombs fell. Man evolved. "Myron, I know your going to be resent me for this, but I need you to go back to the work we were on before our guest arrived. Without pissing and moaning. Go." the Overseer pointed at the door. What a fucking loser. He really must be a soft-bitch. Staying in the Vault after its opened to sit around with your thumb up your ass following the pointed finger of a decreped old man, only to one day hope you can be pointing your finger at somene. Pathetic. The pink bitch left the room and the Overseer walked over the doors panel and closed the door. "Now can talk about real business." "With all due respect, Overseer, I'm not here to talk about anything other than my Wife." I said to him. "I'm not a Merc." "I don't need you to do petty work, Liam." he said, knowing I don't like my Pre-War name being used. "I need to know what its like out there." "Out where?" I said laughing "In the Wastes? What do you want to know?" "Between you and I, two men. Is it safe out there?" "Are you kidding me? It's a fucking nightmare out there." I said. He pointed at the bulge under my left sleeve. "That is your Pip-Boy right?" he asked. "Yes." I said holding up my arm up for a minute. "I heard it can be painful. Did it hurt when you put yours on?" he asked. "You don't even wanna know." I looked at him serious. "But its worth it." "Glad to hear it!" the Overseer said. "There is no point of beating around the bush, Six, Brea isn't with us anymore." I could feel my eyes fill with tears. It took all the powers that I could conjour up to keep them from falling like swollen Waterfalls in a starving rainforest. "What happened to her?" "We're not sure." the Overseer said to me as he put his hand on my shoulder. "It was a horrible, horrible day. One that will never be forgotten here at the Milwaukee Avenue VAULT." "What do you know?" I asked him. He told me to have a seat at the table. I was in no mood for lunch, but I had a hankering for dessert with this shocking news. "All bullshit aside, do you smoke?" I asked him real quick and spontaneously. I must have caught him off-guard or he's pretending to be stupid with the expression. "Pardon me?" he said. "Smoke what?" "What are there cameras in the room?" I said as I looked around. I focused on him again. "Do you smoke marijuana?" "Oh my god!!" the Overseer says as he mocks me and looks around the room and then focuses in on me. "You have got to be kidding me. You think your Wasteland ass is going to walk into a Vault and do drugs with the Overseer of the greatest vault in all of Brew City? Son, you've got to be kidding me!" "Well fuck me, I was just.." "I'm kidding!" the Overseer said. "Do you know how long its been since I've had a little Mary Jane?" He laughs. "YOU were just a dream in your Daddy's pants the last time I smoked some grass!" We shared a laugh. It was the first laugh I shared with someone in quite a long time. A nice, long, belly-hurting laugh. Something of legend, something that you would share with a good friend. I was making quite a bond with this Overseer. I'd have a whole different life if this guy was heading our Vault. Our Overseer is rotting in his version of this room at our Vault. Super. Warm. Almost feel like your there. I got up off the chair. "Well lets go to my bag and get that shit." "That's silly!" the Overseer says laughing. "I'm the Mother-Fucking Overseer!" He walked over to the panel on the wall for the door but instead of tapping it he slid his hand across it. "Myron have someone go down to the Vault Entrance and have our guests things delivered to my office immediately N-Q-P." He walked over to the table and we both had a seat. "N-Q-P?" I asked. "No Questions, Please." the Overseer said. "Very light on the please." We both smiled. "Six. What is that about anyway?" the Overseer asked. "Overseer," I said "You have my word that you or your people here will not be harmed by me in any way. I have to tell you that because I spent my entire Pre-War life beating around the bush, and letting people stomp all over me. The things I tell you about what happened in my Vault, and in my times in the Wastes just need to be heard for the their face value. Don't take them as scary stories that should make you fear me harming you and your people." At first he looked confused by what I had just said, but when I had told him the story about my Vault. Being in that son of a bitch until only earlier this year, being under the sort of Overseer we were under, he suddenly took pity on my story, my way of life, and ultimately felt sorry for me. We talked for quite a long time. My bags had been delivered, but we didn't even smoke pot together, we just kept talking about the State Street Vault, and my minor experiences in the Wastes both with Cal and Jewls and alone. Eventually he called for some food to be prepared for us, which was great because by this time I was fucking starving. He mentioned he had some Whiskey that we could have with lunch. I hadn't had a drop of liquor since before the War. With a mounting level of trust being instilled on this guy, I told him about Calvin's Grandfather's Enclave business. Shockingly he was familiar with the idea. His Father apparently was a government official as well. Working with the FBI, the Overseer said his Father was always particularily pissed off about what the Enclave was allowed to do, despite being 'just Marines'. When our food arrives, Myron escorted these poor excuses of waiters to bring us our food. They had some cheap ass kitchen linens on. Neighter the Overseer or myself said anything while they were in the room, and I stared Myron down until they all left the room. The Overseer and I got into our meals, but I didn't wait long to press him about my Wife once again. "You'll have to pardon me, I wanted to know your backstory." the Overseer said. "Brea really loved you." I almost dropped my eating utensils when he said that, but I tried to act normal. "Brea was a wonderful person. Everyone here loved her. Everybody loved her a lot. Afterall, she was in the medical field, and you probably know better than I what means in the realities of the Wasteland. She could walk on water, and did so with grace." "Why do you do talk of her like she's gone?" I asked. "What are you not telling me?" "That's just me as an Overseer speaking. The day one of my children leave those Vault doors they are no longer with us. Brea left on a different tone. The understand you need to know the history of our Vault. The icing only version goes something like bombs dropped 2077, we opened our doors three years later, lost a bunch of people immediately because it was too early despite our Vault computers telling us otherwise. We shut the door again, then re-opened it again in 2081 and its been open ever since. In 2081 when we decided to open the doors for the final time, your Wife was a crucial part of our Medical Staff. Most of the other members had died when we opened the doors in '80. Your Wife left the Vault with a group of people to get supplies by one of the Travelling Merchants, she was the only one who would be able to look at medical supplies and know what she was looking at. The Vault was loosing supplies like you wouldn't believe because someone fucked off and got pregnant. Your Wife delievered the baby and everyone is still around to tell the story, but it fucking devistated our medicals supplies. That stupid bitch getting pregnant was part of the reason we reopened again in 2081. While I'm thankful that we were safe in doing so -- you can imagine what it would be like to be me, fucking hell, you would be thinking 2080, 2080, 2080 all in your head over and over again, yeah?" "So what happend to the clan of Vault Residents that went to the Travelling Merchant?" I asked the Overseer. "They never came back." said the Overseer. "So their all fucking dead." I said. "That's what we thought. After almost a day we sent out three runners to go see what the fuck had happened." the Overseer continued. "They came back with the report that Wolfgang not only did business with the people from our Vault but they were with several other people as well, all 'in jolly spirits'." "And what the fuck is that supposed to mean?" I asked. "And fuck that bullshit Wolfgang was by our god-damn Vault all the fucking time, you know how many god-damn times I asked him if he saw my Wife out there in the Wastes. Trust me.." "NO, No! You know how many fucking people Wolfgang sees during the course of the a day? A lot more than a lot of other people in the Wasteland. I know he didn't see your Wife, and you know what, he didn't see mine either. Even if he did see our Wives, he isn't going to tell you. Wolfgang is a Travelling Merchant, he's not out there to reconnect peoples lives, he's out there trying to rebuild civilization like the rest of us." "So what then?" I asked him "What became of Brea if she didn't get killed out there? I doubt they decided to go go join another Vault or something. Plus if she was important as you mentioned in the Medical Staff here, I know she wouldn't have left a post like that. I know her too well, that would have been her security blanket." "I know that, Liam. We had become very close during our time here in the Vault." the Overseer said. "and by close, I mean relative to the Jewls lady you spoke of earlier. It was nothing more than companionship. But that's why I was so bewildered when she didn't return. The other people with her were all skilled, intelligent people as well so I didn't understand how any of this could have happened." "And the other people…" "The other people troubles me just as much as much as Wolfgang telling us that they were all buddy-buddy with each other." the Overseer said. "I cannot tell you how many nights I've laid awake thinking about it." The Overseer and I continued to talk for a little while about the other people she was with. Two of the people where wanna-be doctors who never had any formal education in the Pre-War days, and the other three were just skilled marksmen, and from what the Overseer said, not all that bright upstairs. They're sole purpose was to get the Medical Staff to the Travelling Merchant and back in one piece. It wouldn't make sense for them to try and 'start over on their own', for they didn't have the resources to survive out in the Wastes alone. I told the Overseer that I was going to venture the Wastes to try and find my Wife and her missing people. The Overseer told me that he thought it would be unwise to try and find them now. "Liam, its been years since they disappeared." he tried to tell me, but I wasn't hearing it. All I am seeing in my head is my lovely Wife's face, all I am hearing in in my head is my lovely Wife's voice. The Overseer and I finished our meal. I thanked him for the lovely food, but told him my time for visiting was running short as I started to get anxious to start searching for my Wife. His Vault Residents have figured out a way to get the Wasteland radio transmissions to broadcast in the parts of the Vault closest to the exists, and through the above-ground Vault Lobby. They kept Brew City News streaming thoughout their Vault, hoping to hear a clue from Tzak about their missing commrades. The Overseer suggested that I stay a few days and 'rest up' before my long and uncertain travels, but I couldn't bring myself to do so. "Am I welcome to return?" I asked the Overseer. "If I hear or see anything in the Wastes, can I return here and speak to you again, or was this my "one and only" visit to your Vault?" "Typically Vault protocol says to not allow "repeat visitors" as to prevent from the Vault become a "squat spot" but take it from me, Liam, your always welcome here. Day or night. Your Vault is my Vault. I just hope that if you do find anything that would help us here in the Milwaukee Avenue VAULT that you return it to us. We would give you our very last to see you off in good travels, and we hope we've earned the same level of respect for one another. I assured him that if I had found anything of value for the Vault, heard any news on my travels or seen anything worth mention that I would report back to him as soon as the moment presented itself. I apologized for getting sidetracked with the pot-smoking issue and offered to leave him the bag of cocaine I found in the house I had slept in the other day. He looked guilty at first when accepting it, but eventually did take it. "Take it easy with that stuff, its all I have. I found it the other day." I told him. "I feel silly taking drugs from you," the Overseer said. "but I do accept this gift with honour. Thank you." The Overseer said I could keep the Vault issued clothes they had given me to wear while I was there, and I did take them with me but didn't wear them out as they didn't provide too much protection from the elements of the Wasteland. The Overseer gave me his Living Quarters for a little bit to change into my Wastland clothes, and to ready my weapons. As I prepared my final things before heading back into the Wasteland, the Overseer came to his door and knocked. "Liam? Are you properly dressed?" I went to his door and opened it. "Yeah what's up?" I said, as the Overseer walked into the room. "I want you to have something." he said as he walked over to his dresser. He opened the top drawer and pulled out a beautiful handgun, three boxes of ammo, and a holodisk. He brought these items to me. "Here, take this." He set everything on a table in the room. "What is this?" I asked. "The holodisk contains information about my Wife. I know your time out in the Wastes shouldn't be spent doing other peoples work, but if you did cross paths with my dear Wife out there if you could pass on to her that disk, I would be forever in debt to you. But if you were such an honourable man, you could perhaps do this for a man who is stuck serving his duty as Overseer. Take my prised handgun and the only ammo I have for her as a token of my appreciation." "Pre-War?" I said while looking at the gun he just gave me. "This is beautiful. Are you sure?" "I've never been so sure of anything." He said while he put his hand on my shoulder. "I knew one day I would meet the right person for this, and today was the day, and you were that person." I took the things he gave me and I scanned the holodisk inside of my Pip-Boy. He wanted me to take the holodisk with me however, in case I did find clues about where his Wife had went. He told me that if there was a place that seemed it would be safe to leave the holodisk for his Wife to find then I should leave it somewhere but otherwise try to find her out and give it to her. The Overseer assembled a group of people to see me off. He had a few of the Vault Residents that were still around to go to the Vault Entrance and see me off with the Protege. They even recited their "Leaving the Vault" poem that Vault-Tec had inside of the Vault Manual. I didn't think anyone took those serious. The Overseer's Protege, four of the Vault Residents, and the Overseer himself all wished me well. I shook the Overseers hand, I even extended my hand to Myron who did return the generous social gesture. "We started off on the wrong foot, but your a good kid." I said to him. He didn't like the fact that I was calling him "kid", afterall he was the Overseer's Protege, right? "Safe travels" he said quietly. His Vault Reisdents also nodded me off, they didn't look like they wanted to actually have to touch anyone who looks like they were from the Wastes. It wasn't until I was standing her saying my goodbyes that I realised how different I do look from the rest of the them. They are dressed up in a way that mimics how man walked around before the War, and I represent the modern-man who calls the Wastes home. I 'look' like I belong in the Wastes. "Alright everybody, thanks for everything." I said to them "Overseer, I hope to see you again good sir, with good news as well." He nodded to me, and waved me off. I suppose he doesn't want to have the same approachable personality with all of his Vault Residents. They look up to him as a leader, he probably doesn't need the burden of friendship with all the Residents, it probably only makes his job that much tougher. The Vault door let out its puff of steam around the edges before starting to sound the sirens, and slowly it rolled forward and then off to the side. "This is it." I said. As soon as the Vault opened, and the door stopped making noise I walked through the door into the Vault Lobby. I turned around and waved the resident of the Milwaukee Avenue Vault and said: "Take it easy you guys, thanks again!" The Vault door shut as the people inside waved me off one more time. The experience here was one of the most peaceful in all of the Wasteland that I've experienced, something that I'm sure all the Vault Residents would be be scared of hearing, they wouldn't go anywhere outside the Vault if they knew the realities of the outside. I looked through the Vault Lobby and back out onto Milwaukee Avenue itself. My short visit in the Vault is over, the gun-ready nature of the Wasteland is now reality again. It was incredibly wonderful to even just walk around the Vault without having to lug my bag around me with everywhere I went. Despite being well fed and showered, the weight of the bag seems overwhelming. The short visit to the Vault started to make the "Vault Virgin" status start to poke through, a term Wastelanders use to describe someone who is fresh out of the Vault, or otherwise not-ready for what surviving the Wasteland all entails. The Overseer of the Miwaukee Avenue VAULT loaded what mapping data they had aquired into my Pip-Boy before leaving. They had a lot of the area covered around the area of their Vault, which was nice because I had only made it this far west, anything farther west of here was still pitched out black on my Pip-Boy. They also got quite a bit into the downtown area, and althrough its not all of it, its sure as hell a lot more than I would have attempted alone, to this level of detail. Before leaving the confides of his Living Quarters back in the the Vault, the Overseer mentioned that there were a group of bandit Wastelanders that called themselves the "Sportsmen", and they operated several smaller factions that all operated under the blanket Sportmen term. The largest of these factions were Admirals. They were a bunch of Pre-War medical staff that rally together medical supplies and sell their profits and skills to other factions for loot and caps. Without any other real motivations, finding the "Sportsmen" facility is my number one concern. The call the Bradley Centre home, which was a sports arena in the downtown area of what is now Brew City. It was considerably far off east from where I was and it would be quite a while before I would get there. Regardless I made my way between the busted up road and ruined houses, and north a few blocks of State Street. With all the destruction, and fallen over buildings, and unsafe passageways, you just can't go "down the street" in the Wasteland like you could in your car in the Pre-War era. You have to go East a bit, then a little North cos a building is blocking your path, and then you can't go that way anymore cos some wild animal started chasing you, etc, etc. Its easy to see how a simple task as "going downtown" can turn into an epic mini-adventure. So I readied my Rifle around my body once again, making sure it was in a proper positition for travel, but close enough to be grabbed in a heart-beat. Tzak came on the radio after a Bing Crosby number, and spoke of these very Admirals that I am seeking out. "Wastelanders, I must tell you of some horrible news that we have just heard from the boys downstairs that another group of Prophets have come to start some shit with the Admirals down at the Bradley Centre. Why don't these Prophets just go back where they came from? What's the story with them anyway? I speak for myself and the boys downstairs when I tell you that we think they are all running short of medical supplies for their people and instead of coming to get some more diplomatically they would rather spill blood over it. Well good luck you no do good bastards! You do know that the Admirals are some of the most powerful people in Brew City right? Perhaps you should pick on someone your own size, you have got your work cut out for you trying to mess with the Admirals, or any of the Sportsmen on their home turf. My advice to the Prophets? Get the fuck out of the dodge before the Sportsmen put you out!" I walked east for two hours, twisting and going out of my way whenever the path ahead posed a hurdle in front of me. The Wasteland seemed a little safer the closer and closer you got the Downtown area. The wildlife doesn't hang out in the destroyed cement piles as much as they do in the ashy coloured suburban areas. As the afternoon turned to evening, dense area of the downtown area became to become more and more prominent on the horizon. To make travels the safest, I thought it would be wisest to choose a place for the night and try to work myself into the Bradley Centre area in the morning, when the light of day could help me see any threats. Off in the distance looked to be a parking lot of an old restaurant. I walked over to the parking lot to see that it was indeed an old restaurant. Once in the lot it was very familiar, perhaps I had eaten here once with the Wife or something -- but the memory of the restaurants name slips my mind. I made way to the back o the building to the fenced in, garbage area. Most all restaurants had a grease-collector, and dumpster fenced in in their parking lots. Old grease from our fryers and grill where worth their weight in gold. Many of the automobiles ran on filtered grease. The fence around the dumpster and grease bin was half fallen over, but it still opened a bit with a good tug. I peeked inside to see how dirty the ground was behind the dumpster, and althrough it wasn't as clean as parsay the Vault, it would do for the evening. I went behind the dumpster and tossed down my bag and laid my head down next to it. I fell asleep almost instantly. How accustomed to this Wasteland life I have become. When I woke up in the morning, I walked out of the fenced in area that acted as my humble home the previous night, stretched myself upon the rising Wasteland sun, picked up my bags and started back on my path all before the full of the sun had gotten off the line of the horizon. I could see the Bradley Centre off in the distance. I'd have to make it through a short section of the downtown area before making it to the actual building. I prepared myself to be back at the constant threat level as I approached the road that dropped you down onto the hectic downtown area once again. My strategy for downtown travel was simple. Avoid what has been done in the past. Meaning do not walk on the side of the road like your a slow moving car, don't walk on the sidewalks, don't do anything that people did in the Pre-War. So when I walk around getting places in the downtown area, I hug the buildings as I walk, I'm always crossing streets like a J Walker so anyone who might be looking down at me from above only gets short glimpses of me before I'm under cover again. I kept this pattern the same and simple, and it has kept me alive this long so I feel no real need to change it up. As I trace along the buildings, cutting through alleys and hopping over cement piles of rubble; I debate what the Admirals will require of me to get inside. I'm prepared to give them all the my stuff just for a spitting shot at seeing my Wife. All I need to do is make eye contact with her once and the rest will be history. It's irrelevant. It doesn't matter. Once I see her, all this Wasteland business will take on half as much of a burden on me, because I will be going through it with her by my side. It will be all alright because she always knew what to say when shit seemed horrible, and she always knew what to say when things were all good to keep you in line with reality. The level of peace that my Wife's presense brought on me will be the best feeling one could ask for in the Wasteland. I cannot wait to touch her, and hold her in my arms. I cannot wait to feel her hair against my face as I hold her close in my arms. The tingly feeling I get down my spine whenever she touched me, the warmth, the knowing that everything will be okay is the reason I shot a man in the face and watched him die. I wanted to get out of that and find my Wife. I need her, and nothing else. We can go find our own little part of the Wasteland to call our home, and we can try to rekindle what we once had -- together. It all seemed to make such perfect sense. And this is why I will do anything to get inside of this Bradley Centre. I will join a cult, kill a small child, kill and innocent old women, I will torture someone -- anytyhing. Being inside is priceless, so I'll go to extraordinary lengths to show the world how serious I can be. When I got within two blocks of the front of the Bradley Centre I could see there were people standing out front. When I got within a block they had noticed me coming. They didn't shoot at me right away which lead me to believe they were not the worst people I've come across in the Wasteland. Then when I was across the street from the entrance of the Bradley Centre, they started to get a little suspicious looking. "Whatever it is, we don't need anything, we don't want anything and we don't have anything for you. Just keep going." A stocky, bald man said to me holding an impressive sized Assault Rifle in his hands. It made my sun-dried bloody rifle look like a child's toy. "I come in peace!" I said to him in an anxious voice. "Please, sir, please I believe my Wife is inside of your building and I must see her, you see I was seperated from her…" They cut me off. The guy standing behind the one who spoke cocked his matching Assault Rifle and pointed it at me. "What part of we don't have anything for you didn't you understand?" the man asked me. "But sir, my Wife. I KNOW she's in there!" I said to him. I walked a little bit closer and held up my Pip-Boy and he took a shocking look at it: "Can't I show you a picture of her?" The guards assistant shot at the ground in front of me. I stopped dead in my tracks. If I'm shot out here I'm fucked, I have absolutely no medical supplies. I turned around and walked away, picking up my bag that I had dropped when they started shooting at me. I walked across the street, and dropped my bag once again and turned around. I leaned up against a sign, I believe it was a bus-stop sign. With everything covered it soot its all a memory game of things before the war. "What are you doing?" the guy asked me again. "I'll just wait for her." I said with the cockiest attitude I could muster. Even though deep down inside I just wanted to start crying because I was started to get those feelings of conclusiveness in me, cos I was so certain I was going to be reunited with my Wife. "You can't wait here for her." The guard said. "Your on our turf." "Oh am I?" I said. "Where does your 'turf' end?" I asked him. He started waving his hand far, far into the distance behind me. I turned around and said: "What do you guys own all of fucking Brew City!? Blow me." I walked to the building that was across the street from me and I tossed my bag up against the wall of the building. I sat down, and just stared them down. At first the guards assistant took another shot at me, but the guard who was bitching at me motioned for him to stop. Perhaps he knew how serious I was. I have every intention of staying here until they either let me in or I see my Wife. Eventually you would assume that she would have to come out. I beat all the guards assumptions about my intentions. I had been outside of the Bradley Centre for three days. I've seen several changing of guards happen, and I am starting to recognise them from as far back as I am. I see them look at me with binoculars, and I see them all poke fun at me between each other. There is this one guard who did strike me as the oddball. He guarded the front doors only from 01:00 until 03:30 in the morning. All the other guards worked eight hours. Perhaps he was a new recruit or something. He wandered over to me on the third night and asked me what I was 'really' doing here. I told him the honest truth, and he was shocked to hear that what I said was paralell with with the stories the other guards had been swapping back and fourth about me. I begged and pleaded with the guy to take a look at my Wife's picture and tell me if he had seen her inside. When I showed him her picture, my heart-skipped a beat. "That's your Wife?" he said to me, almost as if he was having pity on me. Then he started to walk away. "Hey! What the fuck? Yes that is my Wife, what the fuck is going on? Tell me what you know!" "Or what!?" He said. "You gonna shoot me with that fly-swatter you call a gun? Go ahead." "Well then at least tell me why I should say goodbye to the only life I have ever known and go start over without the only other person I have ever loved." I said to him. "Even someone as young as you can understand it when it broken down like that can't you." I reached into my bag and pulled out my pot and tossed him the entire bag. It was all the drugs I had on me. "Is my Wife in there?" The kid started to cry, looking down at the bag of pot that I just thrown him. "You know I was young when the bombs fell. I was young in the Vault too, but there was this girl that I knew in the Vault. When we had our Evacuation Day ceremony I had looked all around to find her to see where they were going to go when we had opened to the doors. I really was attracted to her, and felt like I loved her despite being as young as I was." the young guard said. "I know the feeling man." I said to him. "The point is, I never found her." he said. "So I had to come over here and find out if that's really why your out here. I sympathize with your story. I know what your going through, and if you were actually married in before the War, I can only imagine that it makes everything that much more difficult to deal with." "Words cannot describe how difficult it is." I said to him. "Your Wife is inside." he said. "SHE IS!?" I screamed and I ran over to him and hugged him. He pushed me off him off right away. "You won't be happy about the circumstances, I'm afraid." he said to me. "To be honest, its quite hard to wrap my head around the idea that she would have been married before the War." "What are you talking about?" I asked him. "She is, uh, I don't know how to put this.. 'taken'." He said. "TAKEN!?" I screamed even louder. "What the fuck you mean she's taken?" I held up my left hand pushed my wedding ring in his face. "We were married, son." "I'm sure you were, in the Pre-War era." the guard said, with a shitty tone to his voice. "And let me guess.. you guys were 'just made for each other', too!" "We had something bigger than that!" I said. "Yeah, we all think that at first." the guard said. "Look, I gave up on idea of finding that girl I knew back in the Vault, and every once in a while it gets hard to think about but overall I'm doing alright. You need to let go of the idea of getting back with your Wife. She is cozy with the leader of the Admirals, sir Bradley himself." "Fuck you." I said to him. "I guarantee you that if I see my Wife she will come back to me." "And I can guarantee that if I was even able to get a moment with Lady Brea right now that you would be out on your ass the moment she and saw that her Pre-War husband is some Wastelander who has a toy-gun and smells like Brahmin shit." I thought about trying to shoot him. But he was right. My gun wouldn't even pierce this guys armor, and he'd probably beat me to the trigger anyway. "I'm not leaving" I said to him. "I'll die out here before I just fuck off and not give seeing my Wife another chance." "Do what you like, but your waisting your time." he said. "Why don't you try and get inside by means of the SoS?" "What the fuck is that?" I asked him. "The 'Supporters of Sportsmen', they live inside and do all the meanial work for the Bradley Centre so that the actual Sportsmen can focus on doing other 'more important' things." he said. "What do I gotta do to get in?" I asked him. "I'll do anything, I swear to God I'll do fucking anything." "I'll tell you what. What do you all got in that bag over there?" he asked while pointing to my bag of all the things I have ever owned since leaving the Wasteland. I ran over to my bag and ripped it open in front of him, cataloging what was inside as I pulled each item out. He kept the black gun and knife set I had found in the house I slept in before the Milwaukee Avenue VAULT for himself, and he said that if I sacrificed all the things that I had on him, letting him keep all my caps and the gun and blade, plus coughing up all the clothing I was wearing, leaving me with only the Vault-Tec issued clothes I had just got from Milwaukee Avenue VAULT as my only and primary set he would personally see me into the SoS as a 'personally recommonded' member. He told me because he can relate to my story, and the fact that that he wants me to personally see for myself that he wasn't lying about my Wife with my own two eyes, he would tell the SoS council that while he was patrolling tonight someone came to attack the Bradley Centre and I helped void the threat. A story that would be harshly swallowed I'm sure by those guards during the day as I have watched them defend their turf while I cheered on their enemy threats with a cheerleader-like attitude. The Bradley Centre was the same inside as I had remembered it with the traditional Wasteland filter over it, soot covered shit and dirty garbage all over the place, but all and all it was a good looking building inside. The main staircases were still in tact, as many of them were solid cement, nothing too fragile like in traditional residential homes of the late Pre-War era that just crumbled and fell into themselves when the nuclear fire boiled the earth. My young guard friend escorted me to a room that wasn't much smaller than the room I had stayed at in the Vault. You could tell it was part of the locker room or something of the old Bradley Centre when it was still used for sports and other venues before the War. "This will be your Living Quarters for a few days, so settle in and get comfy. I will be back to give you a orientation as to what we will expect of you and what you can expect from us." the guard said to me. He extended his hand and said: "Look, its not going to be easy in here, they really can treat you guys as second-rate, but I want you to know the truth and this was the only I could do it. There was no way in fucking hell you were getting in here on some "guest pass" or something allowed to romp about freely." "No problem. Look I'm not some kinda slave am I?" I asked because to be honest I didn't really know what about to happen, and because I wanted to make sure I wasn't blindly walking into something I couldn't get out of, although I'm sure it was already too late to turn back. The guard lowered his voice a little bit and leaned into me: "The SoS is basically a Merc group, but in terms of Merc business the bulk of any profits are given to the Sportsmen, for the better of the Sportsmen group. While the SoS is actually a small, minor branch under the Sportsmen, you will be protected by all means under the Sportsmen, but you can't go loot a house with a bunch of other SoS members and keep the shit for yourself. That would be treason. "Fair enough." I said to him. "Thank you, I don't know how your going to deal with those guys in the morning, they really, really don't like me at all." "Don't worry about them. They are are unimportant when your looking at the bigger picture anyhow." He assured me. "You get some rest, you'll need it." I did just that. With no bags to unpack, only the clothes on my back. I laid on the metal cot with a thin later of fabrics on top of it and went to sleep. I slept pretty soundly and woke up on my own. Part of me thought I would be woken up shortly after fallen asleep and I would be dragged outside and forced to look for loot or something, you know like slave work. But that was not the case. I woke up the room just as liveless and empty as when I had laid down last night. I looked at my Pip-Boy and looked at my LOCAL map and noticed that I was in the middle of quite a little complex area of small rooms. I was curious about meeting some of the other SoS members, seeing what their stories were. I walked over to the door, and opened it and walked into the hallway. I looked at my Pip-Boy and noticed there was a larger room down the hallway and to the right, so I started to walk that way. When I got to the larger room, I was pleasantly suprised to see a large locker room with about ten people all eating food and talking to one another. When I walked into the room, one by one they all looked at me. Eventually the room got quiet by them all looking at me. I turned around and looked back at the door then I spoke. "I'm sorry, am I in the wrong room!?" I said. "I'm looking for the SoS." A short, fat man with lots of tattoos, got up off the chair he was sitting at and walked over to me. He stuck out his hand: "Welcome noobie!" and pulled me in close for a hug. He turned around and pointed to me like I was a slave on sale for the rest of the people in the room. "Ladies and Gentlemen this is the guy Cohen told me about. This is our newest member of Supporters of Sportsmen, Six." Random hoots and hollers greeted me by the group of people in the room and the tattooed man had me follow him back to the table he was sitting at so we could have some food. "So what's your story?" he asked. "Cohen told me you were one of the people who recently left Milwaukee Avenue VAULT, still got the clothes on, huh, can't let go of the place or what?" he said pointing at my clothes. I had forgotten I had on the clothes that Milwaukee Avenue had given me while I stayed there. They clearly hadn't seen a Visitor Jumpsuit before. So apparently Cohen must have been the name of the guy who got me in here, and he must have told everyone that I was from Milwaukee Avenue VAULT. Whatever the case may be, I just hope I can float a conversation without getting caught up in my words. We'll also hope there isn't a pop-quiz later. "Cleanest set of clothes I had!" I said with a smile. "My story is simple. Had enough of the Vault, wanted to see what was out there in the Wastes for me, and I stumbThey clearly weren't clear on the idea that I was wearing a Visitor badgeled upon this place. This idea seems good, I like what the Sportsmen seem to be doing for the Wasteland." "Yeah but what are the Sportsmen, REALLY doing!?" he says to me with a speculative voice. This must be typical SoS banter between members. "So you plan on sticking around or you gonna get all independant on us and leave as soon as you realise you gotta share with everybody. There is a strong community here kid, you'll come to realise that soon enough. Name is Kenny by the way." "Is this everybody?" I asked him. "Is this all of the members of SoS right here?" Kenny laughed. "No way! There is over three hundred of us at the Brew City Chapter alone. We got people on the other side an everything. Motor City got a chapter just as big if not bigger." "Wow." I said to him. "So what do we do all day anyway, I don't want to sound stupid, but I really am not sure." "Yeah, I didn't know what the fuck was going on when I first came in either. Well today our group here were all going into the sewers today." he said. "There was a small camp of Prophets camping out down there during the last attack towards the Centre and we are still dragging back the look from the camp they had setup." We ate breakfast, or what you could call 'breakfast' in the Post-War world and then we assembled together outside the room in the hallway. Kenny is apparenly the leader of our group of people. "Its walking for a half-hour then we have our motivational talk from Bradley and then were off." We walked through the hallway and into a large room where sports people probably used to warm up for sporting events. There was a track around the outside of the room and we all walked around it for about twenty minutes. I heard several people say somethign about a Pip-Boy, pehaps not everyone here has one. Then we did basic stretching and floor excercises, most of which made me hurt in areas all over my body. Its been a while since I gave my body a good stretch, it was always get up and run. Kenny told the group to go back to our rooms and get our gear ready for the trip, and to meet back here in ten minutes. Everyone left the room and then Kenny waved me to come over to him. I walked over to him and he walked with me over to a line of locked cabinets against the wall. He opened one of the cabinets and pulled out an armoured vest and a pair of thicker pants. He also tossed me a dingy white T-shirt. "Boot'll have to do." he said talking about the boots I was wearing. Then he walked over to another cabinet and opened that one up. He pulled out a sexy looking assault rifle just like the ones the guards had in front of the building. I couldn't believe he was handing me these things and just letting me use them like they were my own. "It would be in your best interest not to loose or damage the weapons provided by the Supporters of Sportsmen" Kenny said "The people upstairs.. they look down on it. If you loose your weapon out there in the Wastes, it would probably be in your best interests to get lost and hope nobody ever finds you. We're not exactly a Pre-War Wal-Mar with endless suppliess to be handing out. "Understood." I said to him. He told me to get back to my room and to toss the stuff on and get back right away as the speech from Bradley was coming. I wasn't sure who this Bradley guy was but Cohen said that is who my Wife is taken by. That makes me think she is a slave to him, and if that is the case I don't give a fuck if I die in the process, I will free her of such enslavement. I ran back to my room and I changed into the issued armor. It was better than anything I have ever worn, in regards to protection. Not the most comfortable, but you'd rather be safe than dead. We would all be matching I would notice as I walked back to the room were we did all the excercising. "Everyone is here?" asked the group of people. We stood lined up against the wall opposite of where Kenny had been standing. I took a look at the rest of the people who were dressed in the same clothing I was. They were mostly my age, two people were clearly younger, and there where a few people who were a lot older. "Okay look, we're off to clear out the Prophet camp down below the Centre Square out from then were back here for a cataloging and organsation session then were off to see wherever we can help in the building today. Now if everyone will please follow me we need to enter the Arena and hear from Bradley." We all walked in a single file line like we were in school. All dressed in our pale green protective armour. We got into the Arena and I was suprised to find about fifty other people dressed just like we were, all lined up in a grid of standing men all with their back turned away from the way we had walked in. We assembled ourselves in a line behind all the others who were already there, and a few other groups of people came in after us and stood behind us as well. Kenny was standing at the end of our line of people, facing us not the front of the room like we all were. He instructed us to greet Bradley as he started to enter the room. So we all started to clap and hoot and holler as this man and women walk in the room. I knew my hands were clapping, because I could see them doing a clapping motion, but I couldn't feel it. I was frozen solid. My Wife is standing on a platform in front of the room, arm and arm with another man. Another man whose face is sadly familiar. A man who's picture I had actually had in my back pocket for most of the time I wandered the Wasteland. Jewls' husand. He is standing there with my Wife, in fucking "jolly spirits" alright. "Good morning ladies and gentelemen! Supporters of Sportsmen I thank you for another great day in the wonderful world of Brew City. I am so happy to have been told that we have ourselves a new member to our Brew City chapter. He comes to us from the Milwaukee Avenue VAULT. Where is this fine young man?!" Bradley said. I was overcome with fear. I didn't know what to do. I didn't wanna be called out for being a liar by my Wife in front on her, that is the Vault she came from, but the rest of me wanted nothing more than my Wife to see me. So I fucking raised my hand. "Ah yes! What is your man good sir!?" Bradley said. "LIAM!" I said. I couldn't look up cos I was toio afraid that I would look straight at my Wife. "Well welcome Liam!" Bradley said "Glad to have you!" "You got stage fright or something" the guy next to me leaned in and said. "Yeah. A little." I said to him while looking at the floor, but in his direction. Bradley continued on about other things, but all I could do is look at the floor. The guy who giving me shit about having stage fright speaks again: "Dude, Lady Brea is staring you the fuck down man!" "Are you serious?" I said to him, still focusing on the floor more than anything else in the woirld. "Yeah dude, you better hope Bradley doesn't get wind of that shit, you'll be a fucking dead man." he said. Bradley finished up his speech and Kenny instructed us to go back to the room we exercised in. As we walked past him, Kenny grabs my armor and pulled me in and said: "I think the big man's Lady got the hots for you!" He laughs. "Watch out man, playing with fire, you will most certaintly get burned!" We walked to the room we exercised in and stood there congregating with one another. I talked to the guy who was giving me shit while we were standing in the Arena. His name was Carl. Claimed to come from a private Vault he wouldn't ever speak the name of. Kenny instructs us to break up into two groups of five and to meet up by the front doors of the Centre to get ready for departure. I follow Carl and we join up with three other guys he seemed to know well. We leave the room and start making way towards the Bradley Centre entrance. We don't make it halfway down the hallway before someone toting a large gun and a armor full with a helmet yells "CARL!" "The noobie there, tell him to come with me. Bradley wants to see him!" the armed guard says. Carl turns around and with a serious look says: "Oh man your in deep shit man, Bradley wants to talk to you in private! Go with him." He points at the guard. As I start walking away he turns me around and rips the gun from my hands. "Don't be rude!" he says. I follow the guard. "Am I in trouble?" I ask him. "No actually its the Lady Brea who wants to have a word with you. If Bradley catches wind of this your in as much trouble as I will be for having the conversation without being with him there! So fear not, but I wouldn't tell anyone about this ever. She asked me to do this for her personally." he said to me. He walked me to a room much like the one I'm staying in, except there is no bed and two doors instead of one. He tells me to stay put and leaves the room. I stand with my back up against the wall and wait. The other door opens up that I didn't come through and all the sudden my heart stopped. My Wife, Brea, walks into the room. She walks up to me and I resisted the temptation to just grab a hold of her. I didn't want to scare her, I was just so happy to see her. "Brea, I'm so happy to.." my sentence is interupted by the most painful think I ever felt my life. Brea slapped across the face. "I thought you were dead!" she said. "What happened to you? Your Vault pass was at home! Where did you go? How are you still alive! WHAT HAPPENED!?" "Captain wanted to die at Pandora and he gave me his Platinum Pass, and I was with Calvin all this time. Were were at State Street VAULT and we didn't have such a good time in our VAULT like you seemingly had in yours. Calvin, Juliet, and I broke out out after being locked up in that bitch for six fucking years. I had to kill the fucking Overseer and force the Protege to open the VAULT for the chance to get out of and find you." I said to her, balling my eyes out. "Now I have and I'm the happiest guy on the face of the earth. Now we can be together like we always wanted to be. Who is that guy you were up there with anyway, why were you all up close with him?" She slapped me in the face again. This time on the other side of my face. Now I'm even. Then I noticed she wasn't wearing her wedding ring. "You don't ever talk about Bradley like that ever! To anyone. Not even yourself. Bradley is so much more of a man than you ever could be. Bradley has a vision for the future. What do you have? Are you the same old Liam you were before the War. Let me guess, I'm willing to bet you have smoked marijuana since you have left the Vault, and were dying to smoke the entire time you were locked up in that Vault. Weren't you!? I bet you were!" She didn't know I had smoked pretty much every single day of my life while in the Vault with Calvin, Elijah, and Caleb. Every bone in her body said that I haven't changed a bit. And she was right. "Yeah your right." I said. "I can change though, you know I will do anything for you darling." "Don't you fucking call me darling!" she shouted. She never swore. "You don't deserve to call me anything other than Lady Brea you some of a bitch. The world ending wasn't enough motivation for you to change? You know what the world made me realise?" she said to me with the same eyes she did on our wedding day. "That you were the only thing in the this entire world that could hold me back from spreading my wings and living my life." she said. "The world ending was symbolic for me on so many levels. I took that day for me to realise that I wouldn't be held down by anyone in this entire world. Man, woman, or child. You were the possibly the worst thing that ever happened to me and I regret to ever have known you. Your nothing to me. I wash my hands of you." My eyes felt like they were bleeding, I was crying so hard. The women who I married walked into the room that morning, and somebody else walked out. I became puzzled as I stood in the room alone. The very reason I got up each and every morning just told me that I was nothing to her. I am void of character. I need to change.