I grew up in Megaton, have been here all twenty-three years of my life. I can’t say I travelled much further than the Super Duper mart. I’m not cowardly, just practical. I know there are raiders surrounding us in the abandoned grocery store and the creepy school just north of here. The only equipment I can come by in this place is an old police baton and a couple of frag grenades. Between that and the psycho I’m sure they’re all shooting; I won’t make it far.
My best friend in town is Moira Brown. She’s more than a little eccentric and has an unusual enthusiasm. I think that’s why I like her. Everyone else grumbles or won’t shut the fuck up about “Atom.” But Moira is pleasant to be around even if her attitude is inappropriate for the world we live in. Moira and I always tried to read any books that came into town and after reading through what was probably a dozen volumes of “Duck and Cover.” I was able to disarm the atomic bomb which our town surrounded. I figured it was a good way to test my knowledge and I reasoned that if I made a mistake, it was these idiots who were at fault for building a town around a fucking nuclear weapon.
It was the only time it seems that anyone noticed I was around. Moira told the Sheriff what I did, and he expressed his appreciation and even gave me a couple hundred caps. He also didn’t want me to tell the Children of Atom that the bomb was disarmed, he was afraid it would upset them. Truth be told, I really only did it to fuck with them. What a bunch of dumbasses, worshipping a bomb because they think being vaporized by it will bring them to nirvana or some shit. I take pride in that they still worship the thing even though now it’s harmless. That’s what they get for being dumb.
With the caps Lucas Simms got me I was able to get a few more frag grenades from Moira and I guess that’s when I decided that I could do a little more scavenging. You never really know what you will find. People’s lives have changed from wasteland treasure.
I didn’t have to go far for my life to change. I tried scavenging near Springvale. I was a little discouraged seeing the remains of what must have been a Deathclaw or Yao Guai attack. Maybe it was Molerats, what the hell do I know? But there in bright blue and yellow was the torso and arm of a Vault Dweller. And on that arm was a pip-boy. I couldn’t believe it. For one, Vault Dwellers are rare. When people see them, they usually steer clear because of their VATS capability. They don’t even have to see you, they just program their pip-boy to locate and automatically aim at anything in the area. They can kill anything that moves and out here anything that moves is probably a threat. What ever mauled the Vault Dweller, didn’t have the intelligence to see the value of what they left behind. I almost didn’t want to pick it up, it would make me a target for anyone with half a brain. There was someone I could trust however.
I made my way back to Megaton concealing the pip-boy as well as I could. I also sprained my ankle coming up the steep ramp to Moira’s. Craterside Supply was closed up for the day, but Moira trusted me enough to give me a key, albeit coming to her at this time was unusual and I learned that the hard way when her mercenary greeted be with the barrel of his assault rifle. My last thought would have been, I didn’t even get to try this pip-boy out. Luckily he recognized me.
“Do you know what time it is?” he grumbled
“A bad time apparently.” I answered. Even the merc couldn’t help but crack a smile.
“I guess you’re here for Moira.”
“I didn’t come to see you.”
“Do you know how to answer without being sarcastic? One more and I’ll just tell her I thought there was an intruder.”
“Gawen! What a surprise, I usually don’t have any late night visitors!” Moira interrupts from the second level, overlooking the main floor of her shop.
“What have you got there?” The merc asks drawing attention to the pip-boy covered in rags I was holding.
“That’s what I came to talk to Moira about, any chance I can come up so I can talk to you in private?” I said looking the merc in the eyes, which he rolled at my request.
“Sure! Come on up!”
As I meet her on her loft I whisper to her “Please get rid of the merc.”
But subtlety was never Moira’s strong suit, she says “Oh sure! Hey, why don’t you head to Moriarity’s? Gawen’s got something he only wants to share with me!”
Once the Merc leaves. I unravel the pip-boy and show her.
“Wow, no way you found a p-.”
I put my hands over her mouth and say. “There’s a bar full of people who have killed people for less valuable things. Until we figure out how to use it, we need to keep it secret.”
“Oh! Okay!”
“Okay, how do I use it?”
“Gee, I don’t know. Did you try putting it on.”
I’ve always appreciated Moira’s ability to come up with simple solutions. I was never as smart as she was. I put the pip-boy on my wrist and almost instantaneously, the device tightened around my wrist and turned on. It had a bunch of information I didn’t understand but with it on my wrist Moira starts poking around on it.
“This is really fascinating stuff.”
“What’s it telling you?”
“Well I’m not sure, let me see something.” She says as she pulls a stimpak sitting around her loft and jabs me with it. I do not care for surprise needles, but a stimpak is an automatic rush of pain relief, so I couldn’t complain.
“It tells me how healthy you are. You’re also addicted to whiskey.”
“I’m not addicted to whiskey! I just like a drink here and there.”
“I’m not so sure, I don’t think this thing is lying, considering it just told me exactly how much stimpak is in your system.”
“Well I don’t accept that my drinking is a problem, but what else does it tell you?”
“You should take a radaway. And that your left ankle is sprained.”
“Woah how does it know that?”
“I’m not sure! But Oh! Do you know what this means?”
“What?”
“With this information I can continue my research.”
“Oh, come on! I can appreciate your scientific pursuits, but I swear I don’t see the same since we were making bottlecap mines.”
“Oh come on! Things will be so much easier now that we can measure what’s happening.”
“And that’s not even the best part. Here watch this.”
“This time Moira pulled out a Ten-millimeter pistol and placed it in my hand. Then she tapped on the pip boy and threw a tin can in the air. My muscles seized and it was as if my wrist were being pulled magnetically, following unnaturally steady, the arc of the tin can.
“I think all you do is pull the trigger.”
“Ok, I don’t think I’m going to do that in this metal shack.”
“Oh, right of course not!” she says tapping the pip-boy and throwing more items in the air. Again my arm seized up and tracked the tin can. I was amazed at how steadily my arm moved while tracking the bottle she tossed in the air. I’m almost tempted to pull the trigger, but then I noticed my arm was terribly sore.
I drop my arm and the pip-boy begins to vibrate therapeutically. Moira picks up my limp arm as the pip-boy strangely massages my sore muscles and examines the screen.”
“Oh, I see, this ability isn’t unlimited, and it’s directly related to your overall muscle mass. Pretty much, you have to exercise more. Maybe if you cure your whiskey addiction, it would help.”
“Is this thing judging me? Atom be damned, this thing feels alive. I think my arm feels good enough to try shooting again. Can you show me how to do that?” I admitted with enthusiasm.
I spent the rest of the night at Moira’s getting the hang of the VATS system, which will make sure I lob grenades with precision. I didn’t have enough for the gun or the ammo, which was scarce over in this part the capital wasteland.
Without any sleep and the help of jet to get me through, I was finally able to scavenge the Super Duper Mart. Moira was always telling me they might have food or medicine, except now I don’t have to worry about my grenades missing. Other than that I was always okay in the dark. I was never brave enough to rely on stealth alone to get me into buildings. With this pip-boy, now I finally stand a chance. It never occurred to me that the odds were against me, I was just empowered with this VATS system.
It was pretty early in the morning, the sun had a few hours to come up. I looked at my pip-boy and I realized it told me the date and time; something I never cared to know before. In a weird way, I felt like having constant access to the time had evolved me in some way. It was four am, March thirty-first in the year two thousand, two hundred and seventy-seven.
I crept into the Super Duper mart under the cover of the early morning. I sneak around for a bit, before seeing two raiders grouped up and one just out of reach on top of some dilapidated shelving. I sneak back around and whack the raider hard enough to knock her off of the shelving and closer to her friends. I used VATS to trace her as she fell and from the other side of the bookshelf, I lobbed a grenade and then I ran for my fucking life. I thought I got them all, but then the fucking pip-boy unsolicited tells me there’s a partially wounded survivor. In a panic I ran to the other side of the unit where the grenade just hit and started bludgeoning the only thing moving, which was a raider crawling away without his right leg. I whacked him as hard as I could. Truth be told, I need strength training, because I had to hit him about seven more times before he stopped moving. I didn’t have a moment to shit myself, because then I hear more voices and my pip boy display some kind of sonar revealing their location. I’m fucking surrounded, and then reality set in, this thing is a game changer for someone with half a brain. So I tuck behind a tipped over shopping cart and sit as still as I can while four raiders diverge around the scene of the grenade. One nearly kicks the shopping cart I’m crouching behind and after he passes I figure I might as well jump behind where the pharmacy was. There was a raider in there, luckily he didn’t see me, but it would only be a matter of time before his psycho infused red eyes would spot me. He only needed to take a few more steps forward. The closest thing to me was a sawed off shotgun that I prayed was loaded. I know he would hear me grab it and react, but I bet that I can get a shot off with VATS first, and I only needed one shot. I think before I could think about the raiders who would hear our standoff, my arm located his head and my finger blew it into a bloody mess. I stayed crouched while the pip-boy displayed their location. I waited for all of them to group up right in front of the pharmacy’s shelf and then I used VATS to toss two grenades. The pip-boy confirmed everyone was dead. This was the first time I killed anyone. Before this, the most I killed was a molerat, and only because Deputy Weld injured it. I was horrified and proud at the same time. I thought I had a moment to celebrate and load up a sack with all the food and meds. I had to pick a lock for the meds, but it was worth it, I’ve never held so many valuable pills in my life! But then a group of raiders come through the front door. That’s how I learned raiders terrorize people on a twenty four hour shift. These guys must have been coming back from raiding all night, and they had the loot. I just took my sack and tried to find a back door. I stumbled upon a terminal that was connected to a charging protectron. Moira and I fiddled with computers a little bit, it wasn’t hard to figure out how to turn the thing on. My pip-boy told me that the machine was a threat, then I realized I’m smart enough to turn on a protectron, but not smart enough realize that the thing can’t tell me apart from the raiders. In my moment of panic I see an employee badge on the computer and put it on. Needless to say the robot endured most of the raiders and once they scrapped him standing and surrounded him, I hit the dead protectron with my last grenade. His body added even more shrapnel to the blast. I think I sat there for five minutes, catching my breath and letting the pip-boy restore the muscles in my throwing arm. Loaded everything, the food, the meds, the dead’s guns and clothes and even the protectron scraps into the same shopping cart I hid behind and rolled it all the way back to megaton. The rest of the town saw me for the first time, as I noisily carted my way up the rickety ramps to Moira’s.