<<UserID:Webb>> Been an odd afternoon. Boone, ED-E, and I are camped on an overpass on the access road to the REPCONN site, not too far east of the building itself. Figured it would be better to wait out the dark here, get some rest, rather than pushing on in after hiking all day.
Vargas was certainly right about the ghouls, though.
<<Unidentified Male>> Hmmph.
<<UserID:Webb>> Ferals have been all over this road. They slowed us down considerably, having to advance and pick them off one by one, rather than bring them down on us all at once. The Geiger counter on the PIP-Boy isn’t picking up any more than standard wasteland radiation levels, though, so I’m still not sure what’s drawing them to the place or keeping them here.
The overpass itself hints at a completely different story. It’s been fortified, at least to some degree, and we found two more of those odd blue-skinned supermutants, lying dead and torn apart by ferals. At least these ones weren’t trying to kill cattle, but it is looking like the presence of mutants and the ghouls are related... and not in a friendly way.
Maybe there’s something both of them want at REPCONN. Again, I keep thinking radiation, but...
Hmm...
Maybe the PIP-Boy isn’t getting accurate readings. We’ll have to monitor ourselves for rad posioning, just to be safe. Boone, let me know if you start feeling nauseous or losing any hair.
<<Unidentified Male>> Tough for me to tell. You’re the one with the beard.
<<UserID:Webb>> Fine, then tell me if my beard falls off, just in case I don’t notice the sudden breeze.
Not much more we can tell from here, I suppose, so no real sense in losing sleep over it. I’m sure we’ll find out more tomorrow if we don’t get eaten in our sleep. ED-E, got your sensors tuned for movement in both directions?
<<UserID:ED-E>> 010101000110100001101001011100110010000001110101
0110111001101001011101000010000001100001011011000111011101100001
0111100101110011001000000111010001110010011000010110001101101011
0111001100100000011011010110111101110110011001010110110101100101
0110111001110100001000000110100101101110001000000100000101001100
0100110000100000011001000110100101110010011001010110001101110100
01101001011011110110111001110011
<<Unidentified Male>> That a yes?
<<UserID:Webb>> Probably. I never know for sure.
Anyway, may as well get some rest. Signing o--
<<Unidentified Male>> You do this every night?
<<UserID:Webb>> What, leave the eyeball on watch? It’s not like he needs sleep.
<<Unidentified Male>> No. Record what you did that day.
<<UserID:Webb>> Oh. Yeah, most days.
<<Unidentified Male>> Why?
<<UserID:Webb>> Started it to make sure my cognition wasn’t impaired after the fellow in the checkered suit shot me in the head. Now... I just keep it up, mostly for myself, I suppose. Something to leave behind, maybe as a warning to whomever finds it and listens to it.
Speaking of which... let me register your voice, so you stop showing up as unidentified on the logs.
<<Unidentified Male>> What’s the point of that?
<<UserID:Webb>> Makes reviewing the logs easier. Besides, it’ll be a cheat sheet for when I forget your name. Just sit tight, won’t take a second. Just have to hook up this little keyboard, and...
*Typing.*
There. Auto-detect is on. Say your name.
<<Unidentified Male>> This is stupid.
*A dinging noise.*
<<UserID:Webb>> Uh-oh.
<<UserID:Stupid>> What?
<<UserID:Webb>> Heh. Nothing. Hold on...
*More typing.*
There we go, did it manually. Say something else.
<<UserID:Boone>> Still think this is a waste of time.
<<UserID:Webb>> Yeah? Maybe I shouldn’t have changed it.
<<UserID:Boone>> Changed what?
<<UserID:Webb>> Nothing.
<<UserID:Boone>> Hmmph.
*Several minutes of silence.*
<<UserID:Boone>> You said you were a corporal while you were in?
<<UserID:Webb>> Eventually, yeah. Enlisted in ’52, when I was still just a kid.
Jesus, seventeen. You think you know everything then, right?
*Sighing.*
Served as a grunt for three years before someone picked me out for combat medic training. Got pulled from my unit and sent to Vault City, studied there for two years before I got my certification and got reassigned. One of the units doing raider sweeps in the backcountry, you remember them?
<<UserID:Boone>> They still send out some now, but all this was before my time.
<<UserID:Webb>> Holy hell, I keep forgetting how old I am. What are you, twenty-five?
<<UserID:Boone>> Twenty-six.
<<UserID:Webb>> Stop making me feel like an antique.
Anyway, the war with the Brotherhood was in one of its little cold spells, so the upper brass figured they’d do some tidying in their own backyards while it lasted. My unit was mainly patrolling in the eastern territories. I got my corporal’s chevrons along with my medical degree, went where they told me, and fell in love with my sergeant.
Watching you shoot, I think you would have loved her a little bit yourself. Something about a woman who can put a round between your eyes from half a mile away, eh?
<<UserID:Boone>> Heh.
<<UserID:Webb>> Anyway, that was my Jess. We patrolled together with the rest of our unit for years, clearing out raiders until ’63, when we got some bad intel about a camp near Broken Hills.
Jess took a shot in the leg from a Viper. I grabbed her and ran like hell for safe cover, stopped the bleeding as best I could, but I ended up having to amputate just below the knee.
Never could find her a correctly-sized prosthetic replacement, though lord knows we looked through half the abandoned hospitals between here and Baja until she got pregnant.
<<UserID:Boone>> They drummed her out for the injury?
<<UserID:Webb>> Honorable discharge. Medals and trumpets playing and everything. Sold the medals first chance we got for a stake in some decent salvage equipment.
<<UserID:Boone>> No medals for you?
<<UserID:Webb>> I don’t think they have a medal for punching your CO in the face when he tells you to leave your injured woman behind and get back in the field. Best they could do was a dishonorable discharge. Lucky I didn’t get court-martialed, all things considered.
<<UserID:Boone>> You said she got pregnant?
<<UserID:Webb>> In ’65, yeah. We settled down on a farm outside of Modoc.
<<UserID:Boone>> Your kid still there? In Modoc?
<<UserID:Webb>> She’s dead. Jess too.
*A few minutes of silence.*
<<UserID:Boone>> How’d it happen?
<<UserID:Webb>> Why don’t you tell me about your wife first?
<<UserID:Boone>> Hmmph.
<<UserID:Webb>> “Hmmph” it is, then. Get some sleep, I’m sure we’ve got plenty of ferals to shoot in the morning.
Signing off.
//Recording Ends//
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