Home Is Where The Apprentice Is

Lily returned to her room, and Gary made an exaggerated "Kya~" and asked, "What if I had been indecent?"

Lily looked at him and just said, "Nineteen." He looked confused, and she was about to say that she had already calculated when he was "in, decent" and that it was at least nineteen centimetres, but then realized that lewd puns didn't fit her image as a classy lady. Hence, she shook her head and said, "Nevermind." It was a shame, almost, as of lewd puns that was a top-tier specimen.

She had repaired the shower but discovered that the rooftop cistern was full, so she did not need to make a trip outside to refill the little pressurized cistern on top of the shower. She had also calmed down considerably. She had always been a homebody, and she felt that being so far away from her web for so long was bad for her mental well-being.

Before her next adventure, she would ensure that both had a little slice of home to take with her, namely her armoured research vehicle and that she would set up a continuous data link back to Megaton. She had been a little worried about the Apprentice in her absence. Were her education goals proceeding apace? Was anyone bothering her? With a continuous digital link, she could have stayed in contact with the girl throughout her escapades.

As she thought about that, she felt a slight but unusual warm feeling in her chest. She hummed in thought, staring off into space in the ceiling, before she realized that Gary was staring at her, almost slackjawed. She blinked and demanded, "What?"

He asked cautiously, "Were you just thinking about your favourite microscope or something?"

Lily tilted her head off to her side and considered that. Her own Master often said that she was his best research tool, so after a moment, she decided that wasn't an entirely incorrect comparison to the Apprentice. She nodded, "Something along zhose lines. A long-term project, zhough, zhat still needs much time before being ready."

He chuckled and nodded. "I figured it must be something like that," he said but wouldn't elaborate further. She frowned at him but decided it wasn't worth the time to pry out what the sometimes inscrutable man meant.

She hummed, "When we get to Megaton, I will offer you zhe accommodations on zhe fifth floor of my building. Zhe fourth, sixth and basement levels are restricted. I would like you to consider lesson plans for two ten-year-olds of above-average intelligence but low education, as well as one almost sixteen-year-old of very high intelligence. I am currently managing zhat one's education and will continue to do so, so I will have to sit down with you and discuss her individually."

Gary nodded, "I'll take you up on that offer for now. Although, I may wish to acquire a place of my own in the future." He then looked thoughtful, "Only two children for the regular class? Could there be more? Maybe as many as ten or twelve?"

Lily stared at him, "But zhose are zhe only two zhat I care about." She knew that sounded wrong as soon as she said it, and her social assistant heartily agreed with her.

Gary rolled his eyes a little bit, "Yes, I understand that very well. What I meant to say is that children, especially young children, have better educational outcomes when they have peers near their own age in a learning environment. So more children, up to a point, would increase the learning capacity and rate for the two you want to be educated."

Lily blinked at him and nodded, deciding to tease him a little bit, "Zhat sounded like you actually know what you're talking about."

"Don't act surprised!" Gary yelled, feigning outrage. Lily chuckled, "Okay, I understand what you 'ave said. I'm sure I can find other children of approximately zhe correct age range, perhaps from my employees. An education for zheir children would be a good employment benefit."

Gary grinned, "Ohhh... so you're a job creator, now? Look how far you have come from your meagre past as a lowly Sergeant in the Army."

Lily sniffed. She had a good idea of how the economy of the Pre-War era worked, or rather how it didn't. Everything she saw indicated that it was the definition of a highly mature economy, a zero-sum game where it was difficult to open new sectors. As such, she suspected that class mobility was almost nonexistent. She replied back, "Well, you too soon, no? Starting a business is a lot easier zhese days, zhat is for sure. But I assure you, even if I wasn't well known, I lived comfortably before I found myself in Vault 108, surrounded by your psychotic doppelgangers."

He just tsked and said, "Nouveau riche." He then chuckled, "But, yeah, you're right. That's certainly a silver lining. I mean, not sure it's worth billions of people dying, but I'll take what I can get. I'll have to see your education resources before making any plans, though."

Lily nodded, and they got their gear together and went out to meet Scott and Sophie for breakfast. After a quick meal, they once again saddled their trusty steed, although this time Lily laid in the back cab area with Sophie while Gary rode shotgun. She and Sophie could see the outside through their feed to the surveillance drone. Lily was staring up at the ceiling of the truck's cab, finishing her work cross-compiling her own moving map and GPS program to work on the Mister Handy architecture.

It would require installing a small, secondary antenna array and an extra radio peripheral, but she had already created a design for such a device. She would install it in Sophie before she and Scott left back for home. She incorporated a couple of antennas on the same array, as well, so that Sophie could have the same breadth of frequencies she used, including the near-microwave high-bitrate spectrum. She might find it useful; at the very least, she could send and receive files very quickly with Scott once he got his computer working.

With her current radio, Sophie was barely managing an abbreviated experience stream the other day. Lily's system had to degrade the stream somewhat to allow it to be sent with Sophie's present bandwidth restrictions.

Scott's voice brought her out of her reverie, and she put the windows of her development environment away, "We're approaching the bridge. Could you have your drone check for any ambushes?" Lily sat up and brought the surveillance feed to the forefront, triggering the drone to descend a bit while darting ahead of the truck to hover over the bridge. She fed the feed to her expert system, carefully analyzing it for any movement and things that appeared out of place.

"Nothing on the bridge; I'm moving the drone over the far side choke points," Lily said quietly.

Gary blinked, glancing from Lily to Scott, "Just how are you controlling this drone? And wait, you have a drone?"

Lily chuckled. He would find out pretty soon anyway, so she may as well tell him, "I 'ave installed, surgically, zhe computer interface in my brain. I consider zhis a secret, so I'd appreciate it if you didn't mention it to strangers. Or really anyone but Scott and Sophie, as well as my Apprentice. It includes a number of features, such as built-in radio scanners and control of robots... I can even write my correspondance with it." She did understate its usefulness to him slightly, though.

He whistled, "That's wicked; that's like Flash Gordon shit right there. Don't worry, Doc. I won't tell anyone."

Lily nodded, "It doesn't look like zhere is anyone in any of the obvious ambush spots, but it does look like zhere was recent combat here, and judging from a couple of bodies, I don't zhink the raiders won." She triggered a return to default orders on the drone, which accelerated back to the truck, climbing to its usual five hundred metre position.

Scott nodded and accelerated onto the bridge gently, "It's been my experience that about one out of three times you will experience an ambush at this position. It is so predictable."

Lily was curious, "Do you know where zhe population of raiders comes from? Zhey seem endless and perpetually renewing."

Scott chuckled, "A lot come from the Pitt; there is actually a huge population there, and they're almost all raiders. Many come from the Commonwealth to the north or are pushed out of the Dominion by their organized military. A lot from Norfolk from the south, they were hit harder than even DC was when the bombs fell due to the huge Naval base, it's basically completely lawless there. The rest are locally produced people who don't want to work or build anything and would rather take from others." He shrugged at that.

Lily considered what he had said, "You basically said they come from every direction but from the sea."

Scott considered that and then added, "Sorry, some do come from the sea, also. A few of the islands around here have been co-opted as, for lack of a better word, pirate kingdoms."

Gary seemed enthused, "Arrr! You mean there are actual ships or boats around here?"

Scott seemed to think about that, "What's the difference between a ship and a boat, again?" Gary chuckled, "Mostly, it is their size; if it is small, it is a boat; if it is large, it is a ship. Technically, the US Navy said that if fits on and is carried by a ship, then it is a boat. To be a ship, it has to be actually seagoing."

Lily blinked, now curious. "What about torpedo boats or coastguard cutters?"

Gary hummed, "Torpedo boats are actually, technically, considered vessels, kind of an in-between between the two. And most coastguard cutters were as big as frigates when the war started, so they're definitely ships." He paused and then added, "Although technically, all ships are vessels, too. But not all vessels are ships."

Scott considered that and nodded, "In that case, there are definitely some boats and vessels, but I do not know any group that operates true seagoing vessels, presently, though. They definitely exist, though, because I know there is occasional traffic to and from Europe by sea."

This clearly excited Gary.

Lily nodded, "I can confirm zhat. Zhere is a really terrible man zhat immigrated to the Capital wasteland from zhe UK. I will probably have to kill him sometime in zhe future."

Scott nodded, "I am pretty sure I know who you are talking about, and the sooner, the better, I'd say."

Gary glanced between them again, "Well, I don't know! Come on, spill! We still got some time to drive, don't we?"

Scott nodded and then began telling him what he knew about Alistair Tenpenny, basically that he was a murderer, probably a rapist and a complete genocidal psychopath.

Lily added in, "If I 'adn't disabled the nuke in the centre of Megaton, he would have tried to use it to destroy zhe town within two years, although please don't ask me 'ow I know zhis. His right 'and man, Burke, tried to get me ripped to shreds by a crazy cult when I disarmed it."

Scott slowed the truck to a stop and turned in his seat to look at her, wide-eyed, "Are you telling me that bomb was live?" To which Lily nodded, "Yup." Scott seemed aghast as if he was reliving every time he must have walked past it.

"Why does he want to blow up a town of ten thousand people?" asked Gary curiously.

Lily snorted, "If you can believe it because it ruins 'is view from zhe penthouse of zhe building he lives at."

Gary blinked several times and then just nodded, "Yeah, okay. He's got to go."

Lily just nodded and sat back in the bed of the truck. Sophie was sitting on the floor, having turned her levitation off, but she was still listening to the conversation and would occasionally make a comment.

As they approached the big gates of Megaton, something caught her attention. A radio transmission whose source was uncategorized, followed by a stronger transmission that she had already categorized as Galactic News Radio, but on a different frequency. She pulled up the waveform and realized it was an audio transmission in the clear. She played it back for herself.

"Golf November Romeo, this is Scout Thompson. Reporting, the vehicle matching the details of target Lima-One has approached Megaton with a heavily-laden flatbed trailer; it appears to be entering the settlement. Is this a priority mission?"

"Thompson, Golf November Romeo, that is a negative. Repeat, negative. The owner is a local VIP that Star Paladin Lyons tried to visit recently. This mission is just to inform Lyons that she will likely be in town now. Can you identify the cargo? I'll add that as an appendix."

"Golf November Romeo, Thompson, Looks like... Lots of heavy machinery, maybe computers, unknown. An operational looking tracked construction vehicle with a fork-lift attachment and a lot of crates, but they're under a bunch of tarps. They could be anything. Fuck, a dozen Protectrons and one Assaultron that are fully active and a deactivated Mister Handy under a tarp, I'd recognize that shape anywhere. Other miscellaneous things, a giant drill, probably for the construction vehicle."

"Thompson, Golf November Romeo, copy that. That's very interesting, and that many combat or security robots will go straight into the daily intelligence digest; good work. Out."

Lily raised her eyebrows. It wasn't that surprising that the Brotherhood was keeping an eye on the comings and goings of Megaton, but it seems Sarah Lyons had not only received a promotion from the last time she saw her but also tried to visit Lily at her hospital while she was away. Lily didn't particularly like that, but at least everything seemed cordial, for now. The fact that the Brotherhood sent critical intelligence in the clear on the radio was a little disappointing, but hubris and the Brotherhood of Steel always seemed to go hand-in-hand.

She used her radio direction finder system to pinpoint the location of the Brotherhood of Steel scout from triangulation, positioned in concealment in the ruins of a building about a kilometre away from the entrance to Megaton, with good sight lines on the entrance to the city. She was tempted to send her drone over there but decided against it. She didn't know what equipment he or his team had, and scouts tended to have good eyes. She would very much wish to keep secret the fact that she had that capability.

She wouldn't be surprised if it was a scout sniper team in a semi-permanent nest from the first transmission. One kilometre was an easy shot for a marksman, but she had both armoured the cab of the truck and its windshield, but it seemed as though she was still on the good side of the Brotherhood. It was good to know that they likely had that capability, though.

She debated whether or not to tell the others, as it wasn't anything Scott and Sophie didn't already probably know or guess. She decided to, anyway.

Gary scoffed, "Don't think much of their opsec if their friggin scouts transmit in the clear. Do they think nobody else has radios?"

Scott nodded at Gary, "Yes, basically they do. That is their blind spot. They are raised to consider everyone, not them, to be barbarians, basically. Although, to be honest, they do often use encryption. I believe that is one of the more fragile parts of military radio handsets, though, so they may have a shortage of working radios with the encryption working. The Enclave always encrypts their transmissions, though. The Brotherhood doesn't take them seriously, and who would with President Eden's radio broadcast, but they clearly have a better supply situation." He paused to consider, then added as an alternate possibility, "It's also possible they just concentrate their working equipment, as they very rarely leave Adams Air Force base."

Lily seemed to notice that people were aware of the Enclave, but only their operation at Adams. She suspected that their main base at Raven Rock was still a carefully guarded secret.

Scott glanced back at her as he pulled up to the guard station, "You can't be too surprised. With the products you're advertising, especially the genetic alterations, it was inevitable that they would come to take the measure of you."

Lily nodded, but she had a sour face anyway, "Yes, but I was hoping to put it off a couple more months."

There wasn't any kind of customs duties or anything in Megaton, the guard just wanted to make sure they weren't carrying a platoon of raiders in the back. He was a bit put off with the dozen Protectrons, which was a lot more effective than most raider platoons, until he saw Lily poking her head out the window, "Oh, it's you, Dr St. Claire. You can go on in."

Lily smugly retreated back into the back of the cab, "See? I am zhe big shot, yes?"

Gary just snorted, Scott was silent, but Sophie, at least, praised her.

As they drove through the streets of Megaton slowly and headed east she slowly got intermittent pings from all of her equipment at the hospital. She didn't get a good signal until they were about a kilometre away, and she instantly dove deep into her mind to check on the status of everything.

Alice was alive, that was good and the most important thing. Everything seemed to be going well. The patient archives seemed to indicate that there was brisk business while she was gone, but she just skimmed them. The Termitron she had left behind and her Labourtrons had tested over four hundred and twenty-two alloys, finding two matches to the characteristics she desired.

They continued testing afterwards but shifted to a secondary objective in categorizing the material specifications for a number of steel, titanium, and aluminium alloys featuring semi-random metals added. A few alloys of aluminium showed some promise for both weight and refractivity.

Lily noticed Alice tried to communicate with her on the chat protocol, but she was still using the old version, and there were incompatibilities. Lily would need to package and send her an OTA update for her OS and a number of apps that she had adjusted while she was gone, but she had a utility to automate that process based on snapshots, so it wouldn't be a problem.

She started working on packaging the update now, sending a commit to her mainframe's version control system, which should automatically cryptographically sign the update and send it to all users, of which currently there was only Alice. It would take the Apprentice longer to review and approve the update than it did for her to send it out.

As they pulled into the parking lot, Lily noticed a new structure. It was the garage she asked Tombs to build, although it actually looked more like a barn or an aircraft hangar, even. That suited her just fine, as it meant there was more room inside. It would take her days to unload everything and install it in the various places. She was going to use the fourth floor as the cloning lab but hadn't figured out a place to keep everything else. She suspected this garage would be where she constructed the trucks, so most of the vehicle-related things could stay inside here. She'd assign a permanent security presence and lock the gate.

"Pull into that hangar or garage. We'll leave most of the loot on the trailer for now," Lily informed Scott, who backed the truck carefully into the large space.

Matilda jumped off the trailer and walked into view. Her arm was repaired. It turned out the brute didn't need a new arm, just a new set of graphene cables, which was easily produced.

Alice showed up after they had unloaded the Protectrons and carefully used the ramp to back the MUVS off the trailer to sit next to the truck. She said, "Ooh, cool! I'm glad you're back, Dr St. Claire! We had heard that a lone truck got attacked at the bridge, and I was worried you might have been hurt!"

Lily smiled, then snorted. "Apprentice, where I grew up zhere was zhis saying... it was..." She then coughed into her fist formally before reciting, carefully enunciating each consonant, "Heroes die young, but calamities last a thousand years."

The Apprentice tilted her head to the side, and Lily pointedly ignored Gary staring at them, looking back and forth between Lily and Alice with a confused expression on his face. Alice finally asked, "So?"

Lily grinned, 'Ahahah, she fell for it!' She whispered conspiratorially, "That means girls like us have a long time to live, yet! Don't worry so much!" Besides, this calamity intended to last much longer than that!

The Apprentice snorted and shook her head, "A number of people came to visit you. Someone from Rivet City, working for Dr Madison Li, came to find out when was a good time that Dr Li might be able to visit with you; he's still in town. A Star Paladin Sarah Lyons came with what she called some Scribes and wanted to talk with you, but you weren't in. She said she'd come back. And the rest aren't that important, people from the mayor's department, Mr Tombs, but he didn't have anything pressing, just status reports, that sort of thing."

Lily's eyebrows rose. She expected Sarah Lyons, but one of Madison Li's people? Sounds like a low-level staffer or assistant. Lily wondered why she was approaching her, possibly in cooperation? Lily would be interested in that. Dr Li might have heard that she was behind the new Eastside Water & Power Company and might be interested in comparing notes.

Or maybe she just wanted a bulk discount on genetic therapies, who knew? She'd find out, she supposed.

"'ow are zhe doctors working out?" Lily asked.

Alice frowned in thought, "Pretty good, I suppose. Dr Rebecca was the one assisting me the most, but Dr Taylor answered my questions if I had any. I just get the impression he isn't as good a teacher. Business has been steady. I followed your directions and protocols as far as customers wanting any of your therapies were concerned, and there were a number of buyers. Mainly the clean metabolism mod and the life extension therapy."

Lily nodded, "Speaking of teachers, zhis man is named Gary Kaminsky. I've 'ired him to educate your brats--err siblings, and possibly assist in some of your education zhat I am less suited to provide. I will still personally oversee your education, zhough."

Alice looked quite unsure, but Gary was charismatic enough and shook her hand, "We will talk about 'is particular advantages over other teachers later. Are zhose light poles I saw on the drive up here and around l'hôpital?"

Alice already knew Scott and Sophie, so she just waved at them.

Alice grinned as wide as Lily had ever seen her, "Yeah! That's all me! Well, Nick and me. I used your.. uhh.." she glanced at Gary, and Lily waved her hand and said, "Gary 'elped us raid a factory full of loot, 'e already knows some of my special capabilities."

The Apprentice nodded, "Well, I used your fabricators to build giant replacement lightbulbs to ring the hospital and go up and down our street a few hundred metres. At night it reduces crime a lot!"

Lily raised her eyebrows, looking a little impressed, "Really? 'ow?" Although she was already searching through all of the fabricators to pull the design specs of designs Alice had made. They were clearly regular incandescent bulbs, so there had to be a vacuum inside in order to work properly. That wasn't a project she would expect either Alice or a ten-year-old boy, gifted or not, to be able to accomplish.

"Well, Nick helped me iterate through designs until I found one that worked. We had to build a number of models that didn't work, but we had a busted bulb to use as a model. It took a lot of use of your callipers, but we finally got one that was identical," Alice started to explain enthusiastically.

"Mr Tombs was the one who told me that the bulbs had to have a vacuum inside to light up, so that was an additional complication, but in the end, we managed to do it! Mr Tombs' men wired the poles into the power for us, and people have been asking to buy them!" the girl even pumped her hand in the air at the end.

Lily nodded, seeing the simple vacuum system she had used. It was similar to the medical suction systems she had already designed for the hospital, and Alice clearly repurposed the design that Lily left behind in the mainframe. That it worked was pretty amazing, Lily thought. The suction system would draw down the bulb to a vacuum, and the metallic base would be crimped onto position, almost like a rivet gun or bottling machine.

Still, Lily asked her solemnly, "And 'ow did you do all zhis while still keeping zhe you-know-what a secret from your brother?"

Alice scowled, "It wasn't easy! It involved a lot of drawing, let me tell you. He thinks you have some sort of design system in the basement. I'd like your permission to tell both Isis and Nick about it, it is becoming impossible to keep it a secret living in the same house.

Lily hummed and considered that. It certainly would be difficult, wouldn't it? She sighed and then nodded, "Fine. You can tell zhem. But you're responsible for zhem. And you can sell zhese to zhe city or property owners if you want. It would 'elp gentrify the neighbourhood. Do some research and settle on a price, and I will buy the ones around zhe hôpital. It is a good idea. But first, we shall do some quality assurance. I'm not so sure your air-tight seal shall last too long. We'll find out together, zhough."

More than the benefits of gentrification, it was a good idea that Lily didn't have to spend much time doing herself, which should be rewarded.

Lily had already reviewed the design. The bulbs were made out of diamond, but then again, so were regular street lights that still sometimes worked after two hundred years. She used the metal printer for the screw-on base to preserve its conductivity. Alice must not have known the settings for the dopants to turn a carbon allotrope conductive, which ended up being good as a metal base looked much more like a Fallout-universe bulb.

The filaments she tried were varied, but the girl seemed to settle on a carbon-based one, much to Lily's relief. The tungsten design Lily saw in the files would have worked for sure, but it was Lily's precious tungsten!

It wasn't really the use of diamondoid materials Lily wanted to hide but the fact that she could build them in arbitrary shapes and quickly, which she suspected Fallout manufacturing definitely could not. Everything she saw seemed to indicate that there was a lot of tooling involved in such manufacturing during the Pre-War period. Seeing new lightbulbs? Someone would just assume she looted a lightbulb factory, or something, so long as the Apprentice wasn't too radical in her design iterations.

The group of adventurers and one nearly sixteen-year-old girl walked together into the hospital's foyer. It was lunchtime, and after Lily ate, she was going to see how many auto-turrets she could build in the next day or day and a half until she got a visit by the Brotherhood of Steel. It was best to be seen as not a push-over with them, even if she privately liked Sarah Lyons.