Lesson plans

Jerome Simms was a disagreeable man. Other people called him an asshole. He took that as something to be proud of, which was why he mostly worked alone.

His current assignment was to confirm the most likely death of two freelancers and three slaves and return the valuable collars if possible. Eulogy did not like the devices to be out of Paradise Falls's control, beyond the fact that they were somewhat expensive.

It was a bullshit job, but at least it was an easy one. The two freelancers were almost a week overdue, and the three activated collars had not moved in longer than that. Obviously, the two idiots had gotten themselves and good merchandise killed by some feral ghouls or another stupid thing.

Jerome wouldn't be so disagreeable if he weren't surrounded by idiots all the time.

Jerome made sure to pace himself so as to arrive at the last reported position of the collars early enough in the day that there would be full light. He wasn't going to let some stupid fucking zombie jump out of the dark and surprise him.

He was equally as careful when he began his assessment of the building, circling the exterior twice and examining each possible entrance. Odd, he did not see any usual signs of a ghoul infestation. He decided not to make his entrance at the front like a chump would but instead skulked through a side door.

The collars were definitely in this building and still active, so he was on the lookout for dead bodies. Unfortunately, he didn't have any tools to remove the collars safely. There was no way something like that would be allowed outside of Paradise Falls, so he would have to cut their stupid heads off, and the collar would shut down as soon as it detected it was not around someone's neck anymore, which would make them safe to transport back, at least.

He did not see any sign of ghouls inside, either. Just a bunch of fucking books. He searched each room methodically while working his way to the front of the building.

He found the two freelancers near the front of the building, very dead. Not surprising, but what was surprising was that they had not been chewed on at all. In fact, each had been shot several times with obvious laser weapons. Jerome groaned, "You stupid fucks..."

Had they run into the fucking Brotherhood or Enclave? The Brotherhood wouldn't have shot the merchandise too, but the Enclave probably would have. Or maybe it was just some other player that used energy weapons.

He grunted softly as his attempt to rifle through their pockets came up empty. Would Enclave soldiers take the caps out of their pockets? Did Enclave soldiers even use caps? Odd. He kicked the penniless fools for wasting his time; he was hoping they would have something of value at least.

He was cautious and still on the lookout for the dead merchandise. Their bodies had to be in this building if the collars were still active.

His footsteps came to a stop as he began searching a small room with a long table and a bunch of chairs. There were no bodies in here, but there was a slave collar, unlocked, sitting on top of the table.

Jerome scowled. Things were getting more fucked up. The slave collars were pre-war tech and almost impossible for a person without the proper keys to remove, or at least that was what everyone thought. Eulogy would want to know about this. The idea that there was some group of sneaky abolitionist bastards skulking around, killing their men and freeing their merchandise would incense the scary man who had recently come to power.

It wasn't that uncommon for some new goodie two-shoe group to form up to try to stop them from doing what they always have done. It had happened a couple of times in the past. Whatever new band of heroes this was, they would be ground into dust like all the ones before had...

Walking over to the table, he noticed that the collar was sitting on a piece of paper, folded in half to conceal what was written on it. A letter?

Jerome growled when he saw that there was text written on the side of the paper he could read. It was printed in bold capital letters, "DEAR SLAVER ASSHOLE."

Eulogy was going to love this; these fucks had just signed their own death warrant -- literally. Shaking his head while he reached out to move the collar out of the way so he could see what was written in the letter, he just didn't understand how people could be so stupid.

He picked up the collar and moved to put it in his pack when he felt it vibrating for the briefest moment.

*CRUMP-BOOM*

An explosion that was significantly larger than a standard slave collar rocked the conference room of the old library. Generally, if a slave collar exploded while a person was carrying it, it would result in, at most, a missing hand. However, it hadn't taken Lily more than five minutes to carefully score the metal of one collar with her laser pistol, weakening it significantly and ensuring it would fragment and burst into a bunch of metal shards moving at high speed in an explosion.

That, combined with taking all three explosives charges and putting them into that single collar, turned a collar into an effective fragmentation grenade. It was simplicity itself to reactivate the self-destruct and rig it to go off if the collar was disturbed at all.

The hardest part was slightly damaging the battery, ensuring that the device would only function for a couple of weeks at most. Lily did not want to leave a booby trap in a library forever, after all.

The dust was slowly settling in the conference room, along with a sheet of paper slowly falling through the air like a feather. It finally landed on the dead body of Jerome Simms, but the only thing written on it was, "LOL."

---

A week later.

One of his assistants came to see Eulogy Jones with a report, "Simms still hasn't returned. He's been overdue for five days. He's dead, for sure."

Eulogy shrugged, "Well... no big loss. Jerome was an asshole. Are those collars still at that same location?"

His assistant nodded after a moment, "One of them reported self-destructing, but the other two are there. I bet a fucking deathclaw or something tried to eat the neck of one of the slaves it was on, finally."

Eulogy sighed, but it didn't reach his eyes. "Well, detonate the last two collars and mark that location as dangerous on the map. Don't use it as a stop-over point anymore."

The assistant nodded, "Yes, boss."

---

Lily stared at the anxious-looking girl before asking, finally, "What is the problem?"

Alice sat at a table; in front of her were sheets of paper and a pencil, "You said this was an IQ test. What if I'm stupid?! Will you kick me out?"

Lily snorted, "You're clearly more intelligent than the average person; I know that by just talking with you. If you think your score is too low, well, we will just work on improving it."

Alice looked surprised, "I thought it was impossible to increase one's IQ?"

Lily shook her head and descended into lecture mode, "I don't really like that term in the first place. I shouldn't have used it. But... intelligence can be roughly divided into two forms. The first is fluid intelligence, which is what most people refer to when they use the term IQ. It roughly equates to a person's ability to learn new things and deal with unexpected situations. The other type is crystallized intelligence, which deals with a person's ability to apply already learned knowledge and skills. For example, my ability to diagnose and treat an illness is mostly a function of my crystallized intelligence. I am not flexing my fluid intelligence at all, except if it is a novel disease I have not seen before."

Alice nodded; she knew enough about the tone Lily had taken to know not to interrupt her when she was on a roll like this.

Lily continued, "Well, the fact is that fluid intelligence, what people call IQ, changes over a person's life... The older an average human gets, the less fluid intelligence they have! However, crystalized intelligence stays the same even with age, absent dementia. You probably know this intuitively even if you haven't intellectually put two and two together. Your average old human has an amazing breadth of knowledge and skills in the areas they focused on, but ask them to learn something new?"

Lily shook her head sadly before saying, "Often, their ability to learn brand new skills is dependent on how well they can mentally shoe-horn that new skill into an already learned paradigm."

The younger girl looked a bit interested in the discussion but, "That is interesting, but what is the point?"

Lily sighed, "It just shows you that so-called 'IQ' changes your entire life! Sure, it is mostly for the worse, but there are ways to treat the brain to restore the neural plasticity of youth!" The fire of zealotry was in her eyes again; this was something Alice had come to recognize. She had seen it a few times in Dr St. Claire but hadn't quite pinned down the exact thing that got her so fired up, yet. Alice felt it was something along the lines of improvement, though.

Lily's bright eyes bored into her apprentice, "A child of five or six can learn a new language in two to three months, fluently! Imagine if you could do that your entire life? It is possible! So, fret not, apprentice. If you are not satisfied with your score on this crude test that can barely be considered useful, we will just... improve your brain!"

Alice coughed and nodded, "Yes, Dr St. Claire." She took the pencil and got to work.

Lily nodded and smiled. She didn't offer to replace Alice's brain with a computer... yet. Even in her past life, you had to carefully groom--err... slowly persuade an average person even to consider such an option. People were so weird!

---

Lily pursed her lips as she graded the battery of tests Alice had finally finished. But, of course, she had also tested the girl's general knowledge of math, English, biology and chemistry. Some of which were functionally non-existent. No matter!

Lily scribbled down on a sheet of paper a rough initial syllabus. This would be mainly a self-study program on Alice's part, with Lily there to ask questions to and provide the scaffolding of what to study and read and in what order. However, that only accounted for the theoretical side of learning. Lily had planned many practical learning activities in various subjects ranging from first aid, medicine, chemistry, hand-to-hand combat and marksmanship.

She called Alice into her office, who arrived looking even more nervous. The girl whined, "Some of that I didn't know ANYTHING!"

Lily shrugged, "I thought so, but you never know. I was actually quite impressed with what you did know. It doesn't matter. I've created a rough outline for a study program for you." She slid the paper across the desk, "You're going to be doing a lot of reading. This is a list of books to read, and in what order. In some of the textbooks, you only have to read specific chapters I've specified. Every morning we'll briefly discuss what you studied the day before and if you had difficulty understanding any particular things you read."

Alice looked at the... extremely long list of books. Only half of the books seemed to be textbooks; the rest were... novels? "How will I find the time to read all of these books at this schedule and still work the front desk?"

The blonde in the labcoat just blinked at her. "You won't. You're no longer working in the front office. Or working at all, except on days I've designated as practical medical lab days. I've 'ired a temporary replacement, and then I'll 'ire a more permanent replacement when we reach Megaton."

Alice looked distraught again, "But... but..."

Lily tapped on her desk and shook her head, "You seem to be under zhe misapprehension. You still 'ave a job. Your job is learning now. If I felt you would learn something useful by cleaning the toilets with a toothbrush, you'd be doing it. You've already learned, mostly, how to be personable, polite and professional in dealing with patients. You likely won't learn much more working in the office. If you don't want to spend a decade on your Apprenticeship, then you're going to 'ave to make learning your full-time job and go about it systematically. I will create the system for you, so all you need to supply is the will and determination to carry it out."

Alice finally started to understand and nodded, "Yes, Dr St. Claire."

Lily concluded with, "I've had a couple of labourers clean the office next door to this one. That will be yours for the next couple of weeks until we depart. For every two chapters in a textbook, read one chapter in one of the novels listed. But remember, you have to read each textbook at a minimum twice before moving on. Take a fifteen-minute break every two hours. You can expect a ratio of two days of book learning to one day of practical learning, for example, chemistry labs, shadowing me, firing range, et cetera. Dismissed."

Alice blinked and backed out of Dr St. Claire's office. She was a bit more terse than usual today, "...wait, did she say firing range??"