14 “Is this what you normally eat?” 2/2

Chapter 10 "Is this what you normally eat?"

His belly full, his mind eased from unburdening, John sat back in his chair. Relieved to still be welcome in the warm home. Something jolted him from the relative calm, something he hadn't heard in years. Error pips from the jet black pipboy. The first he ignored, assuming Wallace had missed a key. Then came another, and another still.

Panic built in John, he'd let his guard down. Overwhelmed with sights, sounds, smells, people, animals he thought were a myth. Robco must have read the look on John's face. Or knew enough that the strange device he'd seen in action wasn't something to be poked and prodded at.

"Wallace." His flat, even tone, drew the boy out from the screen.

"I know, I'm almost…I can see, but I can't…" The boy found something, he just couldn't place it yet. He took a break to eat more of the nearly cold dinner and throw back some cola.

"Here John, remember when you asked what a barbarian was?" John didn't. "This is a barbarian." From the stack of books the boy slid out something, thinner with worn edges. The front showed a hand drawn picture of a shirtless man swinging a chain around his head. Like John had done earlier with the pistons. Although not to fend off skeletons wielding swords.

"It's a comic book 'Grognak the Barbarian' he's got big muscles like you see. He goes on quests and fights monsters, see." John knew what the boy was doing. Rosie wore that trick out, distracting one arm so she could work on the other. He didn't mind. From what he could glimpse the boy was read only mode. Viewing the code, but not able to edit it. Besides, he liked the idea that the boy saw him as a hero. Even if he wasn't brave enough to wear a new shirt.

John flipped through the antique pages. The barbarian fought with axes and swords against all manner of reanimated bodies in a dark dungeon. It sort of resembled the children's stories from the Vault, but this comic told a tale of bravery, adventure. Not terror of the outside, plus there were far more women in revealing armour.

"Alright, question for you John, tell the truth now." John felt oddly worried as Robco topped up his whiskey with more cola, adding just whiskey to his own. "Which did you like more, my stew or this?" Louisa laughed warmly, amused at the suggestion of equal footing.

"Yeah be honest John, I'm not worried, plus I got dessert in the oven." She teased.

"What's dessert?" John answered a question with a question, provoking quiet laughter that built as they tried to stop it. With one final error ping Wallace got up from the table. He gathered his notes as he gathered his thoughts, then began pacing back and forth.

"Ok, it's definitely military tech. It's got the same RobcOS code Rusty has, but it's different, it's only a part of it. It's loaded with schematics for bots and guns and other things I've never seen before!" The boy stopped, looking at his mother.

"Momma, there's code in there I can't read. It's massive, running all the time, doing something but I can't tell what. And Momma, it's amazing, it's all got the same signature, it's all written by the same person! He must have been a genius." Wallace stood still in awe of the long dead genius a moment longer, then flipped back to the front page of his pad and started pacing again.

The momentum generated by his small, thin legs propelling his thoughts as he laid them out. For his own benefit as much as anyone else. "On the surface, it's a pretty standard unified OS. With some sloppy deletions, and back doors that looked like they were hammered in." John heard the same complaints before. "I can do what I want with that, that's easy. But the remote override is buried underneath, in the new code. I can view it, but I can't move it. Too big for a holotape, too big for a hundred holotapes, and it won't let me send it through the four pin. Even if I built extra four pins, which based on the schematics I'm pretty sure I can."

Both the boy's mother and grandfather watched with pride as the bright boy of no more than eight paced, laying out his detailed findings. All from a mere hour of digging through the jet black pipboy, exercising his own genius. He stopped mid pace as inspiration struck.

"Pop Pop, when we hack a bot, we overwhelm it with junk data right?" The boy didn't wait for an answer. "And when we do it crashes and reboots to default, meaning we can tell it what to do. If we overwhelm the Unified os, crash it, then don't reboot it, we could force the new code to take over. But that would mean…"

John had grown concerned. He'd seen Rosie get like this, so focused on an outcome no matter the consequences. He had to say something before the boy damaged the only key to the Vault door. The only way to get the parts in and, more importantly, Rosie out.

"Wallace I can't ri—" Before John could raise his warranted objections, Robco held up his hand, politely interrupting. Trusting his grandson to finish his thought process, he turned out to be right.

"But that would mean risking the pipboy and I don't know enough about it and I can't risk stopping John's quest. He's got people counting on him, we need to help him, not hinder him." Wallace looked crestfallen. The unstoppable force of his intellect colliding with the immovable object of his moral compass, and the latter winning out.

John wished he could have done for Rosie what the bright boy's family had done for him. Kept him grounded, not letting intelligence overtake empathy.

Louisa moved her chair back and pulled the disappointed boy gently onto her lap. He looked every inch of his eight years in that moment. His mother looked prouder than ever.

"Hey, Wallace, what's a quest?" John hoped to lift his spirits by giving him an opportunity to teach him something new. With uncharacteristic silence he reached across the table and slid the old comic book in front of John, tapping on the cover as he spoke in a small voice.

"A quest is what heroes do. They go on adventures and save people."

"Like you saved me you mean." A glow returned to the boy's face as John spoke. His eyes brightening as he looked at the reanimated skeletons on the cover. They bore a passing resemblance to the thing that they stopped from mauling a terrified stranger.

"Yeah, we did save him huh Pop Pop."

"We did Junior, we did."

"And do you know what I'd be having for dinner right now if it wasn't for you? A protein bar, you remember what they tasted like right?" The boy giggled, whispering the answer in his mother's ear, who humoured him and giggled too.

"It's just a shame is all, if you could get the rubbish out, it could be something really special." Wallace might as well of been talking about John's mind. Filled with trash that needed to be removed, replaced with truth. "May I please be excused, I want to work on my projects." His grandfather nodded, and with that the boy threw on the oversized upper half of the vault-suit and headed out the door.

"Hey Wallace" John called as the boy reached the front door. "When my quest is over, I'll bring my friend Rosie by. She's smart too, maybe even as smart as you. I'm sure between the two of you, you'll figure it out." She'd want to meet this kid, he thought to himself. Knowing the isolation of intelligence she'd felt in the Vault. Knowing Rosie may well never speak to him again.

"I'd like that. She'll have to stay out of my room because there are no girls allowed, but she can stay in your room." And with that Wallace flung open the door and stepped out.

"Thank you for that, he gets carried away. When it doesn't work out..." Louisa trailed off.

"I meant every word." John had never been a very good liar. "Although, I can't promise Rosie will 'stay in my room' or that I'll be anywhere near her at all." John tried to make a joke, he'd never been very funny either

"Does she know, I mean, did you tell her that you were leaving?" Louisa asked, the softness missing from her voice.

"I saw her as we passed in the corridor, she knew. She always knew what I was thinking, and I recorded a holo for her. I told her I was sorry and that I don't know what I'd do if something happened to her. And that I loved her more than anything, and that I'd be back, then we could leave together then, free. Without any reason to ever look back." There was an almost childlike way to John's words, a naivety that somehow everything would be ok and they would live happily ever after.

"She'll forgive you." Robco said as he poured drinks for the table. The boy's mother free to partake now her son was absent and the prospect of setting a bad example no longer mattered. "You did it for the right reasons, she'll forgive you." Robco seemed sure, Louisa less so.

"She'll be mad as all hell, but if you get her out of there, and soon, she'll forgive you. Life's too short not to be with people you love." She spoke from bitter experience. John still didn't feel he deserved forgiveness, but felt more determined than ever to earn it.

"What Wallace was saying, about crashing my pipboy, I couldn't risk damaging Rosie's code, it's the only way back in. You understand right?" John would have done almost anything for his hosts, his saviours, but he wouldn't risk getting Rosie out.

"Of course, we wouldn't let him near it if we thought he might damage it, for his own sake." Louisa answered with a comforting tone. "Is it really the only copy?" John nodded. "If it's that important we need to have a backup. Let me see." Louisa sat in the boy's seat placing John's arm back on the stack of books. Holding his hand the whole time, and not just to keep his arm still.

"You weren't kidding, she is smart, very smart." Louisa sounded impressed as she scrolled through Rosie's 'esc' code. "It looks like she tricked the door into testing itself, like it never left the factory, clever." She couldn't help but dig into the buried code in the once implicitly trusted device. Her eyes widening with intrigue as data scrolled down the screen. Scrolling through code neither her nor the bright boy could read, let alone understand.

"You can copy your girl's code, but storage is going to be an issue. I could scrounge up every holo in the Rest and it wouldn't be enough. Even if it was, just one gets corrupted and they're all useless." Louisa sat back in thought.

"Rusty." Robco spoke almost from nowhere. He'd been quiet since Wallace had begun explaining what he found. No doubt thinking of the afternoon's events and the part the stranger with the strange device had played in them.

"Give it to Rusty. We had to purge a ton of data to get him operational so there's the space. And you're not going to find anything more secure. Hell, he'd self destruct if the wrong hands got anywhere near him, assuming he didn't cut 'em down from twenty yards first."

"Not bad old man." Louisa said as she shoved him warmly. "Come on." John followed the woman as she headed for the door, still wondering what the older man meant by the wrong hands.

"You come find me in the shop John, we've got stuff to get ready." Robco winked as he got up to leave.

Outside the fallen night covered everything. Driven back only by the light coming from the differently shaped windows of the single storey wooden houses.

"You know I can't remember the last time Pops brought a stranger home to spend the night." Louisa said as she approached the back of the truck and Rusty. The mechanical torso in plain view now the weapon no longer needed to be secret.

"I'm very grateful, that was the best meal I ever ate." John wasn't lying, it was the best meal he ever ate, but he sensed the pretty woman had a point to make.

"It's not like that, you're welcome here, especially after you fixed my baby." She patted the quad barrel grenade launcher with a familiarity that made John uneasy. "What I mean is I know something happened out there you're not telling me about. Something more than picking off a couple of raiders." Her tone conveyed a seriousness he hadn't heard from Louisa before.

She connected the four pin to Rusty and John ran the diagnostic. Leaning against the back of the truck so Louisa could see the glowing green screen in the darkness. "I'll not ask you to break a confidence, that wouldn't be right. But if it's something that endangers my family or my home I want, I need to know, you tell Pops that." She looked him in the eye as she spoke, her version of the older man's flat, even tone. John got the sense he hadn't been the only one keeping secrets, and it'd been happening for a while.

Somehow it felt easier for her to say it to a stranger than her surrogate father. Before he could respond with a weak deflection, she thankfully switched focus to the screen. Reading off functions with various degrees of surprise.

"Ok, see here file manager." John worked the directional pad and buttons as instructed. "Then transfer, then copy, put it under propulsion, that's a dead system." The operating system asked John for a file name, he went to type 'esc' but then stopped himself.

He thought there could be a chance that if he didn't make it Rosie might find this place. He hoped anyway, this could be his last chance to tell her he loved her. He typed the message they would send each other constantly. First on the terminals in grade school, then on pipboys as teenagers. *J.<3.R.*.< p>

She would understand that he thought, and he could do far worse for one final message. He hit ok and a progress bar appeared, estimating four hours to completion. He tilted the screen to Louisa, her face softened when she saw the file name. Whatever family dramas were at play it had little, if anything, to do with the straight forward, honest, frightened man beside her. Trying desperately to keep from coming apart under a flood of new sensations she could scarcely imagine.

She dropped the truck gate and hopped on it. "Your girl, she's going to be mad, but she sure as shit is going to be happy to see that code. I'm guessing she wouldn't of wrote her work on that piece of shit Unified os if she had a choice. I know I wouldn't anyway and I'm not half as smart as she is." John and Louisa weren't dim people by any measure, despite the large muscular man being taken as such more often than not.

"Yeah, me neither. Sometimes I could barely understand what she wrote." I understood well enough to use it without her, he thought to himself, guilt tearing through the already weakened dam.

"My husband was the same." Louisa looked like she'd spoken out of turn, as if mentioning her husband felt wrong. John knew the look well, people didn't want to hear about the departed past a certain point.

"What was he like?" John always loved to talk about his father. To tell people who didn't know him, how funny he was. That he made toys for John and Rosie from scrap. How he liked to walk the corridors on the family deck late into the night to clear his mind. He thought Louisa would feel the same.

"A lot like Wallace." She said with a smile. "Kind, funny…smart." She paused, trying to clarify her thoughts. "Like your Rosie, being that smart is a gift but it comes at a cost, doesn't it." It wasn't a question, it didn't need to be. Both knew a version of the same loneliness. The same aggressive response to innocuous interruptions. The same secondary status to a thought problem.

"Wallace senior, he would get something in his head and wouldn't eat, wouldn't sleep, sometimes for days at time. It changes them and I don't envy you or her being trapped in that awful place." She reached over to touch John's shoulder, smiling sweetly as she clearly felt the vault-suit underneath the borrowed shirt. "No matter what she says, you did the right thing. You protected people, and you did it knowing it could cost you. Hell, it did cost you, I imagine it wasn't an easy decision to make." John didn't know what to say.

He had people that he was friendly with in the Vault but he wouldn't have called them friends. Keeping secrets about the high tech pipboy, about the planned escape, put up walls between him and everyone except Rosie.

Before he could even start to respond Louisa hoped to her feet. "I've got to check the oven, the boys are round back, head on over." At a quick pace the widowed mother retreated to her warm, loving, home. John didn't follow, he knew better to intrude on the privacy she needed.

Instead he sat a while longer, getting used to the fallen night and the grey black interlopers that shifted across the once endless blue.