Is this a male thing?

Lily had expected to require a couple of days to talk the Mechanist and Sophie into both moving and for their help to loot the Corvega factory, but it was barely ten in the morning on the first day.

She had followed Scott back outside, and it appeared like he was already getting his ball rolling.

"I'd like to start moving things and guard bots to Vault 108 immediately," Scott told her, surprising her.

Lily tilted her head to the side, "But we need to go to zhe factory for the trailer first...?"

Scott waved her off, "I can do that myself if you trust me enough to lend me your very expensive truck. Sophie, a few bodyguards and I can get the trailer; there are over a dozen in the loading dock. Even if we need to mix and match wheels, it shouldn't be a problem." [Confident (80%)]

Lily hummed and nodded, "Oh-kay. I don't mind. Zhis would be a lot easier if you 'ad zhe brain interface already... You see, I' ave an aerial drone 'overing about five 'undred meters above my truck at all times, in surveillance." She tilted her head to the side, "It would take a little work to cross-compile the moving map program for Sophie, too, especially since she doesn't use the same antennas and radios I do. It'd be a complete driver mismatch right now."

After a moment, she nodded, "Give me an hour or so. Then, I'll set up a directional antenna on your roof and point it towards zhe Corvega factory. Zhat will allow me to connect to zhe drone even from Canterbury Commons. Zhe drone can also act as a relay, so I can use it to send messages to Sophie if I notice raiders or other threats approaching."

Scott peered up at the sky, trying to see the drone to no avail. Lily chuckled, "It's not very big. It only weighs about seven decimal five kilos, and most of zhat is zhe fission battery." It was fortunate that fission batteries had a surprisingly high output, given they weighed over three kilos; they were commonly used in combat bots, for example. As far as Lily could tell, there was no such thing as simple quadcopter-type aerial drones in the Fallout universe, either.

She had been reading about potential aerial drones using levitation technology, but she couldn't quite understand how it worked when looking at the examples of such tech from eyebots and Mister Handy's. It was pretty state of the art at the time of the Great War, so everything she read had only talked about the possibility in generic terms. If she could figure it out, she could redesign her drones to be very stealthy as far as radar was concerned. Even with ducted rotors, you would never get acceptable stealth on a fan platform.

It was fortunate that she already knew a fair bit about stealthed vehicles, as she always designed those features into her previous bodies that were space-capable. It really wasn't that complicated; you just had to design the shape so that EM radiation would be deflected away from returning back to the emitter of the radiation. She didn't remember the exact formulas for ideal stealth and was just using her intuition, but it was something she could easily rediscover through simple experiments in controlled settings.

Scott nodded, "What is its propulsion mechanism?" [Curious (65%)]

Lily smiled, "Rotors. I guess you'd say it is zhe helicopter, except zhere are four rotors spaced equidistantly. Two rotate clockwise, and two rotate counterclockwise. Suppose all four rotors have the same angular velocity. In that case, zhen the overall yaw force is zero, and it is hovering, zherefore it is a straightforward platform to build automated control software for, and you don't need zhe complicated mechanisms like tilting main rotorblades, swashplates or tail rotors. Instead, you can control it in all axis by the simple variation of one or more of the four rotors' speed."

The Mechanist stood there with his eyes closed for a moment, imagining it and then nodded. "I understand." And Lily suspected he did, too. To the point where he might even be able to build one now. Except, the main problem in building quadcopters was the lightweight materials necessary. Although, with a fission battery, she thought it might be possible to create one out of mostly aluminium if you had powerful enough electric motors. Her drone was certainly overpowered, for example.

She was about to signal the drone to land so that Scott could examine it, but he stopped seeming interested after telling her that he understood, and she suspected all the response she would get if she did have the drone land was a simple nod. That was just like him, so she kept it hovering and also nodded, "You can go ahead and start getting ready, and unhitch zhe trailer. I'll go set up zhe antenna, now."

Lily walked inside the Mechanist's lair and searched for something suitable to fashion into a couple of antennas. It was a shame that there were no Pringles chips here. Otherwise, she could have easily fashioned a dirt simple Yagi-style antenna out of the cylindrical can.

Well, a Yagi-style antenna still sounded like a good idea. She'd have to tune them to the correct frequency she was using, but that wasn't difficult for her. She found some plastic PVC pipe, some wire mesh to use as a parabola reflector and some electronics to fashion the repeater and got to work. She fashioned two antennas, one to point at Corvega and one to point at Canterbury Commons. The contraption was quite ugly, actually, but she felt it would give sufficient gain to reach five kilometres in either direction easily, even with modest power input. And she didn't have to worry about the FTC coming calling, so there was no need to be modest about the power input at all. So long as she chose a frequency band no one else was using, nobody would care. And she had already chosen bands that were quiet when she selected all the frequencies she used in the first place.

Lily paused for a moment. That gave her an idea; she could easily create simple solar-powered or betavoltaic-powered signal repeaters or relays and set up a simple point-to-point ad-hoc mesh network between settlements. She doubted she would get more than a few gigabits per second on the link, but that was enough to have hundreds of simultaneous VoIP calls per link, considering audio compression technology. Not to mention actual e-mail for people that still had some manner of technology available. She had already considered doing this using one of the many dish relay stations that dotted the Capital Wasteland, but those sites were well known and invariably became home for raiders or Super Mutants. She would have had to guard each one. However, if she could make small, camouflaged relay links, that was different.

Humming, she took her jury-rigged antenna and some wire and headed up to the roof. Fortunately, she wouldn't have to drill any holes for power as Scott had already done that to install the microwave gun's dish. She pulled up her full map display. The factory was visible on the edge of the drone's recording pattern. She then used a combination of her internal compass and a mental straight edge to find the correct bearing in order to position the antennas correctly.

She thought more about her idea as she finished setting up the electronics portion of the relay on the roof. Reliable communication was a prerequisite to modern trade and governance, and if that communication was instantaneous, then it was all for the better. Although Lily did not really like the concept of governments at all, she had to admit that some manner of government, even if it was merely a warlord taking control, would be a vast improvement.

Except if it was the Enclave, she supposed. Well, at least the Enclave, as the genocidal VAX AI, ran it, anyway.

Reliable telephone and radio data links between settlements would precipitate the ability for police or military forces to coordinate between settlements and respond to reported sightings of raiders rapidly. While she didn't understand people very well individually in a social setting, she was very cognizant of a group's probable reactions, especially as it touched on military matters. She expected a volunteer force would form first, and over time it might turn into an actual government.

She was willing to support nearly any organization that would tend to reduce the power of either the Enclave, as it presently existed or the Brotherhood, so it might be a good idea to pursue. Plus, it would allow Monsieur Three Dogs to institute a call-in show. She had to get him some more songs, also.

He barely had twenty songs he cycled through playing. She had a lot more than that in her head that she had already digitized and could transfer to holotapes, although only a handful was along the same theme of the music that was popular in Pre-War Fallout. She had some Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and similar, but it would be a bit hard to explain where KMFDM or Disturbed had come from, to say nothing of K-pop or dubstep.

Perhaps, some country music along with some of the oldies she had listened to.

She could already see that the relay was working, as she could visually see the EM spectrum rendered in her vision coming and out of each antenna. She nodded, content at the success of her labours and sub-vocalized a command, 'Command, Audio, Play Twilight Time by The Platters, then random shuffle.'

She sent a message to Sophie indicating she was done and they could leave whenever they wanted, and then paused to consider what she should do with the rest of her day.

---xxxxxx---

She ended up spending most of the day studying the data she received from all of her FEV experiments, especially the Psyker-Gary's brain, although she did it digitally from her scans.

She had a continual scan going of his entire transformation, and it was a lot of information to process and look over. She would wait to perform the actual dissection when she was back at her hospital and had privacy, although she wasn't sure if she would learn too much more from that than she did from examining the scan data.

Comparing Psyker-Gary's transformation against the others she recorded was interesting. Without a skull to get in the way the transformation was a lot different even from the beginning than the ones involved where Gary turned into a Super Mutant. That wasn't entirely scientific, as far as she was concerned, but it was very interesting.

She noticed Scott and Sophie come and go three times, counting their quick trip to the Corvega factory. The first load was mostly full, but the second was barely half full. Sighing and stretching, she decided she was reaching the point of diminishing returns just staring at brains and their changes, for now.

She started looking around the Mechanist's lair to see what was left behind, for now. It looked like Scott was leaving most of his Protectrons behind, which was likely wise as they required either his mainframe or, more recently, Sophie to function at their highest levels.

She saw them truck two Sentrybots and a couple of auto-turrets over to the Vault, which should be enough to protect it from anything short of a full-fledged military assault. She was once again surprised at just the amount of military hardware the Mechanist had available to him and at how much more useful robots tended to be in actuality compared to the game she remembered. Here, a Protectron was a real threat to life, even a single one. Whereas in Fallout 3, they were easily dispatched.

She hoped that no scavengers decided to go looking through Vault 108 in the next few days, although that wasn't too likely. Poor bastards would only have their own bad luck to blame if they did, though.

Taking a while looking at the large stock of unrepairable parts and disassembled robots, she started accumulating small ruby rods that she had taken from laser assemblies that weren't repairable. For her, she could fabricate every part of a laser except for these rods, so she would ask to buy them from Scott later.

The Protectron lasers used an odd-sized ruby that was bigger than the ones used in laser pistols but slightly smaller than the ones used it most rifles, and they used two rods in each Protectron laser to achieve a fast rate of fire. It was an interesting design that she might be able to copy parts of to make a submachine gun-style rapid-firing laser or perhaps a heavy-duty laser pistol.

Compared to the Fallout lasers, her parts were quite miniaturized, so she could make a pistol firing a heavier beam in about the same amount of space. She decided to work on that, as it wouldn't take too much time. She needed to update the design on her laser pistols, anyway, to make use of some lightweight metals like aluminium and carbon fibre instead of using diamond on everything.

Lily had been finding her ability to multi-task had been improving, which was interesting and heartening to her. She couldn't quite tell if it was due to brain changes or her computer, but she felt it was likely a combination of both factors.

So long as at least one task was simple and mostly mindless, like disassembling broken parts, she could do two things at once. So, as she continued accumulating her ruby rods, she worked on adjusting her standard laser pistol design to accept the larger rods, as well as replacing the diamond frame with thin aluminium.

According to her CAD's simulation, the adjustments to use metal did increase the weight, from approximately eight hundred and fifty grams to over nine hundred and seventy when loaded, but she felt it was still quite light and reliable. Significantly lighter than normal laser pistols, in fact.

It was about the same weight as a full-sized Glock from her past life and a bit lighter than the ten-millimetre pistols she used to carry before moving to the all energy-weapon "build" she currently favoured.

She felt satisfied with the design and locked it in for a prototype test when she returned to Megaton. Now, she would walk the short distance to Canterbury Commons and find Monsieur Gary and inform him that they would be hitting the Corvega Factory in the morning.

---xxxxxx---

Gary POV

Gary was having a good day, which was surprising since the world was a wrecked, radioactive hellscape. He had already spent some time discussing his potential new business with the man who was in charge of the town, although he claimed he wasn't the mayor.

It was just too difficult to start a business in America. It was a highly mature country with almost every slice of the pie already divided amongst the elite, who did not really appreciate the competition.

The barriers to entry were large and unless you discovered a completely new technology like the Mass Fusion company did when they brought effective mobile fusion power to the masses, you were fighting a zero-sum game where for you to get a dollar, someone else had to lose it.

One couldn't even go to the country and farm anymore because almost all of the available arable land was being cultivated quite carefully. Maybe if he was a Super-Genius like Wiley Coyote or Doctor St. Claire, he could have invented some new solution which would have opened the door, and his invention could have expanded the available pie, in which case the rulers of the country would gratefully allow him to have a piece.

But, while he felt he was quite intelligent, there was just nothing for a student of history to excel at in the America he remembered. In that way, he felt freer than he had in some time navigating the horrid world he found himself in. He found that he was way more educated than almost anyone he had met, which wasn't something he was used to feeling, either.

It wasn't like he had any ties to the previous world. His wife had divorced him a decade ago, which wasn't that uncommon for career Navy types, and he had no living family beside her.

The combination of once again having a vigorous and youthful body and having no attachments he was fretting about made him feel quite optimistic about his present situation, even if he couldn't understand some parts of this world--like using bottlecaps as currency.

His reverie allowed a couple of men to follow him without his noticing, at first, until he was already in a fairly deserted part of the town. Sighing, he chided himself for letting himself be caught off-guard. This place was just like taking liberty in the Pan-Arabian Protectorate, and he was quite familiar with that.

He tossed his backpack down and turned around, his hand quite close to his pistol, like an old west style gunslinger. Whether or not someone died today would be up to these boys.

---xxxxxx---

Lily found Gary rather quickly and was about to approach him but saw two rough-looking men trailing him and decided to hang back and see what was going to happen. She pulled her AirTaser from her holster and started stalking his stalkers.

If they pulled out firearms, she would stun or kill them from behind. She wouldn't allow two unknown assholes to ambush and kill the Gary she spent so much time reviving. She hadn't even extracted all of his stories about Pre-War America, yet!

Gary showed that he wasn't entirely stupid by noticing his stalkers rather rapidly, and turning around like he was about to have a duel at the OK corral. She snickered when she saw it, from her hiding spot and leveled her weapon at one of the men, flicking the selector from safe to lethal, as she expected bullets to start flying any second.

Instead, she was surprised to see the two shake their fists and yell at Gary. It wasn't that she couldn't understand them, because she could clearly hear all the words even thirty metres away. However, it was just that she didn't really understand what they meant. Something about disrespect, and showing him whose the real man.

Tilting her head to the side, she watched as a bout of fisticuffs broke out between Gary and the two men. She flicked the selector switch to stun and took aim at one of them, and just as she was about to squeeze the trigger, her nascent social assistant popped up a warning that her actions would be a contrivance of the desires of Gary. Frowning, she thought it was malfunctioning.

It was rare for her social assistant to actually provide timely advice that was also accurate, after all. However, she removed her finger from the trigger and continued to watch. The brawl continued for a couple of minutes, which was longer than most street fights usually lasted and Gary demonstrated a number of dirty fighting techniques that made Lily wince.

When all three combatants were on the ground, woozily trying to get up Lily was surprised when all three men just began laughing uncontrollably. Gary was the first to get to his feet and offered a hand to one of the others, who took the help back to his feet. Lily at first suspected Gary was using a ruse and was about to punch the guy, but they kept laughing and chuckling and patting each other on the back.

Lily thought to herself, confused. 'Is... is this a male thing?'

She slid her weapon back into its holster and watched the three men escort each other to one of the only taverns in Canterbury Commons, they all looking very friendly now. She had already overheard that Gary was spending the night at the same place, as it offered rooms to let in addition to liquor in the model of an inn from hundreds of years ago.

Sighing, she watched them enter the tavern and turned around to return to the Mechanist's Lair. She decided to change her plans to a depature at late morning, to give Gary time enough to get over the hangover he was sure to have. She knew where to find him in the morning, and that was good enough.