Saintess-Claire! Protector of Division!

On Lily's coffee table sat an odd spheroid-shaped device, about as big as a football, with dozens of wires and connections hanging off of it. Alice was peering at it, and finally, she asked, "This is what makes atom bombs explode? How do they work?"

Lily clucked her tongue and shook her head at the Apprentice, "It is a 1-to-1 model of the fission kernel of a fusion bomb. It's not the actual core of one; I'm going to take the real one out and replace it with this. Also, this model contains a number of radioisotopes in the centre for verisimilitude's sake, so it is actually fairly radioactive, so you shouldn't have your face so close to it."

That caused Alice to hop away from it and Lily to walk over and set a box she had made exactly for this purpose next to the spheroid. The box was heavy because it was lined with thick lead foil and a few millimetres of water in waterproof honeycombed sections on the box's exterior.

Lily flipped the box open and lifted the spheroid and sat it inside the box, where it fitted snugly. She then closed the lid, tilted her head to the side and lifted the box off the table to test its weight, 'At least thirty kilos. Rather heavy.'

She sat the box back on the table and turned to glance at the Apprentice when she repeated her question, "Okay, but how do atomic bombs work?"

Lily didn't quite scowl, but she affected the facial expression of someone who didn't precisely know how to answer the question put to her and didn't like it. The girl Alice didn't have the proper background in nuclear physics to really understand any answer she could give her, so how to give her an analogy in a context she would understand? Lily tilted her head to the ceiling and hummed, "You know zhat zhere are certain elements, usually metals, zhat are reactive with other elements, chemically, yes?"

Alice nodded her head rapidly, "Yes! Like if you place sodium in water, it creates a powerful exothermic reaction! Explosive, even, considering the water surrounding the sodium will be heated so much it will phase change to steam and expand rapidly! I really want to see that happen. Can we do it?"

Lily blinked at the girl. That was a good explanation of what would happen from a chemical perspective, if not precisely, why alkali metals react with water. It was better stated than she had expected, in fact.

Lily was a little impressed, so she decided to say so, "Zhat's a pretty good explanation of the sodium water reaction, Apprentice. I don't usually keep elemental sodium around because I don't have a lot of use for it, and unless you keep it submerged in oil or a similar 'ydrophobic liquid, it will quickly react with zhe moisture in the air. But we'll see if we can find some. If not, we will make a lab day exercise to produce some from caustic soda, which is still plentiful and used to make soaps, thankfully."

Alice preened a bit at the praise, which Lily tried to ignore to maintain the appearance of the dignified teacher she felt was necessary to properly educate an Apprentice, "Zhe reason sodium is reactive with water is zhat it attacks zhe chemical bonds of water, stealing a 'ydrogen and oxygen atom from water and turning itself into sodium 'ydroxide. Understand?"

Lily quickly drew the simple chemical reaction on a sheet of paper that she stole from the girl for the purpose. Alice looked at the sheet for a while before nodding, "It also has to produce hydrogen gas, then?" she asked, looking at the left-over hydrogen in the reaction.

Lily nodded, "Yes. And heat." Lily said, carefully pronouncing the H sound, "That's the important question I have been leading up to, zhen, is... from where, pray-tell, does the 'eat come from? In the exothermic reaction, where does zhat energy come from if we've already accounted for all the atoms and zhere is nothing left over?"

It was kind of a trick question because Lily intentionally left out the energy in the chemical bonds themselves, in order to emphasize that bonds, be they chemical or nuclear could store energy.

As expected, Alice hadn't read far enough to have a thorough knowledge of chemistry, but Lily was already impressed. After scrunching her head up in thought for a couple of minutes, the girl sighed, "I don't know! Where does it come from, Dr St. Claire?"

Lily smiled and indicated the drawings of the chemical structure of water, H2O. She circled the solid lines that she drew that connected the two hydrogen atoms and oxygen together. "It takes energy to form the chemical bonds that keep a molecule together, Apprentice. If zhese bonds are attacked, then zhat energy is released. Zhis is zhe fundamental reason why every," and Lily made the air quotes gesture to indicate she didn't quite believe the next word was correct, "energy-positive chemical reaction generates 'eat energy, from the simplest and most ordinary ones like burning wood in a campfire which is merely a redox combustion chemical reaction to zhe sodium water reaction you described so well earlier."

Alice's face resembled an O of enlightenment, which was why Lily had these discussions with the girl every day. It was one thing to read these things in a book, but many people needed a concept they didn't quite understand to be restated in a number of different ways before it clicked for them in comprehension. Finally, the Apprentice said, "Okay, I think I understand that. But what does that have to do with atom bombs, Dr St. Claire?"

Lily nodded, "Well, since you have not started studying physics, much less nuclear physics, zhis is going to be merely an approximation of zhe truth using chemistry as an analogue, you understand?"

Alice copied Lily's forty to forty-five degree head tilt of confusion impeccably, which Lily took as permission to continue, "Well, there are some things that are reactive with themselves." She pointed to the box.

Alice blinked, curious, "Why wouldn't they explode all the time, then?"

Lily did her best to explain the concept of criticality and supercriticality using chemistry as a metaphor, "Because zhey only become reactive if they are close enough together. It takes a certain amount of mass of a fissionable isotope being close together to trigger the reaction."

Alice had the obvious question of how you could trigger such a reaction at will, then to make it a viable explosive, to which Lily drew a three-dimensional representation of a hollow sphere on the sheet of paper, followed by a series of arrows on the outside of the sphere pointing to the centre, indicating an implosion of the sphere.

Lily finished her explanation, "Zhose panels on the sphere with the wires coming out of zhem are supposed to be high-explosive shaped charges. If you trigger zhe explosives at exactly zhe same time, zhe fissionable material in the 'ollow sphere compresses and for a brief moment all the atoms are close enough to trigger its reactiveness with itself, and zhat brief moment is enough for a cascading chain reaction which will generate incredible energy."

Alice looked surprised that she seemed to understand the explanation. "But why are the booms so big with this type of reaction compared to just throwing some sodium in water or a grenade?"

Lily nodded, "It is zhe function of how much energy is stored in zhe bonds. Chemical bonds, zhey are weak weak weak. You can sneeze at a molecule and it will fly off into its constituent atoms like a coiled spring, sometimes literally for certain molecules or elements."

Lily sat her hands on her lap primly, seated at the coffee table, and got to the meat of the matter, "Over one million times zhe energy is stored in zhe strong nuclear force, on average, compared to zhe chemical bonds. Zhis is why nuclear energy is such a tempting and long-lasting fuel source for energy. Imagine if you had a log of wood zhat burned either one million times longer or one million times hotter than a normal log, and you'd have an idea, dear Apprentice."

"Oh... Oh!" Alice said, finally looking at the box that contained the mock-up of the fission kernel with some trepidation and wariness, "That seems incredibly uhh.. hazardous. And you're going to bring the real one back here?"

Lily snorted, "Don't worry. It won't stay in our home too long. I have a..." she paused, "...safe place to get rid of it, where it won't maintain a continuing hazard... to us."

---xxxxxx---

"What's in the box, Doc?" asked Miller, after she had handed the sealed, heavy box to New John, who was the strongest man in Grace's group.

Lily repeated her explaination that it was a scale model of the fission kernel for the bomb they were going to disarm. Miller blinked, "You're tasking the core back with you? Why?"

Lily shrugged, "Highly pure fissionable plutonium is quite useful, and shouldn't be just discarded. Perhaps I'm interested in refueling the truck I bought -- you shouldn't worry, I understand how hazardous it is."

Miller narrowed his eyes at the young woman, pursing his lips. After a moment he just shrugged, "Arlight." He wasn't sure he believed her, but honestly fissionable material wasn't exactly highly controlled in the Wasteland. You could find mini-nukes in janitor closets in some buildings, which contained a significant amount themselves.

New John opened the box curiously, having never seen the fission kernel of a nuclear bomb, model or not. Lily warned him, "It's quite radioactive, you probably shouldn't have your brain so close to it. Zhe box is shielded."

New John slammed the lid shut and locked it quite quickly, then held the box a little farther from his body, lifting it up higher and giving Lily a sideways glance.

This caused Big John to laugh, "Want to keep it away from your balls, huh? You should find a girl that can stand you before you worry about radiation making you sterile." New John gave him the bird with his free hand, silently.

Miller stared at her while they were walking, and asked her incredulously, "What's in it that's radioactive, and why would you make it radioactive at all?"

Lily pursed her lips and shrugged, "Don't know precisely, caesium, americium, some uranium, plutonium and other mixed radioisotopes extracted from the water purifier running these past couple of days."

Lily had a couple of ghouls working for the water purifier company, although she mandated that they wear thick radiation-resistant helmets when in proximity to any radiation during their job duties, much to the ghouls' amusement. But Lily thought they were too cavalier. Lily was almost as radiation-resistant as a ghoul, and there was no way she would stand in any appreciable ionizing radiation longer than she had to.

Lily still thought that feral ghouls were a function of either acute or chronic exposure to ionizing radiation depolarizing sections of the brain of a ghoul, which would either immediately during the ghoulification process or over time turn them feral. She suspected it actually killed the majority of them, depending on the parts of the brain that were damaged.

She suspected a careful ghoul would have a limitless lifespan but hadn't gotten too in-depth in the study of their genomes, beyond reinforcing her previous conclusion that they were not a natural mutation.

She couldn't find any hint of a virus, bacteria or mutagenic agent in any of the cheek swabs she collected, and suspected she would need to do an in-depth, preferably pathological, examination of a flat in the process of ghoulification for her to understand more of the process. The longevity was too suspicious, though.

There were a number of secret government research projects during the pre-war period, and one of the commonalities was that they often focused on longevity, just being approached from different directions. FEV, ghouls, and life support systems like the kind that were used in the VR pods in Vault 106 all had this commonality, and she suspected there were many others that she hadn't discovered yet, besides.

Blinking out of her reverie, she glanced at Miller, who seemed to be waiting impatiently for her to finish. She said simply, "Oh. Because of zhe Children of the Atom."

She continued, "While zhey aren't actually completely unreasonable, and I doubt any of zhem want to be incinerated any more than I do, they do worship zhe strong nuclear force and fission. I've noticed zhem using geiger counters on zhe bomb during some of zheir rituals. If we take away the core, the replacement 'as to be at least as radioactive as the one we take."

Miller made an 'Ahhh' sound of sudden enlightenment and nodded, "Yeah, cultists can be a real pain in the ass so this is a good chance to mollify them, seeing as they are mostly harmless. Or rather, the only ones they generally harm are themselves."

Lily nodded, but since she had already traveled through arguably three different universes already, she was much more agnostic. She didn't believe the Children of the Atom that a universe was contained in every atomic nucleus because she happened to know that they contained quarks, leptons, bosons and protons. However, who is to say that they weren't in some ways correct, just speaking metaphysically?

Lily was certainly more open to the idea of metaphysics now than she never was before, which made her leery of exploring a couple of places involved with the Point Lookout DLC. She already verified, much to her dismay, that Point Lookout was a real place; at least, it was listed on the maps of Maryland as a state park. Would she find a Cthulhu-themed cult of Shoggoths if she visited that place? She was very worried that she, in fact, would.

She thought about the character generation she went through, she thought she selected 'scientific only worlds' but recalled it said 'psuedo-scientific' was also a possibility, but didn't realize how broad that could be, if she thought about it. She could think of some theoretical pseudo-scientific explanations of what a Great Old One could be, perhaps a remnant or survivor of a previous iteration of the universe if there was a cycle of birth and destruction of universes from the Big Bang to Big Crunch?

Or just a plain extra-dimensional visitor. None of it reassured her because she was a firm believer in that magic was just something she had no way to presently explain, not that its explanation was impossible. Which meant there could be innumerable "supernatural" possibilities in the world. It also kind of excited her, because it meant that there would be at least the possibility of explaining how they functioned, which interested her.

She wasn't about to seek them out, presently, though.

The group arrived at the centre of town to see Cromwell, the leader of the Children of the Atom, along with a number of his parishioners waiting for them. Lily pursed her lips; she was hoping to do this without them becoming involved but supposed it was a long shot.

"Doctor St. Claire, sister of Atom! Have you come to defile this holy Artefact of Atom as has been told to this humble servant of Atom," Confessor Cromwell somehow managed to be civil and demanding simultaneously.

Lily narrowed her eyes. She had been expecting some pushback from the Children, but it sounded like a third party was meddling. She only knew of one interested party who would want the nuke in Megaton to be functional. She glanced around, looking for Burke in his conspicuous fedora and suit, and told Grace and Miller in a quiet, "I only talked to Timms a couple of days ago, and someone warned zhese cooks already? If you see Burke, a man in a fedora and prewar suit, he's our agitator."

Grace hissed, "Why would someone try to make this more difficult?"

Miller also narrowed his eyes and said quietly, "Theres only one reason a person would want an active nuke to remain in the middle of a city of fifteen thousand people, and I wouldn't mind pulling the fingernails off such a person to get them to tell me the full story."

But the man named Burke wasn't anywhere to be seen unless he had changed outfits and was pretending to be a parishioner, which Lily doubted.

Lily turned to face Confessor Cromwell and smiled in a friendly manner, "Defile? Of course not! We 'ave come to make it safe, 'owever. I'm sure zhat while you appreciate the concept of Divison you wouldn't actually want to be incinerated by being next to a atomic bomb that underwent uncontrolled Divison, do you? Not only would you all die, but all of Megaton would die." She said the latter to his flock directly, on the off-chance that Cromwell was in fact crazy.

Cromwell looked a little surprised, "Well... while each of us shall give birth to a billion stars, becoming a mother or father to a new galaxy, it is true there is no need to.. uh... rush it a long." He nodded and then said in a much more preachy tone, "Divison is inevitable!"

His flock murmured appreciatively and Cromwell approached the group, "What, then do you intend to do? I'm afraid I can't support you reducing the Holy Glow of this Most Holy of Adam's Artefacts."

Lily smiled. Was that a Speech check success? Lily took the shielded box from New John and presented it to Cromwell, and spouted bullshit as best as she could, "We will replace zhe core of zhis ... artefact with zhis one, which will only divide in Atom's Good Time, and not be forced along by unbelievers."

Cromwell blinked and opened the lid of the box, and peered inside. He called over one of his assistants who brought over a Geiger counter and held it next to the model of the fission kernel, getting a very loud and rapid clicking noise, "Confessor... this is very holy."

Cromwell nodded and turned to look at Lily again, "This is... acceptable, then. It is right that none but Atom himself shall dictate when Holy Divison should occur, so if you could protect this Holy Artefact, you would be doing a Good Service to all of His Children." Lily tried very hard not to roll her eyes in the back of her head as she audibly heard the capital letters in his speech.

Big John started giggling at the absurdity of everything and got another elbow in the ribs from Grace which shut him up.

Lily glanced at Miller, "Shall we zhen, protect zhis Most Holy of Holies, eh?"

Miller's lips were twitching upwards uncontrollably but he had better self-control than Big John did and he just nodded rapidly, setting down his bag and getting the tools out necessary for their impromptu-bomb surgery.

It wasn't hard and it didn't take that long, either. The bombs were designed to be serviced by maintenance techs, after all, and they had what amounted to the blue prints so it was only the work of ten minutes to open panels and lifting parts out of the way to expose the small fission kernel.

Lily hummed as she worked, she carefully sabotaged the detonation circuits in a somewhat complicated manner that would tend to electrocute anyone trying to induce a detonation, although it probably would have no effect on anyone using a fusion pulse charge, which she finally found some information on from Miller.

However, who knew what would happen in the future, and if someone years from now thought this was a live bomb and tried to detonate it the old-fashioned way? Well, they deserved to be electrocuted.

Then Lily carefully disconnected all the wires leading from the explosive detonators on the core to the detonation circuit, "Okay, get zhe other core out," she told Miller, not wanting him to hold the radioactive model longer than necessary.

He nodded and pulled it out while Lily simultaneously pulled the live core out of the bomb's panel. They did a quick swap, and Lily slid the fake core into the bomb while Miller softly placed the live core inside the box and closed and locked the lid.

Lily reconnected all the wires, even if the explosive lenses were inert and could never explode, and then spent another fifteen minutes reassembling the weapon.

"Annnnd zhat's it, Confessor. Your Holy Artefact is as 'oly as ever, 'olier even, and it won't be induced by wicked whispers to Divide prematurely," Lily told the man.

"Hallelujah! Saintess-Claire! Protector of Divison!" the man proclaimed, which caused all of his cult-members to repeat the phrase, 'Wait, I didn't agree to be a part of your crackpot religion.'

Lily stared at him for a long time, before nodding and quietly grabbing the box carrying the live core and saying, "Uhh! We'll be off then!" and fleeing, shoving the box at New John again to carry.

Grace's Grenadiers were cracking up before they were even a block away from Cromwell's sermon.