53 You maniacs! You blew it all up!

Gary wanted to look around and explore the Vault, but Lily found him still a bit noodle-legged to be walking around. However, he asked for any way to speed up his recovery, so Lily set him up with an I.V. of medichines and vitamins.

She had noticed from both the scan of the rabbit and Gary that the clones came out perfect but quite out of whack as far as some of the vital non-organic materials in the body were concerned. She supposed it all depended on the source of the organic feedstocks, and the ones loaded were very vitamin deficient—especially some of the B vitamins, magnesium and potassium.

She suspected that the psychotic Gary clones only had a natural lifespan of at most eighteen months before the low levels caused heart failure or cardiac arrest if any of them lasted that long.

She'd have to consider adding a multivitamin mixture to the output of the people mulcher and carefully monitor it; she wasn't making snack cakes, after all.

Gary still couldn't quite walk on his own, so she helped him back to his bed by draping his arm around her shoulder and firmly grabbing him by the waist. "You should be able to get up and move around tomorrow, I believe," she told him as she settled him back into bed.

He groaned, "Sorry to hold you up like this."

«You're not, really. It will take at least today and some of tomorrow to finish disassembling and loading all the stuff I am looting out of the Vault in any case. You'll be fine to travel by the time I am done here.» She stood over him, «I won't even make you hike all the way to the nearest settlement,» she added slyly.

Lily left him and returned to work. She was fibbing a little bit. If she buckled down, she could probably finish everything in eight to twelve hours, but she didn't intend to work at such intensity in the first place if she did not have a pressing need.

Grabbing a precision ratchet wrench in her hand and twirling it around with rapid clicking noises, she returned to work on the recycler. After she got this finished, she'd run off several rabbits before starting on the larger cloning machine.

It was just a shame her musical playlist was so small. However, as her memories of her past life had been digitized she had been adding some music from it as well. She generally had to clean up each song individually, and it worked best for memories when she was listening to songs on headphones or earbuds.

Muse's "Supermassive Black Hole" began playing in her mind as she got to work.

---xxxxxx---

The next morning Gary Prime was up and walking about even sooner than she had anticipated, looking in on her beginning the process of disassembling the cloning machine, "Woah, so my brain was hooked up to this machine for two hundred years?"

Lily nodded, «It certainly was. Feel free to explore around the Vault if you like, but if you intend to go outside, I'd recommend at least arming yourself first.» She dug around in her pockets for a moment before digging out a small grey key, tossing it at Gary, who caught it out of the air with no problem.

«This is the key to the cage in the armoury a few rooms down here on this level. There is a PipBoy in there for you; I'm pretty sure they reset yours to defaults. All of them here in the Vault are PipBoy 3000As, though, so it is all pretty much the same. I think there might be some combat armour in the cage, as well as some miscellaneous stuff in there,» Lily informed him. Gary glanced at the key in his hand and nodded, "Thanks."

Lily hummed as she continued to work. Lily didn't entirely trust the man, so the idea of a clearly well-trained man she didn't trust at arms around her sort of made her uneasy.

However, she was actually quite a bit more bullet resistant these days. A shot to the head would not kill her; even a shot to the eye would not kill her. She had specifically designed her orbital cavities with two ninety-degree turns, having to grow out the optical nerves to fit in order to prevent any lucky shot to her eye from destroying her brain.

The ribs in front of her heart were similarly designed to prevent such simple take-downs of her, with ballistic protection built into her chest. A bullet or knife could not, through luck or skill, slip between her ribs to destroy her heart or aorta, as she wasn't entirely sure the PHOENIX system could heal that damage before she died.

In other words, she was a bit more willing to accept certain levels of risk these days. For example, two months ago, she would never have revived Monsieur Kaminsky in situ like this and would have kept him on ice for some time until she had the time and place of his resurrection under complete control.

After a while, Gary returned to the large lab looking far more tricked out than when he came in. He had a short-barreled carbine slug on his back, a pistol on his hip, as well as was wearing a new-looking set of combat armour over his vault suit. He glanced down at her, as she was partly inside the cloning machine, "I was going to go outside to take a look, as well as zero this rifle. Are there any specific dangers nearby?"

Lily carefully back out of the cloning machine, on her hands and knees, before standing up and dusting herself off. She carefully bagged the number of small fasteners she removed from inside. She had to bisect a number of cable runs, as this machine was assembled in position here in the Vault and wasn't intended to be moved again, and she carefully recorded each location where she would have to splice them back together when she reassembled everything.

«Hmmm... in this part of the Wasteland, there are usually large mutated ants as the main threat. You'll definitely find some if you travel as few as five hundred metres to the west. They're quite quick, and I wouldn't let them bite you if I were you. The venom isn't lethal, but it is excruciating. Plus, the mandibles on some of the larger varieties can cut through mild steel,» she advised him, after pausing as if to consider the question.

Gary stared blankly at her, "You're shitting me? How big are they?"

«The worker ants you'll likely to see are about as big as a French bulldog, I suppose. The really dangerous warrior ants are as big as a Great Dane. I believe that their queens, which you definitely won't see around, are bigger than a truck,» Lily told him, smiling.

Gary shook his head slowly several times and said, "Alright. Thanks for the heads up." He glanced at the simmering crockpot that appeared to be made of glass, "Will that stew be ready soon? I have to say, it was better than mystery meat sandwiches last night."

Chuckling, she nodded, «Yes, probably another hour, I suppose, if you want the rabbit really tender. But I'd get more used to the mystery meat if I were you, that's pretty much the standard fare around the Capital.»

He nodded at that, "Thanks. These robots are something else, too. I haven't seen any models like this." He glanced as a group of three of them began setting up to drag a section of the cloning machine away.

«They're actually based on RobCo models; I just improved the exterior a little bit,» Lily said, proudly. «Dr House made a lot of odd decisions in his quest to make a really versatile bipedal robot, but he forgot or discounted that the most versatile bipedal platform already exists -- us! But go ahead and get ahead of this team of three. Otherwise, you'll have to wait behind them for fifteen minutes to get up to the surface. They don't move these parts quickly.»

Gary blinked and then nodded, "Okay. I'll see you in a bit," before slipping in front of the team of three robots.

Lily hummed to herself while she set about to finish disassembling the machine. A window popped up in her mind showing the perspective of one of her robots as she played back output of its optical sensors, watching Gary walk into the room and then seeing him blatantly stare at her derrière for a good seven seconds before she crawled out of the cloning machine.

She might not understand people all too well, but even she wasn't completely blind. She smirked.

---xxxxxx---

POV Gary

Gary tried not to think about the shapely rear end of the strange doctor-cum-mad-scientist that had saved his life, or perhaps more accurately resurrected him from the dead as though he was Lazarus, as he took stairs two and three at a time. He felt better than he had in ten years, and it wasn't surprising if the woman was telling the truth in that he had a brand new twenty-year-old body.

The Vault above the lower level looked completely destroyed, and he felt he might need a tetanus shot just walking through the area. But, wait, if his body was brand new did that mean his immune system was brand new, like some uncontacted tribe? If so, would a random cold lay him low? He'd have to ask the woman, and perhaps she had some vaccinations for the common post-apocalyptic diseases.

It was clear to him that the doctor didn't precisely trust him. She never met him alone when she wasn't armed and had one or two of those eerie-looking robots watching her back when she was working on the machines she intended to loot from the Vault. Gary didn't believe for a second that they were unarmed; they probably shot laser beams from their eyes or something.

Still, he couldn't really blame her. Especially if she was telling the truth and she had been moved through space and time to find herself in the middle of this Vault a couple of months ago, around dozens of psychopathic versions of him. He shuddered; that was something he still hadn't quite got his head around.

Dr St. Claire had explained that the brain copying machine didn't work, so it wasn't a good idea to think of them as versions of himself, but it was hard not to.

He reached over and activated the light on his PipBoy. He was reaching the Vault entrance and spent some time looking over the heavy cog-like door. It seemed like it might be working if only someone would lubricate the workings, which was interesting. He didn't, ultimately, care who would live in this hole in the ground going forward, so long as it wasn't him.

That said, he wasn't foolish enough to discount the advantage to his survival by claiming at least partial ownership in the place, though. At first, he had thought that either the doctor did not understand the value inherent in the place or, perhaps, she was smitten with him when she offered the place to him.

However, it was clear that the young doctor understood precisely how much value could be generated, and his boyish fantasies seemed incorrect as well.

The doctor definitely seemed interested in him, but he got the uneasy feeling of an entomologist looking at a prized butterfly rather than any sexual interest when she looked at him. He had no illusions as to the fate of the best specimens, and he definitely didn't want to end up in her killing jar, so he was going pretty easy with her.

He shook his head. Being in a younger body meant he was dealing with a twenty-year-old's hormones. How embarrassing. Despite his uneasiness, he was significantly in the young doctor's debt. She had no pragmatic reason to help him at all, and he could have been floating around in that jar she showed him for hundreds of more years or just thrown in the trash like his previous body.

Seeing the light of day, he got his first view of the outside world. He shook his head, looking up at the brown-orange sky, "You fucking maniacs... you blew it all up!"

He was hoping against hope, irrationally, that it was all bullshit, but he felt shuddering quakes as the bombs exploded above their heads in the Vault before the overseer betrayed him, so it wasn't really something he was realistically optimistic about.

He glanced at his PipBoy after deactivating the flashlight as well as the sun overhead and guessed that the time seemed correct. The doctor must have reset this PipBoy's internal clock before giving it to him, as he didn't think that their clocks would be this accurate over two hundred years.

Unslinging his carbine, he carefully walked a bit to the west as the doctor suggested. He figured he would zero this rifle to about a hundred metres, although he suspected that conflict in this new world probably happened at a lot closer ranges than that. He walked the distance out, settled down in a prone stance and fired four rounds to zero the sights.

There was a lot of ammunition in the armoury, and he intended to drag it all with him. Something told him that the Winchester factory wasn't pumping out cartridges as he remembered, and it would be a bit more difficult than going down to the store to get a few boxes.

Movement caught his eye, and he glanced out to the west, and sure enough, he saw a fucking large arthropod moseying down the desert. He was kind of hoping that was bullshit, too. Well, if these were a threat, he had to find out exactly how threatening they were. He shouldered his rifle and took careful aim.

His first shot hit, but it didn't put the creature down. It made a shriek and started running in his direction, which made his eyebrows raise. Luckily, it didn't seem to know how to zig or zag, so he carefully aimed the reticle ahead of the creature and let it walk into it before squeezing the trigger again. The second shot to its head put it down for the count.

He walked over to it and observed its body closely. It looked just like a giant ant would. He wondered if it tasted like a prawn or crab, like other giant arthropods, and had a feeling that he would eventually find out. But not today.

Walking back down to the laboratory section of the Vault, he was in time to eat a bowl of rabbit stew. He didn't know what she seasoned it with, but it was quite good and had a little bit of a spicy kick. He drank a large glass of ice-cold beer with it, and that was one main reason to follow this woman back to what passed as civilization, just to have the ability to buy beer, even if it was only average gruit.

He asked her about his immune system, and her matter-of-fact answer that she had adjusted the genetics of his body to provide a notably better immune response caught him flat-footed for a moment, "Uh, are you telling me you just fiddled with the genetics of my body without asking?"

She looked at him like he was a very special child before saying in that cute French accent, «It wasn't your body. Your body was thrown in the people mulcher two hundred years ago, remember? The fact that I gave you a body that resembled your old one was a courtesy, and whatever I did with it before I gave it to you was my business. It was a take it or leave it offer, you realize?»

He blinked. He couldn't find anything logically wrong with what she had said, but he was pretty sure that she might be the only person in the world to have that particular perspective. Still, she was correct in that he shouldn't be ungrateful, "Ah, I realize that and I'm not intending to be ungrateful but it would help to know the changes this body offers compared to what I'm used to, you know?"

That caused her to blush a little before she nodded, "Ah, of course. Well, I didn't change too much," and with that, she explained in detail, sometimes too much detail, what she had changed. He would be more resistant to radiation, have a better immune system, and have a number of changes that would tend to extend his natural life. Altogether, he thought it all sounded wonderful, assuming he didn't mutate into a hideous wildebeest as a result of them.

She seemed offended that he even thought that was a possibility, too.

He nodded and asked his next question, "I think I shall take up your offer to invest in my incipient water business, but that may take a little while to get off the ground. What kind of work do you think is available in Megaton?"

---xxxxxx---

POV Lily

Lily considered Gary's question and hummed. She might like to hire him herself as the leader of her, as of yet non-existent, security services given his experience in the military. However, she didn't quite trust him with such an important and sensitive position as of yet.

She said, «I think you'll find your skills are in demand,» she then paused and decided not to prevaricate with him, «If I get to the point where I trust you more I'd be willing to hire you full or part-time to handle my hospital's security needs, training and leading men-at-arms. However...»

She hummed, «You said you were a school teacher. I happen to have somewhat responsibility over two young children and one young Apprentice. I am seeing to my Apprentice's education myself, but I would definitely be willing to hire you to not only help out with her education but also take on the education of her two younger siblings. Then, if things work out well with that and you seem a stable person, you could shift into a more security-related role. You'd still have time to handle most of your personal business as far as selling water from this Vault, I would think...»

He blinked and nodded slowly, "Not quite what I was expecting, but actually, that sounds really nice, especially considering I am just arriving, so to speak, in this crazy world..." He nodded decisively, then. "I'll take you up on that offer, thank you."

Lily nodded, «Well, let's get ready to head out then. The robots will be done loading the truck with everything I need to take. You should gather all the loot you are taking, as well."

Gary wolfed down the rest of his stew before standing up and gathering all the stuff he was taking, which included almost fifteen rifles in good condition that she suspected he intended to sell and a lot more ammo than she thought would be in that small armoury.

It took him three trips up to the truck to load everything, and she was right behind him on his last trip. She hopped up into the driver's seat, while he took the passenger's seat without having to be told.

«Alright, let us be about it, then,» she said as she started the motor from idling, and slowly aiming the truck and trailer to the northwest. Checking in with the drone above, she was happy to see it wasn't overheating any longer.

She wondered how far such drones would have to loiter to be undetectable from either the Enclave or the Brotherhood. They were small and featured ducted rotors made out of radar-absorbing carbon fibre, but their shape wasn't stealthy at all. A single drone wouldn't attract attention, she suspected, but if she had a hundred all hovering over the Capital wasteland, that was probably different.

Despite many attempts by the Americans, it wasn't really possible to design a truly stealthy vehicle that operated via spinning rotors. The only thing you could get was levels of less obvious.

She glanced at Gary and said, «My friends are a bit shy of strangers, so I will drop you off in the middle of Canterbury Commons and allow you to start your business. I wouldn't mention the source of your intended water just yet, obviously... oh and...» she dug around her pocket and tossed him a small bag, «That's about a hundred caps. You can pay me back, but the merchants will offer you a lot better prices when it is clear you have a little money and don't need to sell a rifle just to afford dinner.»

Gary caught the bag, glanced at it and then just nodded, "Thank you. And yes, I will be a bit cagey about my source. I'm sure they'll think I'm bullshitting until the first water truck arrives. That's my bigger worry; how will I find one of those."

Lily nodded, «Well, there is a Corvega factory southwest of here. I happen to know it is overrun with giant ants, including soldier variants and one Queen. I'll ask my friends if they are interested in clearing it out with us, if so we could probably use the fission motors to jury-rig a water truck. I'm not unfamiliar with engineering projects like that.»

Gary brightened considerably, "I'm quite good mechanically with cars. And I have a lot of experience handling and maintaining small fission reactors from my time in the Navy, so I definitely could put something together myself, even. That sounds like a great idea. I'm not sure my rifle can do much against an ant the size of this truck, though, Doc."

Lily didn't think so, either. She still had that minigun in the back of the truck, though, and a fair bit of the 5mm ammo she had stolen off that weird woman on the bridge and figured that would be much more effective. Plus, if the Mechanist went along with it he'd no doubt bring at least one Sentrybot.

Some of the people of Canterbury Commons came out to look at the unusual and unfamiliar truck that was pulling in. She pulled in right next to Dot's Diner, «This diner is pretty good. Across the street is an old Firestation, however the new owner uses it as a transhipment hub for traders. He might be a good choice to mention your incipient water business to. Tell him I sent you, and he might not think you're crazy.»

Gary nodded and dismounted, "Is it okay if I leave most of my stuff in here?" Lily nodded at him, «Go ahead. I will be at the old discount electronics store southwest of town; everyone knows it. However, I'll likely find you first in a day or two.»

"Thanks, Doc. I'll see you in a couple of days, then," Gary said, unloading one bag of loot from the back of the truck.

Lily smiled as she put the truck into gear. It was time to see how Sophie and Scott were doing!