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[Out of Milliways: The Republic of Dave.]

Ellen stomps through the door in her dark green fatigues, Dogmeat at her heels. An overwhelming smell of Brahmin and fertilizer- so, more Brahmin, really- is cut off as she closes the door behind her. "I really hope Elder Lyons knows what he's doing," she mutters. "Bar? Could I please get a bottle of Nuka-Cola and something that Bill Guarnere would approve of to eat? It's been kind of a long day."

Bar obliges with... well, Ellen's not sure what's going on, but there's noodles and there's what appear to be lumps of ground meat and there's.... okay, the red sauce is a little outside her experience. As is the white stuff dusted over the top. Smells good, though.

Once she figures out what she's supposed to do with her first dish of spaghetti and meatballs she'll probably notice that the Bar's also given her a small, heavy object wrapped in a note saying 'a gift from Corazon'. That, however, can wait. Food first.

She's botherable, so go right ahead and laugh at her total inability to handle spaghetti. These things happen.

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"Oh, no," says Ellen. "It's the wasteland that exists where the national capital used to be- it's the year 2278 back home, and there was a planet-wide atomic war two hundred years ago. Things haven't really recovered yet, you see."

"Oh." Jim falls silent for a moment. The gears in his head are turning a little slower this morning. "That'll explain the mutants then."

"Pretty much," Ellen says. And then: "Um. I... probably shouldn't be talking too much about the future until I find out if it's the future for where you come from. I mean, for all I know you could be Drake Tungsten the Chrono-Cowboy in disguise and then I'd be in a lot of trouble."

"If I were a...Chrono-Cowboy, this'd be a pretty shitty disguise, wouldn't it?" He smiles a bit for the first time this morning. "As for when I'm from, well, that's a little complicated. You could say 1874, could say 1974. For the sake of convenience we'll go with the first one. Saves a few headaches."

"You'd be amazed what passes for disguises in comic books," Ellen says seriously. "Okay, um... huh. I don't know when Coca-Cola was invented, but I think it was around that time... have you ever heard of it, by any chance?"

"I have," Jim says. "Though it wasn't invented until 1886." He winces as he realizes he's said too much already.

He wishes he had a writer in here, too. He's on his own here. And if he isn't, the guy writing for him is doing a really shitty job.

Edited 2011-12-29 02:42 (UTC)

"That's fine," Ellen says. "It was never invented at all in my history. We got a drink called Nuka-Cola in 2044 thanks to a man named John-Caleb Bradberton, but Coca-Cola never happened so far as anyone can tell. That's really all I needed to know to make sure you weren't from my world's history."

Ellen is remarkably happy to accept quite a lot of things at face value, when it comes right down to it.

"Yeah, I heard you mention it before," he said. "That name's a little on-the-nose now, isn't it? Oddly prescient of him."

"It's a divergence like any other," Ellen says with a shrug. "As far as I can tell, most of the weird alternate histories around here split off from my world's timeline sometime around 1945 or so, maybe earlier. The soda thing's one of the earlier signs, that's all. That and the aliens, but most people wouldn't know whether aliens were kidnapping people from their world in the 1600s or not, so I don't bother asking."

She's had plenty of time to get used to uncomfortable facts like that. It's not that she's being deliberately blase', it's that it's just history for her by now.

"Yeah, I really wouldn't know. I'd probably just assume that Spielberg's next project had crossed over into our lot."

"Spielberg?" says Ellen curiously. "If that's a historical name, it's not one I've ever heard before, I'm afraid."

"Filmmaker," he says. "He made a few movies about aliens."

"Oh, okay," Ellen says. "We didn't really have movies like that where I grew up. I mean, we had pretty much the entire run of Captain Cosmos up to the 2076-2077 season on holotape, but they didn't put many science fiction movies in the Vault with us. I'm not sure why."

(Probably because the vast majority of them were of roughly the same quality as Ras Bastion and the Amazons of Xarn, and even Vault-Tec had its standards.)

"Well, it's better than nothing," Jim says. "Captain Cosmos could be similar to a few things that we have. Did the Captain sleep with a lot of green-skinned alien space women? Were there a lot of shouty British actors in makeup?"

"I think most of the actors were American, but there was a lot of shouting and theatrical makeup all around," Ellen says. "And the special effects looked really awesome until you actually got the chance to see what a real explosion looked like, in color, and then if you went back and watched it you realized that all the ships were just models on strings and you could see the seams on the costumes."

"Well, maybe once things finally settle down to the point you can rebuild, somebody can make a post-ironic movie version with a cheesy soundtrack by a popular music group."

"Probably in New Vegas," says Ellen, not really understanding the post-ironic part but picking up the general thrust. "My friend Corazon says the city's still there and the gambling's still... going... shoot, I don't even remember when they built Las Vegas, so I don't know if you'd know it or not. Um."

"I know Vegas VERY well," Jim says. "Don't remember much of it, though."

"That sounds like what Corazon tells me about the place," Ellen says. "Lights, casinos, lots of bottlecaps changing hands, and lots of regrettable decisions. I guess some things never change."

"Ain't that somethin'." Jim snorts. "All of civilization destroyed and the first things to pop back up are whiskey, gamblin', and whorin'."

"Well, Corazon says there was a man in Vegas named Mr. House who controlled some kind of defense system that protected the city from the worst of it," Ellen says. "But yes, that sounds about right. We don't have the gambling so much back in the Capital region but the other two are pretty common there. Just don't drink the beer. It's nasty."

"Is that a challenge?" he asks. "'Cause I can tell you, I've had some pretty skunky shit in my time."

"Well, if you really insist I can always get some for you," Ellen says. "I mean, Gob sells it for less than the price of Nuka-Cola and the Nuka-Cola's all two hundred years old, so fair warning there. All I know is that when I compare the stuff I grew up with to the beer on the surface, and either one to the beer they serve here, I don't think I'd even use the Wasteland beer for cleaning my hair, it's that nasty."

"Maybe something in a small container," Jim says. "If I'm not already dead by now, a sip probably won't kill me."

Ellen nods. "I'll bring some the next time I come here," she says. "I can probably buy some while we're in the Republic of Dave. Otherwise I'll just have to wait until my squad goes back to Canterbury Commons- we're in a pretty remote settlement at the moment."