milliways_bar | (no subject)

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Hygiene in the Capital Wasteland is a tricky thing at best, given how precious water is and how rare decent cleansers and soaps can be. But the quietly growing settlement of Lacuna has a leg up in that regard: every one of the people thawed out from storage on board the alien ship in orbit is sent into the Wastes with as many pounds of supplies as they can carry. The aliens did, after all, fill a good portion of their cargo hold with Terran objects as well as with Terran people- although why there were quite so many dashboard-mounted hula girls and Giddyup Buttercup robot horses is a difficult question to answer.

Perhaps they were just bad at science.

*ahem* At any rate, there's more Abraxo cleaner, Washo detergent, and other cleansing-related stuff in Lacuna than anywhere else in the Wasteland other than the ruins of the Takoma industrial district. They may be a town populated by five Brotherhood members and a lot of people jarred out of time, but by God they're at least clean. This extends to their clothes, which is a long way of saying that there's neither dust nor cow smell nor anything else objectionable about Ellen's Brotherhood fatigues when she comes in today. Dogmeat, at her heels, is... erm... a slight exception. Somebody's been herding the sheep.

"Hey, Bar?" Ellen says. "Can I get a bottle of Nuka-Cola and something to eat that wouldn't depress Bill Guarnere? I've spent the past two days dealing with people wigging out about the anniversary of the Moon landing, and I think I could use something a little better than usual."

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"Did they really land on the moon?" Fry asks, from a little way down the bar, where he is arranging barmats into evenly spaced patterns. "Tommy said it was made up and the pictures were taken by aliens."

Tommy is not known for being the most reliable source of information.

Ellen considers that for a moment.

"The aliens I know aren't the kind to bother taking pictures," she says. "And I've seen the lunar lander and used one of the parts that was recovered from it before the astronauts came back to Earth. So I'm pretty sure they really did land on the moon, at least in the history I know."

"That's good. I wouldn't like it if they lied." Fry says.

"But there's not much up there, is there?"

"On the moon? Not from what I learned in science class," Ellen says. "I've never been there personally, but from what I learned in science class it's pretty airless and barren. About the most interesting things there are the pieces of space exploration equipment that got left behind."

"I heard they want to build a space port." Fry says.

"Mum said that was silly when there are people who don't have enough to eat."

"I wouldn't know," Ellen says. "I'm from the year 2280, and we don't have a space program. When are you from?"

"Twenty first of July, 2014." Fry says.

"Oh," says Ellen, and considers this. "Well. You may not be from my past, so things may be different in your future."

He's a little young to go into more detail than that without being asked, really.

Fry nods.

"I don't think I'd want to go into space." he says. "I like everything falling down the right way."

"It's awfully big, too," Ellen says, with an ill-suppressed shudder. "If you haven't got magnetic boots on to hold you to the ship, you'd fall off into the black and keep falling forever. Or close to it, anyway."

"Because it's a vacuum and it has no air pressure." Fry says. "When you fire Angry Birds in Space away from a planet they go in a straight line and if you fire them in a gravity field they fall down."

"I suppose that makes sense," Ellen says, "but wouldn't any birds you got into space alive freeze to death fairly quickly? Or is this in some kind of an experimental satellite or something like that?"

She's heard things about the early Chinese space program. Brr.

"This is a computer game so I guess they don't die. But the pigs do if you burst their bubbles..."

"Oh, one of those things," Ellen says. "Okay, that's different. The only computer game I know wasn't really a game, it was an in-depth training simulation. Our computers back home weren't used for that kind of thing much."

"Was it in 3D?"

"It was immersive. I think the people who ran it said it was a 'virtual reality' simulation," Ellen says after some thought. "It certainly looked like the history texts say Alaska was supposed to look."

"Does that mean it was underwater?" Fry asks.

"No-" Ellen considers. "More that I don't think you can really call it 3D. Everything looked three dimensional, but it was more like I was in Alaska than looking at Alaska. And I could feel the temperature and the weird textures under foot, too, and smell when my guns went off. So it wasn't just wearing a pair of 3D glasses. I had to put on a suit and get into a pod to participate in it."

"So not virtual reality...so much as actual reality."

"I don't think you can call it actual reality if it only exists inside a computer," Ellen says. "I mean, I got shot several times but as soon as I put my hands on one of the flashing red bottles marked 'healing' all my injuries went away, and whenever I touched the dispenser machines all my bullets came back even if I'd emptied all my magazines. That's pretty virtual."

"I don't think I'd like a game so much if I got shot." Fry says.

"Did you float like in space?"

"No, it was all pretty strictly Earth conditions," Ellen says. "It was a simulation of several of the critical battles of the Anchorage campaign of January, 2077. They created it as a training program for new soldiers."

"Are you a soldier?"

Ellen nods. "Not in the same army the sim was made for," she says, "but yes. I'm a Paladin in the Brotherhood of Steel. Our ancestors were originally in the United States Army, several hundred years ago."

"What's a paladin?" Fry asks.

"It's one of our ranks, a kind of commissioned officer," says Ellen. "Mostly it means we're either some kind of specialist, or we're going to be moving up in the command structure one day."

Fry nods. He doesn't know much about the army, but he knows what ranks means so he gets the idea.

"I don't think I'd want to be in the army." he says. "I don't like blood."

"It is a big part of the job," Ellen says, nodding. "What would you rather do instead?"

"I'd like to be a police officer but I think that has blood too." Fry says. "So maybe a scientist."

"Sometimes it does, from what I hear from police officers here," Ellen says. "What kind of science, do you know?"

He's a little young to think of these things, but Brotherhood children have to decide whether to go into the Scribes or the combat orders fairly young, and in Vault 101 it didn't matter at all what you wanted, so her idea of how old a decision should be made at is a little skewed.

"I'm not sure." Fry says. "I like flowers and worms and growing vegetables. And penguins."

"... penguins," Ellen repeats after a moment. "I'm not sure I remember those. I mean, I think I heard the word in science class once, but... what are penguins?"

"They're a bird that swims instead of flying."

"Huh," Ellen says. "That's... huh. I'm pretty sure we don't have those in the Capital Wasteland."

"There are twenty one kinds." Fry says.

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