milliways_bar | (no subject)

Gabriel is in from a workout wearing a black tank and green army fatigue pants. He's recovering with a protein shake while he reads a borrowed tablet from Bar, but the sound of the dog catches his attention. He looks over, eyes lighting up a little as a smile grows on his face.

"Nice dog," he says to the woman. "Cool that they let animals in here. Is he friendly?"

Ellen glances up and smiles a little. "They've always been pretty good about that," she says. "This is Dogmeat, and yes, he's friendly. And will probably try to get you to give him food, because he does that a lot. Dogmeat, be nice to the man."

Hooray! People are paying attention to him! Dogmeat's ears perk forward as he leans over to sniff at the new human.

"Dogmeat?" He laughs a little as he crouches to meet the animal. It's definitely a unique name. "Hey there, buddy," he says, pitching his voice soothing and friendly while holding his palm out for the dog to sniff. "Haven't got any food on me, but if your mom says it's okay maybe we can get some Beggin' strips from Bar."

He glances up at her. "I'm Gabriel."

"Dogmeat," Ellen confirms. Dogmeat, for his part, is happily sniffing the offered hand, and licking it just in case he can get away with it. "And yes, a little something to eat won't hurt him."

Eat! She said eat! Dogmeat's tail starts wagging even more wildly.

"My name's Ellen. Or 101, back home, but here it's mostly Ellen. It's good to meet you, Gabriel."

Gabriel grins. "One sec, buddy." He stands and grabs the fake bacon Bar has ready for him and starts breaking it into pieces to offer the dog. He doesn't mind getting licked at all.

"101? That a call sign or something?"

!!!!

(Don't mind Dogmeat. They don't have bacon where he comes from, so he gets a little excited about it here.)

"Something like that. I'm part of a military order back home called the Brotherhood of Steel, and virtually all of us wind up with call signs or substitute names," she says. "I grew up in a sealed underground shelter called Vault 101, so people who knew about me but didn't know my name called me 'the kid from 101', and it wound up sticking."

Gabe uses his free hand to pet Dogmeat as he works on the treats, but he's looking up at Ellen with a touch of interested bewilderment.

"This all happening on an Earth?" Dogmeat seems like a Earth dog...

Edited 2017-12-28 05:17 (UTC)

"One of several, from what I understand," Ellen says. "It's the year 2282, for me. I'm guessing you're from another Earth?"

His eyebrows rise a little at the date.

"Yeah, 2041. Only thing I've heard so far that sets it apart is that we have omnics, uh, robots." He leaves off that they're currently trying to wipe out humanity.

Ellen scratches at her head a moment, thinking. "We've got robots," she says, "and we've had them since before the- before 2077, but I don't think I ever heard of anyone using the word 'omnic'. Maybe 'synth', once or twice. Um... do your omnics use micro-chips?"

There is just enough of a pause in her pronunciation to mentally fill in the dash- 'microchips' isn't a single word where she comes from.

"Because that would... probably mean you're not from my world's past. We never really got the hang of those."

Gabriel gives the last of the treats to Dogmeat before standing. He's happy to keep petting the dog if he wants, though.

"Pretty sure they do." He makes a mental note to start studying what schematics they have. "That have something to do with you growing up in a vault?"

"Not really," Ellen says, "although it seems to make my Earth pretty distinct from most of the others represented here. I grew up in Vault 101 because we had a planet-wide nuclear war in 2077. The micro-chip thing didn't have anything to do with that, though."

[Ooc: I have to get to bed; it's nearly 2 AM in my time zone. Can we resume tomorrow?]

Gabriel's eyebrows go up again. Nuclear war over two hundred years ago with people taking refuge in vaults? They had vaults ready to go?

"Wow. You guys actually...wow, okay." Huh. He knows they were talking about tech but this is a little distracting. "So these Brotherhood of Steel guys, they're from a different vault?"

[OOC: Absolutely! Slowtimes seem pretty common around here.]

"Not- well, no, not really," Ellen says. "There were a bunch of Vaults across the country, but there were other shelters, and... well, honestly, mine was a bit of an aberration. Most of them opened within a few years of the Great War being over, from what I understand. And a lot of other people survived in other places. The Brotherhood was already operating on the surface for more than a century by the time Vault 101 opened its door."

He's starting to get a better idea of her world. Way post apocalyptic but there's still people around. And dogs!

"Sounds like you guys are doing alright, considering. Thanks for explaining."

"We're managing," Ellen says with a smile. "It's slow going, but we manage. Hopefully your world's got it easier, though."

He winces slightly.

"Kinda? Omnics are trying to do the whole 'kill all humans' thing, but we're not dealing with nuclear strikes so I'll count my blessings."

"Ouch." Ellen wrinkles her nose sympathetically. "We get killer robots sometimes, but not quite on that level, usually. More like a sentrybot losing the ability to tell friend from foe, or a Mr. Gutsy that hasn't been maintained in decades de iding that anyone interfering with its patrol area has to die."

"And that's where the Brotherhood comes in?"

"Sort of. We reclaim old world tech before other people can get hold of it and put it to harmful use, so that means robots or robot parts and systems a lot of the time," Ellen says.

"Right, the," he squints at her questioningly, "not microchips." Then he gives a slight laugh. "Sorry for the curiosity, still kinda new here."

"It's okay. Everyone was new here at some point," Ellen says with a smile. "You should have seen me when I was first coming here. I asked just about anybody unusual-looking if they were some kind of mutant."

"Seems reasonable," Gabe says easily, "if all the weird things on your world are mutants."

Maybe a little rude but eh, Gabriel's never put much stock in avoiding that for avoidance sake.

"A lot of them are," Ellen says. "That was more me just not being familiar with life on the surface, but we've got plenty of mutated things- humans, animals, even some plants. If you ever spot a two-headed cow here it's probably one of mine."

Gabriel doesn't know enough about farm animals to know how impressive it is for two-headed cows to have survived well enough to be considered the norm (but mun is kind of twitching).

So he just asks, "They taste the same? I mean have you gotten to try ancestor cow here?" He'd be willing to try it as long as it wasn't radioactive. His DNA's being messed with enough as it is.

"The meat's pretty close, although the old kind of cow's usually more tender," Ellen says. "Brahmin- that's the two-headed kind of cattle we have back home- are too valuable to kill for meat until they're too old to work, most of the time. Even the old ones taste pretty decent, though."

It may be worth noting that Ellen did grow up inside a fallout shelter, which.... might not really make her the best source of information on good-tasting food.

"But the way they make the hamburgers here comes out a lot nicer. We don't really have things like catsup. Or pepper, now that I think about it."

The look he gives her is almost pained.

"On the one hand I really hope you've gotten to try a bacon bleu cheese burger, but on the other that's kind of cruel if you can't get it at home." He shakes his head. "Any chance of getting hardy seeds so you can start growing tomatoes and shit back home?"

"We're working on it," Ellen says. "I was able to get some seeds from here a while ago and bring them over to the Capital Wasteland. We have a few green areas around Megaton now- that's one of the biggest settlements in the Capital area, near what used to be Arlington, Virginia. Some of the seeds took to local conditions better than others. There's a lot of... shoot. Um, they're this long-"

She indicates something about as long as her forearm.

"And green. Um, zucchini. That was it. Those things grow like mad all over the place. The tomatoes are a little harder, but people are working on trying to keep those happy long enough to get a good harvest."

Pause.

"I thought cheese was supposed to be white? Or yellow?"

He's impressed and looks it. They really do seem to have things going well for them.

"Bleu cheese is white," he explains, "it's just got these blue crumbly bits in it. Good on burgers, buffalo wings, and as a salad dressing."

Ellen nods. "Okay," she says. "I didn't know buffalo had wings before the- well, ever, really, it's not like we have buffalo any more. I just meant I didn't know there were winged buffalo."

Then again, most of what she knows about buffalo is that there used to be millions of them and that Indians hunted them and that they mostly got wiped out during building the railroads. And they were on a coin for a while.

He laughs a little.

"Naw, buffalo wings are chicken wings with buffalo sauce. Thought the same thing when I was a kid, though," he assures her. "Buffalo sauce is tangy and a little spicy. Bar could probably get you a sampler platter. I'd order one and let you pick at it but," he gestures to his protein shake, "I'm supposed to be on a strict diet right now."

"That's okay. Maybe another time," Ellen says. "Are you preparing for a medical exam. You don't look like you're sick."

"My life is nothing but medical exams right now," he answers, rolling his eyes. "I'm a soldier in a program we're hoping we'll give us an edge over the omnics. Pretty controlled environment type stuff and I'm cheating a lot by coming here." He shrugs and grins a bit. "Been pretty good, though. Just got a flavor of shake the base doesn't carry."

"Oh, good luck," Ellen says. "I don't know if it'd interfere with your program, but there's a lot of physical training equipment here and a challenge course in the mountains out back. Seems like a lot of soldiers end up coming here."

"Thanks." He nods in appreciation. "Should be fine, I push myself pretty hard anyway," and his men, much to their chagrin, "and a nice change of pace. Kansas is kind of flat."

"Never been farther west than Pittsburgh," Ellen admits. "Is Kansas where you're based?"

"Yeah, attached to Fort Leavenworth if that means anything." This is mostly true. "Good staging ground between the North American omniums. Uh, omnic factories." It's such common knowledge in his world it always take a moment to remember to translate. "Think the closest one to DC is in Detroit."

"I don't think I know that one," Ellen admits. "But I could find Detroit on a map. So if that's the closest one to DC, then I'm guessing you don't have one in Philadelphia? I ask because in my world, General Atomics had a headquarters and robot factory there."

"They kept 'em pretty spaced out, supposed to supply the whole region. Don't know General Atomics, either. Guessing you haven't heard of Omnica Corporation or SST Laboratories?"

"Afraid not," Ellen says. "The other big robot company was RobCo. Think it was named after the founder rather than the product, but I'm not really sure on that. They made a lot of other computer products, too. Um... West-Tek, but they mostly made power armor and laser weapons, rather than computers?"

"None of those, either," he says, shaking his head. "Heard some rumors the Germans are working on power armor, but nothing about laser weapons." R&D is working on some interesting weapons but nothing so futuristic as that.

Ellen nods. "Regular ballistic weapons are pretty common back home," she says, "but there's also laser weapons, plasma guns, and some other interesting energy weapons out there. Power armor's pretty rare outside the Brotherhood, though. Takes roo much precise work and parts for most civilians to keep it going."

"Makes sense. Military usually gets all the fun toys."

He does take the weapons seriously...but he's also the guy who will be known for dual wielding shotguns.

"Which isn't to say that there aren't some impressive homemade weapons and such out there," Ellen says. "The second best hand-to-hand weapon I've had was cobbled together from lawnmower and motorcycle parts. Flaming swords have their uses."

"Alright, that just sounds cool." He smiles. "Gotta imagine there's an intimidation factor that goes with that."

He's picturing her in power armor wielding a flaming sword and he's pretty impressed by it.