Neither
Amy nor Jack had wanted to go back into
town with
Drew, which
was rather irritating. He wasn’t going back there for the fun of
it, he was going because they hadn’t yet moved out. They
still had a lot of stuff back
at
the old house including clothes, equipment, and furniture. He didn’t
want to leave any of it and with Leanne parked outside having just
brought
them back from the hospital up north, he had thought it a perfect
opportunity to move the bulk of it.
While convincing Amy ended
up being a waste of breath, Jack eventually relented. With a goodbye,
they left her alone with the two Gutsies and the seemingly dead Miss
Nanny and climbed back into the truck, Jack jumping in the back.
“Ready?” Leanne asked.
“Yeah,” Drew said.
“So, how much are we
moving?” she asked as she started the ignition and pulled out of
the parking lot onto the highway.
“A lot,” Drew answered.
“Might need to use your services again pretty soon.”
“I know you’re good for
the caps,” she said. “And as I said before; it’s thanks to you
I’ve been able to keep these things running.”
“I know how much they’re
needed,” Drew said. “The region depends on them as much as they
depend on the caravans.”
“That’s right, and you
need them more than most right now. It would have been impossible to
move all your stuff without a truck,” Leanne said.
“That much is certain,”
Drew agreed.
It
took them an hour or so
to get back to Colville, and just about as long
for them to pack a good
chunk of their stuff into
the truck, which Leanne had
parked in the street outside
their place for ease of
access.
From there, they made their way back to the plant where they
unloaded.
With
Drew handing over the due caps to Leanne, she headed off back to town
while Drew and Jack made
their way back inside,
meeting up with Amy. From
there, they headed to the
nurse’s office where they had left the
Nanny robot.
“So,
what do
you think is wrong with it?”
Jack asked after Drew had
taken a look at the medical
robot.
“Programmers, that’s what’s wrong with her.”
Jack frowned. “Programmers? What does that mean?”
“It
means that someone was a little overzealous. She couldn’t leave the
hospital and when she tried, she shut down.”
“Can
we reboot her?”
“Probably.
I’m going to have to take a look at her programming, though,
otherwise she might just switch herself right back off again.”
After
taking off her back panel, Drew took the jack from his Pipboy and
inserted it into the slot. After
going through the code, Drew shook his head with a sigh.
“What’s wrong?” Amy asked
from where she sat on the edge of a hospital bed.
“They had a kill switch for
if she tried to leave the hospital.”
“So it’s dead?” Jack
asked.
“No, just switched off. I
don’t understand why they did it? Unless they were worried she
would wander off?”
“Probably,”
Amy said with a shrug. “I
bet these things cost a lot of caps.”
“Dollars,” Drew corrected.
“They used to use dollars. Like the NCR.”
“Whatever,”
Amy said with
a dismissive wave of her hand.
“Can you fix it?”
“Yeah, I can fix it. It won’t
take long either.”
“If
it won’t take long then why
didn’t
you
fix it back at the hospital?” Amy asked.
Jack answered. “Because you
have to take the back panel off.”
“Actually,
you don’t,” Drew corrected. “It’s just a helluva lot easier
to
get it in the slot if
you do. Besides,
I didn’t realize someone would actually put a kill switch in a
Nanny. If
I did, I would have tried to fix it there in
the hospital.
It’s
not like it’s an Assaultron or something like that. It’s a
freaking Miss Nanny. The
thing is harmless.”
“The
thing has a buzz saw,” Amy pointed out. “Hardly
harmless.”
“It’s
standard,” Drew said as he checked that he had properly removed the
offending code segment. He
needed to make sure that there were no references to it anywhere,
otherwise it
would throw up errors and
possibly cause
issues.
“A
buzz saw being standard is stupid,” Amy
continued.
“Who needs a robot with a buzz saw? What’s it doing? Hacking off
limbs?”
“Possibly,”
Drew said. “Whatever the reason, those at General Atomics thought
a buzz saw should be standard equipment on all of their Mister
and Miss line
of
robots.”
“I know it’s standard. I
could guess that much considering they all have one,” Amy said. “I
was just wondering why?”
Drew looked at her before he
shrugged. “No idea. You would have to have asked the ones that
designed it. Not important now.”
“Yeah, I suppose not.”
“What
is important is that I think I’ve sorted it. I
ran
the code, got no errors.”
“None?”
“Well,
a few. Actually,
there’s a lot of errors, but not
from my edits.
I
might
go
back in and fix
the corrupted fragments and
recompile.”
Jack groaned. “How long will
that take?”
“A
few hours,”
Drew told them. “While
I work on this, do you think that you and Amy could start on plans to
make a
water purifier? We have parts that should work from the hospital.”
Jack
frowned. “I thought we were selling the parts
to the guys at the Colville purifier?”
“We are, but we have plenty
of spares.”
“So we’re keeping some
parts for ourselves?” Jack asked.
“Yeah.
I’m
not selling all of it. Besides, there are plenty of spares here we
can use.”
“I’ll see what I can do,”
Jack said. “This place should have a boiler, so we can use that as
a base to build a new system.”
“I’ll help him,” Amy
said.
“Excellent,” Drew said with
a sniff. “The water here isn’t too irradiated, but I’d prefer
if we could bring that as close to zero as possible.”
“Agreed,” Jack said.
The
two of them
left the room while Drew continued to go through the code. There had
been clear corruption and degradation over
the years,
though that was to be expected. Thankfully, it wasn’t that bad. He
had seen a lot worse. In fact, his
former Assaultron companion, Izzy,
had been near inoperable when he had found her. Her code had almost
been unsalvageable. But after a few weeks, and a lot of improvements
even over the base code, he’d made a companion that would be with
him for years. She had even been there when he had first met Jack,
Amy, and, of
course, Gemma,
the woman that would become his love. Then his love lost to the super
mutants.
Drew
worked well into the night. He
still hadn’t quite caught up with his sleep debt from
before and
knew that a crash day was coming; a day when he would feel absolutely
exhausted
and
wouldn’t be able to do much
of anything.
Still,
he felt that he couldn’t go
to bed
until he was done.
Finally,
as the time on his Pipboy changed from 3:59 to 4:00 in the morning,
he finished. He briefly considered activating
her, but instead, he turned off the light and climbed onto the
hospital bed in the corner and went to sleep.
When
he awoke, it was still dark, though considering the room had no
windows there was no opportunity for natural light to get into the
room anyway.
Drew checked the time on his
Pipboy to find that it was half-one in the afternoon.
He
climbed off the small bed, yawned, then headed out of the room making
his way along the hallway to the bathrooms where he took a
piss and a shit.
He
flushed the
toilet
using a bucket and water from the sink before he washed his hands and
headed down into the basement where he found Jack and Amy.
“Finally
decided
to
get
up?” Amy asked with
a smirk.
“Sorry, I was up till four
fixing Suzy’s corrupted code.”
“Started her up yet?”
“Not yet. Thought I’d wait.
How are you two doing down here?”
Amy
smiled. “Jack
had
an idea earlier.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah,”
Jack said, smiling
proudly.
“I remembered how Handy units had water condensers for producing
purified
water,
so
I checked to see if there were any parts laying
around and
sure enough there were. This
place has
a lot of condensers and purifiers in stock.”
“Well
shit,” Drew said grinning. “I never thought of that. Completely
slipped my mind. Most
Handies
out there have lost their condensers over the years, either
from rust or by
simply falling
off.”
“Well with your help we can
probably jury rig a few into the system.”
Drew nodded. “That sounds
like a solid plan. I also want to take a look at the ovens in there,
see if I can fix any up. First, though, I want to restart Suzy. If
there’s one thing we need, it’s a medic. Especially considering
how much work I plan on doing here.”
“You should do that now,”
Jack said. “We’re almost done for the time being. We’ll be up
shortly.”
Amy agreed. “Yeah, getting a
medic sooner rather than later is a good idea. Earlier, Jack almost
had an accident, one that definitely would have needed some medical
attention.”
“What happened?” Drew
asked.
“It was nothing,” Jack
said, glaring at Amy.
Drew
decided not to push it and instead headed off back towards the
nurse’s office. First,
though, he
stopped by the cafeteria where they had dropped off some of their
supplies and grabbed a mutfruit from
the semi-functional refrigerator.
Back
in the nurse’s office, Drew squatted down next to Suzy and switched
her on, putting her back panel on while she booted up.
Stepping back, he ate the
mutfruit while he waited. Finally, after a nervous few minutes, her
irises began to move and her arms began to flex.
“What
’as ’appened?” she asked as her thruster ignited and she
floated into the air. “Where
am I?”
Drew
cleared his throat and took a step forward. “What do you remember?”
All three of its eyes focused
on him. “I remember you,” she said, nodding her front eye in his
direction. “We were in ze ’ospital.”
“That’s right,” Drew said
with a nod.
“I
do not know what ’appened after zhat.”
“You don’t remember wanting
to leave?”
“I
’ave wanted to leave for many years but
I was unable.
Are you telling me zhat you managed it?
What
’appened? We were in ze foyer last I remember. Did
you switch me off and carry me out? That is very rude.”
“No,
I didn’t shut
you down.”
“Zhen
’ow?”
It
was clear that she didn’t remember what had happened.
She did shut down rather suddenly meaning
her last memories were likely either
not saved or had
been corrupted.
He realized that he should have checked her memory for
fragmentation
before switching her back
on.
“It
wasn’t easy,” Drew told her. “Unfortunately, you had a kill
switch in
your programming
that shut you down when you attempted it.”
“I see.”
“I fixed it as well as some
corrupted code.”
“I zhank you,” she said.
“You are too kind.”
He
smiled. “Think nothing of it. We could do with a nurse around
here.”
“And I would be ’appy to
’elp.”
“That’s
great.
Today and probably over the next few days we’re going to be working
on getting a purification system installed for
the water.”
“Clean
drinking
water
is a necessity for
a ’ealthy lifestyle.
I
would like to
’elp?”
“I’m
sure we can find something for
you to do,”
Drew said. “Come
on, let’s
get to the basement. That’s
where the others are.”
“Actually,”
Jack said as
he stepped through the door.
“We’re
not. I
was thinking of putting some of the condensers into the cafeteria
first. There’s those old water
coolers in there and I think I could rig them to collect atmospheric
moisture and output purified water. Then we’ll have some clean
drinking water available while we work on the main system.”
Drew patted him on the
shoulder. “Great thinking.”
“Thanks.”
“My
idea, actually,”
Amy said as she peeked her head inside.
Jack
rolled his eyes. “Okay, Amy thought of it. But
I’m
the one who knows
how to rig it up and
I was the one who thought about the purifiers in the first place.”
“Good work, both of you,”
Drew said with a smirk.
The
three
of them, plus Suzy, headed out of the nurse’s office, Jack leading
them to where the moisture condensers were stored. Together, they
took seven of
the devices to
the cafeteria where they assisted Jack in installing them into the
water coolers after
cleaning and sterilizing them.
It
took a good few hours, but finally, as it
turned half-six in the evening, they finished. Though that didn’t
mean they could get a clean glass of water. It
would still
take
some time for the moisture
to be captured,
condensed,
filtered
and cleansed, which
meant it still wouldn’t be ready until tomorrow. They still had
some clean water in the form of bottles, but that was finite and they
had less
than
a week left
until
they had drunk it all. By
then, if everything went well, it wouldn’t be much of an issue as
they would have plenty of cleansed water from
the coolers, and
hopefully, they
would
be halfway to getting clean water flowing out of the faucets.
Bringing
the old Robco plant back online had been a dream of his for a while,
but the sheer amount of work it would take had always stopped him.
For
the longest time, he hadn’t even bothered to check the place out,
only knowing of its existence from old maps.
Still,
they
had a lot of work ahead of them, an unfathomable amount, but clean
water would be a solid first step. For
one thing, it would mean they could actually live there long-term,
especially now that they had a medic.
Ever
since Paulson, Drew had been living from day to day. Now, he felt
like he had an actual goal in his life, something to work towards,
something to look forward to.
There
was an unfortunate downside,
a metaphorical
glowing
cloud on the horizon that threatened a
radiation
storm, and that came in the form of the green
deathclaws.
Thankfully he hadn’t heard of anyone being killed by one of them,
though that was certain to change.
He forced that last thought out
of his head. He couldn’t afford distractions, not before he had
brought the place online. First, though, they needed clean running
water, then a means of reliably cooking food. Once the place had been
made truly habitable, then he would truly bring the plant back
online. He would build robots that would help keep everyone in the
region safe. Safe from deathclaws, Greenclaws, raiders, super
mutants, and whatever else the world could possibly throw at them.
It was his vow.