I may not need anything from the general store, but I do appreciate a free soda. Or 12. I help myself, with an internal promise to shop there someday. Eventually.
And of course I clean up the empties. Boxes you can carry AND put things in, what a concept.
Now you might be thinking, it’s funny that a guy named Johnny Smash cleans up after himself. Trust me, if I want to wreck a place, I can. But, as a gritty, greasy symbol of classic American machismo, I have of course worked all the manly drifter-type jobs. I’ve toted barges, lifted bales, pushed and/or floated brooms, you name it. The crates and barrels go in the alley when they’re empty, it’s just natural. Once a Mojave Express stevedore, always a Mojave Express stevedore.
Beyond the alley, some kind of enormous monster goat is pacing in an agitated manner. It doesn’t seem to notice me, so I attempt to scan it with the computer on my arm, which is a real wonder by the way. It knows the name of every object I pass it over like magic, and at a very portable 6 pounds will probably stop hurting soon. Right? I mean it’s prescription so, I guess I just keep wearing it.
At the last second the goat moves. He’s real jittery for a truck-sized goat. Instead I accidentally scan what was behind him:
So the guy who lives there is named Jimmy Sterland? Not a threat, the computer suggests (despite him clearly having a large kitchen knife sheathed in his belt?), and in good health, which seems, invasive.
I finally manage to point the device at the monstrous goat, which thankfully isn’t charging or goring me as I fumble to identify it with my toaster gauntlet.
So this creature is a Bighorner, and it seems pretty well domesticated, if still pissed looking. Maybe it just has resting beast face. I can’t judge, I look like the “brand X” comparison in a shaving cream ad.
The implications of this technology are staggering. I can know anybody’s name at a distance, and make invasive surveys of their physical health and wellbeing? There are privacy concerns, ethical issues, plus it seems designed to help not only identify but attack what I’m scanning. I don’t know if I want to live in a world where such a device is commonplace. I’m deeply concerned, for a moment.
Then I notice that nobody else seems to have a spiffy wrist computer. Just me. All discomfort abates, Pip Boy technology is only wonderful, moral investigation closed.
I try to strike up a conversation with Brian Taylor, but he’s suspicious of my even being there. I’m suspicious of him too, with his gardening pistol and freight tie suspenders and thick Australian accent. I excuse myself, lest he think I’m a mutant gopher or whatever he’s up against.
Jimmy Sterland says even less to me, so I continue to the outskirts of Goodsprings. I’m about to give up on conversation completely when I turn to see, finally, a friendly face.
Only it’s in black-and-white?
Victor the Securitron has some imposing shoulder pads, but so far he’s the nicest resident of this town that I’ve come across, besides the guy who saved my life and clothed me and gave me rare computer gear I guess. In fact I recall Doc saying something about this robot helping me out of that jam in the graveyard, so I thank him.
Victor seems to take helping people as a matter of course, and is a lovely conversationalist. I respect both in a sentient. The Robco Securitron 2060-B is clearly a solid model, though him not remembering anything from before 15 years ago is troubling. Still, complex ethical processing, all-terrain Gizmoduck wheel, looks good in painters’ tarp blue. Solid.
I don’t learn much from talking to him but it hardly matters when a robot is just so darn nice. Happy trails to you too, William Sadler I mean Victor! Be excellent to each other.
Tony Tilack, Mike Woods, and Daniel Harris all seem to be men of little words.
I’m starting to think Goodsprings has its haggard loners quota pretty well-covered as I reach the old Poseidon station on the way out of town. I scan the radio for good songs and poke at the ancient vending machine. More free soda rolls out with a satisfying ka-chunk. This town’s manners may be rough around the edges, but you can’t argue with their style of hospitality.
I notice the robot carcass strewn across the back of a parked truck in the garage is twitching.
General Atomics Industries, Mister Handy model. A nuclear-powered pre-war appliance, if the tattered instructions are to be believed. The nuclear part is no doubt right, if it’s still got servos spasming all this time later. There’s even an extra fission battery and some spare parts lying around the garage. I nab all of it before I go. Poor guy probably just needs a tune-up. And I always feel better when I have a junker to wrench in my free time.
Oh hey there’s a note in my Pip Boy about the delivery I was supposed to make. Definitely have to read that later.
As I leave the gas station I see something across town to the South- a big white cross. There’s more to Goodsprings than I’ve seen, but I’ve seen enough for now. Time for this slicked-back cliche of a man to be moseying on down that lonesome road to splitsville, daddy-o. I’m picking up some great new phrases from the radio.
The road out of Goodsprings is decorated cheerily with a “Keep Out” sign and a grotesque infant-sized “bloatfly”, which my Pip Boy immediately labels and identifies as an enemy. I make quick work of it with my guitar, which emits a lovely wooden smack as it connects with the exploding ichor sack. I’m lucky to have found such an artfully assembled cudgel, but I do have to be careful- it’s not in pristine condition anymore. Bug guts take their toll on woodwork, I reckon.
During the brief fight I notice there’s a manhole in the road, which the Pip Boy insists with a fanfare is worth noting on its map. Okay. I’m learning to trust the computer’s instincts on this stuff. We make a pretty good team, even if the man-machine interface is a little clunky.
Little do I know how much worse it could be.
I spot a caravan coming towards me on Keep Out road. Prospector Merchant, says the Pip Boy. Friendly. And behind her is…
Gaaaah. The caravan guard is a robobrain. Based off what I’ve seen from bots thus far I’m not worried about it being unfriendly, but, I will never complain about the heavy computer gauntlet again because this is the real clumsy-looking interface. You could at least give the meat parts a sun shade, cripes, that gray matter must be sizzling out here like a burger.
I do business with the merchant, selling off the pistol and bullets Doc gave me, and buying a head wrap, prickly pear and a police baton. I’m briefly proud of myself for coming out ahead in the transaction, but then I see she has a bottle of scotch for sale. It just had to be the Creature, didn’t it? Instead of earning 4 caps, I spend 8.
At least the robobrain is, as expected, perfectly charming as it rolls away.
I practice swinging my new baton a few times, and eye the mysterious manhole cover. Okay, Pip Boy, you think this sewer is worth looking into, let’s see what’s up. Or, down.
I don’t know what I was expecting in this sewer honestly, but stairs and bear traps were definitely not it. There are some waterways and drainage areas, but equally as many bus terminal or office break room looking spaces. There are more vending machines of course, even down here. I don’t claim to be a civil engineer but, again, not what I was expecting.
I disarm a few traps only to come across what they are clearly intended for trapping: a gigantic mole rat. Several strikes with the baton put him down amidst the flickering shadows of a burning barrel, a whole lot of strikes actually. I basically have to wail on the horrible thing ten or fifteen times before it gives up the ghost, me using fancy footwork all the while to keep away from its horrible giant incisors. But I am victorious.
The locked gym door in the room, sadly, is a different story. It is clearly too complex for the likes of me, so I must leave it for now.
Instead I continue down more stairs, and open a complex sliding door with a spinning wheel (also a weird thing to have in a sewer), revealing not one but two mole rats this time. No matter, I think, and ready my trusty police baton.
Oh god. My pride at having sailed through two encounters without a scratch disappears as I’m mauled to death in one shot by a mole rat in a very weird small-town desert sewer. Brutal.
(It turns out that this mod list’s Very Hard difficulty is no joke. I have both J Sawyer Ultimate Edition’s Legendary Difficulty (which mimics Skyrim’s hardest setting) and Survival Mode (which mimics Fallout 4’s hardest setting) on, which as far as I can figure comes out to about .75% damage from me and 600% damage from enemies. Thus, one-shot mole rats)
I shake off the premonition of my own gruesome death and reconsider. I had hoped to save wear and tear on my guitar by using lesser melee weapons, but the police baton is not going to cut it down here it seems.
I instead start exploding giant rat heads with the guitar, which only takes 2 or 3 swings instead of a dozen, but it’s still touch and go. Sweating as I excavate hunks of meat from the rat corpses for later, I listen to a man named Groucho on the radio telling me that my chances of surviving an atom bomb are ‘excellent’. If only he could say so much for giant mole rats.
I drink a couple sarsaparillas and rest in a filthy alcove to recover after stepping in a bear trap. I should have stayed a stevedore.
I attempt to storm another room of rats, this one with a large cistern of water in the middle, and am slaughtered miserably. I try sneaking up on them one at a time, and am forced to consider maybe not blaring country music and flash light beams out of my Pip Boy for a while to help at it. The indignity of it all. I barely make it through, and my reward is a dead wastelander with a bottle of dirty water, some ragged clothes and… a police baton.
Yeah I tried that too friend, and yeah, it didn’t work. I doubt the tire iron in a nearby tool cabinet would have helped much either. I repair my police baton with pieces of this new one, as if it will make any difference, and gather what junk I can from the room before continuing. There sure are a lot of traffic cones down in this sewer. I start to wonder if I even understand the first thing about civic waterworks.
Not gonna lie, the mole rats are putting me through my paces. I have to sneak up on them one by one and time a strong attack and then another quick attack perfectly, or they spin around and shred my face like it was tissue paper. I find stray bits of trash, globs of rat meat, a worthless knife that makes the other worthless weapons seem grand in comparison, and several locked containers and doors too complex to even attempt, including a submerged safe I should probably just forget about completely at this point. I do get one stimpak though, which will be useful if I ever face anything that can’t just kill me with a glance.
I end up with my pockets full of nearly worthless crap and about 5 too-difficult locks to remember. By the time I climb back out of the filthy Goodsprings sewer, night has fallen.
I chug the dead guy’s dirty water and a couple more sodas as I walk back into town, which is now lit up with flickering yellow windows in the darkness. According to the neon, the saloon is open 24 hours a day, and I can’t resist popping in to waste even more money. At least I haven’t touched the scotch yet. I failed repeatedly to protect my internal organs from the slashing of rats, but the glass bottle in my pocket, that I kept safe unerringly.
The Goodsprings Saloon is, it should be noted, open 24 hours a day, but not open for business. There is no bartender on duty at night, just a bunch of locals sitting around with their guns out, which is not my idea of a friendly bar. I do get a lead from a lady with a piebald dog about a schoolhouse with a safe in it. I’m about to brush off the idea of failing at more safe-cracking when she offers me a free magazine on the subject. Maybe. I snatch a couple more old periodicals lying around too, and tidy up the empty whiskey bottles while I’m at it. Once a Mojave Express janitor, always a Mojave Express janitor.
Out in the bar’s alley I dump the empty bottles, coffee mugs, burnt books, plungers and other assorted crap I’ve “harvested” today in one of the stacked crates, trying not to think about the inevitable conflict of it being already dark, while I don’t have a place to sleep. It wouldn’t be the first time old Johnny Smash sleeps rough, that’s for sure, but it would be awfully nice if Goodsprings’ famous generosity extended to, say, a soiled mattress or length of cardboard? I’m not picky. I figure my best bet is that giant cross I saw earlier, surely a symbol of sanctuary, right? Maybe there’s a hostel or an inn or something. I’d settle for a propped-open dumpster at this point, as long as it didn’t have any more giant leathery skull-faced rats in it.
The lights of town disappear behind me and the very dark night closes in fast, as I trudge past joshua trees by Pip Boy light towards the distant cross. I try to lift my spirits with the radio but all I manage to tune in is a dispassionate robotic voice telling me “welcome to the wasteland. It will be your undoing”. I’m not in the mood for ominous dark electronic ambient music right now so I turn it back off again, and realize suddenly that I am not alone. The Pip Boy fills with pips. Please no more rats!
Thank goodness it’s not rats. Instead, I have walked smack dab into the middle of a pack of coyotes. Wonderful.
Pack of coyotes (in the dark).
Several gruesome ways to die flash before my eyes. I try to sneak up on one of the coyotes, and he mauls me. I succeed at sneaking up on one, only to be mauled by another. I manage to kill one and sneak up on another only to discover a third has already leapt out to, you guessed it, maul me. Every combination fails. Running fails. Hiding fails. Light and heavy attacks, VATS and real-time, everything fails. I’m starting to lose hope, crouching behind rocks and crawling through tall grass, sensing mortal danger with every snarl and snap from the scraggly coyotes, who I know can see and hear me in the inky desert night. It’s legitimately terrifying, and makes me seriously wonder if that robot on the radio was right. Maybe this place is just death itself.
No matter how I try to strategize it, in dozens of attempts, one of the three mongrels always gets me in the end. All the strategies I built up running the sewer maze with the rats seem hopeless. Perhaps this isn’t a place for strategy, I guess between gruesome maulings. Maybe this is a place for just smashing.
Trying to hide from the first coyote I walk straight into the second and the third, setting off a flurry of barking, biting death that I somehow manage to backpedal away from in time to not die instantaneously. They chase me around a rock in a cyclone of teeth, and I swing out with my trusty guitar blindly in the dark, somehow managing to fell one, and then two of them! As I run backwards comically, swatting at the beasts following behind (in front of?) me, it somehow works, as the third coyote foolishly comes at me from the same angle as his buddies this time, instead of surrounding me. I manage to nail him multiple times with my guitar in the split second window I have, and it’s suddenly quiet again, except for my IRL pounding heart. Phew.
I have killed all the rats in a basement, and faced three wolves by moonlight. I feel… official now, somehow.
By the time I finally reach the giant cross, the dawn is beginning to creep up behind the horizon, and I can see in the early light that it is not the friendly hostel I was hoping for. It’s just some kind of war memorial, according to the Pip Boy. Shit. I don’t like the look of the wooden signs with horrible monsters painted on them beyond it either, so I consider turning back- but to what? More gruff townsfolk saying howdy through their teeth at me? Fuck.
As I start to trudge back though, the early morning light reveals a structure I hadn’t seen approaching in the darkness- a shack, cobbled together out of what looks like an airplane fuselage. Knowing my luck it’s probably full of giant radioactive hamsters that bite like shotgun blasts, but I’m so tired I don’t care anymore, I just want to be out of the sun. Of all the mean beings I’ve come across today, at this point my best chances would be with some kind of…
…fancy robot???