My stomach rumbles as I squint at the hand-painted white letters. “Warning: Deathclaws ahead!” they say, and the silhouette next to them is fearsome. As a level 1 drifter I’ve only heard of deathclaws, of course. But never anything good. Hello. I’m Johnny Smash.
Wattsworth and I have this “prospecting” thing down: unless it has somebody’s name written on it, we grab it and bring it back home. Code of the wastes is finders’ keepers, after all, but I respect the tradition of writing your name on a thing, that’s valid. The memorial feels like a gray area to me- there are some labeled graves here, and we definitely leave them alone. Even though I do have a shovel with me. But, then, there are also some more recent graves:
And I mean okay, the wooden cross is sort of a marker but it’s not like it has a name on it. Stealing from a grave with a name on it would be wrong, code of the wastes and all, but this, uh, well, for various reasons this is okay. Because I also have to point out:
Who buries loaded guns with a body? I mean really, that’s just irresponsible, a loaded revolver, a loaded plasma rifle and a mostly full tank of gas, what if a kid found this stuff? What if some jerk who had just shot an innocent courier had flicked a cigarette butt over this way? I’d be a bad citizen if I didn’t, uh, confiscate… this dead person’s dangerous stuff. The other two graves were empty so no ethical gymnastics necessary. And the nearby hollowed-out rock only had a butter knife in it.
I chug some dirty water and munch on a handful of jalepenos from my dwindling supply, but I’m still hungry. From the area between the memorial and my victory garden I can see some broken fences nearby, surrounding something. It’s getting late, but it’s not far, so I decide to check it out.
Wattsworth tags along dutifully.
What could this fence have once stood around? Maybe a water tank? Or a door, to some secret little nook? As long as it’s not more fucking coyotes I should be okay, and of course, that’s what it is. Of course.
The first coyote goes down easily enough to some fancy frettwork.
Turns out what the fences were protecting is a big-ass hole, “The Devil’s Gullet” according to my Pip-Boy, which seems extra keen on identifying holes in the ground for me to climb into. That tracks, though.
I wonder momentarily if climbing down into a gullet is that smart with the sun so close to the horizon, but shrug it off. Wattsworth has lights, I have lights. It’ll be fine.
Looks like just one coyote down here, I can handle one coyote…
Fuck. Ignoring my own better judgement and premonitions of gruesome death, I head to the gorge and take on coyotes in the darkening dusk. Maybe to save face in front of Wattsworth? Maybe just out of petty revenge. I don’t know.
I just know I am growing to fucking hate coyotes.
I eventually swing my way through the mongrel horde down into the gorge along the top of a crashed 18-wheeler. I try to take the edge off the coyote bites with some herbal healing powder but it just makes me queasy. Some buffalo gourd seeds and a Nuka Cola help, but I’m still not 100%. Ow.
I find myself at the bottom of a wreckage-strewn pit, in the dark of night, trying to staunch off bloody bite wounds with pop and drugs. I make the best choices, don’t I?
But, like it says in Salesman Weekly, A B C, always be cleaning (I think that’s what it said), so while my head clears I tidy up the hole. Tin cans mostly, whisky bottles and some stray ammo (confiscated, too dangerous), but in the mess of tumbled-out cargo from the truck are the real treasures of Devil’s Gullet.
-Blue Star Cap
-Motorcycle Gas Tank
-Cherry Nuka Cola (x6)
The branded Nuka-Cola footlocker with an entire six-pack of Cherry in it really floors me. A desert littered with bullets, monsters and soft drinks, it’s like a Coleridge poem. In Mojave did Papa Khan a stately pleasure shack decree. And to that end, Wattsworth and I abscond back to his stately shack in the dark, treasures in tow. The coyotes, thankfully, are somewhere else for once.
Four AM the following day I am out of bed and chomping on jalapenos and radioactive water. It’s going to be a long one.
The sun isn’t even up yet as Wattsworth and I make the long walk to town. I turn my Pip-Boy light on and tune the radio to surf rock, loud, hoping between that and the clanking robot the local fauna will all be frightened off.
It’s working until, excited by the lights of town, I get a little too far ahead of the pack, so to speak. I don’t even realize anything is wrong until my Pip-Boy congratulates me on another kill. Vicious little thing. But what did I kill? I suddenly realize- Wattsworth!
I retrace my steps as fast as I can, sprinting towards Wattsworth’s green lights in the distance. The Pip-Boy chimes off another kill, the sadist.
Two coyotes, in the dark. Wattsworth acts like it’s nothing when I finally show up, but I’m nonetheless impressed by his deadliness with a face-laser. I’m glad he’s on my side. I stick with him, and the rest of our walk is uneventful.
Back in town I check Wattsworth over in the alley between Chet’s and the saloon, where my junk heap, neat as it may be, is filling more of the stacked crates every day. He seems okay, although when I inspect Wattsworth’s cargo bay I discover the limits to his ammunition situation.
I clean out the drained cells with a shudder. What will happen if we get caught out between the shack and town with no ammo for Wattsworth’s face-laser? Resolving not to let that happen, I chug a beer in the softly building light of dawn to steel myself for shopping at Chet’s general store.
Now I hear what you’re saying already fella, and you can stow it. Oh old Johnny Smash he must have a problem, just because he has to get a load on to trade guns and coyote hides and radscorpion poison to Chet for his breakfast. I’ll admit, I have some social anxiety, I’m not the world’s greatest salesman. I prefer conversing with the old RobCo OS over talking with people most of the time, it’s true. But it’s just one beer, to grease the wheels of commerce. And yeah, I have to wake Chet up in the morning before I think he was really thinking he was open, what of it? So his bodyguard gave me more of a dirty look than I thought a guy in an eyepatch could give, so what? Mind your own beeswax, daddy-o. I’m a good *belch* customer.
Speaking of RobCo, two items in Chet’s inventory today catch my eye, a broken Protectron for just 36 caps, a deal I can not pass up, and then something called a RobCo Neural Command Unit. I choke a little when Chet, still sleepy-eyed, tells me the price which is way out of my range right now, but from what I can tell it’s a device for increasing “robot capacity” whatever that is. Sounds promising, as do the welding torch and soldering iron he carries. I can’t afford any of it.
By the time I’m done bartering with Chet I end up 45 caps down on the transaction, but I clean him out of fruits and vegetables and get a busted up old robot corpse to boot. And I even manage to remember the reason I went in there in the first place, installing 40 more energy cells into Wattsworth’s backpack tanks out on the veranda. He seems relieved.
I grumble to myself as I load the dead Protectron into Wattsworth’s cargo space; I am, sadly, in too foul a mood to enjoy such a remarkable feat of engineering. I can tell it’s not going to work just buying enough fruits and vegetables to get a serious garden going. I’m going to need to get them some other way, if I’m ever going to make it out of Goodsprings and not be a desperate scaveging wreck the whole way.
As I sit by the crates Chet leaves out in the middle of the road for some reason, I stare into the middle distance for a bit, as is my wont to do being a great American drifter cliche and all. And, sure enough, the answer is as usual right in front of me.
Of course! There’s edible plants growing all over this town, even in the cracks of the road! Using my gardening skills I can transplant all the loose, unclaimed plants to the shack. Looks like Wattsworth and I are going to go into the weed-pulling business.
Confident in my new business venture, I start up the hill to the gas station, but as I pass Wattsworth I notice something I missed in the dark and drunken morning alley: battle damage.
Shit. Sorry buddy, guess those Coyotes took a bite out of you after all.
There are no cactus or peppers to scavenge at the gas station it turns out, but it’s the perfect place to fix up Wattsworth. What a loyal friend, we’re coyote-bite brothers. I feel for him.
Which is why I’m terrified to discover the companion-healing interface on my Pip-Boy doesn’t work on robots.
Neither, apparently, can I apply any healing items to Wattsworth as a general NPC, via the First Aid NVSE mod.
Now I’m getting desperate. Can I never fix Wattsworth back to full health again? Do I have to protect him all the way back to the shack and then leave him under a tarp in the garage, except once a year at bot-rod shows? I shudder to think of it. He’s way too cherry to be a museum piece! That just can’t be right, what am I missing?
(Turns out there is a setting in First Aid NVSE that lets you use chems on robots, but it’s off by default and that makes sense. Robots can’t take drugs, duh. But if I was truly stuck, I guess this would be my solution. Luckily I wasn’t)
My mind races over the last few days searching desperately for a solution. It’s almost noon. Wattsworth waits patiently, and I just don’t have the heart to tell him I’m not really RobCo certified or nuthin’, I just know my way around a wrench…
RobCo. Wrench? The RobCo Wrench!!!
How could I have forgotten? Those bullshit wrenches I have as decorations at the shack can’t do diddly in a real sticky situation, but RobCo only makes grade-A bot wrenches. “EFFECTS Repair Robot”, now that’s craftsmanship.
Stand still buddy, I’m 95% sure this is how this works.
I smack Wattsworth in the face with the wrench hard enough to make sparks, and back off to make sure he’s cool. I’ve seen what the dude can do with a glance. He looks fine. In fact, he looks better than he did.
A couple more whacks with the RobCo wrech and Wattsworth is good as new. Not only am I relieved that there’s a way to heal robots, I’m delighted that it’s the most ridiculous looking one possible. Johnny Smash doesn’t need to choose between repairing and smashing. Johnny Smash repairs *by* smashing.
RobCo Wrench has earned a permanent spot on my quick-select, along with old Guitar and “whatever food I have more than 2 left of”.
Speaking of food, my rumbling stomach reminds me what I set out to do in the first place today was gather more of it. It’s already afternoon and other than a few ears of corn from Chet’s and some gourds growing in the road, I’m no closer to the victory garden of my dreams. I’ve fucked around long enough, it’s time to dig up enough edible plants to get me across the state on foot without starving to death!
I resolve not to take anything from people’s yards, name written on it or not (though most people’s gardens, I notice, do have names written on them. These folks know the code of the wastes). I try to strike up a conversation with Monty Peterson again, but he’s having none of it. At least he’s polite about it.
Luckily I do remember where there are some plants- behind the old schoolhouse (and, yes, behind Paul’s dumpster), I pick and uproot enough jalapeno plants to, along with what’s left in my inventory, actually start something of a real garden. A pepper garden won’t do much for thirst but that’s another problem entirely, for food it’s a start!
I manage to scrounge a couple xander roots and a horse-nettle plant from the edge of town, but none of it is what I’d call appetizing fare. The chiles are by far the best tasting thing I’ve scrounged, and a diet of 80+% raw jalepenos sounds… medically compromising. In ways I don’t want to even explore cautiously, so, the onus is on me to find more edible edibles. That’s when I remember- the junk yard behind the repair shop. There was a cave back there.
Lots of stuff grows in caves, right?
