oh my gosh, what am I doing

[interspace]

You're very excited. I get that, it's awesome! One little idea, a tweak to the tried and true formula, and you're off like a rocket. Simple pleasures for simple minds—okay, okay, I'm kidding. You have fantastic taste in old muses to pick up and dust off, though, and I appreciate the effort.

But a sugar glider? Isn't that touching a little too close to cosmic irony? Not... that it isn't my entire life already. So, okay, never mind. At least I'll get to keep doing the checking-other-worlds thing, which is the part I'd be most worried about. Like I said, good taste.

Comments

[acesandeights]

Well, it was... Now, there's a few feuding factions that are fighting over the scraps. Out our way there are two major groups: Caesar's Legion, a deluded group of fanatics modeled loosely after the Rome of yore and based in Flagstaff, Arizona, and the New California Republic, modeled off of the old United States, and they're based out of a town called Shady Sands, which was originally settled by one of the groups that left one of the vaults... Fifteen, I think.

[quixotically]

New Vegas is kind of the capital of the Mojave, I guess. Not really, but it's something like a capital. [Elle scratches the back of her neck.]

What everyone's actually fighting over, though, is the Hoover Dam. Y'know -- power, water.

[interspace]

Vaults... You mean shelters? How telegraphed was this war to the populace? Sounds like they knew the tough was ready to get going.

Right, I guess that would be pretty valuable after all that.

[acesandeights]

Vaults were... Yes, shelters, but also social experiments, from what we've been able to surmise. Each vault had an experiment, with the exception of Vault 8, which was a control vault. There may have been others, but my experiences have been limited to the west.

[quixotically]

I dunno, from what I could tell, Vault 3 was pretty normal. Well. Before the Fiends, anyway.

Everyone knew the war was getting bad. Everyone was really paranoid about spies and there was a lot of propaganda all over the place.

[acesandeights]

Not to mention the Americans annexing Canada, and the Chinese capturing Anchorage.

[interspace]

Social experiment. Not like needles and EEGs and creepy test tube people, right?

... no, but—what the hell could Canada even do to deserve that? I think that's actually the hardest part of this for me to swallow.

[quixotically]

More like... Setting rules in place to see what will happen. There was one where all conflicts were solved by gambling, and I remember another that... [Elle frowns.] Everyone voted to elect the Overseer -- typically, the leader of the Vault -- but in this case, the Overseer was to be sentenced to death. So, they were voting who to kill -- who to sacrifice, for the 'greater good', which they didn't understand...

Things like that.

[acesandeights]

Short answer? Have oil.

As for the Vault Experiment, no, more like subliminal messages in the radio systems, filling a vault with 99 females and one male, making the citizens sacrifice one of their own every year until they refused and the system revealed it to be a big gag, et cetera.

[interspace]

... but they have syrup, too, and we never annexed them before.

[ She shudders. ] Believe me when I say I know my way around horrible things, but that is messed up.

[quixotically]

[Elle shifts and looks away.] Our world... It's not the nicest to live in.

[interspace]

I get that. Kind of on a personal level. Guess it's just not anything I can help with, even if I understood more about your world.

[ Misha seems to be speaking more to herself here, trying to remain strong with the fact that horrible things are happening everywhere and there's only so much she knows, only so much she can do, only so far she can go and not feel like she was going to make it all worse because she's a stupid kid in an Olympic pool struggling to keep her head above water. Knowledge is power, but power corrupts and Misha hates knowing she could do something but not be able to anticipate the consequences. ]

[quixotically]

[Elle looks back at her. Her brow furrows for a moment, emotions stirring behind her eyes, before she speaks.]

No... It's not. It isn't anything I can really help, either. We can't change the past, and we can't change human nature. But that just means we have to focus on making other things better. Just doing what you think is right isn't always the answer, I know... But sometimes, you have to lose your way before you can find it again in the stars.

[She isn't... entirely sure what she's saying. It's just kind of spilling out. But she believes in it, she does. She doesn't know how much help her rambling is going to be, but... She had to try. She couldn't not.]

[interspace]

[ Misha frowns, then shakes her head and takes a deep breath. ]

Right. Poetry readings aside... You have a point.