Awake in Vault 288!

DATE: 8.7.2224
LOCATION: Vault 288 Medical Center
AUTHOR: Big Chief Mike Marcel

To whoever finds this, my name is Big Chief Mike Marcel.
I have returned from silence. The last thing I remember clearly is August 29, 2076.
Hurricane Kendra had come through like the hand of God—swift, violent, and final.
I remember entering Vault 288.I remember quarantine. Then nothing.

No dreams. No sense of time.
No measure of how long the darkness lasted.

The medics tell me I've been in suspension for nearly 148 years.

Nearly.

That's a strange word when somebody tells you you've been asleep for almost a century and a half. According to the calendar, it's August 7, 2224. I don't understand that. Yesterday was 2076. At least, that's how it feels. The room doesn't help.

Pale steel walls. Medical stations. Instruments I recognize and others I don't. The sharp smell of antiseptic mixed with something electrical ozone, maybe. The ventilation system hums through the walls.

The Vault is breathing.

Or maybe I'm just hearing it because I don't know what else to listen to.

Every light seems too bright. Every face is unfamiliar.
And everyone looks at me like I'm the one who has been gone.

Perhaps I have.

They mentioned two medications while they were treating me: X-Cell and Day Tripper.

Strange names. Stranger circumstances. They also fitted me with a Pip-Boy. That part felt different. Familiar. I knew these machines once. I helped build them. Crude things by the standards of whatever this world has become, maybe. But hopeful things.

Devices meant to connect people. Preserve information. Carry voices farther than the human body could. I used to believe that if we could keep the stories alive, maybe we could keep something else alive with them.

Culture.

Memory.

Home.

New Orleans.

I wonder if any of it survived.

That's the question I keep coming back to.

The Overseer came to see me today. She's young.
Young enough that the world I remember is probably something she learned from records instead of something she ever touched.

To her, 2076 is history. To me, it was yesterday.

She welcomed me to Vault 288.

I haven't learned much about her yet. Haven't learned much about anything, really.

Funny thing about waking up after nearly a century and a half:

Everybody seems to know where you are.
Nobody can tell you where you belong.

So, I'll start with what I know.

I'm here.

I'm awake.

I survived something I don't yet understand.

That's enough for today.

But survival has never been the end of the road.

It's only proof that the road continues.

If these words ever reach beyond Vault 288, let them serve as my witness.

I want to know what happened. I want to know what survived.

And if there is still a soul left in New Orleans... some rhythm buried beneath the rubble, some brass still waiting for breath, some memory refusing to die ...

I'll find it.

And if it's gone...

I'll learn what remains.

And if nothing remains?

I'll build again.

For now, the Pip-Boy is my guide.

This record is my proof.

The world moved on without me.

That's alright.

I've survived the distance.

Now I have to learn what happened while I was gone.

I am here.

I am awake.

And apparently, I'm not finished yet.

— Big Chief Mike Marcel