Location: Vault 288 — Library, Terminal 11-D
Here I am, sitting at a terminal in Vault 288, feeling like I just stepped out of some science-fiction flick. The Pip-Boy on my wrist keeps me tethered to something familiar. It gives me a way to keep track of the things I don't trust my memory to hold yet, and a place to put down whatever keeps rattling around in my head.
Today, though, I'm writing from Library Terminal 11-D.
It's been four days since I woke up.
Four days.
Everyone here thinks I'm lost.
They're not wrong.
Half the time, I still have to look at the date just to remind myself what year I'm living in. 2077 feels like yesterday, but according to every terminal I've checked, it's been nearly a century and a half.
I keep saying that number but saying it doesn't make it feel real.
My memory has been getting clearer, though.
Not all at once.
Pieces.
That's how it's coming back.
I remember the chaos surrounding Hurricane Kendra more clearly now. New Orleans was afraid. People were evacuating. Some made it out of the state. Others couldn't. Fear spread faster than the storm itself, and eventually people weren't only afraid of the weather.
They were afraid of what might come next.
They were afraid of each other.
Somewhere in all of that panic, somehow, I ended up at the Houston Astrodome.
I remember the transport.
I remember people.
I remember the confusion.
I remember knowing that something was wrong.
And then there is the part I still can't completely piece together.
Somehow, someone made a mistake.
I was supposed to be going through decontamination.
Instead, I got iced in cryogenic stasis.
That's the best explanation I've been able to put together so far.
A mistake.
One bad decision.
One failure somewhere in the system.
And that mistake cost me 148 years.
I went to sleep in a world that was already afraid of what might happen.
I woke up in one that had already happened.
The world I knew is apparently ash, history, and memory now.
I've been trying not to think about that too much.
It isn't working.
The people in Vault 288 have been decent to me.
Southern hospitality apparently survived the apocalypse.
That's something, I suppose.
Extra tender.
Rich.
Smoky.
Just the right bite.
Almost comforting.
Almost.
There was something hollow underneath it, though.
Something I couldn't quite explain.
Maybe it was my nerves.
Maybe it was because food like that shouldn't have felt so strange to me.
But barbecue in a Vault?
Where are the Brahmin?
That's one question I haven't asked yet.
The whole thing is strange enough that I'm beginning to wonder where they get everything.
I suppose somebody has figured out how to keep the Texas spirit alive down here.
The cooks seem strange.
But nice.
That's probably the best way to describe most people I've met so far.
They are living in a world I don't recognize, yet they seem perfectly comfortable in it.
I suppose that's what happens when you are born into something.
To them, the Vault isn't a shelter.
It's home.
To me, it's a place I entered almost a century and a half ago and somehow just woke back up inside.
That's a difference I don't think either side can fully understand.
Lillie certainly understands that the world outside isn't kind.
According to her, radiation burns deep.
Mutants roam the Wasteland.
The old stories don't come close to describing what the outside has become.
I've read enough now to know she's not exaggerating.
I've seen the records.
I've seen what the Great War did.
I've read about the fallout, the ruined cities, the settlements, the people who changed, and the generations that grew up knowing nothing except the world that came after.
I've even started hearing names that mean something to everyone here and almost nothing to me.
The Brotherhood of Steel.
The NCR.
Raiders.
Ghouls.
Super Mutants.
The Wasteland.
The names keep coming.
I'm learning.
Slowly.
But I'm learning.
And I suppose that's what matters.
Because I won't be staying in this Vault forever.
I have a city to find.
My city.
New Orleans.
I've said that name enough times over the past few days that I'm beginning to wonder if the people here think I'm obsessed.
Maybe I am.
But I don't know what else I'm supposed to be.
I went to sleep with New Orleans still alive in my memory.
I woke up to a world where the records can't even tell me whether it survived.
That's not something I can simply accept.
And now I'm sitting underground in a Vault, surrounded by people who have never seen the sky, wondering if any of that still exists.
That's a hell of a thing to wake up to.
The strange part is that I don't feel broken.
Not yet.
Disoriented?
Absolutely.
Angry?
Sometimes.
Restless?
Definitely.
But broken?
No.
I've survived worse storms.
I've survived worse uncertainty.
I've survived the kind of situations where you don't know what comes next and have to keep moving anyway.
And now I have to walk through what's left.
For now, I'll play by the Vault's rules.
I'll eat their barbecue.
I'll answer their questions.
I'll let the doctors poke and scan me until they're satisfied.
I'll listen to Lillie...
At least I'll try.
But I'm not going to let this place become my ending.
Vault 288 saved my life.
I'll give it that.
But surviving somewhere isn't the same thing as belonging there.
I don't know what is waiting for me outside.
I don't know if New Orleans is still standing.
But I know this much:
I am still here.
That has to mean something.
— Big Chief Mike Marcel
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