Tuesday, November 24, 2015

The Diary of Mitch R. Singer


Emerging from the Vault into the cataclysmic wasteland
It has been eons since the world that I knew died. The landscape that greets me is cracked and barren, a desert stripped of green. Birds still fly in the sky, yet they clutch bones in their beaks. I look down at my wrist and see that they have left me with my Pip Boy, a useless dispenser of information. It tells me that I am nowhere and that I will go nowhere. As the sun sets, I crawl toward a ruined home, seeking shelter. All throughout the night cockroaches as large as cats scurry about the walls, their antennae twitching, their compound eyes sizing me up, estimating my potential worth as a meal. It takes half an hour to kill one of them. I'm so hungry that I don't even taste it.

Onward toward the horizon
In the ruins I manage to find a crowbar and a coffee cup. I take both with me as I aimlessly wander. After awhile I see a trader with a two-headed cow moving over the hillside. They stop when they see me, judging my approach, trying to sense the amount of menace I possess. When I catch up to them the barrel of a shotgun is pointed in my direction. He is squat and covered in sores, his clothing patched together out of rough material. I tell him that I am a Vault dweller, and that I need supplies. He shrugs and asks what I have to trade. In exchange for the coffee cup, I am given a thermos full of water. He tells me of a city lying ahead, so we set off together. I am taken aback by his smell, which is almost unbearable. The landscape around us reminds me of scattered bones.

Nighttime
We are awakened in the night by a monster. It is eight feet tall, horned, and full of teeth and claws. I stifle a scream as it feasts on the two-headed cow. The trader, madness in his eyes, fires the shotgun to no effect. I run as it turns on him. Even in the distance I can hear his skull cracking. I run for miles, tripping over my own scattering feet, the stupid Pip Boy heavy on my arm. Eventually I collapse in a ditch. There is nothing but the night now, just the dull roar of the giant insects. What sort of world have I found? The cracked screen of my Pip Boy gives me no answers.

Captured by raiders
A party of raiders find me in the morning and incorporate me into their harem. I was into some weird stuff before the Great War so this isn't too bad. They do smell just as awfully as the trader, however. It doesn't help that they wear nothing but leather. We pass the corpse of something called a "Super-Mutant." It is gigantic, with muscles over muscles, and green-skinned. The other concubines are afraid of it. Their names are Danny and Maurice. Nice people, I guess, for toothless irradiated sex-slaves.

The battle
Right after pillaging a small village, a lunatic in Power Armor appears, wielding a minigun. He commences to wipe out our raiding party. The small rounds of the raiders bounce harmlessly off his metallic torso. Dave and Maurice perish in the fighting. I only survive by hiding beneath the body of an immense raider named Kongo. The Power Armor guy loots all of the bodies, taking the most worthless knickknacks. When he leaves, I don't crawl out of my hiding place. I don't know if I can make it in this world. It seems to be nothing but an endless cycle of death and destruction. And bugs. Jesus, there are a lot of bugs.     


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