Wasteland Management

Haylen,

Now that we’re back online with the Citadel, I have a spe­cial assign­ment to ask of you while we wait for the Pry­d­wen. I’m work­ing on our mis­sion reports and my rec­om­men­da­tion of our newest mem­ber for Elder Max­son, and I need some infor­ma­tion quick­ly.

First, link up to our knowl­edge­base and see if we have any­thing on Vault 111, includ­ing any info on what­ev­er vile exper­i­ments Vault-Tec was up to, as well as any res­i­dent ros­ter or files that might be avail­able. I don’t need any detailed reports, just high-lev­el infor­ma­tion.

For the sec­ond request, I need you to be a bit more thor­ough. I need you to search any pre-war offi­cial mil­i­tary per­son­nel records, as well as any pub­lic records on a “Nathan Rook (Cap­tain),” cir­ca 2040 through 2077. I real­ize that data­base has more holes in it than an old pair of gym socks, but I’ll take any­thing. Our newest recruit has some rather...astonishing claims, and I need as close to a back­ground check as we can get.

Last­ly, I want to stress that this should be kept com­plete­ly CONFIDENTIAL.

***DO NOT MENTION ANY OF THIS OUT LOUD.***

We’ve had some inci­dents late­ly that are far too coin­ci­den­tal to leave to chance. Any­thing we vocal­ize should be guard­ed against sen­si­tive ears. That goes for ene­mies as well as “cer­tain chat­ty mem­bers of our own team”. Report your find­ings to me here though ENCRYPTED COMMUNICATION, only.

That should keep you busy for 15 min­utes.

- Danse

Pal­adin Danse,

Thanks to that Deep Range Trans­mit­ter, it only took me 10 min­utes. (That thing is FAST, by the way. If R&D can back­ward engi­neer some more, the waste­land could have a func­tion­al wire­less com­mu­ni­ca­tion net­work, pos­si­bly one bet­ter than what­ev­er exist­ed before. It could be the most sig­nif­i­cant devel­op­ment to our infra­struc­ture since the tele­phone. Con­vinc­ing the upper ranks that the tech­nol­o­gy is worth releas­ing to the pub­lic, though, is anoth­er bat­tle. ANYWAY...)

I was able to dig up quite a few things, and you’re right: my research turned up some pret­ty remark­able stuff. Here’s a run­down:

Vault-Tec’s exper­i­ments with Vault 111 involved long-term cryo­genic sta­sis. They men­tioned pod schemat­ics and patents, but those were all long gone.

As far as the Vault’s exper­i­ments are con­cerned, it’s not clear how long the test sub­jects were to remain in sta­sis, but instruc­tions were to freeze the “res­i­dents” upon imme­di­ate arrival in the Vault, then run on a skele­ton crew for at least 180 days until they got an all clear from Vault-Tec to start the “revival and reha­bil­i­ta­tion process.” Doesn’t sound like they expect­ed many to sur­vive resus­ci­ta­tion. Unsur­pris­ing­ly, like most of their exper­i­ments, the data was incon­clu­sive.

There was a ros­ter of names on file of poten­tial clients from their sales con­tacts. I scanned it, and wouldn’t you know, a ROOK, NATHAN/NORA from SANCTUARY, MA shows up. Inter­est­ing­ly, though, the name appeared on a Do Not Call list. It was dat­ed August 2077, so maybe they changed their minds? That or Vault-tec just didn’t hon­or the pri­va­cy and harass­ment laws at the time. THAT’S not a sur­prise.

But the U.S. mil­i­tary records was where it got real­ly inter­est­ing.

His name shows up in a cou­ple reports. A NATHAN B. ROOK, FIRST LIEUTENANT is list­ed on a mis­sion report about Oper­a­tion: Anchor­age from the win­ter of 2066. There’s about a dozen or so oth­er names in the ini­tial deploy­ment and it called him out as offi­cer in charge of a small mobile com­mu­ni­ca­tion strike team that reclaimed a com­pro­mised lis­ten­ing base. That puts him as one of the FIRST sol­diers in Alas­ka dur­ing the out­break of the Sino-Amer­i­can War.

That’s not all.

A NATHAN B. ROOK, CAPTAIN also came up cross-ref­er­enced with a report called “Lib­er­ty Prime Secu­ri­ty Threat Analy­sis and Rec­om­mend­ed Coun­ter­mea­sures,” from May of 2073. But Cpt. Rook isn’t just mentioned–he’s the AUTHOR. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, it’s clas­si­fied and I couldn’t read it. As in, NOW. By US. (Lev­el 1, in fact, so way above both our pay grades. Too bad, because I’d LOVE to know what that’s about.)

U.S. Army per­son­nel records had full OMPR on him, includ­ing a Selec­tive Ser­vice reg­is­tra­tion card (2059), a com­mis­sion let­ter (2062), dis­charge state­ment, and pho­to ID (attached). Hair is a lit­tle short­er, maybe a lit­tle less wear and tear, but the like­ness is uncan­ny. I didn’t read through or down­load the whole record because the file is HUGE, and you said you need­ed it quick­ly. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the DRT isn’t THAT fast. But it’s safe to say he had a long and inter­est­ing, if not high­ly suc­ces­ful, career.

On the pub­lic records side, I found a birth record (2041) from Mass Bay Med­ical Cen­ter (born with two feet, by the way, so at least that checks out), a mar­riage cer­tifi­cate (2067), vot­er ID (No Par­ty), and a Mass­a­chu­setts driver’s record (2 mov­ing vio­la­tions, con­test­ed in court and dismissed–same date, even. Must've been quite a sto­ry!). No oth­er crim­i­nal records, though (sounds like he was too busy). He’s cross-ref­er­enced and list­ed as the father for the birth record of a Shaun Rook in August of 2077 (same date as the mov­ing vio­la­tions, in fact!). Moth­er was Nora Rook. (Oh no...what a hor­ri­ble time to become a new par­ent. Poor thing.)

But short of a writ­ten biog­ra­phy, this is the most com­plete data I’ve ever seen on an indi­vid­ual. To be fair, I’m sure there are oth­ers like him, I’ve just nev­er had a rea­son to look.

Sir...are you say­ing this is OUR Nathan Rook? Does this cor­rob­o­rate his sto­ry? If he is the real deal, that’d make him almost 250 YEARS OLD...and that’s the least amaz­ing thing about him!

- Haylen

ATTACHMENTS:

ROOK_OMPR_23012075.IMG

Could he be a synth?

Ah...I thought that might be where this was going.

I sup­pose it’s pos­si­ble, giv­en that we know less about the Gen 3 synths than the oth­er two generations...and we don’t know that much about the oth­er two.

But most of the Gen 3 synths we’ve con­firmed seem to have real­ly vague and unevent­ful mem­o­ries of their past–they typ­i­cal­ly say they were orphans, or set­tlers, or mer­chants. Noth­ing spe­cial or elab­o­rate. We just don’t know any­thing about the Institute’s mem­o­ry implan­ta­tion process, but we assumed they keep it sim­ple to stay under the radar. The more elab­o­rate the sto­ry, the more sus­pi­cious peo­ple are and will like­ly start dig­ging and unrav­el­ing the truth (which is NOT AT ALL what we’re doing!).

Even so, one thing is for cer­tain: whether Gen 3’s are man­u­fac­tured, grown in a lab, or cloned from an orig­i­nal DNA sam­ple, they don’t just have a full head of mem­o­ries right out of the decanter...or Petri dish, or incu­ba­tor, or what­ev­er the heck they come out of. If he IS a synth, some­one went through a lot of trou­ble to pro­gram him with quite the back­sto­ry.

In the old days, access to these kinds of records would’ve made him an excel­lent tar­get for iden­ti­ty theft. These days, it seems like a LOT of work, even for the Insti­tute.

Why? Did he give off any par­tic­u­lar vibes that he might be?

You’re the res­i­dent expert. You tell me.

Well, for what it’s worth, my pro­fes­sion­al wild-ass guess is no, but you know as well as I do that a synth could be right under our noses and we wouldn’t even know it. Gen 3 synths are more bio­log­i­cal­ly human than machine any­way, which is why they’re so hard to detect. He seemed legit, but you spent way more time with him than I did. I wasn’t around him long enough to notice any­thing unusu­al.

But if his sto­ry checks out with what he told you, well, then...if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, and maybe more impor­tant­ly, IDENTIFIES as a duck, who are we to say it’s not a duck?

It reminds me of the Ship

???

What does a ship have to do with a duck?

Well, they’re both wet! Duh!

(Ha ha. Sor­ry. Rhys came in look­ing for some­thing and I had to hit send before I got to fin­ish my thought.)

Any­way, I was about to say it reminds me of the Ship of The­seus. It’s an old ancient Greek thought exper­i­ment on the phi­los­o­phy of iden­ti­ty.

It is said that when The­seus found­ed Athens, the Athe­ni­ans want­ed to pre­serve his famous ship in the har­bor for all time as an impor­tant mon­u­ment to their her­itage and cul­ture. Over time, parts of the ship would rot and need to be replaced in order to keep it in top con­di­tion. Even­tu­al­ly, years, decades, even cen­turies lat­er, all the orig­i­nal parts had been replaced by new ones. It then begs the ques­tion: was the restored ship in the har­bor still the same ship that The­seus sailed?

The para­dox goes on to say that each part of the ship that had to be replaced was care­ful­ly dis­as­sem­bled and safe­ly stored to pre­vent fur­ther decay, so that at a lat­er time when the tech­nol­o­gy exist­ed to “cure” the rot­ting wood, they could ful­ly recon­struct the ship with the orig­i­nal pieces. How­ev­er, upon achiev­ing that, would this “new” ship be The­seus’ orig­i­nal ship? And if so, what of the restored ship that’s been docked in the har­bor all this time?

In oth­er words, does an object’s sig­nif­i­cance and val­ue rely on the phys­i­cal com­po­si­tion of it, or our per­cep­tion of it? And at what point does that change?

But ships are one thing. Applied to humans, it takes on a whole dif­fer­ent mean­ing.

It’s clear Rook’s mem­o­ries and iden­ti­ty once belonged to SOMEONE. If he acts, and talks, and iden­ti­fies him­self as that person–even as incred­i­ble as his sto­ry might be–we don’t have any rea­son NOT to believe him. After all, peo­ple change all the time, both phys­i­cal­ly and per­cep­tu­al­ly. After every­thing that’s hap­pened to Ini­ti­ate Rook, I won­der what he’d say if you asked him if he was the same per­son that went into that Vault 200 years ago...

Are YOU the same per­son you were that left Riv­et City to join the Broth­er­hood all those years ago? For that mat­ter, are you the same per­son you were when we first got to the Com­mon­wealth just a month ago?

I know I’m not.

Care­ful, Haylen... I appre­ci­ate your exis­ten­tial com­men­tary, but there are some in the Broth­er­hood that would con­sid­er what you are sug­gest­ing to be bor­der­line blas­phe­mous, hypo­thet­i­cal or not.

But you are right. We were not sent here on a witch hunt–or a duck hunt, as the case may be. We have no rea­son not to accept Ini­ti­ate Rook at his word. Vig­i­lance should be our first line of defense, not an excuse to aban­don good faith. Or empa­thy, for that mat­ter.

We will accept him at his word and treat him as a respect­ed and trust­ed mem­ber of this team. His expe­ri­ence, skills, and knowl­edge are a unique asset to the Broth­er­hood of Steel. How­ev­er, while this infor­ma­tion isn’t tech­ni­cal­ly clas­si­fied and will no doubt inevitably cir­cu­late, I do not wish to throw him under the spot­light by call­ing atten­tion to it. He has enough on his mind. Rook may be extra­or­di­nary, but he is still a human being, he is still a sol­dier, and he is still expect­ed to obey the same rules we all adhere to.

Thank you for your assis­tance. And the reminder. You’ve def­i­nite­ly giv­en me some­thing to think about dur­ing the night watch.

- Danse

Yes, sir. Of course. And you’re wel­come.

Buu­u­u­ut, I can’t help wondering...since the Broth­er­hood of Steel was rebuilt from the rem­nants the U.S. Army, then that makes the Broth­er­hood a “recon­struct­ed” ver­sion of it, wouldn’t you say?

So, if Nathan Rook was a Cap­tain while a part of that orig­i­nal Army 200 years ago, does that mean he out­ranks you, now?

NO.

Now go find some­thing else to do, or I’ll make YOU take Rhys out for his walk today.

- Pal­adin Danse

LOL!

Whoops! Bet­ter not laugh TOO loud. I wouldn’t want to raise sus­pi­cion of “sen­si­tive ears.”

- Scribe Haylen