Wasteland Management

I'm going to find Shaun if I had to wade through every piece of trash in this god­for­sak­en city.

And since I'm already here, might as well start in Good­neigh­bor.

The cof­fee in Good­neigh­bor is real­ly strong and wouldn't sur­prise me ter­ri­bly if its spiked with some­thing. I say this because on my third cup this morn­ing, I came to the very real con­clu­sion that to find a low-life ass­hole crook, you have to become a low-life ass­hole crook, and I was on my feet eye­balling prob­a­ble tar­gets, when I real­ized that a life of crime is only lucra­tive when you get paid for it, oth­er­wise its just a death sen­tence.

I sat back down again and had some water.

II over­heard a cou­ple of the Neigh­bor­hood Watch guys tak­ing a smoke break and talk­ing about a per­son named Bob­bi No-Nose. Appar­ent­ly, she thinks of her­self as a busi­ness­woman, and while she pays well, her jobs are usu­al­ly on the sketchy side. I'm work­ing up the guts to go offer myself as a hired gun. Mean­while, I'm run­ning through all the pirates and gang­sters and out­laws in my head I ever read about as a kid. The big les­son I learned there was that none of them real­ly had much of a sol­id retire­ment plan.

But it comes down to this: either I con­tin­ue to wan­der around aim­less­ly, tak­ing odd jobs to clean out libraries and hunt down people's hob­bies, and maybe I'll run into some­thing while I'm out there, or I can "dip my hands in these mud­died waters" and observe direct­ly from the bot­tom feed­ers how things work.

Hell, I used to sneak around and steal infor­ma­tion and crack codes and hijack secu­ri­ty sys­tems for the Army. This isn't much different...right?

In hon­est ser­vice there is thin com­mons, low wages, and hard labor; in this, plen­ty and sati­ety, plea­sure and ease, lib­er­ty and pow­er.

- Bartholomew "Black Bart" Roberts

"A mer­ry life and a short one," yo ho ho.

Yo-ho, holy shit! Mud­died waters, indeed. More on that in a moment. It's been a pro­duc­tive morn­ing, though. Here's a brief run-down:

I learned what a Mire­lurk is. Could've done with­out that.

I remem­bered I'm still not a big fan of caves. Also could've done with­out that.

And I met Bob­bi.

Bob­bi "No-Nose." Maybe it's a fam­i­ly name.

That reminds me of a joke.

I told it to Nora once. Or I tried to tell her.

Me: You know, I once had a dog with no nose.
Nora: (frowns and looks at me sus­pi­cious­ly) I nev­er heard about this dog before.
Me: It's true! He had no nose.
Nora: I'm pret­ty sure your moth­er would've said some­thing about this. Do you have any pic­tures of this dog? How old where you?
Me: (starts look­ing for an exit) Um... Old enough to have a dog? With no nose?
Nora: What kind of breed was this dog?
Me: (find­ing no exit, starts to melt into the floor) It was a dog...with no nose.
Nora: Was it actu­al­ly miss­ing a nose? Like a birth defect? Or was it a short-face dog like a pug?
Me: (on the floor, weep­ing) It was. A dog. With. No nose.
Nora: What was its name?
Me: (drool starts to pool beneath head) Dog. No. Nose.
Nora: That's it? Just "Dog No-Nose?" God, what a hor­ri­ble name! You should be ashamed of your­self. No won­der you nev­er told me about this dog. The poor thing.
Me: (lit­er­al­ly starts to die) ...
Nora: What did it even look like? What did you feed it? How did it smell?
Me: (jumps up from the floor) He smelled ter­ri­ble!
Nora: (blinks)
Me: (fin­ger guns) Wak­ka wak­ka?
Nora: (glares)
Me: You're a lousy straight man, you know that?
Nora: I want a divorce.

Moral of the sto­ry: nev­er bring your lawyer-wife to your Vaude­ville act.

The hard­est part of my day was restrain­ing myself from ask­ing Bob­bi, "How do you smell?" She didn't seem like the type to find that at all fun­ny.

But I got the job. She wasn't look­ing for many qual­i­fi­ca­tions. Breath­ing and show­ing up seemed to be the biggest require­ments. She invit­ed me into her place, and for a moment I was wor­ried she was look­ing for a build­ing con­trac­tor...

Some­one for­got to mea­sure twice.

But it was far weird­er than that.

She refused to give me much detail, but she paid me 100 caps up front to start...with a lit­tle per­sua­sion. She was look­ing for some con­struc­tion labor­ers to help dig a hole in her base­ment. I asked her if we were look­ing for buried trea­sure. She said, you could say that.

Then she point­ed me down to her "base­ment" and said I should start down there.

Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, it's off to work we NO.

But it turns out she had a pest prob­lem.
A very BIG pest prob­lem.
There were sev­er­al, and they were fast.

—Aim for the face!
—Great idea! Where is that?

The good news is, I didn't have to actu­al­ly do any dig­ging. The wall was impass­able once the giant crab things broke through. The oth­er two con­struc­tion work­ers she'd hired ran off, so Bob­bi gave me a pro­mo­tion. There ya have it. I’m well on my way to a life of crime. Aren't you proud, Mom?

I still don't know any details, though. She thought it's be best if I, "actu­al­ly saw what we're after," and that I should meet her in Dia­mond City in a few days. I've been won­der­ing why it's called "Dia­mond City." I guess I get to find out, now. I still have no idea what's going on or what I’m doing, though... So, in oth­er words, it's just like the Army.

But I don't think you need a great sense of smell to tell that Bob­bi is up to some­thing fishy.

No-Nose is Bad News.

...and it ain't the Mire­lurks.

...Okay, yes it is. God, they're dis­gust­ing. Get me the hell out of here.