NOVEL SIMPLE Chapter 20
A gentle ray of sunlight hit my face, and I felt a calming warmth envelop me. While the heat was very comforting, the light that pierced my eyelids eventually became too annoying, and I sat up to get out of the way. I saw the junkyard employee building me, and Isabel crashed in last night. Isabel was sleeping near the desk, and I could hear her gently snoring.
I got out of my bedroll and stretched and yawned. Looking out the window, I saw the sun peeking from behind the mountains. The Junkbots were standing guard outside, ensuring we wouldn't be ambushed while we slept.
Suddenly a ball of silver, roughly the size of a basketball, floated down from the sky and rested right in front of me. The ball had skin made of sheet metal, and the side facing me had grills protecting its sensors like a catcher's helmet. The ball was Sparks, Isabel's Eyebot and one of her closes friends. The little robot made beeping noises, flew inside, and gently nudged the sleeping Isabel.
Instead of getting up, Isabel mumbled about getting five more minutes and raised her hand to shoo away Spark. Sparks flew out of the range of her hand and beeped again, almost as if it was annoyed. It then passed around to Isabel's head and started gently shaking.
Sparks stayed like that for about 20 seconds, and as I was getting concerned, it suddenly emitted a loud ringing noise that pierced my ears. I quickly covered my ears and watched Isabel wake up and shoot out of bed.
"I get it! I'm out of bed, Sparks! Stop, for crying out loud!"
Satisfied that its owner was awake, Sparks turned off its alarm and flew outside again.
"I swear that thing gets joy out of annoying me."
While whining about her robot companion, Isabel lifted her arm above her and stretched while yawning. She was still wearing her dark green mechanics pants but had taken her jacket off. I couldn't see very well in the dark yesterday, but she was now wearing a basic tank top that was probably one size too small.
Her bust was more significant than I expected, and her assets strained against the front of her tank top while she leaned back to stretch. The ill-fitted clothes lifted in front and showed her belly with no excess fat. Years of laboring away building robots have done wonders for her figure, and she looked like a toned tan goddess.
I tore my eyes away before she could catch my gawking and headed outside. Once outside, I found a large bush closer to the treeline that covered my body while I relieved myself. Pissing in the wild was another one of those things that reminded me that I was in a different world. Hopefully, the amount of paper I have stored away will keep me clean before I can find an alternative.
Once I finished my morning business, I walked back toward the building, where we slept overnight. Isabel was outside and had started a small fire to make a simple breakfast. So far, I have stuck to eating preserved foods as I don't know how my body would react to eating mutated foods. But the fried cubes of squirrel meat were too tempting, and I gladly accepted Isabel's cooked meal.
Greatly surprising me was that squirrel chunks were actually shockingly tasty. It had the gaminess and toughness similar to a rabbit, and Isabel's basic seasoning brought out the fatty flavor. Once we filled our stomachs with squirrel bits and a can of baked beans, we cleaned the pan in the nearby stream and started developing a plan for what to do.
The journal entries in the terminal mentioned a total of 90 scrap robots. Of those 90, there are 5 Sentry Bots, 36 Protectrons, 8 Robobrains, 27 Mr.Handies, and 14 Eyebots. In the game, only the prototype Sentry Bot was in the back of the junkyard. This world however, seems to have diverged from the fictional universe.
The scale of the world was much more extensive and similar to real life. This difference makes sense since the game had to condense the Boston area into a map one player could reasonably explore. This also applied to the junkyard, taking up considerably more land than in-game.
I wonder if the extra robots we saw yesterday were because the junkyard is markedly more extensive or because it just has yet to be scavenged. Regardless, the change was welcome, and Isabel chomped at the bits to dig into the pre-war machinery.
We spent the remainder of the morning searching the junkyard, taking stock of what we had, and moving various pieces into a clearing where Isabel could get to work. We categorized all the parts we had on hand by the time the sun was directly above our heads.
Of the 90 mentioned in the terminal, we could find 68 of them. Four rusty Sentrybots, 28 Protectrons with missing limbs, 6 Robobrains with missing tracks, 12 Eyebots without antennas or sensors, and 18 dilapidated Mr. Handies. Dragging the decommissioned Robobrains and seeing the human brains jiggle in the preservative gel really freaked me out, but I endured so we could gather all the valuable parts.
Isabel reckons we have enough stuff to make three heavy-duty robots, seven generalist robots, and ten scouts. Isabel named the heavy-duty class robots Tankbots and the medium-class Scrapbots. She wanted to avoid calling the new additions Junkbots since she built them with relatively high-quality parts this time. She let me name the more miniature flying robots, and I decided on calling them Outriders.
Like in-game, I found a Fatman crammed in a car and a single Mini Nuke lodged within a tire wall. Carrying the low-yield atomic bomb in my inventory reminded me of Fort Strong, where hundreds of these are stored. Eventually, I need to control that fort. I have no clue what I would do with such firepower, but it's better that I have it than the Brotherhood or Super Mutants.
After Isabel had removed all her tools from packs on the Junkbots, she dived headfirst into dissembling and reassembling the parts into valuable robots. I knew nothing about building or programming robots, so I was a tool fetcher and errand boy while she toiled away. Being in a Junkyard also helped since any missing small parts like screws or clamps could be salvaged from one of the old vehicles.
Usually, Isabel would use a terminal to program the robots, but the closest one was inside the worker building, and the door needed to be bigger to have the robot chassis moved inside. Luckily I had my Pip-Boy, which Isabel took and jerry-rigged into a portable programming computer.
Watching Isabel work was one of the most incredible things I've ever seen. The ease with which she understood the mechanics and disassembled the frames made it seem simple to build complicated death machines. Isabel worked away, assembling a basic example of the Tankbot, Scrapbot, and Outrider by sundown.