Encounters.

When Ellen slipped out the Milliways door, she did so with her debts paid, her goods returned, and her laundry knapsack stuffed with supplies. Dad couldn't be all that far ahead of her if people were right about time not passing- but if they were wrong, she wanted to be prepared. God only knew what might be lurking out there.

As it happened, there wasn't much of anything lurking on the other side of the door. Dead ants, giant or otherwise, didn't lurk. They were her kills, she realized. That most likely meant the Milliways people were right. She'd watched a cluster of ants that'd found their way into the Vault once, and they very definitely carried off their dead. Either giant ants didn't have the same instincts as their lesser kin, or they simply hadn't had the time to get rid of the corpses.

Well, she didn't want to stick around for the scavenger crews. They could have their dead, as far as she was concerned. That notebook said the people who'd holed up in the school had been trying to break into Vault 101 until the ants killed them. She owed the colony for that.

---

The overhead lighting- no, she corrected herself, the sun- was as blinding as she remembered it. Ellen was a little more prepared for it this time, though. When she'd bought her food and water, she'd asked the Bar's clothing extruders to produce something that could protect her eyes. Her father and Jonas, and even poor Floyd, had worn tinted reading glasses at times to cut down on laboratory lighting glare. The pair of eyeglasses the Bar issued her were considerably darker, but they fit nicely, and after a minute or so she scarcely noticed them. The question of finding Megaton was more important, anyway. That note in the Overseer's computer hadn't given any directions, but it couldn't have been far from the Vault. Maybe if she headed back towards the Vault door she might ... catch... sight.... of...

Somewhere very nearby, she could hear music. Ellen stopped in her tracks to listen. It was a distant, tinny melody, but it was one she knew- 'Hail Columbia', from the old news broadcasts. Someone was here! She turned and ran in the direction of the sound. And then she stopped, because it wasn't coming from someone. It was coming from some thing, and that thing was a metal sphere somewhat larger than her head, floating down the ruined remains of the street at a little above shoulder height. She'd seen flying robots before, of course. Andy, the Vault's Mr. Handy, moved around by means of his thrusters. But this thing- this was a model she'd never seen before. Andy had a set of lights surrounding his optical sensors on one side, not a grille covering most of his leading edge, and he definitely didn't have trailing metal antennae that made him resemble the old Weixing-1 satellite.

The incongruity of something so utterly Chinese-looking spouting American patriotic music froze Ellen in her tracks. It took her a moment to realize the music had given way to a man's voice.

"-your president, John Henry Eden. I'd like to chat with you..."

"Oh! I- I'm sorry, I-"

But the man's voice went on. Ellen flushed with embarrassment as she realized it was a recording rather than a direct communication. "I've been thinking quite a bit lately about something we can all relate to, something that is unquestionably, inescapably American. I refer, of course, to our great national pastime- baseball."

Ellen glanced over her shoulder, but if there was someone the 'bot was trying to broadcast to, she didn't see them. "Er. Mr. Robot? You do know nobody's here to hear that, right?" she said.

"-from Pennsylvania to Maryland! Put your faith in John Henry Eden, and baseball will live again!"

The speech went on. Not all models of robot had the same level of self-determination, she knew. The storage room Protectrons were several orders of magnitude further down the scale than Andy, and this 'bot had to be further down than that. The poor thing was obviously carrying out its last orders. Ellen shook her head and turned away, leaving it to its course through the desolation.

As she picked her way southward through the remains of the town and the 'bot's recorded message died away, it occurred to her that the President at the time of the Great War had been named Campbell. She was almost sure the President before him had been named Freyermuth. Who the dickens was this John Henry Eden? The question nagged at her. She was still pondering it when the sound of footsteps reached her. Ellen froze, reaching for her gun.

She needn't have worried. None of the people back at the school had worn anything nearly so civilized as the dusty gray suit and tie on the first of the humans, and while the man behind him was heavily armed, his armor was just that- armor, not spikes and random patches of leather. She'd seen them before, Ellen suddenly realized, in the vision Mr. Deegan had shared with her. Even the... pack... animal...

It had two heads. What the heck. It- it was a cow, she'd seen cows in historical documents and science vids, but cows did not have two heads! What the heck!

She shook herself off and forced herself to look away from the cow, then raised one hand. "Sir!" she called. "Hello there!"

They stopped, and the man in the suit lifted an arm in reply. "Hello yourself!" he called. "And who do I have the pleasure of addressing on this fine, blighted day in the Capital Wasteland?"

"Ellen, sir- my name's Ellen." She scrambled over a lump of concrete at the edge of someone's long-ago property line and crossed to where the party had stopped. "Ellen Park. From Vault 101."

"Ye-ees, I can see that," said the man in the suit, looking Ellen up and down with an assessing eye. "That's certainly no outfit that ever came out of Megaton, that's for sure."

"Megaton! You've been there? You know where it is?"

"I've just come from there." He made a jerky little half-bow; there was a mocking quality about it. "Doc Hoff, wasteland physician and chemist extraordinaire, at your service."

"Oh, thank Goodness," said Ellen. "I've been trying to find the place but I have no idea whatsoever where it is. I think my father went there-"

"Miss Park." The doctor's voice cut through Ellen's words. "Some advice, if I may? While I appreciate earnestness and honesty as much as the next traveling merchant, I strongly suggest you curb yourself in the presence of those you've only just met. If I were a less honorable businessman, I'd view this as an opportunity to take you for all you've got."

"He's right, you know," chimed in the armed fellow, who was leaning against the two-headed (she still couldn't believe it) pack animal. "Tipping your hand like that? It's just asking for trouble."

"... oh."

Hoff gave a knowing smile. "That being said, yes. I do know where Megaton is. And given the fact that you'd find signs pointing you in the town's direction if you walked about five more minutes or so in almost any direction from here, there's really no point in my charging you for that information. Although I can offer you an excellent price on whatever medications you might find yourself in need of at the moment."

"I think I'm all right," said Ellen after a moment's thought. "I've still got a Stimpak or two, and some Med-X and Rad-Away."

"Which you'll need if you intend to drink any of the water out here," Hoff noted. "Well, if you happen to find yourself in need of anything more, I make a point of stopping at Megaton regularly in my travels. Unless you've got something you need to be relieved of otherwise, I'd best be on my way. Rivet City's not getting any closer."

There's an entire city?, Ellen wanted to ask, but mindful of his earlier statement she kept her mouth shut. Instead she only nodded. "All right," she says. "Thank you for the advice, Doctor. It was nice meeting you.

"A pleasure, I"m sure. Until next we do business."

And with that, he and his companion set off. Ellen watched them go, and wished she'd thought to ask them why the cow had two heads, but there was no help for it now. Maybe someone in Megaton would know. At least she knew for sure she was on the right track now.

Megaton

Ellen's neck was starting to ache with the effort of not looking up. The thought of the sky's vastness was bad enough. Having to acknowledge it was more than she was really ready to do. Besides, the ground was rough and uneven, and she'd already tripped and fallen several times. Better to keep looking down, and once in a while, looking around. There'd been this horrible hairless thing with teeth as long as her index finger. If she was lucky there'd be a doctor in Megaton when she got there. All she really wanted was some antiseptic. The bites weren't worth wasting a stimpak on.

She stopped at the top of a rise to get her bearings. There'd been a crudely painted sign pointing this way, just like Doc Hoff had promised, but that'd been a ways back. Where-

Hmm. Off in the distance, she could see the wreckage of one of the old elevated roads. The scale of the thing was absolutely staggering, to the degree that she felt her stomach clenching again at being somewhere so open that a road like that could fit into it. More importantly, though, there was an enormous pile of what looked like metal between the highway and her current position. And if she tilted her head and squinted a little... yep. That did, in fact, look like the picture in the Overseer's computer. And like the image Mr. Deegan's vision had shown her. With the first feeling of real relief she'd had in ages, Ellen readjusted her laundry knapsack over her shoulder and set off at a jog for what she hoped was Megaton.

A glimmer of light caught her eye as she drew closer, from something a little ways in front of the metal heap- the head of a Protectron robot. That was a good sign. If there was a Protectron here and it was still operational, someone had to be looking after it. She altered her course to head in the robot's direction. It was a bad idea to sneak up on them, even if they were programmed to recognize you, and this one wasn't.

"Help! Please!" called a man's voice from off to her left.

Ellen stopped in her tracks and turned. The speaker was a bearded, pale-haired man huddled on the ground with his back to several rocks. He looked, frankly, like he'd been through more than his share of wringers. "Sir?" she asked curiously. "Are you all right?"

"Water- I need water-" He licked his cracked lips ineffectually. "Ive been drinking this irradiated shit and... I can't do it. I just throw it up now. I need purified water... please..."

Ellen glanced over at the steel walls rearing up from the landscape; she could see, now, that they were walls and not just scrap. That meant Megaton, and that meant enough people to support a traveling merchant's visits. A doctor's visits, for that matter. Couldn't the man just go in there and ask? ... no, it occurred to her that the Overseer had always preached a doctrine of 'he who does not work, does not eat'. If this man had been drinking radioactive water long enough to be violently ill from it, he was probably too sick to work, and had probably been driven out of the town for it. Lord knew that Reverend Avellone had been in more than one disagreement with the Overseer on similar subjects, and the Vault environment was a lot less harsh than up here.

With that thought firmly in mind, Ellen unshouldered her knapsack. "Hang on," she said. "I've got some purified water here you can have."

The man blinked at her. "I can just have it?" he said. "For free? You- you don't want any caps, or anything?"

There had been a cross-stitched Bible verse on the wall of her father's office for as long as Ellen could remember. She'd asked him about it once; he'd said it was her mother's favorite verse, and that she'd found great comfort in it. "'I am the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End. To him who is athirst of the water of the fountain of life I will give freely,'" Ellen quoted quietly. "Here you go."

An incredulous smile crossed the man's face. "Water," he said, "precious water... thank you, miss, you're a saint!"

That didn't give her a lot of hope for what she'd find inside those walls. Nevertheless, Ellen shook her head. "No, sir. Just my mother's daughter," she said. "Say- you wouldn't happen to have seen a man who looked like me here recently, would you? Very recently?"

Once he'd gulped down about half the bottle, the man shook his head. "I- I'm sorry," he said. "I haven't really seen much of anybody. I haven't been well enough to notice much other than what's right in front of me."

Ellen winced and fished out another bottle. "I have a feeling you're going to need this one, too," she said. "Take care, sir."

"You too, miss. And thank you again."

The Protectron hadn't moved from its spot when Ellen stood up. "Welcome to Megaton," it announced in the same heavily synthesized drone as the storeroom Protectrons. "The bomb is perfectly safe, we promise. Please hold for threat level assessment."

"Bomb? What bomb?" Ellen asked, alarmed.

The robot ignored the question, which was fairly typical; the storeroom Protectrons had a pretty limited vocabulary of responses, too. More effort had gone into making them stand upright and move like human beings than giving them intelligence. "Threat level minimal. Open the gates. Open the gates. Welcome to Megaton."

"Go back to the part about the bomb," Ellen said, but if the Protectron said anything else it was lost in the rumble of the huge corrugated metal door sliding inexorably upwards. Ellen shook her head and moved forward.

On the other side of the gates lay what Ellen could only assume was a town. It looked nothing at all like the wreckage she'd just passed through, but was instead composed entirely of other wreckage. At least, it certainly looked that way. Boxy compartments made from what had to have been scavenged metal dotted virtually every surface in sight, and what wasn't taken up with some compartment or other was supporting a railed walkway or flight of stairs. Huge pipes poked out of the ground here and there, including one just to Ellen's left, next to the stairs set into the dusty soil beneath her feet. The slant of the ground gave the feeling of the whole place having been carved into the sides of some great pit or crater; she squinted down the slope from where she stood, trying to find the bottom. It looked as if there were a pool of water in the distance, so that might possibly be it. And, hey, there was another of those two-headed cows down there-

"I'll be damned, another newcomer," said a man's voice.

Ellen jerked her attention back to the space in front of her. The man who had spoken was a grizzled-looking black man, square-jawed and bearded. He wore a long, patched leather coat with its sleeves pushed halfway up his biceps, a broad-brimmed hat like something out of an old cowboy movie, and some sort of very large gun slung across his back. There was a silver five-pointed star pinned to his coat's chest. Ellen gulped and said, "Yes, sir."

"Name's Lucas Simms," the man said companionably. "Town sheriff. And mayor, too, when the need arises. You're from that Vault 101, aren't you? I ain't seen one of those jumpsuits in a long, long time."

That meant he probably hadn't seen her father. Ellen winced inwardly, but nodded. "Nice town you have here, sir."

The man's eyebrows went up. "Friendly and well-mannered, huh? I think we're gonna get along just fine. You treat my people nice, and you're welcome to stay as long as you'd like."

That was reassuring, at least. "That won't be a problem, sir," Ellen said. a little faintly. "I'm just looking for my father."

Simms shook his head. "I don't remember seeing anyone from that Vault of yours lately. If your dad came through here, the only place he'd be likely to go that I wouldn't see him'd be Moriarty's. That's the saloon on the other side of the crater."

"Um. About that, sir-" Ellen glanced over his shoulder. "Your robot said something about a bomb?"

"Yeah." Simms made a disgusted face. "Down there, in the water. It's been there since day one."

Ellen leaned over and squinted towards the water in question. There was something in the middle, all right. Something huge. It occurred to her that the town's name probably meant- "That's an actual atomic bomb?" she almost squeaked.

"Unfortunately," said Simms. "I don't trust any of the locals to tinker with it. Most of 'em don't even realize it's still a threat. And hell, Cromwell and those crazies from the Church of Atom, they worship the damn thing."

Ellen shook her head in horrified surprise. "And it's just sitting there. No one's tried to disarm it..." she murmured, more to herself than anything else.

Simms overheard, though. "Why? Think you could take it down?"

"I don't... I have no idea, sir," Ellen answered honestly. "I know my way around a lot of dangerous systems, and I could probably undo the control mechanisms if they're anything like the overload mechanisms we had on the Vault reactor, but-"

"Look, if you can do it, there's a hundred and fifty caps in it for you," said Simms. "But don't go fooling around with it just yet. Take a look at it first and make damn sure you know what you're doing. I don't want anyone taking chances with that thing."

"I don't blame you, sir," said Ellen. "Not one bit."

"Good. Let me know what you think before you do anything, or if you decide you're gonna leave town," said Simms. "Just be careful when you go to Moriarty's. Colin Moriarty runs the place, and that man's nothing but trouble."

"Thank you, sir," said Ellen. "I'd... probably better go now."

"You take care of yourself," Simms said, and continued on his way.

Moriarty's

Ellen stepped through the door of Moriarty's Saloon and felt her shoulders untense for the first time in a long while; she was indoors again. She'd definitely missed the security of walls and a ceiling defining the space around her. Even if the saloon did look considerably more rusted and bodged together than anywhere in Vault 101 (and a million miles away from anywhere on the Milliways premises), it was still indoors, and that counted for a lot.

The saloon had two floors to it, from the look of things. There was a small bar in the main room, just ahead of her, with a few stools and a few patrons gathered around it. Up above, a balcony with a slender metal railing surrounded the open space. There were doors up there, leading off to what she assumed were the owner's private quarters; there were also doors down below, probably leading to stockrooms of some kind. To her right there was a smaller open area with a few tables and a screened-over window or two. The whole place smelled of old alcohol and old sweat in a way Milliways never had. Given the circumstances, though, she was pretty sure she could understand why.

A crackling noise drew her attention; she glanced over at the bar. Someone was pounding on what looked like an old pre-war design of radio, of all things. "Come on, now, work you stupid- Oh, hey there, smoothskin. Need anything?"

That was quite possibly the weirdest thing Ellen had ever been called. She glanced up at the bartender and jumped a little. To put it as bluntly as possible, he looked dead. His skin was a nasty grey-white where it wasn't a necrotic reddish-black, hanging from his face in places and drawn far too tightly in others. He had no lips that she could see, and no nose, either, and most of his hair had fallen out in clumps. Frankly, she was a little surprised he even had eyelids. "Gah! What are you?" she blurted out- and then clapped both hands over her mouth, remembering Lorne. "Oh. Oh, I'm so sorry..."

The dead-looking man heaved a sigh. "Haven't you ever seen a ghoul before?" he asked in a resigned tone.

"No sir," Ellen said, wincing. "I'm really sorry."

"Huh. Well, not all of us got the chance to hole up in a nice cushy Vault when the bombs fell. A bunch of us got stuck out here in the world, and got a full-on blast of heat and radiation. Turned us into a pack of walking corpses." He shook his head. "Near as I can tell, we age slower than you. A lot slower. There're even a few ghouls that were alive during the war."

"Oh my God," said Ellen, horrified.

"Yeah," said the ghoul. "And with a face like ground Brahmin meat, you can imagine that folks don't take too kindly to us."

"That's awful," said Ellen. "I'm so sorry, sir. I had no idea."

"Hnf." He considered Ellen for a bit. "You know? I think you might mean that. You're not half bad, for a smoothskin. Name's Gob. I tend the Bar here for Moriarty."

Ellen nodded. "My name's Ellen. I'm looking for my dad. Mr. Simms said he might've passed through here?"

"Middle-aged, looked like you?" Gob guessed. "Yeah, I do remember a guy like that. Honestly, I usually keep my head down. I tend to get smacked around if I look customers in the eyes. But talk to Moriarty, he'll know more."

"Thank you," said Ellen. And then, because it was a hot day and her throat was pretty dry, "Can I get something to drink?"

"For you? Anything." Gob grinned. It wasn't a pleasant sight, but not for lack of trying.

"If you have any Nuka-Cola back there, that'll be fine."

"Not a problem. That'll be seven caps."

Ellen started to reach for the pouch of bottlecaps she'd collected for her work at Milliways. The image of Butch demanding her sweetroll on her tenth birthday flashed before her eyes; she thought better of taking the pouch out for everyone to see, and instead just dug out the caps with two fingers. "Here you go," she said, and passed the flattened bottlecaps across the bar.

"Thanks. You're all right, kid."

"You too, Gob," said Ellen, and went to sit in the other room. This was going to be more complicated than she'd thought, and she needed some time to think.

She didn't get it, though. Almost as soon as she set foot in the open area, a man she'd missed entirely waved at her from one badly-lit corner. Thinking it might be Mr. Moriarty, she headed his way. "Yes?" she asked. "Can I help you?"

"Just when I had given up all hope," the man said, settling back in his chair. He wore a grey suit similar to Doc Hoff's and a narrow-brimmed hat tilted low over his forehead. "My dear girl, I am very happy to make your acquaintance. I am Mr. Burke."

"Ellen Park," Ellen said at his pause, wondering if she'd missed something along the way. "Pleased to meet you, sir. But why are you interested in me?"

"Well," said Mr. Burke with a smile that didn't quite seem to reach his eyes, "you are not a resident of this... putrescent cesspool. That makes you a rather valuable individual."

Ellen blinked a few times, the urge to say Hey, it's not that bad of a place warring with pure confusion. Confusion won. "It does?" she said, and winced at how foolish it sounded.

Mr. Burke nodded. "I represent certain... interests. And those interests view this town, this "Megaton", as a blight on a burgeoning urban landscape." He gave another half-smile. "You have no connections here, do you? No interest in this cesspool's affairs, or fate. You could assist us in erasing this little accident off the map."

She stared. She literally could not believe what she was hearing. When she could speak again, she said, "Go on," in the dwindling hopes that she'd somehow heard him wrong.

The rapidly dwindling hopes. Mr. Burke nodded. "The undetonated atomic bomb for which this town is named is still very much alive," he noted. "All it needs is a little... motivation. I have in my possession a fusion pulse charge constructed for a singular purpose-"

"Detonating the bomb," Ellen finished, trying her best not to squeak in horror. Her voice came out surprisingly even.

Mr. Burke nodded. "Finally, someone of real intelligence," he said. "You'll rig it to the bomb, and then you'll get paid. Handsomely. What do you say?"

Her voice sounded very far away as she protested, "Sheriff Sims wants me to disarm the bomb..."

"Bah! He would, wouldn't he." Mr. Burke said. "He can't reward you the way I can. Caps and a home in the finest bastion of civilization anywhere in the Wasteland- what do you say?"

Ellen swallowed. She'd seen enough pre-war vids of atomic testing to know what it would look like if that bomb went off, and she could see it now if she so much as blinked. "You're out of your mind, Mr. Burke," she murmured, surprised the words were coming out. "I'm not helping you do that."

"Tch." Mr. Burke clucked his tongue sadly. "Now that is a disappointment. Well, if you change your mind, the offer still stands. Good day."

There was no way Ellen could sit in the same room as him, or even the same building as him, after that. She nodded and turned away stiffly, heading for the door as quickly as she could.