Chapter 129: Abaddon

Chapter 129: Abaddon

"Damn..." I grumbled, looking straight up. "Not gonna get up that way..." I'd been trying to get to the tower at the far end of the canyon, and right now it seemed like I was stuck. A gigantic collapsed building was blocking my path from one end of the canyon to the other. Even on its side, it must have been several stories high. The parts of the wall that weren't completely vertical were angled so steeply that even if I could grab hold, I'd just be hanging upside down. But it's not like there was anything I could use as a handhold anyway...

"You know, I think ED-E might have a point." I said, moving away from the wreckage.

"How's that?" Sue asked.

"Well, he mentioned earlier about getting a grappling hook or some climbing rope," I said. "That kind of equipment could come in handy right now."

"Given up on the jetpack, then?" Sue asked, unable to hold back a soft electronic giggle.

"Sort of," I shrugged. "I'm gonna go back to the first idea: rocket boots!"

A heavy silence hung in the air as I made my way along the edge of the building.

"Well?" I finally spoke up. "Aren't you going to tell me that rocket boots are dangerous and impractical like the jetpack?"

"Why would I do that?" Sue seemed genuinely confused. "I'm fairly certain the Think Tank were working on a project like that, back when they still had bodies." I stopped dead in my tracks, thinking about that for a moment... and then nodded.

"Okay, yeah. I can see that. I guess once you rewrite the physical laws of the universe several times when making a teleporter, then rocket boots should be a walk in the park."

"Don't you mean a flight in the park?" I actually burst out laughing at her comment. I couldn't help it, but I managed to quiet myself down before attracting too much attention.

"Sure, let's go with that," I shook my head, sending a small cloud of ash flying, and let out one last chuckle. "Great, now I'm gonna have 'Danger Zone' stuck in my head all day..." I didn't understand why I was cracking so many jokes. Maybe I was just becoming numb to everything going on... or maybe I was cracking jokes because I was cracking. There'd certainly been enough evidence of that over the last several months. Hell, I'd always heard that crazy people never knew they were crazy, so for all I knew I'd already slipped into madness long ago and gone completely nuts without realizing.

Ah well. Nothing I can do about it now. Nothing to do except keep moving.

"Alright, where the fuck is ED-E?" I asked, looking around. "We've got to see if we can find some way around this collapsed building to get to the temple... silo... whatever it is." I couldn't see ED-E, and I couldn't hear him either. Had he gone invisible? Why couldn't I hear his anti-gravity thrusters?

A few intermittent pops in the distance drew my attention to the east, and I suddenly decided that turning transparent was probably a good idea. The sounds of gunfire had come and gone, speaking of some kind of conflict among the Marked Men that I didn't understand, but was glad about either way. Every time I heard the sounds of combat, it was like a shot of adrenaline to my system keeping me alert and awake.

As it happened, ED-E wasn't invisible after all. He was maybe 50 or so yards away, hovering behind a pile of rubble, looking at a spot on the ground. I clicked my belt buckle to turn myself opaque again when I got close enough... and then that sinking sensation took hold in the pit of my stomach. What is he looking at?

"ED-E?" I asked, coming to a stop next to him. He didn't say anything. He just kept staring at the pile of scrap metal on the no. Wait, hang on. That's not just a pile of scrap... that's the wreckage of an eyebot. I rested a hand against ED-E chassis and gave him a shake. "Hey. You awake?"

ED-E didn't answer. At least, not with his own words. There was a click, letting me know that a recording was about to play, followed swiftly by... music? It was filled with static, sounding an awful lot like the radio transmissions from Mr. New Vegas before House's death took him off the air. But that was definitely the sound of trumpets accompanied by someone singing.

Yippie-yaaaay!Follow current novels at novelhall.com)

They'll be no weddin' bells for today!

Cuz I got spurs, that jingle-jangle-jingle! (Jingle jangle!)

As I go ridin' merrily along! (Jingle jangle!)

And they sing, 'oooooh, ain't you glad you're single?' (Jingle jangle!)

And that song ain't so very far from wrong! (Jingle ja-

The music was abruptly cut off by the sound of a gunshot and a rifle round snapping metal. The sound warped and twisted into something incomprehensible, distorted by too much digital static. There was a click, and ED-E went silent once more.

"What what was that?" I asked, already suspecting the answer.

"That was..." ED-E continued staring down at the eyebot wreckage. "That was when I... when the original..." His voice was cracking, and there was definitely a noticeable and worrying digital flanging to the sound.

"ED-E... listen, you -" I began, reaching a hand out.

"I am not ED-E," he said sharply, cutting me off, still looking down at the eyebot wreckage. "The original ED-E was destroyed years ago. A .308 caliber rifle round was fired at the primary stabilizing jets. The internal motivator exploded from the impact, destroying the magnetic memory core, wiping away all traces of the original."

I looked back down at the eyebot wreckage. The metal was scarred and badly mangled, but even covered by the thin layer of ash... I saw something. Underneath the twisted half of a license plate: a hole just big enough to have been caused by a rifle. Maybe it was a trick of the light, or...

"C'mon, ED-E. You don't know that." It was too much of a coincidence. It couldn't be...

"I am not ED-E," he repeated, continuing to stare at the wreckage. "I am just a clone. An ersatz mnemonic. A copy of the original scanned by machines and produced from an assembly line. I... I... I..." He was starting to stammer, like a broken record. I had to snap him out of this I needed an ally, not a basket case.

"ED-E! Listen to me!" I grabbed his chassis on either side of the speaker, and spun him around in midair until he was looking at me, and not the wreck on the ground. "I'm gonna say something very important, and it's very, very important that you listen to me. Can you do that?"

He didn't say anything, but I was holding onto him tight enough that he wasn't going anywhere, and his various antennae were still twitching, so I took that as a good sign.

"It doesn't matter where you came from," I continued. "Maybe you weren't the ED-E built by Whitley, and maybe you were built by the machines here. Who cares! It doesn't matter!"

"Does it not?" ED-E shifted in my grip, but I held firm and shook my head.

"No. It doesn't. Because I know you, and I've seen those other eyebot ED-E clones. You're not one of them you're so much more. You're the one I found and fixed in Primm. The one who's stuck by me through thick and thin, through all the madness in the Mojave. You're the one I can always count on..."

"But still just a copy..." ED-E muttered.

"Maybe you were," I said, leaning in to rest the top my helmet against his speaker. "But you're definitely not just a copy anymore. If you were, then you'd be talking in that stilted sing-song, just like all the other eyebots in The Divide. But you've grown beyond what you were when you were created whenever that might have been - and turned into something unique."

"Unique?" ED-E asked softly. I nodded. "What... what am I, Friend_Courier?"

"One hundred meters ahead!" ED-E shouted, firing his laser again. "This way!" With that, he sped off, over to one of the buildings at the far end of the cavern. Between me and that exit, however, was a sea of moving chitin so thick it could've practically been carpet.

"ED-E! Wait!" I yelled, waving the flares frantically to keep the tunnelers encircling me at by. They were staying just outside the circle of light, growling and snarling and slobbering out of their bifurcated jaws, and if I didn't come up with something quick, then they'd be ripping me to shreds before I could grab any other weapons.

I backed up to the wall, and threw one of the flares at the monsters; they shrieked briefly, and retreated from the still burning stick. The circle surrounding me that the tunnelers refused to cross was slightly larger now... and if I could just...

I waved the last flare in my hand furiously, trying to distract them from the fact that I was reaching into my duster again. They howled and snapped, and didn't suspect a thing when I pulled out the flashbang, knocking the pin away with my thumb, and tossing it into the cluster of monsters. I shut my eyes as tightly as they would go, gritting my teeth to brace for the inevitable.

BANG!

I went deaf. When I opened my eyes (having turned the nightvision off) there was still a lingering cloud of white phosphor from the flashbang, and the writhing mass of body parts were thrashing furiously and, more important, blindly. I tossed the still burning flare in my hand at one of the tunnelers, grabbed my G36, and ran, leaping up to plant my foot on its face.

ED-E said the exit was a hundred meters away, and I'm almost certain that for ninety-nine of those, I didn't touch the ground. I half ran, half leapt from body to body, crossing the distance in leaping strides over the disoriented tunnelers. As I ran, I popped off shots from my rifle, hoping that the muzzle flash would keep those tunnelers at bay that weren't already blind. As I ran, claws and tails thrashed at my legs, threatening to knock me off balance, but I just kept going until finally ED-E was in sight, silently blasting at more tunnelers with his laser.

If someone had told me they'd done what I just did (running over a carpet of tunnelers as they all thrashed about blindly underfoot, threatening to slice me up with eyes on my man salad), I'd have called them one of those big lying liars who lie. But if my excursion in the Big Empty has taught me anything, it's that my life took a sharp left turn at 4th and bananas long ago, and never looked back.

I jumped off the last one, rolled against the ground, and got back on my feet just in time to slam my shoulder against the opposite wall. When I looked back, the tunnelers closest to me were starting to get back on their feet - and, rather worryingly, I saw plumes of fire off in the distance. I couldn't focus on that, so I just backed up, emptying the G36's magazine into the tunnelers with one hand, and grasping at the wall behind me with the other, hoping I could find the exit.

My fingers wrapped around the edge of a door frame, and I caught the end of ED-E's antennae disappear out of the edge of my vision. So I slung the empty rifle over my shoulder, grabbed the last of my microfusion cell grenades, and tossed it over my shoulder as I rushed into the open door, hoping it would lead me absolutely anywhere else.

The ground shook beneath my feet, and the ringing in my ears started to dim just in time to hear a massive fiery explosion roaring behind me, clearly getting bigger rather than smaller. As I ran down the slightly off-kilter hallway in the building, trying desperately to follow ED-E, I glanced over my shoulder just in time to see the doorframe I'd just left being consumed by greenish-orange fire. The howls and wails of tunnelers being cooked alive were briefly heard before being drowned out by more fire.

So I ran. I just kept running, trying to keep ahead of the ever growing backdraft behind me, and ignoring just how much the building was shaking under my feet. I honestly don't know how long I was running, because I was way too focused on keeping ED-E in sight and running fast enough to keep ahead of the fire threatening to turn my ass into crispy bacon to worry about anything else.

The floor eventually stopped shaking under my feet. The roar of screeching tunnelers and explosive fiery death simmered down into nothing, and I finally slowed down, leaning against the wall to try and catch my breath. I looked behind over my shoulder just as a cloud of ash and dust blasted me in the face from the hall I'd just left, and the walls of said hall collapsed into a pile of filthy rubble.

"Friend_Courier!" ED-E said, and I couldn't help but notice that his voice was still slightly muffled. If this shit keeps up, I'm gonna have permanent hearing damage before long. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah, I'm..." I gasped, suddenly feeling very, very tired. "I'm fine..." I clutched at my helmet, and looked around uncertainly. "There's just... there's just one thing that's slightly worrying me."

"What?" both ED-E and Sue said simultaneously. I looked around, a heavy silence filling the air as I tried to figure out how best to phrase this:

"Where the hell are we?"

As it happened, we were in one of those clusters of buildings I'd seen collapsed into one another in that giant cave of awful, only thankfully devoid of any tunnelers. The interior layout of these buildings had smashed together to such an extent that it felt more like a labyrinth designed by someone with a pathological hatred of sense and logic.

"Okay, I have to ask..." I said, following ED-E as he led me outside. "Why the fuck did that explosion get so huge?" As I spoke, I took the time to reload my rifle and discovered with a sense of disquiet that I only had about 20 rounds left.

"Sulfur dioxide," ED-E said simply, as if that explained everything.

"Huh?" I asked, shuffling between a particularly narrow piece of rubble while ED-E just floated above it.

"The composition of the poison gas flooding into the base of the chamber consisted primarily of carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, hydrogen chloride, and hydrogen sulfide." ED-E rattled off. "Two of those four gasses are extremely reactive and highly flammable. Once the microfusion cell exploded, the collapse of that chamber was inevitable."

"Collapsed? Well, shit..." I said with a half hearted chuckle. "If that's true, then I wonder if all those eggs got destroyed in the process? What do you think?"

Silence.

"ED-E?" I asked, realizing that I'd just passed him, and he was now looking at a wall. "What are you..." When I backtracked to find out what he was looking at, I suddenly became aware that this specific section of wall, filthy and ruined as it was, had something very familiar: a poster. There was a large gash through the middle, but it was unmistakably another one of those RALPHIE the Robot posters. ED-E clicked, and a recording began to play.

"Next week on RALPHIE the Robot's Incredible Odyssey!" I heard a bombastic announcer voice say with just a bit too much forced jollity. What I hadn't expected was the music accompanying it. The same tinny, patriotic marching music ED-E would occasionally play whenever things were about to turn violent created a fitting backdrop for this audio drama.

"RALPHIE, hurry!" pleaded the voice of a small boy. "If mean old General Winters catches you, you'll never make it home!" That's about when I heard something that I hadn't heard in quite a while: a series of beeps and whistles, like what I used to hear when ED-E spoke. But apparently, this didn't mean anything, because it just sounded like gibberish to me. And once the beeping died down, the little boy spoke up again. "No! RALPHIE, fly far! Fly fast!"

"Tune in next Saturday for the exciting conclusion!" The bombastic announcer practically yelled. "Only on Vault-Tec Channel 9!"

"ED-E?" I heard a familiar voice after a slight pause. It was Whitley. "What are you doing in here all alone? And who left all these old videos playing?" Whitley chuckled softly. "Come on. Let's get you into your recharge bay. We've got a big day tomorrow..."

There was a click, and ED-E and I were left in silence for a few moments. Cautiously, I reached out to lay a hand against ED-E's chassis.

"You alright, man?" I asked. ED-E bobbed against me silently for a while.

"He never made it," ED-E finally said, continuing to stare at the poster. "RALPHIE... never made it. The series ended before RALPHIE could make it home." ED-E swiveled around and out from under my hand to look at me. "ED-E, the... the real... the first one. He was like RALPHIE, and never made it home, either. He never made it to Navarro."

"Is that what you want to do?" I asked. "Do you want to go home?"

ED-E didn't reply at first. He looked down, swiveled in place to look at the poster again, and then looked back at me.

"I already am home, Friend_Courier," he said, surprising me somewhat. "I do not need to be shackled to the fates of a fictional eyebot or my progenitor. Neither succeeded in their goals. My place is right here, with you." ED-E bobbed in place, like a nod. "Yes, Friend_Courier. I am home."

"I..." For a few moments, I was rendered speechless. I was so touched, I didn't quite know what to say. Again, I momentarily wished I could take off my helmet so ED-E could see the broad smile plastering my face "I love you, man."

"Come on," ED-E bobbed off to the side. "We still have a long road ahead. But we can get to the end if we work together." I nodded, stepping in behind him as he floated away.

"Yeah... I guess you could say we've got to fly far and fly fast if we want to get to the end of The Divide, right?" I said with a laugh, ED-E joining in shortly after. He sped off ahead, bobbing along with the RALPHIE theme playing in his wake.

"So, will you two just make out already?" Sue asked, just as soon as ED-E was out of earshot. "Or are you just going to keep exchanging longing glances in the moonlight?"

"Oh, hush." I said, unable to stifle the last little bit of laughter.