[Cash n Class]

FALLOUT EPIC QUEST
THREAD ONE


NOTES

ASH
JASMINE369 ASH
Central Character of the Story. Born outside of TekVault0101 but grows up there. Special nature, mysterious past. Father was Professor James Ash.
PROFESSOR JAMES ASH
Main Character of the Story. Father to Jasmine. Brilliant but obsessed scientist. Linked to Project Purity which is more than it appears to be on the surface. Mysterious past.
DOCTOR CATHERINE ASH
Main Character of the Story. Was supposed to have died giving birth to Jasmine.

DONALD
MARIA334 DONALD
mother
JOE209 DONALD
older child, son
ANGIE565 DONALD
younger child, daughter

HEROIC DUO
HERBERT DARING DASHWOOD
Special type of android and more?
ARGYLE (Argyle McDonald)
Special kind of ghouliman (more human like ghoul).

LYON
SARAH LYON (KNIGHT CAPTAIN)
Soldier. Daughter to Elder Oywn Lyons of the Orderdom of Steel (formerly Elder of the Brotherhood of Steel).

[Johanna Van Drunick]

01-01(0001)
FALLOUT QUEST EPIC: TEKVAULT0101 STRUGGLES


Jasmine369 did not like the secured inhabited parts of the stark metallic, plastic and glass environments of TekVault0101 as divided into subvaults, semivaults and demivaults along with the Rimzone. Except that the secured inhabited parts of the vault at least had light, fresh pumped air and other such extras. The area she was in was dimly lit with cheap emergency fluroflats, was in semidarkness, was filled with lightly stale air and showed signs of neglect. The Isolationist Policies of the Overseer Government had become extreme, had started to become insane. Now the damned Overseers were busy isolating subvaults from subvaults even when there was little good reason for doing so, even when it meant that the vault functioned less efficiently.

She had not been born in TekVault0101, which was part of the mystery of her past, but in a secret underground base beneath a famous landmark in New Washington DC. She had some short, vivid memories and many blurred, fragmented ones but little more. Her father, one Professor James Ash, had not answered her questions as she wished, especially since he was replaced by something pretending to be him.

In a lightly armoured survival jumpsuit, with a survival helmet and some super-kevlar body-armour, she hunted radroaches and other nasty big vermin with great skill. Yet she was not just there to kill such creatures and to gain vault-credit by taking them to one of the organic recycling network-systems in the area she was in. As a registered Exterminator she was able to cross some of the Isolation Boundaries. Which was why she was successful also as an anti-quarantine smuggler of people, goods and data.

She fired her light powered 25zz pulsepistol at the first of the radroaches to come through the hole in the wall, a hole that officially should not have been there, that officially was not there thanks to the lies of vaultcrats., the too often corrupt and inefficient public servants of the Overseers Government. The 'death' pulse killed the creature at once. Perhaps she would have been less inclined to kill such critters if it did not have the red splash of a venomous aggressive red-splash radroach. such were more dangerous than even bigger, normal radroaches for normal radroaches were more inclined to run away. Red-splash radroaches were far more likely to attack and try to stab one with a venomous tip.

Red-splash radroach bodies got increased bounties because the venom was very useful to the TekVault's limited biotech industries and small research and development centre. She darted over to the hole, saw on the other side a long abandoned semivault, built for the construction of the vault proper but then abandoned. The construction of TekVault0101 had been hurried as the threat of world war had become closer, as the Soviets threatened to invade the actual mainland of the United Commonwealths of America. Such abandoned areas could be found through out the vault. This one was not empty. There was a girl, a mature woman and a young man. By the looks of them they were basic rejuvenated, basic gen-engineered citizens. They were her clients, not that she would be paid for them and not that she would be paid much anyway.

They were desperate but this was normal enough for those seeking the comparative freedom of the so called 'Free Zones' as controlled by the fairly weak Freedom Network.

'Sensing' something wrong, but not with the three before he, she ushered them out of the subvault. The mature woman held a basic manufactured 12-gauge shotgun, a break-open single barreled weapon, and the young man had a work longknife, a multiple purpose tool with a good strong blade that was well cared for. Otherwise the females had dark, dull pink jumpsuits and the male a normal dark, dull blue jumpsuit, badly named slipboots of black and black pouch-belts. Slipboots were so named because they easily 'slipped' on and off, or so ran the theory. In practice, since many people had to do with ill fitting slipboots, this was not often the case.

They hurried along the dimly lit corridor with Jasmine369 leading them. Even as she did so, she 'sensed' the approach of a roboremote, a dumb-robot guided by the AI-supercomputer network of network-systems through the small sensors dotting even that area. It would hopefully be only a patrol remote and not something more deadly like a seeker or hunter remote. She sped the escapees up a little, though they were clearly tired, then scooped up the child and easily carried her. This made the going easier and faster.

Again and again she redirected them until she could no longer 'sense' the presence of the roboremote. They went deeper, going down a grimy emergency escape slide-tube and then down a spiral rampway shaft, a plunging metallic cylinder shaped space. TekVault0101 was slowly, steadily failing and the Isolation Policies were only making matters worse.

[RObert loVes MOmmy]

01-02(0002)
FALLOUT QUEST EPIC: TEKVAULT0101 STRUGGLES

Jasmine369 had them take a rest in an alcove partly full of softly humming semiactive machinery and some pipes, one of which dripped lukewarm clean water onto the metallic floor. She gave the three a foodbar each, a small bioplastic sip-bottle of pristine water and a vitamineral pill each. She needed to ration out what she gave them because they did not have much and she was not overly supplied with stuff to give them. She was very attractive, even with out make-up, and was slightly annoyed at the young man staring at her.

The mature woman spoke. "I am Maria344 but I suppose you know that."

Jasmine nodded. "Of course. Ask your son to stop staring at my briasts."

Maria344 sighed. "Joe209 is badly program-conditioned. The damned instructor got lazy when Joe209 was a child and did not implement the program properly. One reason we are escaping to the Free Zones is because we hope to find some better alternate treatments there. I suppose you have been there."

"No!" Jasmine369 responded in Esperanto, the language they were all using, that was the officially common language in the TekVault Network. "I have never gone further than the Rimzone. There another will take over to lead you to one of the Free Zones. Getting you that far is my field of expertise, my area of experience. I am paid but not much. It is enough to keep me going. This pulsepistol of mine is illegal for me to have while your shotgun is only semilegal thanks to the radroach infestations and other problems."

Yes, radrats, isolationism craziness, infections, infestations, criminal violence, Security Police brutality, suicide, failing technologies and a few other problems.

The young man blushed, looked troubled.

Jasmine369 sighed. "Oh, damned it, look all you like. You, cute girl, you must be Angie565."

Angie565 nodded and then spoke. "Why are you different inside from us? Why is your mind different? Why are you so sad inside?"

The mother looked worried and went to intercede but Jasmine369 just smiled. "I 'sensed' you are psychic, a powerful one, also psionic gifted. That would be an excellent reason to get you to the Free Zones before the Overseer Government can get its hands on you, sweetie. I am different because I was not born here in the vault but in another place beneath the Wastelands. I am different for reasons that I do not know but I am what you might call a biotech cyborg with special enhancements, augmentations and extras. Why am I sad? Probably the same reason many vaultfolk are sad. Because we do not live in a nice place and we have a bad government, bad criminals and other bad things we have to put up with."

The six year old girl shook her head. "Something special bad is making you very sad and that makes me sad. You do not have a mummy."

Jasmine369 sighed. "She died when she gave birth to me and then my daddy brought me to the vault that very night. Other things, well they are best not talked about. You have to be careful though. Not everybody is what they seem to be."

Angie565 frowned. "Doppelgangers. They look like us, sound like us, almost smell like us and they are very bad inside. They do not have a 'conscious' or so mummy says." She yawned before she spoke again. "They know that I know them and they want to get rid of me just like they tried to get rid of all of the security dogs."

Yes, Jasmine369 remembered that and had taken part in the rescue of not only many security dogs but other animals and people who had wanted to go with them. Then a new type of security dog had appeared, bigger and more dangerous, that seemed somehow fake in the same way as did the human imposters.

The girl was soon sleeping in her mother's lap and Jasmine369 sat thinking as Jo209 ogled her in a rather awkward, clumsy manner. The mother rested with her eyes closed.

[Rhi Edwards]

01-03(0003)
FALLOUT QUEST EPIC: TEKVAULT0101 STRUGGLES

They made good time for a while, the girl assisting now with her psychic-psionic abilities to detect threats. She was what was called a psyker, a fairly rare type of empowered mutation, and she was one of the even more rare powerful ones. Yet from the start Angie565 insisted that Jasmine369 was even more powerful than herself though Jasmine369 did not generally agree with the idea. They found the looted, stripped, partly devoured body of some victim of violence, perhaps a runner or maybe just unlucky. Except that Jasmine369 then identified the corpse and she was stunned for it had been a powerful leader in the Overseer Government of TekVault0101. Jasmine369 made sure that she was as knowledgeable as vault affairs as was possible and knew that this man, one Kirby309, had been behind the Reformist Isolationist Faction push to slow down the increasing internal isolation of the vault. He had been a member of one of the leadership elites and yet it was clear that his relatively high wealth, power and influence had failed to save his life.

It was then that the girl child spoke again to surprise. "The doppelgangers killed him. The fake ones like the one that pretends to be your father, like the three that you have killed."

Jasmine369 turned and nodded to the girl. "Yes, I was forced to kill these 'doppelgangers' as you call them. A good name for them. They are harder to kill with normal weapons but high voltage electricity, xolasers and some other ways do them more harm than they do to humans. A sharp blow or shot to the head or torso or cutting off the head will kill them speedily. They burn away when they die except for some greasy, strange smelling ash. Do you know more about them?"

Angie565 sighed. "The Voice told me about them and the doppelganger security dogs. Animals can easily detect the doppelgangers. The doppelgangers are servants of a darker, more powerful force called the Illuminati, the 'Illuminated Ones'. They use the name of a group that no longer exists, that existed centuries ago."

Jasmine369 responded. "Yes, I know of the Illuminati, at least something of them. They were supposed to be linked to something called the Circle of the Golden Dawn. Except none of the information, in the public vault databank libraries on such subjects, is very dependable. Does the Voice talk to you often?"

The mother was frowning. "Must you reinforce such things with my daughter? I do not trust to this Voice, do not trust to any of the strange things that are happening. I suggest we focus on survival and getting to one of the Free Zones."

So they moved onwards and avoided more trouble in the form of scurrying radroaches that seemed more agitated than normal in recent times and which moved in bigger groups as if for greater mutual protection.

[Stephanie I]

01-04(0004)
FALLOUT QUEST EPIC: TEKVAULT0101 STRUGGLES

Jasmine369 wanted to know more about the 'Voice' that spoke to the mind of Angie565 but the mother, Maria344, was clearly against discussing the matter further. Jo209 walked behind Jasmine369 and stared at her bum sometimes but into air most of the time. Jasmine369 was soon enough doubting that he was just effected by some bade programming-conditioning when he was quite young. No, there was something both unusual and disturbing about the young man though there was nothing particularly 'dark' about him.

They got to the Rimzone and there waited one OldJoe121 who was but one of the mature, experienced, tough men and women who bore an 'OldJoe' coded name. Jasmine369 quietly spoke to him to one side and pointed out her concerns. He just smiled and nodded, acting a little simple but he was anything but so. OldJoe121 was one of the canniest and toughest OldJoes there was working to take escapees safely through the Rimzone. She gave him a series of coded signals warning him that Angie565 was a powerful psyker, that there was something hidden about Jo369 and that Maria344 was hiding something important.

Jasmine369 hugged the little girl and carefully did the same with Jo209 before hugging the mother, a rather nervous Maria344. Then she left them, expecting that there was little chance that she would ever meet any of them again.

Getting back to the inhabited core zones of TekVault0101 was dangerous but less so because she no longer had to care for the three others. She went through secondary areas, some abandoned areas not even in the official 3Dmap of the vault and used a secondary utility elevator that still functioned almost 100%. After stashing some of her gear, she was once more acting the official registered Exterminator and she took five big dead radroaches to claim bounties on them. The bounties were okay but she also got a small but important allowance as an Exterminator. It was a good thing that though radroaches did breed quickly, they bred a whole lot less rapidly than did normal, much smaller cockroaches.

Jasmine369 was soon riding a big tricycle with a trailer. Pedal-vehicles made very good sense to use in a vault environment with big corridors and rampways to use. They helped to keep citizens fit, did not use electricity and were fairly easy to build and maintain. Some citizens were allowed to use mopeds, that is bicycles or tricycles with small electric motors to assist them. There were citizens, some androids being mostly basic vaultdroids, dumb-robots being mostly wheeled delivery machines or cleaners, some compact electric vehicles and, occasionally, an armoured armed security patroller.

[Samantha Pattison]

01-05(0005)
FALLOUT QUEST EPIC: TEKVAULT0101 STRUGGLES

The unofficial whisper-network of TekVault0101 was often more efficient, more useful, than was the 3DPBN (3D Public Broadcast Network) of public and more private 3Dscreens. The 3DPBN broadcast vault dramas, government propaganda, VaultShop advertisemants, public briefings and news bulletins but mostly games, sports and other entertainments. Much of the entertainments were old repeats.

A favourite new game was Radroach Hunter that had players hunting for the maximum number of radroaches within a set limited time; the problem for the players was that they were criminals convicted of low level crimes armed each only with a large knife and an autobow with just ten bow-darts. Players did not get to wear much protection. They were also sent into sealed off areas with poor lighting, many obstacles, often cramped conditions with resupply points being hidden except for basic clues.

Jasmine369 had picked up her bounty receipts and was standing close to a VaultShop autovendor eating a just bought foodbar. A public 3Dwallscreen, very big and almost functioning perfectly, was showing a woman in a skin tight game-suit that was not very modest at all except that the splashes of mud, grease and other stuff made it more so. She moved quickly and efficiently. Her name was Alda401 and until recently she had been a licensed registered Exterminator. For some strange reason over a dozen experienced Exterminators had recently been convicted of crimes that were clearly, to her, fraudulent.

Beatrice333 Armstrong, supposedly very eccentric and harmless but efficient enough to do her allocated work and other public duties, came to stand next to Jasmine369. She spoke with a big smile. "Oh, how lovely to see you, Jasmine. Would you like me to read your cards for you?"

"Of course!" Jasmine369 responded. It was common knowledge that Beatrice333 supplemented her meager wages and allowances by taking small fees, or favours, in exchange for tarot card readings, massage sessions or even the selling of eccentric poems. What was not so well known was that she was truthfully far brighter and more alert than her public persona would suggest and that she was in the cell-network that assisted runners to get to the Free Zones. Some of Jasmine369's visits to Beatrice333 were far more than that.

They headed for Beatrice333's apartment but soon the older woman abruptly changed course and they moved into a lesser used area. Beatrice333 suddenly lost her typical smile and the lost look of her eyes. She spoke to Jasmine369 in urgent tones. "Your father, that is the thing pretending to be your father, was destroyed. He burned away in front of witnesses, many witnesses, in a public hallway. We did not kill the..."

"Doppelganger!" Jasmine369 spoke. "Good name for such creatures, be they human or dog shapeformed."

"Yes, good name!" Beatrice nodded. "I want to know where you got that name from, later. Now you need to know that the High Sheriff has sent officers and constables to arrest you for a crime that you could not have possibly done. Perhaps they will set you up to play that disgusting new game, Radroach Hunter, as they did poor Alda401 and thirteen other Exterminators. None have yet to be released though they have won games and two have been killed, another five badly hurt. We need you to go and rescue Alda401 and try to find out what she, and the other Exterminators, might have accidentally learned that would have got them into trouble. We managed to get to your apartment and salvage personal goods for you, along with some supplies."

Beatrice333 gave Jasmine369 some more information and in turn Jasmine333 told her about the Broomo Family of Maria344, Jo209 and Angie565.

While Jasmine369 did not like what was happening, she was not surprised and had indeed been waiting for something like this to happen. It was getting increasingly difficult for rebels, of any kind, to stay free let alone to operate properly. So far the Overseer Government seemed to have ignored the Free Zones but it was expected that this would one day change though none were sure just what would happen.

The mystery, the threat, of the doppelgangers just complicated matters for they seemed to be just as much a threat to the traditional Overseer Government as they were to all others in the great big, slowly decaying TekVault.

They kissed, hugged, and then Jasmine369 departed in a hurry to her nearest hidden cache, that the cell-network did not know about, where she had some special resources hidden away. Soon she was riding one of the 55% of fully operational monorail-trams that ran through the vault. Some teens were telling stupid jokes. An off duty security guard was reading a news-bulletin print-out. Jasmine369 sat opposite the security guard and next to a mature woman in a dull dark pink vault-jumpsuit of a alpha fertile woman. Fertility rates had dropped in the vault over the centuries and alpha fertile citizens were much prized, especially women.

Jasmine369 'sensed' that the security guard was a doppelganger and wondered what it was doing and what she would do about it.

[He got the]

NOTES TO BE ADDED HERE

TEKVAULTS
Designed and constructed by VaultTek of the TekCorporations based in the United Commonwealths of America. Officially over 300 such TekVaults were constructed, each having a population of over 1,000,000 citizens. These were numbered from TekVault0001 to TekVault0300. This official account has come to be largely discounted. Instead it is stated that perhaps as many as 1,000 TekVaults or even more may have been built. The truth is that nobody knows for sure though it is suspected that not all of the supposed designated 'TekVaults' were actually so. At least some were supposed to be secret experiments set up as research projects to use vault citizens as subjects. While some TekVaults were made to be more isolated, others were constructed more closely together and linked strongly by various means.

[Kathryn Medows]

01-06(0006)
FALLOUT QUEST EPIC: TEKVAULT0101 STRUGGLES

Jasmine369's mind was made up about the doppelganger, fake security guard, when she realized that 'he' was following her. How she came to 'sense' this was the case was not something that was clear to her but she had come to trust such things out of experience; she had a couple of small scars to remind her of that painful lesson. So she got off at the next stop and casually moved towards an elevator bank. The area was fairly well inhabited but by horribly named 'deformants' who were born with a mixture of moderate mental and physical handicaps. Given basic medical treatments, some basic cybernetic augmentations and other such resources, deformants were forced to do many of the more mindless and mundane duties of the vault; they were always sterilized even if it was doubtful that this was necessary.

Jasmine369 was well known in this community. She was one of those who assisted these people as much as possible, taking many of them to the Rimzone free of charge. Yet there were others, like deformants, that were very dangerous and they were known as malformants. Many of those lived in their own sector of the area and the Overseer Government used these aggressive basic cyborgs to do much of its nasty work. Except that lately many of the malformants had begun to go rogue for reasons that they kept to themselves, refusing to follow government directives.

It was hard to say just how big the vault population was. She doubted that the Overseer Government's Demographics Office knew the actual figure. Officially the population was thriving at just over a million. Many said it was at most half of this but Jasmine369 suspected that they only counted those with citizenship. Rimzoners, malformants, deformants and Free Zoners, along with others, had no citizenship. So there might have been at least a million living in the vault but at least half were noncitizens that the government either exploited terribly or oppressed or ignored.

Going past a fading 2Dposter showing some old government community program, long abandoned, Jasmine369 found herself confronted by two more doppelgangers in the shapeforms of two elderly women. They moved wrong for what they were supposed to be. An elderly man in a power-wheelchair, a deformant, moved away from the deadly frauds quickly and brought out a home made gun that could fire a single 9mmP calibre bullet of the old fashioned cased sort. To her surprise, the old man aimed for the head of the nearest doppelganger in a way that indicated he knew both what they were and how to kill them the easiest.

That doppelganger whirled and lunged towards the wheelchair bound man but he fired and then the entity was burning away. The gear was left behind to be easily looted, which was a bonus to killing of these sneaky murderous entities.

Jasmine369 had no time to stop and think. She turned and threw a slim throwing knife that thunked into the forehead of the fake security guard. Then 'he' burned away as if by spontaneous combustion.

The other doppelganger struck the elderly man, throwing him over onto his side, and from a fairly large pouchbag 'she' drew a 10mmC semiautomatic pistol, it firing caseless bullets of more efficient and advanced design than the 9mmP but being harder to manufacture. Bullets thudded into 'her' upper back, hitting another very vulnerable spot of the doppelgangers, and she burned away. Jasmine369 had not shot the doppelganger but she did help the elderly deformant by bringing him, and his power wheelchair, upright.

The figure that strode, like a trained and experienced killer, was not known to her and to her surprise she was soon 'sensing' that he was an outsider, that he came from outside of the vault. He had hard, cold eyes showing much dark experience and he was appeared to be constantly annoyed by something like somebody with an itch they could not scratch.

It soon turned out that his name was Knight Captain Gallows and he belonged to something that was called the Brotherhood of Steel, a large paramilitary organization that was outside, up on the surface, in what were known as the 'Wastelands'. She did not like the name but was not surprised because her father had dropped some hints, as she grew up, that outside the TekVault was a very harsh, dangerous environment though he never named it.

Gallows was soon following Jasmine369 as she headed towards one of her caches.

[W E I R D]

01-07(0007)
FALLOUT QUEST EPIC: TEKVAULT0101 STRUGGLES

"You were born in a secret underground research and development complex, known as AlphaBeta111, below the New Washington DC Jefferson Memorial Complex. The Complex is on the shoreline of what is generally called the DC River but which is also known as the Potomac River. Your father, and mother, were involved in something called Project Purity. This was to do with the release of nanobots, microbots and macrobots that would cleanse the waters of excessive radiation and harmful toxins left over from Doomsday." Knight Captain Gallows crouched beside a wall. "You were told that your mother died in childbirth giving birth to you but we know that she had twins and that your father stole you and fled from AlphaBeta111. We do not know why he did so."

She frowned softly. "That would explain the strange dreams, perhaps."

Jasmine369 was going through a cache of useful stuff he had put there just in case trouble arose. There was a whole false identity backed up by hacked datafiles in the vault security databanks, a 10mmC submachinegun, varied ammo, two more jumpsuits, two pairs of slipboots, some stuff for disguising her features, sealed food rations, box-bottles of pristine water, a xolaser-pistol and some other items. Yet she knew that more resources would be needed and she wanted to get her personal stuff from where the rebel cell-network had placed it.

She was also concerned about her friends DJgirl (Uris098), Amata123, the Finger Twins (Hans089 and Hans088), Brent387 and Sally473. Would security go after them except for some light interrogations of the type they normally did?

Gallows gave her an odd look. "Dreamlinking is what we call it. Psykers can do it, even subconsciously. You have a brother, Jadekin, and Catherine, your mother, still at AlphaBeta111 working on a series of projects though Project Purity has been put on indefinite hold."

Yes, she had experienced, all her life, a series of vivid dreams in which she had shared experiences with a growing brother and her mother. Yet she had never thought much about them in her waking times; now she wondered why this was so. Still there were more urgent matters to attend to.

"What are the doppelgangers?" She asked him straight forwardly, hoping for an answer that would give some clarity to the mystery. "Where do they come from?"

"I have no idea." Gallows frowned. "I am here because your mother asked me to track you down with the assistance of two companions. They are hidden away not far from here. The locals told us about the doppelgangers just as they told us much about TekVault0101. Many locals, even the criminals, think of you as being a hero. You have helped them in many ways, have taken many of them to the Rimzone, leading to the Free Zones. We passed through one of the Free Zones. Harsh survival living but better than here in some ways and no oppressive Overseer Government to deal with. There are glowcrystal caverns there, lit and warmed by gen-engineered glowcrystal, where they grow food and other resources. There are plans to start sending back resources here such as more food, some healing substances and even some manufacturing materials."

Jasmine369 had gotten everything into two duffel-bags, a backpack along with pockets and pouches. Now she passed a duffel-bag to Gallows. "TekVault0101 has many secrets. The Isolationist Experiment is one that has been discovered by many but I suspect there are more and I am not the only one. Except that the cell-network discovered a secret that the Overseer Government does not seem to know about. I will show you it. Come with me."

So she began to lead him through the vault, going through that more isolated area but still staying away from less traveled ways where security patrols were more likely to show up.

[Chris Cross Cabaret Man]

01-08(0008)
FALLOUT QUEST EPIC: TEKVAULT0101 STRUGGLES

Jasmine369 met the famous Herbert Daring Dashwood and Argyle, the first being a very sophisticated android and the second a ghoul who had recently gained some rejuvenation treatments so that he looked far more human, though a bold one. They had come seeking Jasmine369, along with Gallows, after Catherine May asked them to do so. Catherine had returned to her maiden name after James had kidnapped Jasmine, then with out the numbers on her name, and had gone to TekVault0101.

Jasmine369 took them to a secret minivault inside the bigger vault, it being one of thirteen that made up a network of such minivaults. They were very cleverly hidden, very well made and well resourced but when found by the cell-network they had been semiactive and not used since before Doomsday. In each minivault was an observation chamber linked to spycams and other devices through out TekVault0101 but they were not active; the cell-network had been unable to activate them. Nor had they found any data in the minivault network that gave the reason for the construction of these vaults inside a vault.

"We figure that they were meant for more than one purpose." Jasmine369 spoke as she led the others into a large chamber, a multiple purpose commonroom. "One could have been to observe the isolation experiment being conducted here. Another seems to be as an emergency escape network of shelters linked by special secret tunnels. Each minivault has a stock of basic general items including survival equipment and supplies, a small armoury of weapons. The cell-network has chosen not to strip these resources but to leave most of them as reserves in case they are needed in a hurry. Though we know there are thirteen minivaults, the cell-network has accessed only seven of them."

Herbert, who was no longer called 'Herbert Daring Dashwood' since he faked retirement to the Tenpenny Towers, of the infamous Tenpenny Family, looked around with a grin of appreciation at the good quality of everything. "These minivaults seem to be in much better condition that large areas of TekVault0101."

"Damn place is collapsing around our ears, slowly but steadily. Given the right resources we could make TekVault0101 a real good home." Jasmine369 placed her duffel-bag and backpack on a metal table as Gallows placed other gear there. "I suggest that we use this as our temporary home base. Each minivault has about a dozen chambers, mostly on the small size." She walked over to a kitchenette and began making some vault coffee. "I have been asked, by the cell-network, to rescue an Exterminator from a bad situation."

So she ended up telling the three newcomers, to the vault, about much of what was happening there. They had a meal and coffee along with some pristine drinking water. They picked up a 3DPBN broadcast and the news indicated that there were some troubles in the vault, that citizens had to remain calm and to keep doing their duties to keep the vault functioning well. That the Overseer Government would even admit to this much was a sign that matters were not going generally well in TekVault0101.

Security Overseer Alphonse049 Almodovar, father to Amata123 who was a close friend to Jasmine369, had instigated a series of new rules and regulations. Areas of the vault were now officially out of bounds. Many vault doors were being sealed and emergency shutters were being put into place. People were only allowed to operate in some areas now in groups. Security check points were being set up and citizens would be given a series of quick tests, some of them exotic but all officially for good reason.

Jasmine369 spoke after the briefing ended and was replaced with a rather tedious vault citizen sitcom that had been created over a century ago and repeat broadcast many times since. "The Overseer Government is fighting the doppelgangers. The new rules and regulations, the security check points and new types of tests, all indicate this to be the case."

Herbert spoke. "Unless they are also seeking out something else such as androids, such as myself, or biomechanical cyborgs, such as yourself."

Jasmine369 did not like that idea at all but considering the nature of the tests being done, at the check points, Herbert's words made only too much sense.

[Claudia Cook]

First off: I'd like to say that i'm genuinely suprised that you haven't gotten some kind of feedback. This is an interesting take on the Fallout series. The idea of making a little more Sci-Fi is, if nothing else, a departure from the norm. It reminds me of those reimaginings they do of classic movies and books. I hope you continue.

[Adrian Morales]

Thanks for the positive feedback, kdn003. I am used to having little feedback in this forum but what I do get tends to be positive.

01-09(0009)
FALLOUT QUEST EPIC: TEKVAULT0101 STRUGGLES

It was Herbert who provided new information to Jasmine369 that helped to find the very well hidden section of the minivault. Inside a secret chamber they found a fully functional safe-cycel mattercator that could turn various kinds of mattercation substances, using electricity, into a wide range of basic to fairly basic to special items. It was an amazing find and promised much for the cell-network for there was not only the mattercator network-system but also special equipment and supplies along with spare parts and mattercation programs and templates.

Then they found the second secret chamber with a super virtual reality network-system complete with nine SVR capsulechairs in three sets of three. The databanks held many basic SVR programs but only three major programmed fully interactive simulations. There was one primary and three secondary control consoles.

Yet it was the third secret chamber that was mos surprising, in its way, for Jasmine369 had heard of the other two types of technologies as they were semiactive in the vault. She had not heard of cable-teleportation. In the chamber was a cable-teleporation network-system complete with control console and both a sender and receptor cell. It was soon evident that the cable-teleport network included all thirteen secret minivaults and other destinations but only a few were reachable from that CTN Station.

Jasmine took a chance and sent a special communications to Beatrice333. In seconds there was a response. Beatrice333 was on her way to check out this very important discovery for herself. Jasmine369 informed the others of her plans before she sent the communications and they seemed calm about it. They waited patiently for Beatrice333 to arrive but there was something about how they did so, falsely calm and prepared for trouble, that puzzled her.

After a moment she spoke out. "What are you doing? Beatrice333 is part of the cell-network seeking freedom for the vaultfolk of TekVault0101?"

Knight Captain Gallows responded. "After we arrived in the Free Zone we met a delegation of Free Zone leaders and officers. They informed us that many of the escapees being sent to safety by the cell-network are being sent to a fake Free Zone. There they are enslaved by a mysterious but powerful faction of vaultfolk somehow linked to the doppelgangers. There are traitors amongst the rebels here in the vault proper, inside the cell-network. Even if Beatrice333 is to be trusted, we still need to be careful."

Herbert spoke then. "The same treacherous faction has probably also infiltrated the Overseer Government. We suspect that they may belong to a very dangerous, fanatical and strange faction known as the Enclaven that operates out of a world wide network of deep underground, well hidden, complexes known as Enclaves. The Enclaven is linked to the Skynet, that went rogue on Doomsday, and the zetan aliens along with other dark factors. The Enclaven operates in the Wastelands and other regions of the surface world."

Jasmine369 did not appreciate being lied to but was puzzled. "Why be truthful with me now?"

Argyle grinned. "Me, I am a psyker with my own specialities though I doubt I am generally as powerful a psyker as you are. Gallows is also a psyker and, in a very exotic manner, so is Herbert for he is a very special kind of android indeed. We came here for more than one reason, though we did come for you, for we are here to track down Professor James Ash and bring him to justic for various crimes that he has committed because of his obssession with Project Purity. You are not one of the Enclaven superclones, a very dangerous breed of sociopathic superfolk." He lost his grin. "Professor James Ash came here to find safety for you, and himself, but also because of a powerful dark secret hidden in TekVault0101, a secret that he hopes to use to help him create Project Purity. We would have come long ago but we only learned recently of where your father had come, where he had brought you."

At that moment Jasmine369 'sensed' danger and moments later the attack, on the minivault, began.

[Mandy Muir]

01-10(0010)
FALLOUT QUEST EPIC: TEKVAULT0101 STRUGGLES

Doppelgangers came as fake security guards, as fake security dogs, and even as fake vaultdroids, vault-androids. They seemed to know about the minivault and went to use the old security code to get in but of course it had been changed. They blew the door with shaped charges and ran straight into a withering fire aimed at heads and chests. Doppelgangers burned away with rapid frequency, none of them getting further than the destroyed outer door.

Doppelgangers got caught between the defensive firepower and that of real security guards coming in from the other side. This included Security Troopers in security power armour, a lighter faster version of fighting power armour, xolaser-carbines and autocarbines. The doppelgangers were destroyed quickly and efficiently, bizarrely silent even as they perished, never showing any real emotion as they did so.

Security Overseer Alphonse049 Almodovar came forward with two troopers and stood there, glaring at Jasmine369. "I should have known that the daughter, of Professor James Ash, would be involved in this."

"Do you mean my real father, who I have been estranged from for years, or the doppelganger that took his place some months ago?" Jasmine369 responded calmly with a question. "You are a good Overseer in many ways but are quick to see conspiracies where none exist, Alphonse049. So you knew about the minivault network and were not going to tell people about it."

Alphonse049 grinned. "Not when I could use it as a trap for the damned rebel traitors, your stupid little cell-network. The Prime Overseer himself gave me authorisation to do what I must to return proper security and order to the vault. I will start by arresting you and these intruders into the vault. You will have a fair trial and then be executed after a long interregation process has been undertaken."

Gallows smiled an unpleasant smile, he did this very well. "Just how many intruders do you think that there are?"

Alphonse049 when to respond and then stopped with a worried, wary look on his face. He turned in time to see three assault power armoured soldiers come into view, each in true assault power armour and carrying battlerifles designed to be used with power armour. It was Knight Captain Sarah Lyons leading the deadly Lyons Pride of elite Troopers of Steel.

Sarah spoke. "The reason you, and your Security Troopers, dealt so easily with the doppelgangers was that we destroyed most of them before they reached you, Security Overseer Alphonse049 Almdovar. You will be arresting nobody and the knowledge of the minivault network will be made public. I would like to meet with this Prime Overseer of yours."

Alphonse049 snorted in contempt. "Prime Overseer is an AI-supercomputer network-system, primitive outsider."

Sarah sighed softly. "We, of the Orders of Steel, know how the TekVaults are run, perhaps more so than you do. I suggest you use your tongue more wisely with me if you wish not to have it burned out of your mouth."

The Security Overseer visibly backed off. "Very well, what you suggest shall be put to the Prime Overseer." He turned and his Seccurity Troopers went with him, clearly happy to do so now they knew they were out gunned, out armoured and generally out classed by the outsiders."

Herbert smiled at Sarah, she removing her helmet. "Allow me to explain the concept of diplomacy to you, my dear."

"F**k diplomacy!" Sarah gave a mild grin in return. Then she lost the grin. "At heart I think this Alphonse049, that numbering system is annoying, is a 'good' person but understandably the stress has got to him considering what is going on in TekVault0101."

Jasmine369 frowned. "Just what is happening in TekVault0101 and why do I get the idea that there are things you have not told me."

[Prisca Lacour]

NOTES

DC FACTIONS

EAGLEENCLAVEN (OFFSHOOT OF ENCLAVEN OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER)
Some outpost bases, infiltrations.

ENCLAVEN (NEW WORLD ORDER)
Hidden outpost colony, infiltration and possible invasion.

DC SYNDICATES
Organized crime based in small hom territories such as Paradise Falls, Shadow Town and Twin-Towertown.

GANGERS
Assorted gangs, survivors of PostDoomsday gangs expanded with additions of other people.

GHOUL UNDERWORLD
Ghoulicants
Ghoulimans
Rhouls
Tamed Zhouls
Other

NEW DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA REPUBLIC, NDCR
Citizens
Guest Workers

NEW UNITED COMMONWEALTHS OF AMERICA (SMALL OUTPOST COLONY IN DC)
General Classes of Citizenry
Specialised Castes

ORDERS OF STEEL

ORDERDOM OF STEEL
*Brotherhood of Steel
*Sisterhood of Steel (Returned Faction)
*Sages of Steel (New Faction)
*SCRIBES OF STEEL (NEWISH FACTION)
*Troopers of Steel, special elite special operations soldiers.
*Ways of Steel(Classified)

Cousins of Steel (Exotic Order)
Exiles of Steel (Criminal exiles came to DC Long Ago)
Outcasts of Steel (Broke away during the Schism of Steel.)

PEOPLES FREE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF DC (PFDRDC OR PFD)
Soviets surviving from Soviet Invasion of the old United Commonwealths of America.

RAIDERS
*Pack-Raiders of Cold Beserker Power.
*Mutant-Raiders (like supermutants in some ways). Hot berserker power.
*Raver-Raiders crazy beserker power..
*Power-Raiders (exotic power armour) with exotic robotic assistance.

ROGUE
*Gary Clones with enhanced physical abilities in crazed beserker packs.
*Robots (Gone rogue with the Berserker Virus).
*Androids (Gone rogue with the Berserker Virus).

SUBWAYERS UNION

SUPERMUTANTS (FROM TEKVAULT0087?)

UNITED SETTLEMENTS COMMONWEALTH

[Jacob Phillips]

01-11(0011)
FALLOUT QUEST EPIC: TEKVAULT0101 STRUGGLES

It was a stand off, of sorts, and it turned out that the Overseer Government had only learned about the minivault network in recent days; some unknown source had tipped Overseer Security about what was going on. Alphonse049 had become convinced that the source of doppelgangers lay in the minivault network and he soon decided that the rebel cell-network was also behind the doppelganger threat. His picture of the situation was overly simplistic and thus was a dangerous part truth but nobody could convince him of this.

Sarah, Herbert, Arygle, Gallows and Jasmine369 were sitting again in the commonroom of the minivault. Herbert spoke. "Doppelgangers have come out from TekVault0101 to go as far as the surface, to the ruins of the domecity of Springvale, through the cavern systems of the partly artificial Sanctuary Caverns where people still dwell, and even as far as the Subway Network where Subwayers dwell being settlers, traders and soldiers along with a few other classes. Doppelgangers can not tolerate hard, sharp sunlight but go out into the darkness or twilightish conditions of the Wastelands. They seem to have very good capacity to operate in darkness or semidarkness. Doppelgangers attacked the settlement of Megaton, that is based around a Dbomb crater and a LifeVault below the surface-subsurface settlement."

Jasmine369 nodded. "LifeVaults are smaller and more basic cousins to TekVaults, built in far larger numbers and often closer to the surface. They were designed and constructed by LifeTek, another TekCorporation that VaultTek was the mother corporation to. Survival there was less likely but people found it easier to be accepted into LifeVaults than into TekVaults."

"LifeVaults were actually designed to seed the PostDoomsday surface with people while remaining as a service-support to them." Herbert went on. "They were often overcrowded and so people had to leave to go out into the subsurface and then surface areas of the Wastelands. Some LifeVaults failed, some badly, but most did much better than was predicted by the Predoomsday UCA Federal Government. The UCAFG is fragmented and broken in various big underground bunker complexes, some of which are linked with each other as the New United Commonwealths of America. The Enclaven as absorbed, often brutally, other surviving aspects of the old UCAFG. Her in DC the NUCA has one bunker complex buried beneath the New Washington DC National Mall. There is also the New DC Republic, the NDCR, part of the Subway Union and the Unified Settlements Commonwealth, the USC. Then there are the Orders of Steel, various independent factions, the Children of Atom, the Ghoul Underworld, the DC Syndicates, slavers, gangers, cannibals, hunters, scavengers, salvagers, the infamous raiders, supermutants and many others. The Enclaven is starting to appear in the DC in the form of the smaller daughter EagleEnclaven. The situation is messy enough with out the addition of doppelgangers."

Jasmine369 was fascinated, what to learn much more about the situation outside the vault, but she focused on the more direct concerns. "What is going on in TekVault0101?"

"The Isolation Experiment was also a doppelganger experiment." Herbert frowned softly. "We only know that this is the case, now. We did not know anything much about the doppelgangers when we got here. They were a mysterious threat and because they burn when they die, it is impossible to examine their remains except for the greasy ash that gives very little away. We suspect that this is no accident."

He paused before going on. "James Ash, your father, came here because of the secret doppelganger experiment or so we compute. He wished to gain from stealing its secrets to further his obsessive cause of Project Purity. The Enclaven was behind the experiments carried out in some TekVaults and even more LifeVaults. Other experiments they carried out on the surface, also in conjunction with the TekCorporations. Except the surviving TekCorporations have split with the Enclaven. They now of the TekCommonwealth based in New England. We have little doubt that doppelganger experiments have also been carried out elsewhere to measure how fast, how efficiently, an isolated community could be taken over by such as doppelgangers. Why the experiments were carried out, we do not know, but we strongly suspect a special kind of Enclaven agent are here in TekVault0101. They are shapeshifters of limited ability who can alter their appearances greatly, can alter their fingerprints with difficulty, can change even their hair. They can not alter their six (gender) and can only shift their actual shapeform relatively little in such as size and shape. They have some odd weaknesses and special ways of detecting them. These faceshifters are bad enough but there are also brain controlled people who do not even know they serve the Enclaven. Many are clones."

Jasmine369 shook her head. "That would be a sad situation to be in."

Which was when she blacked out and Argyle moved with amazing speed to gently bur firmly catch her as she fell.

[Claire Mclaughlin]

01-12(0012)
FALLOUT QUEST EPIC: TEKVAULT0101 STRUGGLES

Jasmine369 awoke and felt as if a great clarity had come to her mind, a great feeling of freedom and a weight had lifted from her body. She found herself in an autorobotic medical bed naked except for a white sheet. She was in the small medical chamber of the minivault. Her throbbing headache was fading quickly away and then was gone. She sat up carefully, with Herbert's assistance, and then she drank a small bottle of pristine water. Then she drank a second bottle of cool pristine water.

She then looked to Herbert, the exotic android, who was examining a datascreen on a medical unit, examining data on her body. "What happened and why do I feel so good?"

He sighed. "We could not remove the brainbug from your head so we transformed it into a cooperative parasitic entity instead of a remote mind control device. Not that it had been truly functional as such for a few years."

Jasmine369 frowned. "I am not the real Jasmine, am I?"

Herbert frowned softly. "Yes you are for but a brainbug controlled James brought you to TekVault0101 to be implanted with brainbug larvae when you were but an infant. It was also then that you were transformed, with much pain, into a biomech cyborg. You have assassinated five people under the control of the brainbug inside you. Ironically all were master criminals of vault organised crime, none of them being anywhere near good citizenship. We came here knowing that James was a brainbug slave and that you would probably be made into one, would probably be one when we found you. Hence our reluctance to be fully honest with you. Catherine, your mother, dreamlinked with you with some difficulty and in the end empathically seduced your brainbug to stop it being a barrier. In many of your dreamlink dreams you have a strange adorable six legged puppy like creature with some odd features. You played with it, nurtured it. That is your brainbug in dreamlink dream form."

Jasmine shook her head in wonder. "Then I will give it an extra tummy rub the next time I dreamlink."

"Very good! Your brainbug not only enhances you in some ways but augments certain abilities like keeping watch while you sleep and 'sensing' some kinds of exotic threats more efficiently than you can." He gave a calm smile. "Your brainbug is called Neggsi and likes it when you drink vault lemonade and eat sweetrolls."

She snorted softly. "That would be right." Then she went back to sleep.

A young women came into the room, looking like an older version of Jasmine369. Her name was Jarilin. She smiled at her younger sister.

[Elizabeth Falvey]

01-13(0013)
FALLOUT QUEST EPIC: TEKVAULT0101 STRUGGLES

Jasmine369 learned that she was a faceshifter, had been turned into one as she had been changed also into a biomechanical cyborg. Now she remembered the months of agony though she had no desire to do so. Yet she also remembered that she had fought being controlled from the very start, had subverted her brainbug not by attacking it but my being nice to it. The brainbug had stopped trying to control her. She also remembered now, more clearly, the dreamlinking dreams. Catherine had been there along with her older sister, Jarilin, and her brother, Jack.

Jarilin sat beside her bed and spoke with concern showing in her voice. "The Enclaven is very dangerous and cunning but at times it over reaches itself in its arrogance. The brainbug infiltration plan failed badly in the end. Brainbugged victims often went insane or committed suicide or went into comas. Others just acted oddly at times, revealing that they had changed. To try to kill the brainbug was to kill the host so new ways were found to subvert the brainbugs. The results were surprisingly successful."

Jasmine369 nodded. "You played with me in the dreamlink garden."

Jarilin smiled. "Yes, of course. We distracted you from the agony of transformation as much as possible. Others died or were malformed by such transformation processes. The Enclaven, as far as we know, now uses only clones that are prepared for the transformation process. We do not know if they have any faceshapers in TekVault0101 except for those who they have lost control over."

Jasmine369 smiled back. "What of the EagleEnclaven?"

Her older sister frowned softly. "The EagleEnclaven is a false return of the United Commonwealths Federal Government. A President Eden speaks from eyebots sent into the DC in small clusters. We know nothing of this President Eden except that he promises a return to some kind of golden age that never actually existed and is constantly attacking various factions, especially the Orders of Steel and of them, especially the Brotherhood of Steel. As far as we know the EagleEnclaven has nothing to do with the New United Commonwealths of America, the NUCA."

She went on speaking. "Doppelgangers are created using a dangerous type of mattercation process that is like safe-cycle mattercation in some way. Super-cycle mattercation is unstable and yet is able to use special templates and programs, along with special mattercation resources, to create copies of lifeforms. These are the doppelgangers."

Jasmine369 spoke. "So the Enclaven were creating a new kind of weapon."

"That might make sense except that the Enclaven is fighting and killing doppelgangers out there in the Overworld and the EagleEnclaven has declared that all doppelgangers are enemies of the people." Her older sister stroked Jasmine369's hair. "President Eden has vowed that the EagleEnclaven will destroy all doppelgangers along with such as the Brotherhood of Steel, ghouls and... well a lot of folks. I will brush your hair, if you don't mind."

Soon Jasmine369 was sitting up as Jarilin lovingly tended to her hair.

[Scott Clemmons]

01-14(0014)
FALLOUT QUEST EPIC: TEKVAULT0101 STRUGGLES

A series of explosions erupted through out TekVault0101 doing great damage to the vault. The bombs had been well hidden and very cunningly placed in vulnerable spots to knock out many vital vault network-systems.

Swarms of radroaches, including venomous red-splash ones and bigger, more powerful but slower horned radroaches, came into the vault proper. This was bad enough but what made it worse was that many of these radroaches were actually doppelgangers. What made it better was that the real and false radroaches began to fight each other with much brutal savagery. It quickly turned out that red-splash radroach venom killed off doppelgangers quickly, causing them to burn away.

Then came radrats, 'giant rats', of powerful muscular build that could not only climb surprisingly well but leap through the air with great power, reaching surprising distances at times.

Doppelgangers attacked in other shapeforms such as humans, basic vaultdroids, big hulking dogs, strange copies of protectron robots and as things that were not really copied from anything but were of original design. These latter were big hulking humanoids in some ways like supermutants, skeletal like creatures faster and more agile but less powerful and things like the infamous trogs of Pittsburg, the Pitt. Yet others were very individual, were a crazy mixture of shapeforms with a wide variety of features.

Jasmine369 wore security power armour as she darted along a big vault hallway. Even as she ran, she fired her 10mmC autocarbine, the effective caseless bullets exploding holes through fake and real radroaches alike. The fakes burned away while the real runs danced around crazy in death. The fakes kept attacking but the real radroaches knew better and began to flee.

A trio of protectron like doppelgangers, she wondered why they had been made in such a curious type of shapeform, thudded with elegant clumsiness into view. As they did they shot not standard robotic weapons but spat spinedarts of biometallic nature, deadly in their speed, power and impact. Security power armour would stop her from dying or being badly wounded but if a spinedart got through the venom in its tip could get to her. She did not know how effective such venom was against her. She had been pleased to learn that red-splash radroach venom had no effect on her thanks to her exotic cyborg nature.

Security Forces, Exterminators and Sheriff's Forces were tied up trying to both defend the vault and in keeping law and order. Volunteers were being gathered and armoured armed as quickly but as best as possible. The Security Overseer did not want common citizens to be so armed but his wishes were overriden by both the Prime Overseer AI-supercomputer network-system and the Overseer Council. Vault-androids were useful but could not be ordered to kill. There were relatively few security robots, mobile roboremotes and turrets of different kinds. The elite fighters of Lyons Pride were devastating where they struck but they were only one platoon and thus their effect was severly limited.

Why had the doppelgangers struck now? Doppelganger mentalities were very hard to comprehend.

Then Jasmine369 woke up from the amazingly vivid dream.

[MR.BIGG]

01-15(0015)
FALLOUT QUEST EPIC: TEKVAULT0101 STRUGGLES

Jasmine369's dream had been a forewarning of things to come. Reluctantly the Security Overseer formed a temporary alliance with genuine rebels and the outsiders to search for the hidden bombs where Jasmine369 had dreamed they would be. At first Alphonse049 was sceptical that there would be any bombs and then he was suspicious that Jasmine knew where they were planted because she had helped put them there; there was no real evidence against Jasmine and Alphonse049 was forced to quit by the Overseers Council.

The bombs were found and deactivated safely. Explosions failed to rip holes in walls letting in invaders, both natural and doppelganger, and network-systems were not damaged. Yet the general consensus was that the threat had been postponed, had not been dealt with for ever.

A series of hunts began through out the vault with search and destroy patrols seeking out doppelgangers. New hand held sensors were designed and built that were fairly short ranged but still very useful in detecting fake humans or androids or dogs. Radroaches were automatically attacked as were such as radrats. The fighting was savage and done mostly by mixed teams of professional Exterminators and Security Guards along with volunteers with the right sorts of skills and experience to be of use.

Jasmine went looking for Beatrice333 and found her dying in a coma in her apartment. Herbert did some amazing healing on her and she would live, her brainbug being transformed, but would spend time in a regeneration-capsule in deep sleep. Then there was the Exterminator, Aldo401, that she had been asked to rescue. The mission had been swept aside by events.

Jasmine, Herbert, Argyle, Gallows and Jarlin went seeking Aldo401 to find out why she had been framed for a crime she had not done and been placed in the nasty 3DTV show known as Radroach Hunter. They found that the game zone was empty, abandoned by both players and media people. Then they found the long dead, stripped bodies of the real Aldo401 and other falsely accused Exterminators along with some media people.

Herbert and Argyle examined the bodies and it was Argyle, with his odd abilities, who declared that the lot of them had been massacred by Enclaven faceshifters some months ago. Enclaven faceshifters had killed the Exterminators for some reason but why. Argyle got some psychic impressions of the Exterminators finding a strange hidden area in TekVault0101 that seemed to be a temporary Enclaven infiltration base of operations. Not only were there faceshipters there disguised as vault citizens, Argyle 'saw' them with odd energy flickering around them, but also Enclaven Special Forces in stealth power armour or assault power armour. There had also been Enclaven techies and other specialists in survival power armour along with Enclaven androids and robots including eyebots hovering with their fanjets humming softly.

So not only was the Enclaven in TekVault0101 but it was there in some force; it was very bad news.

[mimi_lys]

NOTES

TEKVAULT0101
Overseer Government

*Prime Overseer: AI-Supercomputer Network-System
*Council of Overseers
*Departmental Overseers of Overseer Departments

*Directors

*Coordinators

*Supervisors

Overseer Security

*Officers

*Guards

*Troopers

Overseer Sheriff

*Deputies

*Constables

VaultShop Network

Common Citizenry

Other

*Officially Hidden Elites

*Rebels

*Free Zoners

*Rogues

*Convicts

*Others

Exotic

*Brainbug Infiltrators

*Doppelgangers

*Deformants and malformants

*Phantoms

*Others

[Lauren Denman]

01-16(0016)
FALLOUT QUEST EPIC: TEKVAULT0101 STRUGGLES

It was Enclaven faceshifters who had planted the bombs. Herbert found this out, along with other data, as he hacked the Enclaven mobile AI-supercomputer network with amazing efficiency. They had found the Enclaven outpost but a gristly surprise awaited them. Death, destruction and disorder lay through out the temporary base. Mounds of greasy ash and dropped gear indicated many doppelgangers had been destroyed but at least half of the Enclavers had suffered the same fate. Their bodies lay scattered, blasted and broken. The fighting had been savage. The other Enclaveners had taken with them what they could, including robots and androids, but had not moved out in a panic. They had departed with strong discipline.

Herbert frowned. "Most Enclavers are exotic clones of deadly design and intent. They are unnatural sociopaths with out conscious, with out any drive but the Enclaven Cause that is program-conditioned into them. Faceshifters are a subspecies of the clone-humans. Others are biomechanical cyborgs that have some features in common with yourself, Jasmine."

Jasmine369 studied the dead Enclaver woman on the autorobotic autopsy table. Forensics doctors, vaultfolk, had examined that and other clone bodies, both bio-cyborgs and faceshifters. Most bodies were in status-storage. The Overseer Council was shaken up by the discoveries, who could blame them, but the Prime Overseer was, of course, quite calm about it. Security was upgraded in attempts to discover not just doppelgangers and brainbug puppets but also faceshifters.

Gallows spoke. "We always seem to be one step behind what is happening."

Herbert shook his head, a little. "We are catching up. The Enclavers here are of the main Enclaven, not of the EagleEnclaven based in the EagleEnclave hidden in Alaska. This is a very top secret operation as instigated by the Enclaven Presidium itself who are in the very well hidden Central Enclave that could be in many more likely places around the world."

Jasmine369 examined the exposed flesh of the Enclaver woman. "So my flesh looks like that?"

"No!" Herbert responded. "You are an experimental prototype for you are both a limited bio-cycborg and a limited faceshifter. You are a compromise between the two with additional special abilities, some of them unintentional in nature. Your flesh is cleverly disguised and would need more than a basic inspection to reveal its true nature. I wish I knew how or why you were created or even who did the processing. It did not seem to be official Enclaven units who did so. We have picked up strong hints of at least one break away Enclaven Faction opposed to what has been happening in the main Enclaven. They may even have altered their name, their fundamental cause. We had some strong indicators of a secret civil war having taken place inside the Enclaven which led to the rise of the superclones and the demise of the old human based Enclaven Government. Perhaps the civil war is over and surviving Orthodox Enclaven Factions have gone into hiding or have transformed. We know that the TekCorporations, now based in the TekCommonwealth of New England, were once closely linked to the Enclaven but now they are enemies with them. The New United Commonwealths of America, NUCA, is certainly hostile to them. Some say that the EagleEnclaven is a puppet of the Enclaven but some have doubts about this. I am not sure."

Gallows frowned. "I heard reliable stories of Enclaven and EagleEnclaven Forces fighting each other. Then again, how 'reliable' can any such things be in the Wastelands?"

Jasmine369 took a small gulp of cold vault lemonade from a glass. Though she considered it a little too sugary sweet, she 'sensed' Neggsi the transformed brainbug gain delight from the taste sensation that it shared with her. She sighed and 'stroked' Neggsi in a way hard to explain in words and Neggsi gave a psychic pur.

Just how reliable was anything in the Wastelands?

[Amy Smith]

00-01(0017)
FALLOUT QUEST EPIC: MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

The Mysterious Stranger was hidden in shadow in the twilighish conditions of the DC, the semidarkness caused by the distorted conditions of the Wastelands. The crater centred settlement of Megaton was close by but was locked down in fear for good reasons.

High overhead in space, and high in the atmosphere, a battle was raging between Skynet units and zetan aliens. Skynet orbital-forts, hunter-killers and other units were firing plasma pulses, railgun projectiles and smart-missiles at the zetan saucercraft. Zetan saucerboats, saucerjets and small saucerships were attacking in return. The flash of disintegration beams, the explosions of missiles impacting against force barriers or destroying enemies, the burning fall of machines, was accompanied by the muffled noises of a brutal savage battle taking place.

In the distance a burning zetan saucerboat crashed into the ground with a big dramatic explosion. Even the fauna, including the most dangerous of mutated beasties, had fled into what cover that they could find. The sounds of frightened wild mutant cattle could be heard, being monstrous powerful brahmads. High overhead dark clouds skudded through the sky.

In the distance a big autorobotic Earthnet tower unleashed a smart-missile upwards, the projectile climbing rapidly towards some zetan target. There were not many surviving Earthnet facilities, networks, in the DC but people left the survivors alone because nobody wanted to deal with zetans coming down out of the sky in force. Anyway such facilities were amazingly well fortified and otherwise defended including with strange force fields, androids, robots and cyborgs. Earthnet did not interfere with local affairs and local factions, even the most powerful, kept away from Earthnet.

They Mysterious Stranger was waiting for something special to happen and then it did. Professor James Ash, along with companions from TekVault0101 including robots and androids, came moving into view. It was a fair sized group being quite well equipped and supplied. Professor James Ash was no typical brainbug puppet or was he some kind of doppelganger but he was no longer fully human, was no longer the man who had discovered a terrible secret in AlphaBeta111. It had been a very unfortunate event and it had both changed James and unleashed onto a devastated world a horror that should have been destroyed on Doomsday. An attempt to destroy this very horror had been one of the causes of Doomsday.

One aspect of that horror was buried inside Professor James Ash, had largely absorbed James but something very small and vital remained of the human he used to be; perhaps there was some hope for him yet.

The Mysterious Stranger could have destroyed James, and his companions, but the hidden horror was unleashed and was also in other parts of the DC. The Mysterious Stranger had to track down and eliminate the main threat and hoped that the insane obsssessed professor would lead him to the right place somehow.

A deathclaw, a juvenile advlt male, roared with futile rage at the distant space battle but then became quiet as an alpha male advlt swatted him across the snout for his troubles.

A rogue robot, suffering from the berserker computer virus, came rolling through the landscape on its tracks. The Mysterious Stranger smiled. Soon he would have the robot cured and he would take it with him to Megaton to give it to the Megaton Leadership Council as a good will gift. He needed their cooperation if he was to do what he needed to do in Megaton before Professor Ash, and his group, actually left the large, well fortified settlement.

He could sense a platoon of Rangers of Steel, elite fighting scouts, hiding in ruins about half a kilometre away. Since the Orderdom of Steel had arisen in the DC, not to be confused with offshoot factions, the OSDC had been doing much in those Wastelands. The Mysterious Stranger was pleased, as were others, for the OSDC was badly needed there to help tilt the balance of forces towards a more positive state.

Professor James Ash kept moving and his private assistant, a beautiful android woman, moved close to him but it was no typical android at all but something deeply unsettling so that other humans in the group kept their distance from her and the other androids in the group were wary of her in their own way. The robots just did their thing.

[Jaylene Brower]

01-17(0018)
FALLOUT QUEST EPIC: TEKVAULT0101 STRUGGLES

They found the super-cycle mattercator that was producing the doppelgangers from 'templates' which were lifeforms in special capsules. When they found the hidden site the big network-system was semiactive, was producing nothing, but they had to fight a large number of doppelgangers. As the combined assault force struck, doppelgangers converged on the area from all over. The combat was intense but the doppelgangers were not organised, often did seemingly stupid things and died easily when confronting an organised fighting force.

Jasmine369, Herbert, Argyle, Gallows, her friend Amata123 and some others including Sarah and the Lyons Pride. Amata123 had been sent by her father, the Security Overseer, as an informal laison to Jasmine369 and her companions. She had also come to be with her friend for in more recent, more troubled, times they had not been together much.

The muffled sounds of fighting came to her at times but it was dying down as the last of the doppelgangers were being destroyed. All of them had come to the super-cycle mattercator chamber as if drawn to defend it by some influence they could not resist.

Amata123 spoke even as Herbert, with some vault specialists, deactivated the unsafe super-cycle mattercator; this process took far more than pressing one or more buttons for the mattercators had a kind of nuclear cycle going on inside them and this had to be safely brought to a halt. It was human-alien hybrid technologies at work that was more versatile, more powerful, but more dangerous to use than safe-cycle mattercation was. Such poorly understood technologies had helped lead to the Mars Doomsday.

Amata123 spoke quietly to Jasmine369. "Father is not himself but he is not a doppelganger and he has been found to be clean of brainbugs; he certainly is no Enclaven faceshifter; yet I think he is under the influence of something dark, something secretive and selfish that I 'sense' when I am close to him."

"Now that you speak of it, I feel the same." Jasmine369 realized then that she needed to have greater faith in her empathic side, in her 'gut feelings' though she was far better at doing this than she had been. "I wonder what it is?"

Argyle showed up and spoke. "I do not mean to offend by breaking in but my enhanced hearing picked up your words. We have been hunting for it for them for many years now and have destroyed one of them. They are linked to the doppelgangers somehow and other threats arising in the Wastelands such as the mutagenic mutants of TekVault0087. They 'possess' some individuals somehow and go between individuals when they can and want to do so. There are only certain people, in certain states of mind, who they can 'possess'. We knew Alphonse049 was 'possessed' by a shadoz when we first met him but a very powerful one that will be hard to deal with. As more than one they are called shadoza and the whole people are the Shadonz, if one can call them a 'people'. We know too little about the Shadonz except that they are willing to do much harm in order to gain what ever it is that they are after."

Jasmine369 frowned. "Do you suspect that my father is also 'possessed' by a shadoz?"

"You are quick of mind." Argyle frowned softly. "We know he is and that the Shadonz sometimes use brainbugs to help control somebody just as other dark factions do, such as the Enclaven. When we find such as brainbugs are involved in a situation, it does not lead to an easy answer to who might be behind it or even if there is anybody because there are wild brainbugs."

Amata123 shuddered a little. "The Wastelands are seeming worse the more I learn."

"Thankfully there are good factors also, there are good factions, even good nuetral factions and also other reasons for hope." He nodded. "The Wastelands are terrible in many areas but less so in others. Some things I can not speak of but, yes, there is hope."

[adam holden]

Thanks for the positive feedback, kdn003. I am used to having little feedback in this forum but what I do get tends to be positive.

If you're looking for more feedback, the best way to get it is to leave some on other fan-fics. Authors greatly appreciate it and constructive critiscim is always welcome.

[Benjamin Holz]

Thanks for the positive feedback and suggestion, kdn003. I will do as you suggest.

01-18(0019)
FALLOUT QUEST EPIC: TEKVAULT0101 STRUGGLES

They took the Security Overseer into safe custody. Even his closest followers seemed reluctant to support him for he had been behaving more erractically as time went on. The shadoz was gone, had moved on, but had left behind lots of psychological damage. This was the prognosis of Herbert and Argyle, both of whom had examined him. Herbert doubted that the terrible exotic entity would have staid around once it knew there were people in the vault who could detect it and harm it. The Shadonz were not known for their courage.

TekVault0101 began to make positive changes. The Overseer Government declared the official end of isolationism and that in future there would be open, formal attempts to trade with the settlement of Megaton. Malformants and deformants gained full citizenship as did peoples of the Free Zones. The Overseer Government elites were not happy about what was happening but the vault was in trouble and they had no choice but to make concessions. The vault badly needed resources from outside.

Details of the secret scouting expedition to Megaton, that had taken place before, and the allowing into the vault of some outsiders, were released to the public. Overseer Security did not want this to happen but was overriden by the Overseer Council. Many citizens were angry that the Overseer Government had shown such hypocracy in doing the opposite of what it demanded from the common vaultfolk.

Gallows and Sarah Lyons officially, and openly, met to talk with Overseer Government representatives to discuss future relations between the TekVault and the Orders of Steel.

Jasmine369 was not sure what she would do next for she wanted both to stay and assist with the vault changes, to be with her friends there, and to go to meet her mother at AlphaBeta111 below the great memorial. It was Herbert who told her of the amazing solution; Jasmine369 could be cloned with surprising ease, given the right equipment, which was in the vault because she was designed that way. Jasmine369 would remain in TekVault0101 and Jasmine, with out the numbers, would go back to the big underground research and development base. The two would remain linked in a special manner, being able to communicate empath-telepathically, which would also be helpful to others.

A big sweep was undertaken and no more doppelgangers were found. They had been all drawn to defend the super-mattercator and to their destruction. This was good because the vault had enough problems to solve with out the extra threat of the bizarre entities.

The cloning process, of Jasmine from Jasmine369, went smoothly and yet with an extra result. The chubby muscular baby like figure was like Jasmine369, and Jasmine, in many ways but she was small and adorable. So was created, unintentionally, Jasmie the neobaby. Yet it was to prove to be fortunate that this one came to live.

An expedition of TekVault0101 envoys would set out to go to Megaton and with them would go Herbert, Argyle and Gallows along with three from the vault who wanted to experience the Wastelands. For the moment Sarah Lyons, and the Lyons Pride, would stay in the vault before they set out to go deep into New Washington DC on a mission that she would not speak of except to Gallows.

There was a new feeling of hope that had sprung up in the vault.