I hope there are still some Vegas-loving forumers around because I would like to discuss the often overlooked character of Anthony House. Because frankly, his story does not add up. Forgive me if this will be a long read because I would like to take the time to outline my thoughts on the story. I hope you will add your own thoughts if you are interested in this kind of stuff.

For those who might have missed the character altogether, Anthony House was supposedly Robert House's half-brother. He apparently cheated Robert House out of his inheritance, the H&H Tools Company. You can find some general information about him http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Anthony_House.

Now the supposed story is as follows: Robert House, born in 2020, loses his parents "at an early age" due to an accident. The exact age is never specified but at some point you no longer qualify as being at "an early age", so we can narrow the date of their deaths to until Robert was at maximum around 15 years old. So they would have died in or before 2035. Now in one of the http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/H%26H_Tools_Factory_terminal_entries in the H&H Tools Factory Anthony writes in 2068 that his father "always loved him (Robert) best". Since Anthony uses the word 'always' we can only assume that Robert was not orphaned shortly after birth, there would have needed to be some time between House Senior and Robert in order to make Anthony think that their father 'always' loved Robert best. This also might imply Anthony is older than Robert to have witnessed the bond between House Senior and Robert, but it's not set in stone. Either way I think it's safe to say Robert might have been at least five years old before his parents died, which puts the date of their deaths around somewhere between 2025 and 2035.

Now here is where things get a little weird. Take a look at the terminal entries on the link I posted a few lines above, and look at the dates of the entries. The timeline is completely strange. The entries are basically divided into two categories: The company e-mails are all sent between 2020 and 2023. Every entry that can be attributed to Robert's half-brother dates between 2061 and 2077, with one cut entry from 2053. There is a time gap of about 40 years between the e-mails detailing the company's new security measures and Anthony House's paranoid entries.

So how can this time gap be explained? From looking at the company e-mails Cindy Lou Kreb sends you would assume they allign with the half-brother's paranoid entries. But they are 40 years apart and the first one sent by Kreb is from 2020. So does that mean Anthony took over the company after his father died in 2020, the very year Robert was born? He is still in charge of the company in 2077. Does that mean he ran the company for 57 years? Not to mention Cindy-Lou Kreb is also mentioned as being alive in the entry from 2077, so has she been working there for 57 years too?

One other strange thing is that the final entry, on 2077, is signed by "Alexander House". This could be an oversight but somehow I doubt it. The terminal is called "Anthony House's terminal" so it would have to be a very stupid oversight.

Now my own theory is as follows; House Senior was just as nuts as Robert's half-brother was. The entries detailing the restricting new security measures between 2020 and 2023 are not the work of the half-brother, but of House Senior who was in my estimate still alive at this point. When he died somewhere between 2025 and 2035 the company passed to Robert's half-brother in name only. Think about this: The first entry found was written in 2020, the last in 2077. The first describes the new security measures taken by presumably Robert's half-brother and the last entry is from the man himself. At what age can you run a company? 20 years old? So going by the 57 year age gap between the two entries that would mean the half-brother still ran the company at the age of 77 and he would have been a full 20 years older than Robert. Somehow I doubt all of that. My personal thoughts are that when House Senior died between 2025 and 2035 a man named Henderson took charge of running the business. The company is named H&H Tools after all, the second 'H' could very plausibly stand for Henderson. Henderson is clearly an important figure in the company since the half-brother is afraid he is conspiring with Robert.

So, when Robert and his half-brother are old enough Robert goes off to MIT and his half-brother takes control of the company. The half-brother keeps talking about his father's legacy and Cindy-Lou and Henderson, even 57 years after Cindy-Lou sent her first recorded e-mail. But they're both dead or long retired. They're all in his head and he has become just as paranoid as his father was. In his mind he perhaps is his father in some way, carrying forth the House legacy and talking paranoid delusions about his father's employees. In 2068 he asks his father why he has "stopped talking to me (him)" and he also wears the "special hat" that prevents thought-stealing after Cindy-Lou described the same hat 45 years earlier. And, of course, he uses the old terminal that was once his father's. So while the terminal says "Anthony House's terminal" the last entry is signed by "Alexander House". Anthony House is Robert's father, Alexander is the half-brother. Robert built RobCo while Alexander was running H&H Tools and when RobCo became large enough it took over H&H and made them part of the process of developing Robert's Securitrons (the H&H Tools logo can be found on the robots). He kept Alexander on as his employee to run H&H Tools. We've seen in NV that Robert takes pride in having had thousands of employees and he is proud of the fact that the tribes of the Strip are now his employees. His own hated half-brother would have been a nice trophy for him in that regard. Thus Alexander still runs the company in 2077, and his last entry is both an act of anti-communist paranoia and a last single act of defiance against Robert; activating the security systems, killing off all the employees and thus destroying H&H Tools, and disappearing from the grounds.

I honestly don't know if any of this makes sense to you guys or if I am reading way too much into something. Perhaps Cindy-Lou's emails should have been dated somewhere between 2060 and 2063 which would clear up the confusion, although I doubt it since there are several of these emails and they all make sense on their own from a chronological standpoint. Please let me know what you think.