The Past

Post » Thu Dec 09, 2010 7:12 pm

Just want to run this little story by you guys and get a few hints/tips and opinions. English is not my native language, therefore i might have made a few errors.


1. The Past
Max was a scientist as much as he was a scavenger. His old rusted sawed off shotgun kept him company in the fear filled nights on the wastelands.
The city had gone bad, really bad, yet this was the best place for him to stay, for now.

Max had dedicated his life to scavenging the pre-war technologies, and understand their functions as well as the ideas behind the concepts.
In his search across the wasteland Max stumbled upon the technology museum, though not accidentally, and was busy rewiring the computers to get power on them.

He had been alone for a long time, he wasn’t the man for company. He was a person who could become your best friend but might as well be your worst enemy.
Rather then waiting to see if a person would be friendly, Max would let his gun decide for him and he was not a bad shot.

To get by, he sold the pre-war technology to whomever would buy it, be it raiders or the honest people at Big Town, he didn’t really care.
Except for Talon Company, his dog used to be his one and only companion for the last years in the wasteland, that was until someone from Talon company shot the poor animal in the head.
To this day Max refuses to do business with Talon company other then exchanging bullets for lives.

As he was crouched to reach the wiring under the desk on which the main computer was settled Max suddenly felt the cold, hard touch of steel on the back of his neck.
He thought for a split second and very slowly tried to grab his combat knife from his boot.

“Please don’t take me for an idiot stranger, a smart man could have a knife in that boot.” The voice sounded like it came from an older man, there wasn’t much more Max could deduct from hearing him speak other then it might not be a wise decision to grab the knife.

“Put your hands on the back of your head and slowly stand up. In that particular order, stranger.” The old man ordered him.

As max put his hands on the back of his head and slowly stood up he felt something in his side.
As he looked out of the corner of his eye he saw a hand with a leather glove on it take his sawed off shotgun from his belt.

“It would be better to not have to shoot you. You’ll be worth a lot more to me when you’re alive. What’s your business here anyway, why are you trying to hardwire the computers?”

“I was just looking around,” Max responded, he tried to turn his head to face the man, but the old man made quick work of that and pushed his head back.

“You know mate, looking around doesn’t have anything to do with touching the wiring of the computers with your hands. Oh and another thing, a man who’s ‘looking around’ doesn’t really need a sawed off shotgun, you my dear sir are a scavenger.”

“Scientist,” Max mumbled.

“Whatever you want, whatever you want. To get back to my original question which you decided to not answer, what’s with the computers?”

“Look, I was trying to get the computers to work. I’m trying to find something, okay? Why don’t you just turn around and walk away.”

“What is it that you’re looking for?”

“If I tell you I’d have to kill you,” Max said with a sarcastic tone in his voice.
User avatar
Budgie
 
Posts: 3518
Joined: Sat Oct 14, 2006 2:26 pm

Post » Thu Dec 09, 2010 6:46 am

“Now, now, don’t get rude with me. I haven’t done anything to deserve that, and we would want to go shoot each other, now would we?
Oh wait, you don’t have anything to shoot with” The man laughed.

While the man was laughing Max felt the barrel of the gun lifting off the back of his head and then touching it again.
The new barrel was different though, there wasn’t one, there where two barrels now. He picked up my sawed off shotgun, Max thought to himself.

“I’m not so sure you even have a gun” Max said as he lowered his arms.

“Well what can I tell you, you’re right, well part of it anyway. I didn’t have a gun, but now I’ve got you’re shotgun, stranger.” The man had a big grin on his face as he
showed max the piece of steel pipe he held against his head.

“At least you can be sure one of us has a weapon,” Max said as he turned around, “and you’re not it. That shotgun is empty.”

The grin on the man’s face quickly turned into an amazed look, a look as if he’d seen water burning. That look however soon went over into fear as Max quickly got his combat knife out of his boot,
turned around and held the knife to the mans throat.

“Give me the gun,” Max demanded and the man quickly handed over the gun. Max put his combat knife back in his boot and pointed the gun at the man.

“But, it’s empty,” the man said with a surprised look on his face.

“you want to try?” Max responded.

An awkward silence filled the large hall of the technology museum as Max stood there with his shotgun pointed to the man’s head.
The man on the other hand was thinking, trying to make the decision if Max had a bullet or not. They stood in a face-off looking at each other for about five minutes.
Max’s face never showed any emotion, while the man kept looking to Max and then his shotgun.

Max studied the man, he wore an beaten down metal armor had grey long hear and a beard. He had a look of fear in his eyes,
which most likely came from Max pointing the gun at his forehead. The man was wearing a necklace which contained a pendant with the sign of the slavers.

“Filthy slaver, where you really going to enslave me?” Max frowned upon the man.

Suddenly the man seemed to have reached his decision and made a run for it, without hesitating Max fired his shotgun… a flash, a bang and then nothing.

“it’s a f*cking dud.” Max said to himself. Max quickly grabbed the combat knife out of his boot and threw it at the man, flinging it directly into the window post which wasn’t even located near the man.
“Damn it.” Max shouted as the man ran outside and disappeared from his sight.

Although Max might have been a good shot, his throwing was something that could need some work. Max walked over to the window post and pulled out his knife.
He needed to make haste, more slavers where bound to show up and the last thing he wanted was to become someone’s pet.
User avatar
Rinceoir
 
Posts: 3407
Joined: Thu Jun 29, 2006 1:54 am

Post » Thu Dec 09, 2010 7:34 am

2. Max

Max grew up in Megaton he never got to know his real parents but was lovingly taken in by a family of traders. From the traders Max learned about the wasteland,
especially where the money was. Caring for nothing more then making a few bucks Max set out into the wastelands and traded guns, ammunitions and body armor.

At the age of nineteen he had a fixed trade route from the slavers in Paridise falls to the raiders to Big Town and then Megaton. Max made quite a fair bit of
money out of trading with nearly everyone in the wasteland, but that money would disappear just as fast when he was raided.

After two years of running the wastes Max grew tired of the raids and stopped his trade route for a while, and went to live in Megaton visiting
Moriarties on a regular basis. Moriarties was a bar filled with lowlife scum, Max went in there to get a few drinks and maybe get a good nights sleep with one of the ladies.

One day in Moriarties Max found himself sitting next to what looked like an old merchant from somewhere in the capital wastelands.
The man mostly told stories about vaults and shadow governments, Max didn’t really pay any attention to it, and declared them to be the ramblings of an old man.
The man kept showing up for the next couple of days, but it wasn’t until the man started talking about pre-war technology and how there where certain
groups paying serious money for it that Max showed any interest.

Max started a conversation with the man, the man claimed to be an old vault scientist. The man spoke in such details about the vaults that Max got seriously interested in his stories.
Max, being twenty-one years of age, became an apprentice to the vault scientist. During the next eight years Max was thought all the knowledge the man himself
possessed about the pre-war world and the pre-war and current world technology.

Max would be twenty-nine years of age when the scientist disappeared. The scientist would normally travel back to his vault, of which Max never got the location,
for a few months and then come back and teach Max more of the past. But this time it was different, the man disappeared without letting Max know and never returned.
Max spend a few months search the wasteland but had to return empty handed.

During the following five years Max managed to setup his own private lab in the wasteland city of Washington. He continued to teach himself more about the past,
and sold the old technology he had no use for to different parties. It was in these five years that Max would become a loner, a man with about as much friends you could count on one hand.
A hand with no fingers that is.

His life consisted of scavenging for technology during the day time and stealing food during the night time, leaving him very little time to sleep.
Sleeping was a dangerous act anyway in the wastelands with all the ghouls stalking the streets at night.

At one of his searches in the capital wasteland sewers Max found a body of a man dressed in a jumpsuit. The jumpsuit had the number 101 stitched on his back,
when Max searched the body for assets which might prove useful he stumbled across nothing more then a few flares, a broken 10mm pistol and some type of voice recording.

Deciding that the voice recording might hold some value, Max took it home with him. The voice recording proofed to be nearly completely broken due to being left in the waste for a long time.
It took max a few weeks of hard work to get anything useful out of the tapes.
User avatar
Jade
 
Posts: 3520
Joined: Mon Jul 10, 2006 6:42 am

Post » Thu Dec 09, 2010 8:36 am

3. The recording

“The date is march something 2248, I think, I can’t tell what day it is cause I’ve been locked in this hole for weeks on end. Oh yes, this is voice recording number twelve of my findings and it will be my last one.

The days have moved slowly after locking myself in this hole, I know they’re after me for what I’ve uncovered and I hope they can’t find me here, I might just have enough food and water to last me a few days, but I’ve decided not to use it. May everyone forgive for the choices I’ve made, but my pistol is going to become my saviour.

-a sigh is heard on the voice recording- After discovering the location of the Spaceship Agency Control Center in the Museum of Technology, I head over to the mountain range. There are still satellites in orbit around the Earth, and they still have power, long live the power of fusion I guess.

The Control Center has the most still working pre-war technology I have ever witnessed in my life. That’s a lot coming from a man living in a vault. Half of the technology I’ve never seen before, it must have gone lost in the wastelands, but the satellites…”

Metal footsteps are heard on the voice recording – “Oh my god… they must be near me. I don’t know what they want of me, I haven’t even connected to the satellites yet. I don’t have much time. I hope they don’t find me and take the voice recording, to anyone out there the satellites is where the past is… that’s all I can say.

God forgive me, I had no choice.”

-End of recording-

This must have been the one hundredth time Max had listened to the voice recording, no clues, no signs just “museum of technology”. Max put down the small audio-playback device he’d put together himself and crouched under the table.

“Wires, wires, it’s all wires.” Max thought out loud. Suddenly he heard footsteps outside of the museum. “Slavers.” Max said as he jumped on his feet, quickly he grabbed all his equipment and ran towards the other side of the building towards the emergency exit.

Out of breath Max reached the doors, slowly opened them and took a look outside. “Empty, perfect” Max put the backpack with equipment over one shoulder and slowly walked away from the museum towards his home, “better luck tomorrow.”
User avatar
Yvonne Gruening
 
Posts: 3503
Joined: Mon Apr 23, 2007 7:31 pm

Post » Thu Dec 09, 2010 9:51 pm

Awesome, I'll start with some of the error I found

First Post:

rewiring the computers to get power on them


It would probably sound better if it read like:

rewiring the computers to get the power on.

OR

rewiring the computers, to turn them on.

I think the first choice is better though.

Second Post:

armor had grey long hear and a beard.


You kind of mixed up the the words there it would read better:

armor and had long, gray hair and a beard.

Third Post:

most still working


You can get rid of Still

-a sigh is heard on the voice recording-


I always thought it would read better and show us more if it read something like:

-there's a rush of static as the man sighs-

Of course that's just my opinion...


Your story seems find to me, just a lone man out in the wastes with an obsession for technology. That's all the advice I got right now, I'm pretty sure other people will cover what I missed, until then, keep writing. :thumbsup:
User avatar
Breanna Van Dijk
 
Posts: 3384
Joined: Mon Mar 12, 2007 2:18 pm


Return to Fallout Series Discussion