I ask him where I can trade, and he directs me towards Craterside Supply.  I go but it’s closed, so I have look around town while I wait for daybreak.  This place is a dump.  Sheet metal nailed together to make buildings, leaking pipes, a fuckin atom bomb in the middle of the damn town… what a bastion of humanity.

Once the shop is open, I go in and sell everything that I looted out of the vault on my way out.  Moira, the shopkeeper, rambles on about a book she’s writing while she is counting out my bottle caps.   She asks if I can say something about my vault as a foreword, and I told her the vault sucked.  She seemed to think that was wonderful and asked me if I’d help out with some research.  She’s got money and weapons and ammo, and I need all that, so I tell her that it will cost her but I’ll do some work for her.  She tells me I gotta do a few things: walk through a minefield, get horribly irradiated, and get food and medication from a supermarket.  Hey, that third one sounds like easy money.  Let’s get that done.

She shows me on my map where a place called the “Super Duper Mart” is located and asks me to bring back any food or medicine I find there.   I head to the mart and let myself inside.  I hear voices, so I crouch down in the dark and make my way among the shelving that is still standing.   Then all hell broke loose.  A bullet ricochets off of the shelf I am standing next to, so I look around and see where it came from– some raider bitch about 15 paces off.  I take careful aim and plug her three times in the gut, then turn to my right, where another raider has appeared after hearing the shots.  I was able to get a few bullets into him, then snuck my way to the back of the store where the intercom system was.  I hid in here for a few mintues, going through boxes, and found a whole mess of food.  I grabbed everything I could carry and made my way back out and around to the other side of the store.  I had the fortune of coming across several more raiders on my way across the store, and they all quickly died.  I got to the pharmacy area, found the password to the computer and helped myself to all their meds.  I also noticed a computer in the pharmacy that I poked around at, and got a lucky guess when I guessed “smoke” was the password, and was able to unleash some kind of idiot robot into the store.  The robot tried to fight one of the two remaining raiders, but the raider beat it until it stopped working.  I managed to take these two raiders out without much fuss, then happily cleaned all the corpses of their belongings.

I headed back to Megaton, my backpack and clip full.  I readied my gun when I went back into the supply store; for all I know, Moira could have been setting me up.  She seemed happy to see me, though, and was pleased with what I found.  I sold off anything I didn’t need and told her to fuck herself for those other tasks, then made my way to the saloon, where I met a man with a fascinating proposition.

After walking for about half a mile, making a loose circle around the vault, I saw what looked like a house on the horizon.  I decided to see if anyone was there worth killing, but the closer I got the less I thought it would be worth my time.  The house was mostly gutted, but I walked in anyway.  Found a precarious stairway once inside and made my way up.   The old wood creaked under my weight, and I saw that there wasn’t much up here besides a desk, a chair, and… oh, a dead guy.  Most of his clothes and flesh had rotted away, and he was still sitting in the chair hunched over the desk with his hands on a nice hunting rifle.  I helped myself… after all, skeletons don’t need guns… and grabbed the ammo on the desk, then got out of there.  I decided to have a look at my Pipboy and see if there were any radio stations out there.  I was able to pick two up– something called the Enclave and something called Galaxy News.  Listened to the news station first and got nothing but static.  Tried the enclave station and there was some shitty music looping.  No thanks.  Turned the radio off, took a look at my map, and decided to make my way towards Megaton, where my father was supposedly going.

I took the “scenic” route.  By “scenic” I mean I got lost and wandered around being attacked by some disgusting dog-like creatures which I promptly shot.  I eventually came upon some sort of ramschackle town that looked like it was held together with twisty ties from bags of bread.  I walked around this piece of shit city until I found a way in via a bridge.  There was some prick sitting there half asleep in the dusk who stopped me and started asking annoying questions.  Who am I, where did I come from?  I told him I was the king of the fuckin wasteland.   He said he didn’t mind if I killed everyone in town, there was nothing here worth stealing and everyone’s expecting death from all the super mutants nearby anyway.  Wait, the who?  Supermutants?  All I have is a hunting rifle and this piece of shit 10mm handgun.  I don’t want to be here when supermutants come and skullfuck these sad assholes.  I cut the guard off and got the hell out of there.

My trip to the big bad city of Megaton was largely uneventful; some woman in a leather jacket tried to hit me with a pool cue but I shot her in the tits and stripped her bare.  Killed a few more dogs too, and some nasty creatures that looked like big hamsters.  The sun was down when I finally made it to Megaton.  There was a robot at the front gate that welcomed me and the gates opened before me.

I strode into Megaton, hand on my gun, and I was greeted by a bearded cowboy with some sort of rifle strapped to his back.  He introduced himself as Lucas Simms, and that he was the Sherriff in these here parts.

So a couple of hilarious things happened on my way to the vault exit.  I had to cap a security guard, but at least that got me some decent security armor and a helmet.  After cleaning his blood off as best I could, I put this stuff on and started walking towards the overseer’s office.  As fate would have it, we had a lovely radroach infestation at the same time, so that distracted a lot of guards long enough for me to kill them.  Anyway, hilarious thing #1:  I’m walking down the hall and hear a whimpering, and as I get a little closer, there’s Butch crying! He asks me to help his mom, as she is being attacked by radroaches.  He begged me! I told him to beg harder.   He does, and offers me what I’ve never wanted: a place in his shitty Vault gang.  Whoopee! I laughed at him and told him to go to hell.  I walked over to the wall window where I could see into the room where Butch’s mom was and watched her get eaten by roaches.  I laughed and then remembered the gun I had in my hand…

I could still hear Butch down the hall crying.  I walked around the wall and he was facing away from me.  I held my gun with both hands, taking careful aim at the back of Butch’s head, and put him down for good.  Man, that felt good.  At least now he can hang out with his mom in Hell.

I went through the halls, killing any of the roaches that were stupid enough to come up to me.  I came across Jerome, who was dead, and checked his corpse.  He had an audio recording from my dad on him; I half listened to it.  Blah blah blah, love you, but I’m out… blah blah blah.  Continued my trip and eventually made it to the hallway leading to the Overseer’s office.  I heard his voice, so I made sure to be as quiet as I could and tiptoe down the hallway.  As I got closer to an open room, I peeked at the wall window and saw him and one of his cronies staring down Amata.  I could understand the Overseer’s words now; he was not happy with her or with me.  I crept around the frame of the door, and again took careful aim at the back of the overseer’s head.  I pulled my trigger and something happened I didn’t expect:  I hit him perfectly at the base of his skull and his fuckin head came clean off! I popped his cronie in the face as he came running to start some shit with me and checked on Amata.  She had her father’s blood on her, but it didn’t seem to bother her too much.  She thanked me for saving her and gave me the password to her pop’s computer so I could get the fuck out of this Vault.  I got to his computer and snooped around in the files.  There’s some shit about me and my dad here.  Looks like he is going to a place called Megaton.  The machine let me open the vault, so I opened his secret compartment underneath his desk, and headed down to the vault door, which looks like a giant gear set into a wall.  As I got down to the vault and triggered the door to open to the wasteland, Amata caught up to me and tearfully told me I didn’t have to kill her dad.  She was thanking me 10 minutes ago, but now it’s not cool? Make up your fuckin mind! I oughta put you down too! Hey, that might be fun! She never did let me go all the way with her, despite all her advances.  Fuckin tease.  I reloaded my clip and pulled the hammer back so I could wax her, but the security crew had finally caught up to me and I wasn’t about to try to take on 4 guys with guns.  I ran my ass off into the cave behind the vault door, and the refused to follow.  I made my way through the cave and after a few yards, for the first time in my life, I saw sunlight.

Much of my young childhood I don’t have vivid memories of until I turned 10.  I was given my Pipboy 3000 on my tenth birthday.  This meant I would start doing odd jobs around the vault.  My father brought me to one of the small dining halls where Amata, the daughter of the overseer and a girl that, for no reason apparent to me, wanted to be my friend, had planned a surprise party.   The party was uninteresting… an old lady gave me a shitty poem as a present (what 10 year old wants a fucking poem? worst present ever) and at one of the tables in the back sat an arrogant little fuck that was a little older than me that I’ve never gotten along with: Butch.  This guy’s been a prick to me as long as I can remember.  He said some snotty things to me and I walked off, making a mental note to replace his shampoo with acid.

After a robot decided it would be a good idea to cut my cake with a circular buzz saw, my father brought me to Jerome to give me a surprise present.  I’ve always liked Jerome… he’s a smart fella and he isn’t one of the mindless sheep that eats all the Vault bullshit that gets fed to us every day.  Anyway, Jerome and my dad gave me a BB gun.  I told my dad I would have rather had a shotgun, but a gun’s a gun.  Maybe if I shot Butch enough times in the same spot I could draw blood.

Nothing spectacular or interesting happened for the next several years, until I turned 16 and was scheduled to take the GOAT exam.  This exam is supposed to tell you what your job in the vault will end up being.  On my way to the exam, I saw Butch and his asskissing friends harassing Amata.  I walked up and didn’t even let that little prick open his mouth… I just punched him until he asked me to stop (trying to be cool by telling me I “wasn’t worth it” when I could tell that little shiteater had tears in his eyes).  Amata thanked me… this will probably get me to second base with her. Finished the GOAT and went on with life for a few years, until…