Jacob Burns and the Order of the Algorithm #Wattys2017

Chapter 5: The Last Will & Testament of Dr. Isaac Astor

I couldn't look away. My eyes were glued to the screen like a brain-dead lobotomite. I stared at the television, completely entranced, as the man walked out of the frame and the message set to play again. I'd heard of moving pictures before, but the closest I'd ever come was an old slide projector full of military specs and training materials. I looked over at Ilya, almost expecting her to be just as amazed as I was, but instead she was smiling like a kid on Saturday morning, just waiting for her favorite program to begin. It was in that moment that it struck me how far away from home she really was.

"...Ilya," the man spoke again and the smile stretched even wider over her face.

"It's him, it's my father! I knew it, I knew he wouldn't leave me all alone!" She cranked up the volume just as the message began again.

The man stepped back into the frame, much clearer than before. He was in his late fifties, and even though he was wearing a white lab coat and those thick Nuka-bottle glasses that had a way of making all scientists look like giant bloatflies, it was the look in those sullen bloodshot eyes that gave him away for what he really was.

I'd seen that same look every day in the mirror for the past three months. It was a look full of regret, beat down and defeated, maybe even a little self-loathing. It was the look of a broken man.

"My daughter, I am sorry, but if you are hearing this, then I am already dead." The girl's smile quickly faded as the last hope for her father vanished before her very eyes.

"Please don't be distraught, I've known this was coming for a long time. We all have a part to play, and now, this is mine. At the very least I can leave you this message, to help prepare you for the trials ahead."

"There are things you don't know, that you must understand. The world as you knew it wasn't all that it seemed. I... am not all that I seem. I wish I had more time to tell you everything, wish I had been honest in the first place, but I was a fool and thought I could do it all myself. I realize now I was just being selfish. I wanted to keep you safe from all the terrible realities of this world, but now I've only left you unprepared for the next." His voice wavered as he spoke, tears threatening to spill from his eyes.

"All of this, everything that's happened, it all comes down to one thing: Project Omega."

"It was our vision, mine and Braun's. All of Vault-Tec's research was leading up to it, the final solution to the apocalypse and the wasteland it would leave behind. It was to be my greatest achievement, my legacy, but little did I know what he was willing to do... the kind of people he was willing to work with...

"I'd known since the beginning that Braun was taking money from some unsavory characters. Foreign governments looking for favors, millionaires wanting their own post-apocalyptic accommodations, even the covert communist after the odd weapon or power source, but none of them compared with... the Order."

"They came at a time when we needed them most. Our research was failing, and we owed money to almost everyone. The government was threatening to pull our funding, and our investors were the kind of people that did not tolerate excuses, nor left any loose ends. But then they came... the men in suits. They brought with them seemingly endless amounts of cash, but more than that, they gave us access to technologies we'd never seen before, perhaps not even of this earth. It expedited our research tenfold, and we realized a sustainable solution was within our grasp, but it all came at a terrible price. I soon found myself loosing control of my own project, and Braun, so eager to appease our new financiers, found new and horrifying ways to make me question my very humanity."