Tinker Tom was hovering over us when I woke up, startling a surprised squeak out of me and causing MacCready to roll onto the cold stone floor reaching for his rifle. As soon as we had identified him, my partner stalked off in a foul temper to clear his head and see if there might be anything for breakfast.
"What the hell? Did you sleep at all, Tom?" I asked, yawning and shivering a little in the drafty corner.
"No, no, no!" he babbled excitedly, "No time to sleep when your little device has such goodies hidden inside!" He grabbed my arm, nearly dragging me to his workstation. My Pip-Boy was still attached to his terminal, which was scrolling a seemingly endless screen of programming text, a complete mystery to me. "Let me tell you, this little thing is amazing! I've only scratched the surface, though."
"What can you tell me?" I yawned, waking up at the prospect of actually getting some answers.
Instead of answering immediately, Tom hustled around the room gathering a couple of extra chairs, placing them near his computer station. "Sit down, this is gonna take a while. Hey, Deacon, come and join us!"
Deacon, trailed by MacCready, sauntered over to take one of the proffered seats. I sat down in another, gratefully taking the hot drink that my partner handed to me. Oh my god, is this actually... coffee? I closed my eyes to take in the aroma briefly in bliss before taking a sip, curling my cold fingers around the mug to warm them. Okay, whatever horrors this world has, at least there's coffee. "Thanks, Mac," I said with heartfelt gratitude. He gave me a cheeky grin and wrinkled his nose at the beverage, pretending to gag. I stuck my tongue out at him in response when I thought no one was looking.
By this time, Tom had used up enough of his boundless energy to actually stand still for a few moments. "All right, lady from another world. Are you ready for this? It's going to blow your mind!"
I smiled wryly at the engineer over my coffee. "After what's happened to me in the last several weeks? Go right ahead and try."
Tom laughed delightedly. "What you have there is definitely an Institute device. It's got their scientific fingerprints all over it! But there's a touch of another technology in there that even I can't identify! It appears to be a low level assembly language, and it's talking to the Institute programming like they were twins. The whole thing is encrypted, and I haven't managed to crack it yet, but I'll get there!" He stood up to pace restlessly in front of the terminal, half muttering to himself. "I'll get there."
I tried to bring his attention back to the discussion at hand. "You said there's more than one technology in there? Who's the second one?"
"Now that, that I don't know. I even ran through that memory tape from Dr. Amari and if I were to make a guess, it's the people who sent you that letter... that B.I.R.D. acronym company from your world. It's fascinating!" Tom whirled to tap away excitedly at his keyboard, ignoring us.
At this point, Deacon stepped in. "Tom, as much as we enjoy our guests' company, they really do need to be going at some point." He grabbed the excitable genius by the shoulder, turning him to face us again. "Would you be so kind as to tell them what you did find out about this fascinating little gadget?"
"Oh, yeah man! Check this out!"
What followed was a very long and somewhat rambling explanation of what Tinker Tom had uncovered so far. He expanded on his discoveries as we took a hasty meal in our chairs. Apparently, the Institute had programmed the delightful cybernetic enhancements that had extended into my body, allowing for the invocation of skills needed in the Wasteland: V.A.T.S., lockpicking, hacking, and the various computer interfaces.
What the Synths in ArcJet were alerting to was apparently a short-range signal emitting from the interface dongle. "That programming is based in the other language or I would have cracked it already for you and shut it down. It also fused in place when you went through the big bright light, so I can't remove it. I don't know what it's signaling, or what other goodies it's hiding inside, but what I did do was add my own little hidden script to keep it from talking, and instead, listen. You dig?"
"I think so," I admitted, thinking hard. "So, basically, this device is trying to be found, and you programmed it to not only not talk to whoever is trying to find it, but to steal as much information it can if they try?"
"Not as technical as I'd put it, but yeah, that's the gist! That little dongle addition to your Pip-Boy has a lot more in it than just a signal emitter, but it'll take time to decode it. I did copy as much as I could."
"It'd be better if it wasn't signaling at all, but I guess this is the best we can do for now. At least the signal is short-range." Deacon added. "Nice work, Tom."
The Quantum battery had also irrevocably fused itself into the body of the Pip-Boy when it fired up and did...what it did.
"So, what did it do when it fired up?" I wanted to know. "That's the part that no one can figure out."
"It brought you here, of course" Tom announced as if it was obvious.
"Of course," I sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose under my glasses. "How?"
Now that... that is..." He fidgeted back and forth on his feet. "Well, I have a theory, but I don't want to spill the beans until I have some kind of evidence, you see? It's kinda out there, even for me."
"C'mon, Tom," MacCready demanded in exasperation, "can't you give us an idea? A lead? Anything? You're supposed to be the Institute expert here."
"Back off, merc," Deacon threatened, looming over the shorter, slighter man. "If you haven't noticed, we're doing you a favor. Tinker Tom was up all night trying to decipher the programming in that thing. Even genius takes time, not like you'd know anything about it." The two men exchanged a hostile look.
"Anyway," Tom continued, interrupting the staring contest to my relief. "Until we know exactly how you got here, we can't even begin to plan how to get you back. But I have an idea! It'll get the info I need to prove my theory, and help the Railroad at the same time. Basically, I need you to do me a favor, if I'm gonna crack that baby for you. You in?"
Looks like this is going to take even more time than I had thought. I'm so tired. I just want to go home. "Sure, Tom," I said in a low voice I didn't even recognize as my own. "What do you need?"
"Aw, honey, don't you give up hope!" Tom grinned at me encouragingly. He started unhooking my Pip-Boy, talking over his shoulder. "The Institute, they're here in the Commonwealth, but no one can find them, yeah? They just show up, kidnap people, replace them with a Synth copy, and no one ever sees them coming or going."
Deacon nodded in agreement. "It's driving Dez crazy that we can't infiltrate them when we can't find the front door. My grenade delivery boy scheme is useless," he lamented comically.
"Exactly!" Tom beamed. "So, like I said, I have a theory. The Institute's got high-level Synths they call Coursers, killing machines in a very literal sense. Those bastards pop in, like out of nowhere, decimate our forces, and pop out again. Bam! Institute magic! The Coursers are the only ones that can do that." He waved his hands excitedly, nearly dropping my Pip-Boy in the process. "Like all Synths, they have a component in their head, a chip that contains their Institute programming. Get me one of those chips, and I bet you I'll have your way home in no time! It'll prove my theory and give me the answers I need to get your return ticket."
MacCready was aghast. "You want us to kill a Courser?" he demanded incredulously, shaking his head. "No one's been able to manage it, not even you."
Deacon reached out to pat the sniper on the shoulder, to his obvious annoyance. "Aw, c'mon MacCready, you're 'the best gun in the Commonwealth'. We just weren't able to afford you. Now you get paid to kill something as part of your contract that actually benefits the Wasteland in the long run." He grinned at MacCready's angry snarl.
Not wanting to witness another fight, I interrupted. "I suppose you can point us to a Courser if you want us to take it out? I don't know anything about them other than what you've just told me."
Tom beamed. "Yes! Well, kind of. Another of my little enhancements to your device here." He displayed my Pip-Boy screen with a flourish. "The Coursers have a frequency like your Pip-Boy's signal. I've programmed a tracker into your RADIO tab that will pick it up like a radar blip. Just follow the beeps until... Blammo! Courser elimination!"
"What kind of range does it have?"
Tom fidgeted nervously, running his fingers across the Pip-Boy. "That's the not-so-good part. You have to be pretty close, like within less than a quarter of a mile, to pick up their signal. It's magnitudes father than your signal, but..."
"So we'll just have to wander the Commonwealth in hopes of picking up a Courser signal?" I sighed, glancing at MacCready who was keeping very quiet, glaring at Deacon. "It might take a while." I hope my contract with MacCready is still good. This bodyguard job is taking a lot longer than any of us thought it would.
Tom nodded sheepishly. "Yeah, it's a bit of a sleeper plan. But if we get any intel on Courser activity, we can alert you!" He pointed to another line of text on the RADIO tab: RRoad, handing it to me along with the memory tape. "You can have these back now. I've gotten as much as I can off them for my research. But don't stay away long! As soon as you get a chip, or any other information... hell, if you bump into anyone from the Institute, come back here! I can extract the data from your Pip-Boy, and it'll help all of us!" At this final exclamation, Tom turned back to his terminal and was soon deep in concentration, blind and deaf to everything around him.
Deacon led us back towards the catacomb entrance. "Looks like we're gonna have to part ways now. It's time for our super secret pinky-swear Railroad tea party. Don't worry," he reassured me with a friendly pat on my back. "We're specialists in ruining Institute plans, you know. Just get us that Courser chip! With MacCready along, it should be a piece of cake!" He stepped back, actually aiming finger guns at me in a ridiculous pose, "We'll be in touch again soon!" He paused, then added, "Oh, and if you hear of any escaped Institute Synths in need of help, we would be very thankful if you lent them a hand."
"Thanks, Deacon," I replied with mixed emotions as we exited the Railroad headquarters. "We'll see what we can do."