My name is Matthew. I am a former inhabitant of Vault 101. "You live in the vault, you die in the vault", this is what they told us. What HE told us. That was almost true, it would have been true if he had his way.
My father. He left me. He always said him and Mother wanted me to be safe. That it was safer inside the vault, then on the outside. Is this what he had in mind?
It's all too much for me. I'm having difficulty getting my thoughts together properly. I'll start from the beginning.
Vault 101 is where I was born. It is an underground, self contained dwelling, controlled and run by the overseer. My mother died giving birth to me, and so it was up to my father to raise me. He was a caring man, a brilliant scientist, but he always carried the pain of my mothers death.
Today he left me. Abandoned me? I don't know his reasoning. I do know that the overseer was not pleased. Jonas. I can't beleive he killed him. I'm getting ahead of myself again.
Amata, maybe my only friend in the Vault. She woke me up, saved my life probably. She told me her father had had Jonas killed. That my father had escaped. She told me about a secret tunnel inside her fathers office and told me I needed to escape. I grabbed what I could. My bat and glove, some stimpaks, and the pistol that Amada gave me and ran.
It seemed when dad escaped, he left an opening for a Radroach infestation. The guards were distracted, so I thought I might be able to sneak out. I thought wrong. Officer Kendall was the first. So much blood on my hands. He was dealing with some radroaches, so I tried to run past him, but he noticed me and swung on my with his baton. I just reacted. I started hitting him, pummeling him with my fists until he stopped moving.
I can't beleive I killed him. I was training to be the Vault Chaplain. Nonviolence was supposed to be the foundation of my life there, and I killed officer Kendall.
I didn't have the time or the freedom to apologize to Kendall's family, nor could I perform any sorts of rites for him. I'm not sure if it would have been appropriate anyways.
I ran from his body, from the horror of what I'd done, continuing down the halls until I almost literally ran into Butch. I don't think he noticed the blood on my hands, on my clothes and face. He had other problems. Radroaches had surrounded his mother and were attacking her. Butchie is afraid of Radroaches. I know what they say about bullies, but I never thought that Butchie was afraid of anything. I wanted to scream in his face. Tell him he deserved this. Tell him he spent that last 19 years making me miserable, why should I help him now.
I wanted to do these things, but I knew I couldn't. I grabbed my bat and rushed in. She was pretty shaken up when I left, but not as much as Butchie. He was grateful. I think maybe Butchie was a good guy all these years, he just had to grow up with his mother being drunk all the time. He was so grateful he gave me his Tunnel Snakes jacket. I remember only a few years ago, I would have given anything to get a Tunnel Snakes jacket. Now it's just another weight around my neck. I guess it will serve me as a reminder that I can try to wash some of the blood from my hands.
I had to keep moving, so I started down the halls again. I thought i heard a guard coming, so I ducked into the kitchen. It was dark, and there were Roaches. I beat them down with the bat, but I got there too late. Grandma Taylor was in there. She was always so sweet. I suppose everyone has their time though.
Gomez was who I had heard coming, but he had his hands full with Roaches. I had learned my lesson with Kendall, so I waited until he had his back fully to me and sped past.
In the main hall, I saw Tom and Mary Holden. Apparently they saw the writing on the wall like Dad did, and wanted to escape as well. They shot them. Unarmed, and guilty of nothing more than wanting to be free, they shot them. O'brien and Richards. I knew I wasn't sneaking past them. It wasn't going to be a fistfight either. I unholstered the pistol Amata gave me, and shot them. I shot them both. It was... it was a different feeling than when I killed Kendall. It made me sick, but there was a rush of... power. I'd never fired a real gun before. Just the BB gun that Dad and Jonas gave me.
Its scary how much I liked that feeling.
Just as I made it upstairs, Cheif Hannon came around the corner and lunged at me with his baton. I still had the gun in my hand. I didn't even realize what I was doing until he was on the ground bleeding.
Sorry Hannon, you brought it on yourself.
I heard Amatas voice down the hall, so I crept along the hallway to get a better look. She was tied to a chair, being tortured by her own father and one of his goons. I guess its no surprise that he would do that, even to his daughter, but it was still a shock to me. I wanted to go to her, to free her, but I would have had to kill them both. Would she want that? It wasn't for me to decide.
Right next to the overseers office, in my fathers lab, I found Jonas. He was in bad shape. I wish I could have given him a proper burial, as I'm sure they won't do much more than cart him down to the incinerator. Him and all the rest. The oversser will burn them all to hide what he did. I couldn't do anything for him, but I did take his lab coat and glasses. While I was doing that I found a note in his pocket. It was from dad, and addressed to me. I haven't read it yet. I can't bring myself to right now.
I had to hack the computer in the Overseers office. Dad taught me a few tricks, unintentionally, and they really came in handy. He had some notes on there, bios on some of the Vault inhabitants. I really would have liked to read them, but there was no time. I hit the command to open the tunnel and left.
Amata followed me in. I tried to get her to come, but she wouldn't. "We were born in the vault, and we'll die in the vault". I guess even the overseers daughter isn't spared the indoctrination. Park and Wolfe came down, so I had to leave. They wouldn't follow me out in the tunnels. I almost wanted to shoot them. Almost.
I don't...
I...
I'm not sure if I have the words to describe what happened next.
I stepped outside for the first time in 19 years. The first time in my life. The sun. I've never seen anything so bright. So beautiful. It stunned me for a moment, the weight of the moment. I'd heard about this world, seen the Vault-Tec videos, read the books, but nothing had prepared me for this.
If I could have, I would have spent an hour, a day, a week, just soaking it in, but I wasn't sure if the overseer would force his guards out after me, so I had to keep moving.
The vault entrance oversaw what seemed to have been a town at one point. There was a road, burnt out, abandoned buildings, roads fallen into disrepair, not a soul in sight. I knew I needed to find something, someone. Some clue. Dad left this way, so unless he's dead in the wasteland, he must have found a way.
I started of with the road. Even with civilization destroyed, I'm sure man would hold on to those familiar standards, and populate along the beaten path. There was a mailbox along the way. I remember reading about them. Society would use them to send messages and packages to each other. It was a long shot, but I thought maybe the might still be in use somehow. Maybe give me some clue as to where I could find other people. Survivors. What I did find was someone's private stash. Some grenades, as well as some sort of drugs. I took them. Was that wrong of me? We were always taught that survival on the wasteland meant scavenging, and putting yourself first.
As I explored the town, my Pip-Boy emmited a sound I'd never heard before, and when I looked down at it, it seems that it knew where I was. It looks like this thing has some sort of sattelite uplink, it can track coordinates, and has map data from before the war. I think I can figure out a way to program my own coordinates in, if I find anything that it doesn't already know about. It should come in handy in making sure I don't get too lost out here.
I had just sat down to get my bearings, figuring that if the Overseer was coming, he'd have done it by now, when I noticed something scrawled out on a fence in paint. I was about to dismiss it as grafiiti, when I noticed the arrow. "Megaton" I don't know what that is, but that's where I'm heading right now. We were taught in the vault not to trust anyone we meet. That those who survived the war will be at best, ravaging maurauders who would just as soon kill us for our clothes as talk to us, and at worst, slavering mutants who want to eat us. Hopefully I'll be able to find some form of civilization. Maybe I'll even find Dad!
