Inside the reservation, in a conference room in the mysterious Vault Level 1, the conversation between Andy and Dr. Clark, the ruler of the reservation, continues.

"Did anyone predict the outbreak of a great war?"

Andy's thoughts on Dr. Clark's words, are the intellectual and material legacies of those who have been gone for nearly two centuries still have an impact on the world today? What is the ultimate purpose of the construction and design of Tibbetts Prison? Are you already caught up in the plans of someone or a group of people in the past?

"A lot of people have predicted the outbreak of a big war, and as far as the situation is concerned, their predictions have been successful, but it doesn't make the slightest sense."

The mouth on the screen squirmed, and the insight and wisdom displayed between the conversations made Andy feel that this person was not trivial.

"Defense contractors, Vault Technologies, and their Safe House program in partnership with the SA government, designed and built standard shelters throughout the SA, an underground nuclear bunker built with a very high level of design and its patented modular building materials, were supposed to shelter the entire SA population from the nuclear threat of the evil bA, but it wasn't it?"

Andy recalls the two Vaults, and as far as the results are concerned, from an objective point of view, Vault 29 and Vault 70 both managed to save the lives of the Vault residents from the great war that destroyed the world, but this preservation... This preservation is very different from the "protection" they professed before the war, and the Vault does continue their lives, but this continuity is accompanied by a distortion of the Vault's inhabitants.

If Diana hadn't interfered with Vault 29 and interrupted her experiments by divine means, the current Twin Mother Tribe would be one of the countless savage tribes in this wasteland, and the Mormons of Vault 70 would have nearly fallen in the "Garden of Eden" created by Vault technology.

Of course, if you ignore this, Vault-Tech Vaults did help them escape the devastation of the Great War and return to the Overworld to rebuild their home.

"I can't figure it out, I still don't know what the Vault technology is thinking, those Vaults could have really sheltered everyone and contributed to the rapid post-war reconstruction, but they deliberately arranged all kinds of bizarre experiments and turned everything beyond recognition, this is the case here in the Great Southwestern Federation, and even more so in New California, looking at all the Vaults all over the SA, all of them will be this kind of thing, and their shelters are almost all hell."

Dr. Clark smiled.

"There are more than 100 shelters, even if all the shelters are fully operational and all the residents enter smoothly, there are only a handful of people who can get shelter, I said, there are many people who predicted that there will be a nuclear war in the future that will lead to the destruction of the world, but no one can say when nuclear war will break out, those shelters are either extremely expensive for residents, or remote and difficult to reach quickly from the city, and the SA government's periodic safety drills also make people annoyed, and eventually constitute a wolf effect, When the big war really broke out, many people just thought it was another drill, but they guessed wrong this time. ”

"But for some people, the outbreak of this war has been determined by them to a period of 10 years or even less, these obsessed with calculations think that they can predict the future in this way, especially those who claim to be the true masters of SA, they have long determined that the tense international situation will lead to today's evil consequences, and the war will finally break out, turning SA into a wasteland, such an environment is obviously no longer suitable for human survival, at least in their eyes."

"I can tell you one thing, before the Great War, SA's aerospace technology had developed to the threshold of supporting human beings to carry out interstellar colonization in outer space, if it were not for a series of wars caused by the international energy crisis, especially the war between us and bA, perhaps mankind would have stepped into the sea of stars."

Andy listened to what Dr. Clark said, and if he wanted to connect the two....

"What do you mean... The SA government has long thought that today's situation will inevitably arise, and they believe that the worst-case scenario is a permanent environmental deterioration of the entire surface, then at that time they will have to... Leaving the Earth? And those shelters are actually..."

When he thought about this, he suddenly broke out in a cold sweat.

Is the cramped and enclosed space of a vault a little similar to the space of a spaceship sailing in space? Is this a rehearsal of possible problems with changes in the social environment inside the spacecraft during interstellar colonization? But the Vault will only be opened after a nuclear war, and the experiments inside will only be activated later, which is something that has been designed for a long time, which means that ..... Is this another plan that has continued from before the Great War to the present day?

Andy looked at the mouth on the screen with a complicated expression.

"Dr. Clark, who were you in the past? What was this place in the past? ”

Measles looked up, but didn't say anything.

Dr. Clark didn't seem to have anything to hide, and he told Andy all the things straightforwardly.

"In 1943, in a covert military research project called the Manhattan Project, the military base, later named Los Alamos, was built in the mountains of the new mS, codenamed 'The Reservation.' Now, I'm picking up this old abandoned codename, because it's a fitting title for a place like our race, where I was the chief scientist before the Great War... The direction of research is nuclear physics. ”

"At that time, I was the leader of all the people on the reservation, and even more so now, and I have to not only plan the lives of all of us, but also be a pillar of their hearts, and that is my destiny."

After a moment's pause, the mouth began to speak in a scripture-chanting tone.

"Messiah, Messiah William Clark, he will surely be the savior of all our brothers and sisters, brethren, sisters, now it seems that we are not in debt to the flesh, but compelled to live in obedience to the flesh, and if we live according to the flesh, we will live as if we had fallen into purgatory, but the Messiah will be saved, and he will put to death the wickedness of our bodies by the revelation of the Holy Spirit, and set our souls free, and all who are led by this Spirit will become His children, and He is the change of this world, which is now spreading in the wastelandThe wandering metaphysical Holy Spirit, one day our children of the wasteland will be freed from all afflictions and torments under his guidance. “

Measles fell to his knees and whispered over the sentences, a pious energy that made Andy's scalp tingle.

It wasn't until a few moments later that Dr. Clark came back to reality from some emotion.

"Does measles make you feel uncomfortable?"

Andy looked at measles with a complicated face, and didn't know what to say for a while.

Dr. Clark was very considerate.

"Measles, you go out first, I have something I want to talk to Andy alone."

Measles did not show the slightest displeasure when he heard this, stood up, turned his head and left.

With the sound of the metal barrier door falling, Dr. Clark spoke again.

"What do you want to say to me?"

Andy hesitated for a moment, then voiced his questions and thoughts about the reservation.

"I'm sure you're a wise elder, but why did you choose to manage the reserve in such a way? As far as I can see, you are ruling with religion and despotism, and you are allowing and even relying on slavery, and I am not surprised if a wasteland would make such a choice, in fact I have seen or heard many examples of this, but you are a scientist born before the war, and even in the new countries of the Western Wasteland, slavery is a backward system that has been eliminated, I think..."

Dr. Clark let out a low chuckle.

"Yes, first of all I'm a scientist, and you might think I'm supposed to be a spokesperson for science, but the problem is that you misunderstand it... Of course, in fact I can understand you, and I say this because from the popular point of view, the study of witchcraft, both in science and in primitive religion, is nothing more than a theory of thought. Before the Great War, we replaced the dominance of religious sorcery with science, but in the future, if human society one day recovers from the great recession and regression caused by this nuclear war, and even transcends, it will leave the lingering ... The shadow of 2077 is the real year 2078 and 2079, when something new will replace science, and we can't imagine what that thing is, but the arrival of that new hypothesis is undoubtedly predictable. ”

"You talked about. System, yes, system, although I don't know what that emerging state in the Western Wasteland you are talking about, but I can explain it to you from the point of view of the course of history. All advancements are not achieved overnight, it is built on countless backwardness, you... There is little opportunity to read the history of the Old World, and in those history books you can find that in the early human societies of any region and any civilization, tyranny was the best friend of mankind and the best friend of freedom. It's like the relationship between science and religious witchcraft, if it has done many bad things, then it has also been the source of many good things; If it is the child of falsehood, then it is also the mother of freedom and truth. ”

"I was born, raised, studied, and worked in an advanced, great, powerful, and democratic country that human beings cannot imagine today, and its name is SA, and its land runs through this continent from west to east, and its power projection can cross the ocean, fly into space, and go deep into the ground, and its citizens are hundreds of millions, and now it is almost like a myth. It seems to me that all the humans living in this wasteland are nothing more than a bunch of primitive people, whether those who have completely degenerated into savages, or the people of the western countries in your mouth, there may be differences, but there is not much difference. ”

"My choice, of course, has my reasons, and this reason is the current environment that our race is facing, if you look at the world from our point of view, you can understand."

Andy looked down and pondered, the inhabitants of the reservation were all ghouls, and it was well known that these people were widely ostracized in the wasteland society. The same problem has arisen in New California, where ghouls are not integrated into human society or even considered their own species, and the NcR government and some aspiring individuals have tried to reverse this situation, as exemplified by President Tandy's racial equality bill, but now this effort has shown signs of collapse over time.

There are many similarities between NcR and the Reservation, which has also been turned into a radiant land by nuclear bombing, where ghouls gather not only because the radiation here cannot harm them, but more importantly, because it can harm and protect them from humans.

There are still a large number of precious pre-war relics left in those areas shrouded in strong radiation, and once these items are taken out, they will immediately become priceless treasures, and the means that those salvage companies rely on to make a living is to go deep into the strong radiation area to bring back the pre-war relics and sell them for a large number of bottle caps, and the most important thing is that President Tandi gave a speech, the idea of the republic moved people, and the salvage company also successfully settled in Sunshine City and cooperated with the ghouls to carry out the salvage of pre-war relics.

But if one of these things goes wrong, terrible violent clashes will be inevitable.

Andy looked up at Dr. Clark and understood what he meant.

"You're still wary of the outside world and have a sense of crisis, right?"

Dr. Clark nodded.

"It's not unfounded, you probably don't understand... On that day in 2077, a nuclear bomb fell here, which is not unexpected, the so-called top secret has long been leaked, Los Alamos is the main expected target of a nuclear strike by the new mS, and the mountains here really shelter us, but this is not enough. ”

"We all hid in underground bunkers, but the strong radiation brought by the nuclear bomb penetrated the surface and penetrated deep underground, we hid at the bottom in embarrassment, but we still couldn't isolate the continuous radiation pollution from the surface, those anti-radiation drugs were quickly consumed, people died painfully under the torture of radiation sickness, every day my ears were filled with wailing, and every day my eyes had to look at new corpses."

"It wasn't until a year later, when I looked at the people around me who were still alive, and all of them had changed, and the radiation had melted and ablated our bodies, but it had not taken our lives. I was amazed to sample my own and other people's bodies... It's amazing that in the midst of intense radiation that completely exceeds the safety standard by countless times, the neutrons do not completely break our genes and let us die from radiation-induced cancer, or let our bodies disintegrate themselves little by little along with metabolism... Under this just right, long-lasting radiation, a hidden part of our genes is activated, as if it has been silently waiting for this condition to be fulfilled, and our physical bodies have undergone a sea change. ”

"I realized that this is a gift from God, that we are freed from aging, sickness, hunger, and fear of radiation, that this is the gift of life, that it is the ability to help us adapt to this new, promised world, that is... Evolution, if the birth of human civilization is derived from the inevitability of natural development, then the self-destruction of human civilization is even more inevitable of natural development, just like mammals surviving from disasters to replace dinosaurs, we are given the right to thrive in this scorched world! ”

"I thought the apocalypse had come to every corner of the world, but I didn't know it until later that it was a misconception."

Dr. William Clark muttered in a low, scripture-like tone.

"Because many are called, few are chosen."