"I'm here as an emissary to Dr. Clark, hoping to learn from you what is wrong with the Level 2 work environment."

Andy and Fred sat in a corner with a slightly fresher air, and the crate used as a stool was a crate.

Fred drank the bottled water that Andy had given him, and drank the water in the bottle in a few sips.

"Question... Nothing was a problem. ”

Andy knew it was Fred who had just met him and didn't build trust.

"I'm here to help you, Fred, we're one kind."

He took off his gas mask and looked directly into Fred's face.

As if sensing the sincerity in Andy's eyes, Fred raised his tired arm and grabbed his dusty hair.

"What a problem... My lord, I've been working here for five years, and I'm the only slave I know who can live for that long, and most of the slaves here only live for two years, all I can say... There are so many problems here, in this terrible factory, every day people are smashed, scalded, cut, punctured, bruised, those toxic dusts are everywhere, in the air, on the ground, even in what we eat and drink, these toxins do not help us in the slightest, only exacerbate our suffering, shorten our life, we are dirty, helpless, weak..."

Fred said, and Andy looked at his face, which was a slender face full of signs of suffering, with deep eye sockets and a scruffy beard.

Still, there was an invisible force in his body and reflected in his eyes, and those eyes still shone with a light of resistance instead of nothingness and numbness, and he also looked at Andy, with some inquiry and hope in his eyes.

What Fred said was in line with what he thought, and the biggest threat to the health of slaves at the moment was the air pollution here, so what needed to be focused on was how to dissipate as much of the dirty gases that lingered here.

"I'll go talk to Mildt about this and see if it can be solved, but until then, do you have anything you haven't told me about the need for this matter to be resolved as soon as possible, and any ideas that might solve it?"

Fred was silent for a while, until he finally made up his mind.

"The rulers of this place. With a different body than ours, these choking smoke, these unwashed dregs, have no effect on them, and they use this as a reference to judge that these pollution have no effect. This is not true, the fact is that because of this pollution, the slaves did not live long at all, but this matter was not taken seriously, because the reserve could always buy new slaves to replenish it. ”

"But..."

He gritted his teeth, his grief and indignation palpable.

"But we are people, not machines, and how can those companions who die in front of us not have an effect on us? Those shriveled and withered corpses, they are like a mirror, clearly telling all the slaves here, that look, that miserable look is their future, no matter how hard they try, they can't escape such a fate after all, a cold end, if this continues, how can Milt improve production efficiency? ”

Fred pointed upwards.

"I've talked to a lot of slaves about this, and since it was a factory a long time ago, it was impossible for people in the past not to think about air pollution. I've looked along the pipes of unknown purpose, and now I know for sure that there are some old ventilation devices that are still in good working place... This means that, at least in the past, they have not treated people like us who work here as slaves. ”

The meaning of Fred's words is already clear.

Andy listened to what he said, his hands were unconsciously clenched into fists, he had been active in the east for so long, as an NcR person, his natural antipathy to slavery had been ingrained in his heart, and this constantly surging emotion hit his sanity defense line again and again, what if he just led the slaves to rebel against the enslavement of the ghouls on the reservation, and responded to their slaves violently?

No... It's not time yet, it's just going to mess up everything, and maybe you won't even be able to run away.

"Do you know how those ventilation facilities are activated?"

Fred shook his head.

"I don't know...."

........................

Andy walks to the foreman's quarters and sees Milt lecturing the other three foremen.

"I'm trying to pick you out for my favor so that production here can be further increased, but if you look at the latest report, have you read it? Getting lower and lower every month! I'll be straight to the point, if this is the case this month, you don't want to continue to enjoy life here, go and live with those slaves, and stay in the workshop during the day, I'm just too kind to you slippery skins! ”

The three foremen bowed their heads and did not dare to speak.

Milt walked around the room restlessly, hunched his waist.

"Or... This is the bad root of your slippery bones, you just like to be lazy! If it weren't for the fact that none of my kind would want to come down, where would it be your turn to do this? Well? Think about what would happen if you were slaves again? You've all whipped them and scolded them for being a waste before, what if you become like them again? Well? Think about it? If you can't figure out how to reverse the decline in the production of our products now, then the imagination of your stupid and slippery minds will come true! .... How? Are you all dumb? ”

A foreman, sweating profusely, went down to the sea in an attempt to appease Milt.

"Please give us another chance, this time we will definitely let them work hard, they are lazy just because the punishment is not enough, if we can pick out a few as typical... That's right, pick out a few of the laziest ones and dispose of them in front of those slaves, and they will not dare to be lazy! ”

The other two foremen hurriedly chimed in, proposing methods such as the method of increasing production by soldering iron branding, the method of increasing production by walking in the furnace, and the method of vigorously whipping the slag with leather whips to increase production, and so on, and in order not to put themselves in an irretrievable situation, these foremen spun their brains at full speed to come up with more effective ways to torture their own kind, and there was never a smile on the face of Milt standing in front of them.

"Look at your virtues.... It's disgusting, and it's because of this that the slippery skin is hopeless! ”

As he spoke, Mild suddenly saw Andy standing in the doorway for an unknown amount of time, and was a little embarrassed for a moment, waving his hand to signal the other three foremen to leave the house.

Andy walked in, and the foreman, who had almost given Andy a drill with a drill, glanced at him, and then walked away, and as they moved away from the foreman's quarters, the foremen, who had been issued hard hats and gas masks, began to mutter:

"The man isn't... Right? ”

"Not really, they don't even need to wear gas masks."

"How... So in what capacity did he come down to Level 2? ”

"I saw that Milt had a lot of respect for him."

A foreman elbowed the slightly restless fellow.

"Keep your mind should, I heard you almost used a drill to make a hole in his head, and if that big man had the heart to get revenge on you, you might die without a place to bury!"

.........................

Milt beckoned Andy to sit down.

"How's it going? What did Fred say? ”

Andy sat down on a slag-dropping chair and carefully tested that the chair would not collapse immediately before sitting down.

"Until then... I've heard you say that Tier 2 production has been declining. ”

Milt covered his face and sighed.

"Yes, that's right, the pressure on me from above is getting bigger and bigger, I don't know why, maybe some things have entered a critical period. These days, I urge them to work overtime, but there is still a big gap from the required output, and what makes me even more desperate is that no matter what means are taken, the output will drop without increasing, if this month is not up to standard... I may be questioned or even replaced, and I don't want to live in a shantytown with those waste losers rotting and stinking..."

It seems that Milt has run out of ways to deal with the status quo, so this is an opportunity.

"I learned from Fred that the toxic ash in the air is the biggest hindrance to their work, the toxins destroy their bodies and make it impossible for them to breathe, and as you just said, the recent overtime production has produced even stronger toxic exhaust gases than before, how can the slaves possibly produce new heights in this vicious circle?"

Hearing Andy say this, Milt put down his hand, and his face was even a little incredulous.

"Just because of the dust? But there's nothing to be afraid of with this dust, and who can't work because of it? In the past, when only us new humans were working here, no one ever said that they felt bad because of the dust... I just can't understand it. ”

Andy looked at the man in front of him, he had become alienated, the long years had distorted his mind, he had changed from the inside out to another race, and he couldn't even understand the little thing that humans couldn't breathe extremely foul air, how terrible it was.

"Let's digress... Milt, do you remember your past? ”

Milt took off his hard hat and furrowed his brow.

"What's the point?"

Andy looked at him firmly.

"Of course it makes sense, if you want to solve the problem, you first have to admit the problem, understand the problem, if you can't even do that, will the problem go away on its own? Tell me about your own past. ”

Milt lowered his head and scratched at the hairless scalp and began to tell his story slowly.

"Soon after the outbreak of the war, I was like this, before that I was a gangster, my neighborhood was in chaos, not much like it is now, I was self-taught to help my gang produce guns and ammunition, so I knew how those things worked and how to organize people to do it... I got the nickname 'The Gunslinger' and I was... Probably 15 years old. ”

Milt spoke slowly, pausing and stuck, reminiscing as he spoke, these long-term memories were too far away for him, and the process of reminiscing was like digging into his past life, which made Milt feel difficult and absurd.

"When everything is unrecognizable, we only feel happy, because there are no more annoying strips to control us, we do whatever we want on the street, we indulge in merriment... But we overlooked the fact that we weren't the only gangs, and neighboring gangs quickly targeted us, and then there was a fight between the gangs. ”

"At first we threw stones and bricks at each other, then we fought with knives and steel bars, and finally we shot at each other on street corners, and we had the upper hand until they found some grenades from somewhere... Those grenades were thrown at a time we didn't expect. ”

"The explosion blew off the engine of a nuclear car, I passed out, and when I woke up, I was blown all over... Those in the rival gang thought I was dead and ignored me. I didn't die, but I think my flesh began to fall off in pieces due to the radiation leak caused by the explosion, and I felt like I was in purgatory every day. ”

His hand unconsciously clenched his pants at his knees.

"After that, I became a monster that everyone shouted at me, wandering the wasteland, just like that... For more than seventy years, I have seen all the kinds of tragedies that are caused by disorder, depravity, and sheer malice. The chaos lasted until I was doing business with a merchant who told me that there was a settlement to the southeast, and that it was inhabited entirely by people like me. ”

"A hundred years ago, I arrived on the reservation, when Colonel Green was in charge of assigning jobs to the newcomers, and I showed him my skills, so he told me that I should go to Level 2 to supervise and instruct the mechanics here in the production of weapons and ammunition, and from that time until today, I am still serving the reservation with all my heart, I cherish my life here, and I have been in this dirty place for a hundred years in this dirty place where few people want to stay, from the head of the production workshop fifty years ago, Fifty years later, a foreman who managed the work of slaves. ”

Milt said and put the helmet back on his head, as if he understood something.

"I thought I had completely forgotten about it... It seems that time has not passed long enough. ”

Andy listened to Milt's short story and felt emotional, everyone has their own ordeals.

"I'll tell you my conclusion, Milt, the frequent replacement of slaves has greatly increased your production costs, and the time cost of training new slaves is even more priceless, and the only way to solve these problems is to reduce their mortality rates, and the key is to use the ventilation system that exists here to extract those toxic and harmful fumes and dust, even from the perspective of the business of making bottle caps, this is absolutely necessary... Your foreman wears a gas mask and doesn't have to empathize with the slave, but the slave only has a rag on his face, and the root cause of these problems comes from the part you have overlooked. ”

Milt did not object again this time.

"So, how do you start this ventilation system?"

As soon as this statement came out, it meant that things had turned back, and Milt, as the foreman, did not know how the ventilation system should be activated.

"Well, then I need to look for it, and if I can find it, Milt, you can help with everything, right?"

Mir nodded.

.....................

Andy walked out of the foreman's room and looked around, through the air with poor visibility, the equipment hanging high and the looming vents were indeed there, but how could they work?

"Hey!"

A man called out to him, and Andy turned his head to see that it was the foreman who had gotten up so angrily before.

"What's the matter?"

The foreman touched the helmet on his head and nodded a few words of flattery to Andy, for which Andy wanted to leave, but suddenly it occurred to him that this person who was actually walking around every day and was responsible for directing the slaves to work, would he have the opportunity to understand how those equipment were activated?

"Do you know how the ventilation system is going to be activated?"

The foreman rolled his eyes and brought up what he knew.

"I've seen a terminal here before, which records all the existing equipment in Level 2, and there is indeed a ventilation system here, and each production workshop has a fan and supporting exhaust channels, but for these things to work, the first thing is that the fan switchboard needs to be restored to normal, and that central fan unit is in the area where Smith Mechanic is, just..."