FOREWORD This story is a fan fiction imagining of one possible story from the Fallout Universe by Bethesda Software, a collection of Books, Games, and other media (including Fallout 1, 2, 3, Tactics, New Vegas, 4, Shelter, and 76.) This story is in no way relates to existing characters, nor is it assumed to be part of the lore of the original aforementioned media. This is a fan story from the mind of Marcus Liotta.
All writing Copyright (C) Marcus Liotta 2022.
-Marcus Liotta
Release Details
The story will be published as a series, weekly for each chapter. Follow the site/blog to catch up as it is distributed. Each post will be titled “Protectron # – Chapter” for your convenience in search.
HOME – Published on the site 10/22/2023
DREAM INTERRUPTED – Publishing on the site 10/26/2023
NEW BEGINNINGS – Publishing on the site 11/02/2023
ALIVE – Publishing on the site 11/09/2023
TRUTH – Publishing on the site 11/16/2023
PROTECTRON
A Short Story by Marcus Liotta
ALIVE
Somewhere in the darkness of the room, a strange whirring noise became evermore present. Darwin realized it had been there the whole time but he simply hadn’t noticed in his pain and fatigue.
He tried to find where it came from but had trouble locating anything in the darkness. The pitch black was periodically interrupted by that red siren which swiveled above what he could only suspect was an exit door.
In time Darwin honed in on a dim red-glow in the room, off to his left and seemingly eye-level.
The sight was confusing.
It was something across the room, a good fifteen paces at least. The mechanical thing, whatever it was, produced that whirring noise, like gears spinning together in synchronization. The same thing also emitted that dim red-glow from it as if some sort of computer system. He found that odd as the monitors usually glowed with an eerie green, given few monitors had coloring applied.
Perhaps it was an offline indicator.
After searching the darkness for a time, he came to the conclusion that no one else was in the room. The quiet atmosphere bothered him though, why was there no noise outside of this smaller space, somewhere else in the underground facility someone must be… alive?
Someone had mangled his hand.
Darwin realized nothing mattered if he remained as he was, defenseless and bound.
Remaining idle wasn’t wise at all.
Darwin struggled with the bindings, metal clamps that held him in place. He had to get out of there, find his wife, find the other people and figure out where he was!
Abruptly, a number of long florescent lights popped on with an electrical buzz.
Darwin blinked repeatedly and shouted, “For the love of God!”
He would have shielded his eyes if it was possible but with his limbs being held fast, he could do nothing but refrain from opening his eyes all the way, instead squinting in an effort to see without the blindness.
A metallic thud hit the floor nearby.
Then a second.
A third metallic clanging.
After what sounded like a dozen more metallic boots slowly hitting the floor, Darwin caught a clear view of the source. He felt his eyes deceived him. It wasn’t right, couldn’t be.
A robotic voice stated, “HELLO.”
Darwin through squinting eyes gazed at the glowing robotics of a Medical Protectron. It was a fat humanoid-looking robot that moved slowly on two mechanical feet. It was white and sported a large red cross on its center body, denoting it as medical in nature.
Otherwise, the thing was something out of a fifties science fiction movie, a tall-rounded head of clear glass and mechanical parts inside, whirring away and clicking as the robot made decisions.
It had no neck, instead the head went all the way into a shouldered section of the main body. The chassis would have seemed unbreakable if not for the glass that surrounded its antenna and single camera of an eye.
He had seen a handful of these above ground, before the bombs fell and took out all of humanity that was left. They were used for surgeries, or urgent life-and-death trauma scenarios.
None of it made any sense.
Given its nature the way the thing was acting seemed all wrong.
Darwin’s mind raced to understand.
This whole time the damned robot had stood completely still, sitting there in the darkness of the room and watching him.
Creepier still, he realized it not only sat idle but observed him come to. It analyzed how he reacted yet declined to speak or help in anyway.
“Something must be wrong with its programming,” Darwin thought.
The strange robot caught Darwin off guard.
It was an obtuse thing, and he had heard stories of the chips going bad inside of them, making them do things that made little sense, standing there just like it had.
“Robot, I am glad you are here!” Darwin said in a hushed tone, a whisper so as only the two of them could converse.
Before he could continue, the metal thing interrupted.
“WHY?” the robot asked in a loud mechanical voice, as if the concept of silence was never conveyed to it.
Darwin, now more used to the light, opened his eyes and shook his head, trying to shush the thing into silence.
“I’m explaining,” he whispered.
Darwin hurriedly said all he could before the robot could stop him again, “I think a bad man hurt me, and put me here. I’m worried he is going to come back any minute. He could have hurt other people too!”
The robot remained silence, gears turning as it seemingly sat there listening to him. Darwin’s mind raced for questions and began playing inquisitor to the robot.
“Where is everyone, and where is my wife?” he asked.
The robot sat idle as clacking of a typewriter sounded from inside its frame, eventually causing it to speak.
The monotone voice said, “MANY FAILED THE FITNESS TEST. THEY DID NOT STAY.”
“Fitness test?” Darwin asked, utterly dumbfounded.
The robot merely said, “YES.”
“Is there no one still inside this fallout shelter?” Darwin asked.
“THERE ARE SOME WHO REMAIN,” it said.
“Who are they?” Darwin asked.
“I DON’T KNOW,” the robot said.
Darwin was becoming impatient and said heatedly, “then who hurt me?”
“I DON’T KNOW,” the robot stated again.
Under his breath, Darwin muttered, “useless.”
Taking a deep breath, the man directed the robot to help him.
“Okay, help me get out of these bonds.”
The robot’s mechanicals continued turning gears inside it’s translucent windowed-head but the red light remained steady.
It said nothing.
Did nothing.
“Robot, is something wrong?” Darwin asked.
“NO,” it said immediately in its standard mechanical tone.
Another minute passed.
Finally, Darwin screeched, “get these metal clamps off of me!”
“NO,” the robot stated.
Darwin stared at the malfunctioning thing, utterly perplexed by the notion it would refute his order.
“What do you mean, ‘no’?” Darwin asked.
“YOU ARE BROKEN. I PLACED YOU HERE. I MUST FIX YOU.”
The robot began positioning itself over him and took hold of his already burnt and mangled right hand. It pulled his fingers open, causing a searing pain to go up his arm, flowing all the way into his shoulder and neck.
Darwin let out an agonizing howl.
The robot only paused for a moment, saying something a human might try in order to comfort a wounded creature.
“THERE THERE, IT WILL BE BETTER IN A MOMENT. EVERYONE ELSE STOPS YELLING WHEN I FIX THEM.”
Darwin took a few seconds to understand the words and abruptly realized what it had said.
“No, stop! You’re not fixing me!”
It was too late.
The robot had already revealed an active laser cutter on its own left appendage. It pushed out as if the thick and bulbous metallic hand was some sort of Swiss Army Knife, a variation meant for this machination. It was a thing designed to repair human beings but instead was clearly quite fond of death and dismemberment.
With a slow motion from the robot, it moved the laser cutter across Darwin’s remaining fingers. The excruciating pain was enough to make him want to scream out again but instead he held his tongue, trying to act like it had ‘cured’ him.
Two wet taps hit the metal floor, bouncing initially and each sound stayed in Darwin’s head forever.
He didn’t have any more fingers to cut off.
The laser was retracted and the robot made a beeping noise of sorts before it spoke.
“YOU ARE REPAIRED. I MUST GO.”
Without any justifiable reasoning, the robot disengaged the locking clamps on Darwin’s body, and, it began to walk away. The door opened for it and it walked out into the dimly lit hallway outside of the surgery center.
Darwin screamed internally, grabbing the arm of his own blue vault jumpsuit with his teeth and letting out a muffled cry.
He thought to himself, “the hell was that?”
Darwin could barely comprehend what had just happened, his mind numbed by both pain and the insane nature of what had transpired.
Vaguely, a wandering thought in Darwin’s mind came to the conclusion that in act he would not bleed out, being that the laser cauterized a majority of his fresh wounds.
Breathing heavily, the man fought to stay calm and not make any more sound as he slid down, out of the vertically slanted surgical bed. It was a setup clearly meant for individuals who were not in the right state of mind, meant for those who had overcome traumatic stress; scenarios not so unlike what Darwin was currently experiencing.
He wasn’t sane anymore, not after that hell.
The brightness of the room still made it hard to see. His eyes half-closed, he scanned the room while hunched over on the floor.
For a few minutes, Darwin merely sat there and worked to steady his breathing. It was a medical ward, there must be some medicine for pain but even as his mind wandered to that possibility it took him a moment to regain his ability to move.
His thoughts were clouded.
The murky details distracted him.
He had never signed up to be a lab rat.
The Vault company couldn’t have manufactured this as an experiment, so it must clearly be a failure in the machine.
That robot had clearly malfunctioned.
Darwin couldn’t think of any other possibility. Either way he had no interest in seeing it again, let alone without some sort of weapon. Even a gun right now wouldn’t do much against the thing. Bullets don’t penetrate metal well; he’d have to worry on ricochet and even when holes were punched in the thing, he couldn’t be sure of where the internal components were that kept it moving.
Darwin breathed steadily, pulling himself onto both feet and wandered around the room. On one of the walls were a number of wall-based cabinets, each of them metal in nature. He pulled them open, looking for information until he finally found some painkiller medications in one sealed cabinet slot.
Without water he swallowed some and stowed the rest in a pocket of the dark blue jumpsuit he wore.
It kept him warm at least in this cold miserable place. Without the boots on his feet he’d be walking on smooth metal floor, cold as ice.
Bombs had fallen, but they were so far underground that none of that mattered. Didn’t matter who dropped them, who his own people had taken out, nor whether anyone survived that apocalyptic nightmare up above.
All that mattered were the basics.
Darwin was trapped in a facility, a place where no help would come. He was alone, defenseless, and there was an insane robot bent on ‘fixing’ everyone.
He wondered where his wife was, and where Jones and all the others had gone.
Pulling out a scalpel from one of the medical equipment drawers, he slowly edged up to the metal door which still hung open on a hinge.
He peeked outside and realized the corridor was lit up but also had a red light at the end on one side, as if it was under some sort of lockdown.
Darwin used his past military experience and the few memories he had inside the vault to ascertain what he could about the layout, eventually choosing to navigate away from the siren-style light that beat the wall around it with red in a silent circular motion.
Something was very wrong with this place.
Over the course of an hour Darwin slipped from one hallway to another, transitioning into multiple small dormitories and computer labs, however he found no sign of other people. It was as if he was alone in this place.
Alone.
Finally he sat down in a chair at a computer desk and tried a few passwords, none of them seemed to work for the machine. Finally, even as he grew frustrated he felt around under the desk and found a small scrap of paper wedged between the drawers and the wooden frame of the desk.
It had a single word on it.
HAMMER
Frowning, Darwin entered the password slowly and haphazardly with his only remaining fingers on his left hand. Grimacing, he realized he wasn’t about to go into any accounting or hacking careers.
He awkwardly pressed ENTER on the keyboard and watched the black-green screen illuminate with a welcome introduction.
At first Darwin was pleased with this result, only to realize there were notes listed on the machine that were more or less signs of a terrible ordeal.
Four messages to be exact.
(1) WHY
(2) TRUST NO ONE
(3) LOOK FOR THE EYES
(4) I FIGURED IT OUT
Darwin tapped the first entry and read a long and painful account not so dissimilar to his own. Dreams, Vault, surgical table, but surprisingly with no crazy robot mentioned.
Darwin looked at the second note, it rambled on about not eating anything he found and that someone was following the individual, but they were unsure who it was.
Opening the third note, Darwin stared at the first words, “the cameras are watching me! I know it’s some sort of weird experiment.”
The thought was disconcerting. Even so, Darwin found himself cautiously glancing around with the corners of his eyes and found indeed there were cameras.
Finally, the last note, he opened it and it merely stated…
“I figured it out! We can-“
Nothing else was written, as if the individual was pulled away from the computer even while typing.
“Not good,” Darwin thought to himself, “this also doesn’t explain what happened to my wife!”
Darwin began noticing the cameras more and more as he sneaked around the complex, one of them even seemed to move but he couldn’t be sure that wasn’t pure paranoia.
Whatever happened to the other man, he couldn’t let it happen to him, whether it was simple insanity or something far more sinister.
Eventually Darwin found the room number he was looking for, the one that was supposedly assigned to him and his own wife.
He went inside and quietly closed the metal door, looking for any sign she had arrived at this same place.
Nothing.
It was as if she had never made it into the vault, or if she had, the others clearly had no concept of what was going on.
Hours or even Days passed, although Darwin couldn’t be sure which. Either way he grew hungry. His stomach churned with an indescribable pain that would not abate.
A growing dread washed over his already shaking form, a hot sweat within his blue jumpsuit has long since turned cold, lowering his body temperature and causing shivers to make his already shaking form worse.
Darwin realized there was no choice.
He had to return to the cafeteria and dig into the canned meats. Without the protein he would surely starve to death.
Darwin clutched at his hand of missing fingers instinctively, trying to protect his already damaged stump from the darkness of the room around him.
Darwin crawled out from under a bed, the blankets atop it hiding his form from any possible robotic terrors. In the faint light, he noticed there were brown marks on it where his bandaged stump of a hand had leaked, blood marking the otherwise white and blue blankets with brown stains.
Darwin grimaced at the sight.
His stomach interrupted, gurgling with an angry insistence.
“I’ll feed you alright,” he whispered to his own gut, agitated and too weak to argue.
He took a deep breath and slowly opened the room’s door, peeking into the metal corridor of the vault.
The cold metal remained silent.
Darwin carefully made his way to the kitchen, always an eye behind him, looking for the maniacal robot that ‘fixed’ him. Occasionally he heard its footsteps in the distance, a noise that made him weary to ever sleep given it could come upon him when he was most vulnerable.
Once in the cafeteria’s kitchen, he was able to pilfer the stores and used a spare jumpsuit to put a dozen of the canned goods in, including a can opener and a large kitchen knife. He tied the arms and legs together, making the suit into a ramshackle haphazard sort of bag, although the thing jingled a bit.
The noise wouldn’t do.
Darwin covered the noise by stuffing the thing full of had towels before also using some spare duct tape he found to tie hand-towels to his boots, making his footsteps quiet as a mouse.
The journey back was perilous as it was silent.
Once, Darwin thought he heard the metal fiend.
It left him alone, wandering away from where he stood, shoving himself against the metal girders that lined some of the walls.
The alcoves were not much of a hiding spot but he hoped by being silent, still, and appearing as part of the wall; the thing would not see him as a threat.
“Maybe that’ll work,” he thought to himself, “maybe.”
Somehow Darwin managed to make it back to his designated room. He opened a can of beans with the careful and silent-patience of a man condemned to death row.
Opening metal cans with a metal utensil raised his anxiety, doing it with such slowness so as not to cause the bending to be obvious to the human ear. He hadn’t a clue how much more the robot could sense beyond is own abilities, so it wasn’t worth taking any chances.
He used a spoon but did so with a slow but shaking hand, doing his best not to touch the rim nor sides of the can with the metal spoon.
The pre-cooked beans were edible but not ideal, tasting somewhere between dog food and cold chili but with an odd aftertaste.
He managed to choke the contents down and his stomach in time stopped making its constant noises.
if (DJ, Hacker & Author = Dark Fantasy, SciFi){copyright ©2024} 