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#9 - Screwing Up - 9/01/2277
No, the robots were not friendly. Well, except for one, but more about that one later. In the meantime, I’m a dumbass.
Have you ever gone somewhere to do something, and when you got there found you’d forgotten something important? I packed up my standard loadout -  9mm pistol, .308 hunting rifle, sawed off 12 gauge) ammo, snacks, some reading material and some caps - and headed for the Robco factory. On the way I killed my first deathclaw. Luckily, it was weakened by fighting with a few raiders, but after putting it down the raiders turned on me. Still, not a big deal. Then, as I neared the Robco facility, I started encountering hostile robots. I was doing OK until it hit me. A laser. In the head. And something else hit me. I’d forgotten to bring any stimpaks. Like I said, DUMBASS!
Luckily, just past Robco was the biggest intact building I’ve yet encountered in the wastes, Tenpenny Tower. And it’s a good thing it was big as I could barely see after that laser blast. I had to bribe the guards to get in, but I figured it’d be worth it if they had a doctor. They did. He patched me up, and I cleaned him out of stimpaks (only three) and left straight away. Frankly I found the place kind of creepy. There was vapid music playing everywhere, and everyone solicitous and polite to a fault. It reminded me of the vault in a way that made it dawn on me just how creepy the vault was. I headed back to Robco.
The factory floor was mostly junk and broken robots, and the offices were more of the same. Still, some of the junk was potentially valuable so I grabbed as much as I could carry. I finally found the computer room on the third floor. I’d just plugged in Moira’s widget when a Protectron suddenly came to life and attacked me! I took it down with my shotty, and I realized. All those robots weren’t broken, they were just deactivated. And I’d just activated them!
I told Max to stay, and quickly ran down the stairs dropping all my mines on the way, and then retreated to the third floor to wait. I readied my rifle, quaffed a Nuka Quantum and an Atomic Cocktail, and did my best to shoot the ones that made it past the mines as soon as their heads cleared the top of the stairs. And that’s where I spent the night. At some point I realized it had been a couple of hours since any new robots had come up the stairs, and ventured down. After dealing with a couple of heavily damaged stragglers, I finally made it outside, only to see more robots. These were different, though. They were accompanied by a man.
The man turned out to be Tinker Joe (pictured with his entourage - RL-3 is the green bot - and that’s Tenpenny Tower on the left in the background, Robco on the right). He was a used robot dealer and  could see a sucker coming from a mile away. I was that sucker.  Sure, my Mr. Handy - Wadsworth - was, well, handy; but all it could really do was cut hair, make water, and tell bad jokes. And frankly, I can do all three on my own just fine. But Joe had a military model Handy - a Mr. Gutsy - for only almost all the money I had with me. I was sold. Joe said it’s designation was RL-3, and that it was a sergeant (I never knew robots had rank). It has both flame and plasma attacks, can carry a good bit of gear, and is an unending font of amusing battle chatter. Once we exchanged protocols I took advantage of its carrying capacity to do a more thorough job of looting the Robco factory, and then headed back to Megaton.
And RL-3 wasn’t the only useful new friend I made that day. I ran into some more of those Brotherhood guys, but these were different, some sort of splinter faction that called themselves Outcasts. Not that I care about their politics or whatever, the important thing is they want salvaged tech. And boy did I have a lot from my Robco trip. They didn’t have much in the way of caps, but offered to trade ammo, grenades, stimpaks, and Radaway. I marked it on my Pip-Boy map, I’ll definitely be going back there again.

From there, I staggered back to Megaton, and wrote all this down while it was still fresh. No sleep last night has left me exhausted. I’ll finish up with Moira in the morning. Off to bed.