Fallout New Vegas
The Diary of a Wasteland Debutante - 25

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#25 - Moving On - 9/28/2277

I must have had the sound a bit on the loud side, when the opening credits were over I glanced up to see Sydney standing in the doorway.

“That song, I’ve heard you whistling it, even singing it a couple of times when you didn’t know I was listening. “The Sweetheart Tree”. You were thinking of her, weren’t you? Of Amata.

I nodded. She sat on the edge of the bed and took my hand.

“It’s OK, Vault Boy. I know I’m not your one true love. And I’m sorry she’s lost to you. I can’t imagine how much it hurts. But, if it’s any consolation, I’ve had more fun in the last few weeks with you than any other time in my life, and I have no intention of stopping any time soon.  And speaking of fun, would you mind if I watched that with you? I’ve never seen one of those.”

“One of what?” I asked. “A comedy?”

“No silly, a movie. Not all of us grew up with a TV on our arm.”

She wrapped herself around me from behind so she could see my Pip-Boy and I pushed play…

Something Butch said to me in the vault yesterday keeps running through my mind. “Anything up there has got to be better than a lifetime of the same thing down here.Think about it, man. Down here, I'll always be stuck with the same job, with the same food, with the same people, forever.”

He was right. Growing up in the vault everything was the same. Everybody dressed the same, ate the same food, talked the same, listened to the same music. It wasn’t just a small world, it was as small as a world can get. And that’s all I had to look forward to. The same small grey world. Sometimes, I even dreamt in grey.

Then one day when I was about seven, my father brought home this holotape from the vault library, “The Great Race”. Made about a century before the war, it’s story takes place around fifty years before that, near the turn of the twentieth century, and tells the story of an around the world automobile race. My dad probably thought the weird old cars and slapstick comedy would make it the perfect babysitter, and he was right. I have no idea how many times I watched it, but it must number in the hundreds. Once, I watched it every night for a week before he said he had to return it to the library (he didn’t actually, I found where he’d hidden it a few days later). And as I grew older, I started to notice something else beyond the cars and comedy, diversity. It showed a world where from one continent to the next, one country to the next, even from one town to the next, people spoke differently, wore different clothes, listened to different music. I was fascinated by that world, and I began to dream of someday leaving the vault and taking a trip like that to see it. In color. Well, you can imagine my disappointment at the state of the world when I finally did make it outside. Especially concerning the lack of functioning automobiles.

When the movie ended, I told Sydney about my dream, and my disappointment. She told me to keep dreaming, “You wanted a diverse world, well you got it. You just have to get out there and explore. Cars, shmars. Walk. Or find some other way to travel. It’s yours for the taking.”

And then, we did something we’d never done before. We slept together. No drinking, no sex, just sleeping together, our arms wrapped around one another. It was nice.

2 comments

  1. stoffelero
    stoffelero
    • member
    • 7 kudos
    sweet, nice way to start my day, kinda nostalgic too these old movies just have a certain flair about them makes me think of sunday afternoons at my moms
    thx this a beautifull part, you kinda invite the readers more in to his mind, nicely done
    1. Keleigh3000
      Keleigh3000
      • premium
      • 133 kudos
      Thanks, that's just what I was trying for. Glad to know I achieved it.
      My mom took me to see that movie when I was 7, in the theater; and we watched it many times after that whenever it came on TV. I miss her, and I miss watching movies with her particularly.