The Gem that fell from Heaven

Volume 1: Chapter 3

Six was pleasantly surprised when Doc Rotson introduced his bodyguard, another ghoul named Betty, to her and Ruby. To Six, Betty looked like those no-nonsense soldiers from the NCR, and she had the look to match it. Sporting a suit of combat armor with a desert camo decal and a mean looking modified variant of what looked to be an M4 Carbine. The quartet had left the Mojave Outpost a couple of hours prior and were making their way through the broken I-15, there was the occasional gecko or coyote, but other than that the trip had been uneventful, something Six was glad for. It's not that she couldn't deal with what the Mojave had to throw at her- far from it- but a nice, calm trip with little danger was a luxury in the wasteland.

Soon enough, the blurred silhouette of the trading town was visible on the horizon (thank goodness for the flatness of Nevada). By Six's calculations, Primm was still around a good 4 hours away, which would mean they'd be arriving after the sun had already set. Reasonably, Six was rather unnerved by this. Traveling at night meant they were more susceptible to raider ambushes. Maybe they could hide in the car wrecks and use the darkness to conceal themselves better...or maybe-

"Hey Six?" Six felt Ruby tugging on her duster, snapping her out of her thoughts.

"Hmm? What's up?"

"What are those towers over there?" Six looked to where Ruby was pointing. Off in the distance were a selection of 2 big rundown and broken towers, with a third one completely collapsed. Six looked at her pipboy, but no named location was there, so she racked her brain trying to remember what that place was.

Six remained quiet for a good minute before remembering something. "It's uh...I think it was a power station? Like a solar-powered one. If memory serves me right, the NCR cleaned the place dry for scrap and shit to repair Helios One. I doubt there's anything there worth taking."

"Oh okay! Cool...What's that solar power thing?" Ruby's eyes lighted with curiosity.

Six stared at Ruby for a handful of seconds. How does she not know what solar power is? Sure, it wasn't all that common before the war as far as Six knew, but most people had still heard of it... Did her world not have it? Another question for later, Six supposed. "Well, it's just as the name implies. It uses the sunlight to make energy."

"I mean, I understood that much. But how does it do that?" Six didn't answer. Mostly because she herself had no fucking clue of how it worked. Okay, that wasn't entirely right, she had a basic idea of how solar panels worked (Arcade can go on and on and on about stuff when you ask him), but she didn't know the why of it.

"Uhhhh weellllll...you seee... It-" Six was started to trail off before a now familiar raspy voice interrupted the mailwoman.

"Solar panels, which are usually made from silicon or other semiconducting material, absorb light and capture it inside the panel. The atoms from the silicons cells, once exposed to the photons that are inside' light, release electrons which then flow inside a current powering whatever needs to be powered." Six and Ruby stared, completely flabbergasted, at the ghoul who didn't even bother to look back at them, eyeing the group's surroundings instead with her M16 in hand.

Ruby's look of curiosity remained, although now it was sprinkled with a few metric tons of confusion. "I understood, like, nothing of what you just said. Also, how do you ...know that?"

The ghoul glanced over her shoulder, eyeing the young teen with a cold stare. "You callin' me dumb?"

Ruby immediately shrunk, waving her hands at Betty. "Nonononono I didn't mean anything like that Ijustthoughtitwasweirdbecauseyou-"

Betty, however, began to chuckle as Ruby went on her little rant. "Is she always like this?" Betty asked Six, still chuckling.

"How should I know?" Six shrugged. "I've known her for the entire duration of a day... But seriously, how the fuck do you know that? You strike me more as the military type than the intellectual."