At The Precipice Of Something New

Something Within

Goodneighbour
January the 10th, 2290
21:10

To call Maryanne Jolle Curie the most eccentric of the two closest co workers of Dr. Annette Christine Davis would have been, in the view of most anyone though especially Robert Joseph MacCready, an indisputable lie. Still, that eccentricity, insofar as it made his son happy, was something he had decided he could easily overlook. His landlady, after all, was herself a ghoul and had lived before the War, and though once he had been wary of her, since she had become the closest to a consistent, matronly figure in his life. So, wary on impulse though he had been to learn Curie was a synth, he had spent (albeit certainly less than their mutual friend Piper) some time around an older model synth in Nick Valentine. Having since learnt of the (in his mind, decidedly bizarre) circumstances which had led to Curie inhabiting the body of an otherwise perfectly human appearing synth involving Hancock, Sturges Presley, and a Vault hidden within another Vault – a Vault Annette had even, much to the surprise of them both, stayed in during her first few months in the Commonwealth – MacCready had found the wary paranoia he had felt creeping back into the recesses of his mind fade. Duncan had fully recovered well over a year ago, and because of Annette. Amari, who alongside Irma had saved Annette's life after she had been attacked by the now very much dead Vincent Winlock and Stephen Barnes, had handpicked Annette and later Curie as her equals as medical professionals and scientists, too. And, MacCready had found, in the last two months since he had learnt he and Annette would be welcoming a baby into their lives by the end of May, it was almost impossible to be of low mood for long.

That said, the worry for Duncan, and the worry for Annette and their pre-born baby, lingered and seeing Curie walk into the apartment he shared with Annette and, soon to be, their children in her unusual dress and with her arms laden with two boxes, Daisy not short behind her carrying, of all things, a box out the top of which he could see a few cables prickled his nerves and, seeing Annette startle herself at the sight, he swiftly wrapped an arm around her from where they were sat on the couch of their apartment's living room.

"Curie didn't want Duncan to get bored of reading or playing baby games with your baby once it's born," Daisy said with a slight laugh as she set down the box in one corner. "She's brilliant with all this pre-War tech. She got my old TV working a few weeks ago, so I can watch my old DVDs of movies and TV shows, play some Red Menace again on a better screen than my computer terminal, and, when she found out I had a second TV in storage, thought it'd be a nice gift for Duncan."

"What'd be a nice gift for me? We just had Christmas, and mommy and daddy got me some new comics, and stuff to draw with! And I'm getting a brother or sister!" The six year old said, running out of his bedroom at hearing his name. He stared in confusion at what Daisy was removing from her box and what Curie was removing from hers. "What are those?"

"There's nothing dangerous in there, right?" MacCready let out a sigh of relief when both Daisy and Curie nodded. He turned to Duncan. "Go ahead, you can take a look."

Duncan gave his father a cheeky grin before running over to the boxes and all but throwing himself into them, rummaging through them almost in the same way a cat would a bag of cat nip or treats.

"I've been watching some of the television programmes Daisy kept discs of," Curie hummed whilst she began to unbox the television set onto a table across the room from the couch. "When I saw the title on the discs – of both the first two series and the later 'reboot' as they used to say – I thought they were a documentary series. They weren't. But they were good as a drama. Why Women Kill, it is called."

"Do I get to watch TV and play Red Menace too?" Duncan said, poking his head up from digging through the boxes. "I've only ever gotten to play Red Menace on a computer, and the screen is kinda small."