Fallout 3 - Beautiful Stranger

Chapter 21 Part 2

The video stopped, leaving the woman on the screen, Sara, Patience, in the middle of blowing a kiss to the camera. Patience reached out to the flickering image and then pulled her hand back. Both Valrie and Gia remained silent while Patience tried to process what she had seen and heard. Then she heard a short, breathy whistle.

"Wow. That is a lot of information to take in. I mean, 'Sara'? I would never have thought of you as a 'Sara'. Come to think of it, I can't see you as a 'Patience'. I mean, you're really not. Patient, I mean." Gia would have continued talking if Valrie hadn't placed a hand over the girl's mouth.

"Are you okay?" Valrie turned Patience away from the screen and looked into her eyes. "If nothing else, the kid's right. That is a lot to take in. How are you feeling?"

"I'm not." She glanced at the screen, then looked back to Valrie. "I don't feel anything. I mean, that's me. Definitely me. Looks like me. Sounds like me. But there's nothing of her in me. Look at her! She's happy. She's funny and friendly and she's an artist! I doubt I could draw a stick-man!"

"I don't know what to say." Valrie leaned back against the rail. "Maybe it has something to do with your memory loss?"

"Maybe. But does memory loss explain how I know my way around weapons, guns and bullets, and fighting and war? Does she look like a soldier to you? Does she sound like someone who can look at someone and know, for a fact, several different ways she can kill them before they can even move?" She pointed towards the screen and the image of Sara, lips puckered, smiling with every part of her face.

"What's cancer?" Patience's head whipped around towards Gia. Angry, at first, she saw that the girl's question was genuine. She didn't know.

"It's a disease." Gia made a deliberate, long step back. "You can't catch it! Most types can be treated, if it's caught early enough, but some can't be treated at all and sometimes it just gets caught too late. I ... I have cancer."

Once more the world spun and swam around her. With a helping hand from Valrie, she slipped to the floor. She felt sick, her stomach twisting. Valrie reached into her coat and pulled out a bottle of water. It reminded Patience of when they first met. She took a couple of sips and wiped her mouth, her head beginning to clear.

She didn't know why that revelation affected her so much. If she thought about it, it made little difference here, now. With all the radiation still hanging around, it was probable that there were few people that didn't have cancer, here in the Capital Wasteland. She wondered how long she had left. Days? Weeks? Months? Did it matter?

"You were married, too." Again, Patience's head turned to look, annoyed, towards Gia. "Hey! I'm just saying! It seems like a pretty big thing that's just vwooshed over your head. Married, is all I'm saying. And you shamelessly flirting with me all this time."

"I've never flirted with you." Patience rubbed the bridge of her nose and took another drink of water.

"Heh. Whatever, 'Sweetie'." Gia made a short, snorting laugh.

"There are more videos. You could probably copy everything over to your Pip-Boy and go through it somewhere better than here." Valrie took back the bottle of water and hid it away in her coat. "And, I don't know, this might sound out of fucking place, but, what do we call you now? 'Sara'? 'Patience'? Resident 1138?"

"Patience. My name is Patience." She stood back up and returned to the terminal, scrolling through the videos. She reached one from the year 2100. "'Sara' died in the vault. I was born when you found me."

She selected the video.

-+-

"Happy New Year! Okay, so it's not New Year in here." Sara indicated her surroundings. A nice looking suburban home, sunlight streaming in through the window. "In the 'Reality Simulation' it's only been a year, or so, but out there it's been twenty-three years and it's the start of a new century! Twenty-three years!"