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There was a brief flash of light before Courier Six appeared on the balcony of the Sink. Slightly disoriented for a brief moment, she let her eyes refocus before taking in her surroundings. Big MT hadn’t changed much since the last time she popped in; it was still here, still weird, and, as she watched a Y-17 harness wander down below, still pretty hostile.
As Jen had been going back and forth in the past few months, she had been attempting to clear the place out a little more, but it seemed that Lobotomites and the like still crawled out of the walls. She shook her head to clear her thoughts, then keyed in the code to open the door to the Sink.
As she entered the Hub, the various forms of robot personalities came to life around her with exclamations of welcome. Their Courier was back!
Jen set her bag down on the table and smiled as she greeted her mechanical friends. So what if her friends had off switches, it made them more fun this way.
Muggy came whizzing into the main room and immediately started bumping against Jen’s calf. “Did you bring me any mugs? PLEASE tell me you brought more!”
The Courier laughed. “And what kind of person would I be if I didn’t?” she exclaimed, dumping out a small sack full of pre-war mugs before handing them down to the little securitron. “Go nuts, little buddy.”
Muggy cackled with glee as he carried the teetering stack of mugs back to the bedroom to start methodically destroying them.
Mugs aside, Jen did have a purpose to coming back to the Sink. She turned to the Auto-Doc, who was still whirring to life in the corner. "Hey there Sport. What'll it be today?" He asked as Jen started to shrug her jacket off.
"Working on the ol' noggin again." She chirped, unwrapping her bandaged hands and pushing back her close-cropped hair. “Gonna see what this holotape here might be able to do.” Out of her pack came a small bundle, which when unwrapped, contained a small battered holotape.
“Just pop ‘er in there Sport, let’s see what this thing has to offer.” he replied, and she plugged the tape into his mainframe.
While the Auto-Doc mulled over the contents of the tape, Jen continued emptying out her pack, placing everything she had brought back in neat piles: some wrecked old books for Book Chute to chew apart, a toaster for Toaster to dismantle, seed packets for the Biological Research Station, lots of empty Nuka Cola bottles for Sink to fill, and a teddy bear for Dr. Dala. She would have to go visit the Think Tank post-recovery; as crazy as those fishbowl brains were, they were still her friends too.
“Would sir fancy a refreshment before sir’s procedure?” SCIU interrupted Jen’s mental inventory, and she smiled.
“What do ya got, SCIU?” She asked, knowing full well that most of the options were nearing vinegar in the 200+ years since the war.
"Very good, sir. If I might suggest a table wine, the 64 Atomic Claret is a lovely little vintage."
“Humor me, I’ll see what it’s like.” she mused. As she suspected, it was completely fermented. She faked a smile and went to go dump it in the actual Sink, who greeted her simply with a ‘tsk’.
“Oh God, look at you! You're...filthy. I suppose you'll... want to clean up then?”
“Hey, hey, Sink, it ain’t that bad. Just a little. ‘Sides, I’m going in the Auto-Doc in a few.” she said as she poured the vinegary wine remains down the drain. “Got some bottles to fill up though! Mind if I do that post-op?”
“I can do that! They...they've been thoroughly washed, haven't they?” Sink was pensive about germs, as usual. Jen held them up for her inspection.
“Clean as a whistle, Sink! Cleaner than most of the Mojave if I’m honest.”
The Auto-Doc called from the next room then, cutting the conversation short: “All locked and loaded, Sport!” She set the bottles down and headed toward the hub.
As Jen started stripping down to enter the Auto-Doc, SCIU piped up: "Sir is looking exceptionally sharp today, if sir will permit the compliment."
“Ay, SCIU I’m gonna have to start charging if you keep watching,” Jen teased, folding her shirt. She definitely wasn’t as “sharp” looking as she used to be. Scars littered her body: sure, there were loads of little ones up and down her arms, but the bigger, newer ones stood out far more against her tanned complexion. A large rather fresh patch of skin occupied her shoulder from where the Ghost of She took a chunk out of her, an X slashed across her sternum from where her heart was taken out and replaced, a long thin line zippered up the length of her back from where they took her spine. Underneath her freshly dyed, close cropped hair was a neat little incision all the way around her head, where the Auto-Doc scooped her brains out. And of course, cutting across her eyebrow was the mark where Benny Gecko put a bullet in her skull.
Those scars told stories, they did. Too bad they didn’t help tell the story just beyond Jen’s grasp. Although her memory was getting better, she still didn’t have a full answer to who she was. That was hopefully what the Auto-Doc was going to try to fix.
The last two things she took off were Boone’s dog tags and the rosary from Joshua. She smiled, folding the two tokens from the men she loved neatly into the pocket of her discarded shirt, and stepped into the Auto-Doc.
She was prone to falling asleep during procedures, and fully expected to be out cold within a minute or two. “Hey Doc, wake me up when it’s over,” she said before closing her eyes. The last thing she remembered hearing was the whirring of instruments, and Auto-Doc’s noise of affirmation at her request.
---
Jen didn’t know how long she had been out for, but when she came to, she was being ushered out of the Auto-Doc woozy and reeling. “Off to rest now, Sir! Sir shouldn’t be up and about for another few hours while Sir is recovering!” SCIU chided, while Muggy bumped against Jen’s calves to guide her towards the bedroom. She fell face-first into her bed, and without much thought, slipped right back into a deep sleep.
While she slept, hazy visions crept into the corners of her mind, almost as if they were itching at the far reaches of her brain. A female voice called out to her, saying her name.
When she awoke, her head was pounding, and she found a new, coin-sized incision behind her ear. Jen rubbed at her eyes and found her vision less cloudy than usual.
As she ambled, half-dressed into the hub, she yawned, cradling a notebook in her arms. “So what kind of results are we lookin’ at, Doc?” she asked, perching cross-legged on top of SCIU, much to his chagrin.
The Auto-Doc harrumphed, indignant. “Your brains are all sorts of scrambled; whatever holotape you gave me didn’t do much to unscramble ‘em. Managed to fix those eyes though.” Jen began recording her results on a page already covered in her medical notes from previous procedures. The Doc was right though, her vision was completely clear: something that hadn’t happened since...since sometime before she woke up in her shallow grave above Goodsprings.
“I heard a voice this time. And saw some hazy stuff. But that was it. Better than last time though.” she murmured.
“Well it’s better than nothing, Sport. Doesn’t mean I can’t start working on more of those scars of yours next time too.” Auto-Doc continued. “When are you gonna let me take care of that gnarly one on your forehead?”
Jen smiled, touching a hand to the indent of pink flesh above her brow. “Nah, Doc, I wanna keep this one. This one tells a story. And right now, these are the only stories I’ve got.”