[color=00a651][b]Dr. Arthur West, Ace's Diner
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[i]"Me? I suppose you could say I'm not so...optimistic."  Frieda rested her bottle on the bar surface and turned it around in her hand.  "Mind you, I was thinking about their...capability, myself, earlier when Ace came over to talk to us after the gunshots.  Though mainly to the tune of, how do so many manage to survive, and keep surviving?"[/i]

"It is surprising that they have, to be honest," He replied with a thoughtful nod, "Down in the...well down in the vault, we assumed most out here were mutated monsters, killers, and psychotic raiders. The odd rare settlement was just that, rare and certainly not the norm. But there are good people out here I've found. Or, at least, they try to be."


[i]"Though perhaps what you've said has quite a bit of merit.  I hadn't thought of it that way, before.  They figured out how to feed themselves, and each other, and turn it into some kind of trade based economy no less.  Maybe there's some hope, at least, for some of them."[/i]

"I used to think they were the relic of a bygone age. Doomed to eventual extinction," Arthur remarked, a deep look of introspection crossing his face, "But now..well now I'm not sure. Perhaps...perhaps there is a chance that the surface is not quite beyond saving, and maybe its our duty to try and help them along...I suppose my medical work is my way of doing my part. Even if its only a small one."

By this point, the young waitress had returned with his water and Arthur gladly accepted it. But Frieda stopped her again,

[i]"My friend here needs a beer, too. Something...sophisticated," she flashed a quick wink at Arthur before looking back to the waitress.  "How about one of those stouts?"
[/i]

"Oh that's not really ne..." Arthur was about to say, but Frieda had begun arguing with the waitress, and he thought it best just to keep quiet. 

With an annoyed growl, the waitress had returned with a bottle of dark beer, and placed it on the table in front of Arthur,

"Thank you..that's...rather kind of you," He said, trying to be as gracious as he could to Frieda, and not wanting to let on to the fact that he really, really,  wasn't all that fond of surface beverages.  The last beer he'd had, which a Commonwealth farmer had offered to him as payment for helping his sick child, was irradiated and had come in a filthy re-used bottle. It had nearly caused him to vomit..not to mention the fact it had been flat...

Frieda twisted the cap off for him and then held out her beer, "Cheers," she said.

"Oh..um..of course," Arthur quickly grabbed his bottle and clinked it against hers, "Cheers."

Hesitantly, and with all the care he might take when handling a solution of hydrochloric acid, Arthur slowly brought the bottle to his mouth.

[i]Curse my incessant politeness.  [/i] He thought to himself. 

The beer wasn't nearly as bad as he'd expected, and at least it was cold, but he could already sense the tell-tale metallic taste of radiation. It was only slight, but it was still there. He closed his eyes and tried to swallow it. 

[i]"So, I'm interested to know, how did a sealed vault have so many scientific, or medical resources?  Most, if not all, of them were set up to study certain phenomena of human behaviour, but our records allegedly showed that many of them imploded from the inside by one factor or another.  That, or they opened to the world, and who knows what happened to those folks after that."  She paused, then flashed a wide, genuine smile.  "Sorry, I'm sure you're more than aware of the internal politics of a Vault, being from one, and all.  But anyways, how did your Vault make it?  Honest question."[/i]

Arthur nearly spit out the beer he had in his mouth, and quickly set the bottle down. He'd been so focused on trying to act 'casual' when drinking it that Frieda's question caught him off-guard. He swallowed the beer in his mouth hard and nervously adjusted his glasses,

"Oh..yes...well," He began, trying to think of something to say, "I suppose...I suppose we were lucky. We had plenty of food, water, and power. Our D..Overseer was a brilliant scientist, most of us were scientists actually. I guess that must have been our...experiment. Yeah, you know, pack a bunch of scientists into a vault and see what happens, not sure what Vault-Tec was trying to accomplish with [i]that [/i]one. We had also had robots to do most of the day to day things around the Vault, so most of use could just focus on our work. Just normal robots though, nothing really special about them."

He took another quick drink of the beer, nearly coughed that out as well, and looked back at Frieda,

"Good beer," He said, with a smile that was trying to hide a grimace.