New Vegas: Sheason's Story - Chapter 144: Muons and Mycotics

I look inside myself and see my heart is black…

I see my red door I must have it painted black…

Maybe then I’ll fade away and not have to face the facts…

It’s not easy facing up when your whole world is black…

The chill night air blew past me as I stood on one of the Lucky 38’s balconies, looking out at the city below. The lights of New Vegas and Freeside were like a carpet of stars, mirroring the sky. Smoke from my cigarette curled around my head, and the music from the speakers mounted on the walls above me buzzed in my ear. I wasn’t even really listening; I just wanted some background noise…

Tuera…

I wasn’t even sure what time it was. I was too busy trying to make sense of things.

You keep telling yourself that it can’t be her. That the math doesn’t add up.

I took another long draw, and could practically feel the poisonous smoke destroying my lungs.

Do you really believe that? Is it really so far fetched?

My mind had been doing this since I got back to the 38.

You have to ask yourself… how well did you really know her? How long did you two even date?

I came out onto the balcony to try and collect my thoughts. I thought the fresh air and Rolling Stones would help, but so far they weren’t working.

Did she ever talk to you about her past?

So then I started smoking, fucking up the fresh air with carcinogens. That wasn’t working either.

Did she ever even tell you her last name?

Okay, seriously. C’mon Shea. Focus. Compartmentalize. You’re just chasing ghosts. What she said on the roof? That was just a coincidence. It doesn’t mean anything.

Then why did she call you Shea?

Seriously, focus. Put all these thoughts in a box, and then put that box away. Compartmentalize. It’s just a distraction. There’s a bigger issue here: I’m still not fast enough. When she comes back again – and she will – you’ve got to be better than you are now to bring her down.

You’ve got to make yourself better? When have I heard that before?

Shut up.

Oh, that’s right. When she left you with no reason and no warning…

Fuck off.

You decided you weren’t good enough. You needed to be better.

SHUT UP SHUT MOUTH SHUT NOW

Ding.

It was very early the next morning – not so early that it was still dark, but still early considering how late I’d gotten back. I hadn’t gotten much sleep, and for the first time in… well, okay, for the first time, I honestly wished it had been nightmares keeping me up. I stuck my head out of the elevator and looked around the penthouse cautiously – nobody seemed to be around.

I made it a whole two feet.

“You’re up early,” Emily said from the bottom of the stairs. Her labcoat was gone, and she was just wearing a t-shirt and jeans.

“So are you,” I nodded at her as she made her way up, calmly sipping her cup of coffee. “Couldn’t sleep?” She shook her head.

“I don’t really sleep much, anyway. Thought I’d get some work done,” she slowly started looking me up and down. “Of course, when I can’t sleep, I don’t strap on combat gear and as many guns as I can find.”

“To be fair,” I raised a finger like I was trying to prove a point, despite not actually having one yet. “I have a lot more guns than this. If I tried to carry them all, I wouldn’t be able to move.”

“He really wouldn’t,” Sue chimed in, giving Emily a start. “I’ve seen it. His collection of guns is huge!”

“Well, you know what they say about guys with lots of guns…” Emily raised her coffee cup to her mouth, and failed to hide a smirk.

“They’re constantly getting thrown into deadly firefights and life-or-death situations?” I refused to rise to her bait.

“I…” Emily paused briefly, and then sighed. “Sure, why not.” She looked just a little disappointed. “So, are you all dressed up with nowhere to go, or are you planning on going out somewhere?”

“Thought I’d head to the Big Empty. Sue says they’re something there that might help me out somewhat.” At the words ‘Big Empty,’ Emily narrowed her eyes, in that strange mixture of frustration and motherly concern you only get from someone who is definitely annoyed with your antics and officially Done with your shit, but still worried that you might hurt yourself.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Emily asked, setting her coffee on a nearby table. “For all you know, there are more hostile artificial intelligences waiting for you in that crater. One screw up and we’ll have to clean you up with a mop.” Before I got a chance to say anything, Sue beat me too it.

“Not to worry! We’re going to the Y-15: Applied Muon Sciences facility. The only things in that direction are X-22 and the Forbidden Zone, so I’m sure we’ll be perfectly fine.”

“The… Forbidden… what?” Emily looked up at me curiously. “That sounds really ominous.” I shook my head and waved her off.

“What, did I never tell you? Mobius may be a bit senile,” maybe, I didn’t say aloud, “but he’s ultimately harmless. He just gave the X-42 facility the name ‘Forbidden Zone’ because he needed something suitably dramatic to keep the Think Tank in line.”

“I… see…” Emily folded her arms across her chest and leaned against a nearby railing. “So, what are you going to try and find in there?”

“Rocket boots,” I declared without ceremony. To her credit, she didn’t seem fazed.

“I want to say I don’t believe you, but the last month has altered my definition of ‘impossible,’ somewhat,” she shook her head. “Want some coffee before you go? The pot’s still fresh.” She looked up at me with a smile, her glasses slipping down the bridge of her nose. I nodded, unclasping my helmet and pulling it off my head.

“Sounds good,” I said with a smile. “A bit of caffeine is an essential part of the Sugar-Free Bowl of Insanity’s complete breakfast.”

A chill wind howled around me as I made my way across the crater. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a small pack of nightstalkers bounding off in the distance; I turned to look just as they disappeared behind a distant hill.

“So,” I finally said aloud, adjusting my grip on the Jury Rigger. “Out of curiosity, how do you know where to find these rocket boots?”

“Simple!” Sue replied happily. “Barry told me!”

“Barry? What, the biological research station? That Barry?” Sue made a tiny little “Mmhmm!” noise. “How the fuck would he know where the rocket boots would be kept?”

“Well, to be fair, it wasn’t just Barry. He knew roughly where it was, but Jeeves provided the specific information. Barry’s personality chip was housed in X-22 for a while, and we’ll have to pass through that facility to get to the adjacent muon labs.”

“Hrmm…” A knot was forming in the base of my gut, and starting to tug. Something was wrong, but I couldn’t put my finger on what just yet.

“Oh!” Sue exclaimed suddenly. “I think we’re almost here! Watch your step, please.”

“We’re – wait, what?” I looked around, scanning the horizon. The Forbidden Zone dome was off to my right. The Think Tank dome was behind me. If I remembered correctly, then the weather station in X-17 was hidden in the cliffs somewhere to my left, even though I couldn’t see it. But there didn’t appear to be anything directly in front of me. No buildings, no structures… nothing except a long stretch of empty desert.

“Seriously! Stop walking!” Sue said, the worry in her voice rising to the surface.

“Sue? Are you al – WHOA!” Thankfully, I looked down just in time to stop at the edge of a massive cliff. Now that I was standing at the edge, looking down into the yawning abyss, I don’t know how the fuck I managed to miss that. It must have been some trick of the light or some kind of optical illusion or something…

“I did warn you,” Sue said.

“That… you did…” I nodded, looking down at the chasm. I couldn’t see the bottom, but I could see a whole bunch of red crystals embedded in the walls… and a large rectangular structure of metal and concrete buried in the cliff directly opposite where I was standing. I honestly couldn’t tell if had been built like that from the get-go, or if it had been buried underground, and was only exposed because it was this crack in the earth that wasn’t supposed to be here. “Let me guess… that’s X-22?”

“It certainly is! If the schematics Jeeves gave me are accurate, there should be a hatch leading into the underground on the opposite side of the canyon. I think there’s a way across if we skirt the edge for a while and –”

PKCHOONT!

I sailed through the air, the grapnel gun sending me flying through a giant hole in the wall, and I landed inside the building without breaking stride. A small cloud of dust and dirt was kicked up and billowed around my feet, catching in the light filtering down through the top of the canyon.

“… or, I suppose we could just do that, sure.”

“Yeah, sorry,” I shoved the grapnel gun back in my duster. “We don’t really have time for all that.”

I looked around, and compared to most everything else I’d seen in the Big Empty, this place seemed really… non-descript is probably the best word. It was a ruined building, with grey walls, rubble, dust, dirt, and a few empty doorways that led into the darkened underground. There didn’t seem to be any identifying features of any kind that hadn’t been destroyed by the relentless march of time or the indifferent neglect of man.

“So, what is the story on this place?” I asked, advancing on one of the doors slowly. “Any rumors I should know about that will most likely turn out to be true?” A bit late to be asking now, I mused, but whatever.

“Not as far as I know,” Sue answered after a moment’s hesitation. “We’re probably only going to find skeletons. The X-22 Botanical Gardens and Entomopathology labs were one of the few facilities with no automated systems whatsoever.”

I suddenly thought of the many skeletons in the Big Empty, still up and walking around, endlessly repeating the last sentence they said before the hazmat suits took over and turned them into robo-zombie-skeletons.

“Yeah, that’s not a comfort, Sue,” I said. I peered into the darkness, leading with my rifle. I blinked, and suddenly the interior was awash in green. “So how do we get to the other lab that’s connected to this one?”

“I believe I can assist sir with navigation,” Jeeves’ voice crackled to life in my ear. The next thing I knew, I heard a beep coming from my arm; I looked down at my Pip Boy, and the screen had been replaced with a rapidly filling progress bar and the words “DOWNLOADING…” The screen flashed, and suddenly I was presented with a two-tone map, and a very bright line snaking through it.

“Well. That’s new,” I scanned the map quickly, and made my way into the darkness. “Alright, so you said these boots are in the Muon facility, right? I feel like a bit of an idiot for asking this, but what’s a muon?” I was expecting Sue to answer me, but no.

“How much time do you have?” Emily’s voice buzzed in my ear.

“Oh, hey Em! I didn’t know you were still on this frequency.” I rounded a corner and came to a set of stairs. “So, what’s a muon?” I heard a sharp intake of breath over the speaker.

“That’s a simple question with a complicated answer,” Emily said. “I could tell you everything I learned about particle physics from the only two intermediate-level physics classes I took at University to try and explain, but that could take days and only scratch the surface.”

“Try me,” I shrugged. “I mean, I have built a teleporter, after all.” As I started to descend, I noticed something odd: the deeper and deeper I went, the hotter the air seemed to get.

“Yeah, but you didn’t do the math,” she said. “You just built it from the schematics and followed the plans.”

“Okay, yeah, I admit that’s true, but I’m not completely stupid,” I managed to say with a straight face. It’s entirely possible I was distracted. Something odd was going on: the walls were no longer smooth concrete. The nightvision was washing out some of the details, but there was definitely something there, and it wasn’t just a heavy buildup of dust…

“Alright, let me try and give it to you in layman’s terms…” There was a slight pause, and it sounded like she took a sip of some coffee. “A muon is an unstable subatomic particle, with a mean lifetime of 2.2 microseconds, an electric charge of -1 e, and a mass of 105.7 MeV/c². In the Standard Model of particle physics, it’s classified as a lepton: particles with a half-spin that aren’t affected by strong nuclear force, but because it’s decay is mediated by the weak interaction exclusively…” I started laughing, and she trailed off.

“Okay, forget layman’s terms,” I said. “Do you speak English?” She sighed. I think I may have been wearing on her nerves, somewhat.

“A muon is like an electron, but heavier. I can’t dumb it down any more than that to get to your level, because I’m scared of heights!” I couldn’t help but shake my head and laugh more.

“Fair enough,” I rounded another corner. “I guess it’s not really all… that… im… por…” I paused, finally understanding what I had been looking at on the walls. “Oh, fuck me.”

“What?” Emily asked, suddenly concerned. “What’s wrong?”

The hallway had opened up, and even with nightvision bathing everything in a murky green, I could see nothing but foliage all around. I saw various types of moss, a whole bunch of leafy plants, vines snaking across the floor and walls, the whole nine yards. It was all very familiar, and suddenly everything about where I was and why it had the name ‘Botanical Gardens’ clicked in my head.

“Em? Do you think you can contact the OSI office at Camp McCarran?” I whispered, planting my feet and flicking the safety off my rifle. And just in time, too. At the back of the room, one of the bushes started to move, and I was 99% sure of what was going to happen next.

“Uh… maybe? I think so. I may have to talk to Boone to get in the base, but –”

At that moment, a large plant that looked like a giant Venus fly-trap rose up out of the bush. Its mouth opened wide, and the air was filled with several spines in the brief seconds before a laser bolt lit up the overgrown corridor like a sun – amplified to ridiculous levels by the nightvision. There was a bright flash, and the giant man-eater plant was completely vaporized, sending chunks of burning ash everywhere.

“Find Dr. Williams or Keely,” I tried to remain calm as I broke into a run and continued on my way to the rocket boots. “I may need another one of those anti-plant virus bombs Keely cooked up down in Vault 22.” As I ran, the motion tracker started going nuts. Red blips were appearing all over the place, and it was accompanied by the sound of many growly monsters.

“You can count on me,” Emily said, amidst the sound of shuffling over my headset. “Just… be… Jeeves, can you keep an eye on him? Don’t let him do anything stupid while I’m gone!”

“I shall do my best,” Jeeves’ replied. “But attempting to impede sirs’ ability to cause chaos in the crater is an exercise in futility.”

“It really is,” Sue added, completely unaffected by how close the sound seemed to be getting.

“I won’t be long,” Emily said finally, before I heard a click in my ear. And then, I heard several more clicks from above me… followed swiftly by a vent in the ceiling ahead of me flinging open, and dropping a pair of spore carriers right in my path. They both looked at me with eyeless faces covered in moss, their fungal protrusions sticking out of their backs like rows of spines, and leapt at me with a hissing, clicking gurgle.

If the hallway had been any wider, it might have taken me two whole shots to turn them into burning mulch.

“For fuck sake…” I grumbled, running straight through the ash that used to be the spore carriers, and trying my damndest to ignore the sounds of all the others converging on me. “First the Red Cloud, and now this! Is there any monster or unspeakable horrorin the wasteland that the Think Tank ISN’T responsible for creating?!”

“Motherfuckers!” I ducked under a spore carrier trying to leap at me. “This place is a fucking maze!” I slid against the moss on the floor, spun on my heel, blasted the fungus-zombie when it bashed face-first against the wall, spun again, and kept on going.

“You’re probably just saying that because the plants are covering every surface, hindering your ability to navigate properly,” Sue said, in a surprisingly calm tone of voice. “The layout on your Pip Boy’s map should still be accurate.”

“Yeah, but everything looks different in the dark,” I grumbled, sidestepping out of the way of another spore carrier. “Plus, there’s the whole being surrounded by angry plants trying to kill me thing.” I reared back with my cybernetic fist, and punched it right in the back of its head. It must have been mostly fungus, because it practically exploded in a giant cloud of flakes from the waist-up. “That’s a bit of a distraction.”

“Understandable,” Sue said, after a moment’s hesitation. I think she was just trying to polite, waiting until after I blasted a few more spore carriers and she didn’t have to shout over the laser discharge.

I wasn’t worried about the spore carriers or even the giant man-eater flytrap plants. Those all seemed to be going down without much difficulty. It was the vines that were worrying me. I’d been following the path alright, but a series of vines – like leafy tentacles – had been following me. I couldn’t tell if they were actually moving or if they were just growing so fast, but whatever the method, each tentacle-vine was gaining about an inch a second… and with every corridor, more were flowing in after me.

Was there another one of those giant hyper-mutant flytrap things down here, like in Vault 22? I suppose it would make a certain amount of sense, if the strains were similar – and I had no reason to believe they weren’t. If this was anything like the Red Cloud situation, it was engineered here in the Big Empty as a weapon from the start…

“Hang on,” I said aloud, reaching the end of a corridor. “This isn’t supposed to be closed off…” I looked back down at my Pip Boy, and sure enough, the schematics said there should’ve been a door here – with the Y-15 labs just beyond.

“Heads up,” Sue warned me. I looked back down the corridor, and a half-dozen spore carriers were crawling along the floor, walls, and ceiling at me. I flicked the fire-selector.

CLUNK!

“Right, where was I?” I turned back to the wall, and several lumps of charred meat collapsed in fungal heaps. The entire wall was covered in foliage and vines, but these didn’t seem to be moving. It looked like it had been growing here for some time… I think. It was hard to tell with the nightvision washing out so many details. I ran my hand along the mass of foliage.

“Of course,” I sighed, feeling just a slight give under the plants; I leaned in close, and heard a soft hum. So I reached up, grabbed a large cluster of vines, and started tearing a hole in the wall of plants. A bright light started to shine through the cracks…

BARK!

The wall of plants shuddered, and then collapsed to the floor when the support of the force field they’d been growing on had suddenly stopped existing. I momentarily wondered why they had clustered on it so thoroughly. After all, plants are supposed to photosynthesize, right? Maybe the force field was producing enough light for them to –

“I think we need to go,” Sue said urgently, bringing me back to reality. I looked back, and saw the vines again – and they seemed to be getting faster. That’s not a good sign.

“Right you are!” I ducked into the now open door, and just kept going.

The muon labs were definitely cleaner than X-22, but only in the sense that there weren’t plants everywhere. Every surface was caked in a layer of dust so thick, it almost looked like paint, and giant clouds of dust billowed around me with every slight movement disturbing the air in here.

“How much farther?” I asked, still checking my corners and keeping my rifle at the ready. There didn’t seem to be anything murderous here, but I could still hear the creaks and groans from X-22, and all those sounds seemed to be getting louder. I think those vines and the spore carriers were trying to follow me.

“The holding cell should be just around the next bend,” Sue responded.

“Oh yeah?” As I asked, I caught a glimpse of my Pip Boy’s screen flashing out of the corner of my eye. I paused, looking down at it more thoroughly: it was cycling through the maps rapidly. Was Sue accessing the files? Could… could she do that? Whatever.

The noises from behind me were getting louder, and I brought my rifle back up. Nothing. Yet. I started backing up, and… wait. No, there was something here, at the end of the hallway, coming around the furthest corner. Vines. Those same vines from before had started to catch up to me.

“Right, time to go,” I followed Sue’s directions as fast as I could, and came to a closed bulkhead. I slapped the button, and the hydraulics in the door wheezed, and it disturbed a cloud of dust so massive that I was almost entirely obscured. I rushed in and closed the door behind me.

“I’m gonna have to change the filter on this helmet soon if I keep running into this crap,” I muttered, trying to wave the air clear. When I finally broke through the obscuring haze, I found myself in a large circular room. There were dozens of chalkboards lining the walls – if they had any formulas, they were just as obscured by dust as everything else – along with several workbenches covered in tools and books. In the center of the room was a cylindrical pedestal, with a pair of metal boots sitting on top. The boots looked absolutely pristine, because there was a cylindrical forcefield surrounding them, generated by the edges of the pedestal and reaching up to the ceiling.

“H-uh.” I approached it cautiously. “Didn’t know they came in different shapes…” I rapped the back of my knuckles against the forcefield, and it reverberated like I’d hit a piece of sheet metal.

BARK!

“So, these are rocket boots?” I said, grabbing one and turning it around in my hands to get a better look at it. “Lighter than I was expecting…” They appeared to be knee-high boots made out of metal, with a quartet of thrusters ringing the thigh, and a large thruster in the heel. I could see several shock absorbers built into the soles, but I wasn’t quite sure how they were supposed to absorb shocks. There was some kind of box running along the shin that seemed to be wired into everything, and the whole ensemble looked large enough to encompass a foot already wearing a boot, like rubber rain boots. Or, maybe it was just built for someone with really big feet, I dunno.

THUD!

“Uh oh…” Sue said. It sounded like the vines had reached the door, and they were trying to force it open. I grabbed the other boot, and frantically started putting them on.

THUD!

“Okay,” I snapped as many of the buckles as I could find in place, and picked up my rifle again. “How do we get out of here? Is there an easier way to the surface?”

“I…” Sue paused. “I think that door is the only exit.”

THUD!

I started laughing and shaking my head, aiming my rifle at the bulkhead door, hoping that I was ready for when the vines or the spore carriers or whatever finally busted it down. But no.

CR-R-R-RACK!

The floor under my feet gave way when several large vines like tree trunks burst through. I didn’t even get a chance to say something like “This was unexpected!” before the tendrils wrapped themselves around my lower half and pulled me down through the collapsing structure. Broken floors whizzed past my vision, partially obscured by dust and debris, until I was finally dragged down into a large natural cavern.

“Wh- what is THAT?!” Sue practically screeched. Sure enough, I was caught in the grip of another one of those hyper mutated man-trap plants. Its mouth was open wide, ready for dinner, but I was determined to give it a bad case of indigestion. I flicked the fire selector back to the LAER setting, and fired as many bright energy beams straight down its gullet as I could. It faltered slightly, and several large pock-marks were burned into the interior of its mouth, but it was still drawing me in.

I kept firing, struggling against the vines, and looking around, trying to see if I could find a way out… and then I found it. Above me, I could see a single shaft of light, shining down through a hole in the ceiling. I couldn’t tell how big it was, but that was definitely sunlight!

I looked back down just in time to see its massive jaws close around me, swallowing me whole.

For a few seconds, everything was muffled.

And then, the jaws were forced open, and a gust of air pushed up from under me as the giant carnivorous plant roared in pain. Jets of white-hot energy were pouring out of my boots, setting fire to everything underneath them. The plant-flesh on the inside of its mouth was flash cooked and started belching clouds of smoke, and the vines that had been wrapping themselves around my legs, keeping me pinned, were turned to ash.

With nothing holding me down anymore, and with the rockets firing at full thrust, I surged up into the sky. I was doing my damndest to aim myself at the hole in the ceiling, but as I wasn’t even entirely certain how I’d activated the damn boots, I was finding it just a little bit difficult. So, I did the next best thing: I reached into my duster, grabbed the grapnel gun, and fired at the edge of the hole. That was much easier to aim.

The thrusters in my boots cut out, and I was pulled up by the grapnel line. Behind me, I could hear the frustrated bellows and wails of the giant mutant plant, still thrashing around underneath me, trying in vain to reach me. I reached the hole – which was wide enough to shove my car through, as it turned out – and looked up. I was at the bottom of the canyon!

The jets in my boots kicked in again, and I flew up like I was shot from a gun. The rocky walls whizzed past me as I went faster and faster up until finally, I was free!

I hovered high in the open air for a few seconds, admiring the view of the Big Empty below me. It was strange. I knew for a fact that this crater contained untold chaos and madness – like the sort I’d just escaped – but from this high up, it seemed… peaceful. You could almost call it serene.

And then the thrusters unexpectedly cut off.

“SON OF A BIIIIIIIIII-”

The world shifted into focus, and the crackling electricity dissipated as I stepped off the teleport platform and into the Lucky 38. The boots reverberated against the floor with a metal clang after every step. Emily was waiting for me; she was wearing her Followers labcoat, this time.

“Are you alright?” she asked, looking me with concern.

“Oh, yeah! I’m fine.” I said, pulling off my helmet and giving her a grin. Bits of dust and a few flecks of plant matter fell off as I shoved it under my arm like a football. “I got the boots, and I didn’t get eaten by carnivorous plants. All in all, I’d say that was a successful test, wouldn’t you?”