Chapter 14: The Writing on the Wall

We crept down the dark, dank stairwell in silence, spiraling deep into the earth as I held out the torch in front of me. Long black shadows stretched before us, dark shapes shifting along the walls like a formless phantom that gripped my imagination and conjured the darkest of visions into the back of my mind, sending my already finely tuned senses over the edge. I held my gun close to my chest, ready at a moment's notice, while Ilya had her nose buried in the Pip-Boy, no doubt keeping an eye out for even the slightest hint of danger as we moved deeper into the dark. After all, there was no telling what we might find down here, especially with all the damage done to the building over the years. All it would take was one poorly placed cave-in and it could open us up to any number of monstrosities.

Even so, as I gazed upon the Victorian sconces adorning the walls, I couldn't help but wonder.

"Look at this place, it's ancient... How long do you think it's been hiding down here?" I asked as I swept another curtain of cobwebs to the side.

"It must have been built into the very foundation," Ilya replied, "But that would mean it's been around since 1895 and that's practically four hundred years."

"Four hundred years?" I said with a whistle, "That's a long time to keep something like this a secret... Looks like this "Eye in the Atom" thing has been around a lot longer than our robot friend was letting on, and somehow, I don't get the sense we're on our way to a science consortium or gentlemen's club..."

"Neither do I," Ilya replied with a cold shiver, "I do hope my father knows what he's doing, this place is starting to give me the creeps," she added as we passed by another ominous eye carved into the wall, looking down at us with a glare as if it knew we were trespassing on this sacred ground.

We continued along in silence until, at last, the spiraling corridor came to an end and opened up into a massive underground chamber. Through the dim light, we were just barely able to make out the mechanical equipment strewn about the room. A chemistry set crowded the center, a beautiful array of crystal flasks and vials brimming with strange and mysterious liquids that intrigued me all their own, while a large set of databases lined the walls and towered above us from all sides, their dials dark and processors quiet. At last, we managed to find the main terminal, but quickly found it out of power. Ilya and I split up as we searched around in the dark, but as I crept around the edges of the room, I caught sight of something on the wall.

"Ilya, over here," I called out, and without a word, she raced over as quick as she could. I held up the torch high, and heard her let out an audible gasp.

"It's some kind of writing, but I can't quite make it out... Can't you reach any higher?"

"No, but there's got to be some kind of generator around here somewhere, right?" I replied, and we got back to work. It wasn't long before I finally caught sight of the great machine, tucked away far in the back corner and covered in cobwebs. With the flip of a switch, a spark of electricity shot up a pair of towering Tesla coils, igniting the engine and rumbling to life.

One by one, the lights flickered on around us, and suddenly we found ourselves standing in a magnificent laboratory, a monument to the beauty and craftsmanship of the Victorian age. The floor was made of a polished blue marble, inlaid with golden stars to look like the night sky. The ceiling stretched high above us, like a vast cathedral it seemed to go on forever and ever, but at its center hung a massive working model of the solar system that began to spin above our heads, ancient gears grinding out the celestial patterns of the planets and their moons. Finally, another ominous eye stared at us from high upon the wall, as always, surrounded by the rings of an atom.

And yet, despite all this beauty and wonder, Ilya and I saw none of it.

All we could see were the hundreds upon hundreds of equations written all over the room, the incoherent ramblings of a man gone mad. Half of it didn't even make any sense. Mathematical symbols I'd never seen before shone upon the walls, going on forever and ever in a jumble of crazed computations and endless equations, but even more unsettling were the scrawled messages scattered amid the madness, as if the author was trying to retain what little sanity he had left in the few repeated phrases. Words like "It's all my fault" and "If only I could have saved her" glistened in the light, and it was clear something terrible was tormenting this man's soul, but it was another phrase that caught my eye. Four simple words that sent a dark shiver down my spine.

The eyes are watching.

I looked up again at the carving on the wall, wondering if the Order could really be watching us right now...

"So," I said after a long, tense silence, "Is this the Divergence sequence you were talking about? How do we go about solving it so we can get this Conduit thing and get the hell out of here?"

"I honestly have no idea what this is," she replied in a faraway voice, her finger tracing the foreign symbols over and over again, "In fact," she added, "I don't think I've ever seen anything like this before..."

We stared in awe for what seemed like an eternity, lost in the madness without any idea where to begin. That was, until I heard a soft whisper next to me and turned to see Ilya pointing towards the doorway we had entered only moments before. There, just above the open arch, was a message written in red.

The truth is never quite as it seems,

But beneath His gaze, All can be seen.

Where all and nothing does collide,

There, you'll find it, in Atom's eye.

"Great, another riddle..." I said with a sigh, thankful I wasn't being chased by an army of synths this time, but it was just one vague hint after another.

"Jeez, your old man sure knew how to beat around a bush. Couldn't he just once be straightforward about these things? I swear, sometimes I can't tell if we've stumbled on a clue or if we're walking headlong into a trap."

"My father?" Ilya asked with a wrinkle between her brow ," Are you sure this was him? No, I don't believe it, he couldn't have. We both saw him in the recording that night and he certainly didn't look mad to me. Unwell, perhaps, but this? This is a bit much, even for him..."

I scoffed.

"This is your father's labratory, isn't it? We found the key in his office, didn't we? I mean, c'mon. Just name one other person who could have done it? Go on, name one."

"I don't know! But I do know that my father wasn't mad!" She blurted out suddenly and I reeled back.

"Okay, okay, calm down..." I conceded before we got into another shouting match, "We can figure this out. Maybe he left it, maybe he didn't, hell maybe the whole thing's just a smokescreen to throw the Order off the trail. Regardless of any of that, it's clear this is a clue meant for you, so let's just put our heads together and solve this thing, alright?"

Ilya took a deep breath before turning back to the wall with a huff, and I couldn't help but roll my eyes.

Stubborn as always, I thought, but decided it was best to stay silent on the matter.

As we looked over the riddle, it was clear it was trying to tell us where to find this thing, but it didn't make a lick of sense. "Where all and nothing does collide" and "There we'll find it, in Atom's eye"? Where the hell is that? It sounded like a bunch of contradictory nonsense, but it's all we had. As I gazed back up towards the symbol on the wall, it didn't look like much of anything from here, but still, it was worth a shot.

With little else said, Ilya and I split up. I immediately raced toward the console where I carefully climbed on top of one of the main databases. Ilya, on the other hand, began to scour the room in search of any other clues, even so much as inspecting every mention of "eyes" in all the mad writing. I left her to it as I turned to the ominous symbol, suddenly a lot larger than it seemed below, but just as everything in this library, had been carved with artistic mastery and clinical precision. As I brushed away the dust and grime, I had hoped to find some kind of button or secret compartment, just like you'd find in an old copy of Tallahassee Jones or some other cheap comic book, but it was to no avail. Just as I'd thought, the thing was solid stone, and as for it's "gaze", it didn't seem to be looking anywhere except right back towards the entrance and the riddle itself.

As I climbed back down, I found Ilya now pouring over the computer screen.

"How's it going over here?" I asked, but as she heaved a great sigh, I was pretty sure I already knew the answer.

"Poorly," she said with a shake of her head, "It looks like the entire system is fried, I can't even do a basic backlog retrieval! The whole thing's completely shot..." She said as she threw her hands up in a defeated slump back into the chair.

"Damn it, I was afraid of that," I replied, although I couldn't help but wonder if it was by mere accident of the bombs or if there had been an intentional wipe of the systems. Either way, we were getting nowhere fast.

"C'mon Ilya, think!" I urged the girl on, knowing this was just a world I didn't understand, "I mean, you were able to figure out the map, the painting, and the key. Whatever's going on here, it's clearly meant for you, so there's got to be something, anything in here that strikes you as odd or out of place. Whether you want to admit it or not, this was your father we're talking about, and nobody understood him better than you, so just think."

Ilya furrowed her brow in tired contemplation before speaking again.

"Well, It does seem a little odd for my father to be using the geocentric model...'

"The what?"

"The geocentric model," she said again as she pointed up at the rotating planets above our heads, "Look closely, that's the earth at the center, not the sun. That kind of model hasn't been used since the early fifteen hundreds. At first, I thought it was just a decorative choice, but now that I think about it, if this lab was really built as early as 1895, then there's no way they would have used anything other than the most cutting-edge technology and knowledge of the time. My father would have been the same way..."

"And this!" She said, almost exasperated as she jumped to her feet.

"The floor is made to look like a great star map, but look, where are the constellations? There's no Orion, no big dipper, no north star... Nothing! It's extremely detailed and intricate, and yet looks as if it were taken from a completely different galaxy! And what about this? This circle of black marble in the middle of the room? It looks like a black hole at the great center of the galaxy, but such a concept was only ever a theory in my time, so why even use it? It just doesn't make any sense... this library is a literal monument to knowledge and truth, so why wouldn't you portray everything as accurately as possible?" She trailed off again as she seemed to get lost within the peaks and arcs of a star system that perhaps never existed in the first place.

When suddenly, she stopped... and looked up.

Just as I had hoped, something had been triggered in her mind, but this time she needn't say a word. I followed her line of sight and instantly saw what had her standing speechless. From the angle we were looking at, it was clear as day. As we stared up from the center of the room, we could see the model for what it truly was... the ever moving iris of an eye.

Ilya whispered so quiet next to me, I almost didn't hear it.

"Where all and nothing does collide..."

"There, you'll find it, in Atom's eye." I finished with a smile, impressed once again by Dr. Astor's ingenious sense of perception. The ceiling above us had concealed a clever secret, a pattern within the tiles that could only be seen by standing in the exact center of the room. The black hole beneath us was the void of "nothing", the geocentric earth the "all" that we knew, and the eye in the ceiling that stared down menacingly at them both.

With renewed excitement, we got back to work. Frantically, we began to tear the room apart, desperately searching for some kind of ladder or step stool or anything that we could climb on top of really. Unfortunately, we had to settle for one of the large mahogany tables strewn about the room. We dragged the heavy wood into the center, but still we were short by several feet. With little other choice, we began stacking chairs one on top of another, until Ilya's hands were just grazing the bottom of the beautiful bronze orb. I lifted the girl up ever so carefully until, at last, she had managed to unhook it from its chain and we clamored down quickly to the safety of the floor.

We stared at the orb for what seemed like eternity, lost in the dizzyingly intricate designs engraved all over its face, when we spotted a small compartment hidden near the bottom. I watched as Ilya reached carefully inside and pulled out a small package wrapped in a magnificent red velvet.

As the wrapping fell away, however, I wrinkled my brow. I had expected to see some sort of electronic device, a conductor or transistor or something... But what I hadn't expected was the small brass spyglass now sitting in Ilya's hands. As she expanded the strange object to its fullest extent, a ray of light managed to glint off of a beautiful, yet incredibly simple inscription gleaming on the side.

Follow the Butterfly

"What the hell is this?" I said, "Where's the Conduit?"

"I'm not sure..." Ilya replied as she inspected the spyglass even closer, "but this definitely isn't it. In fact, it looks like some kind of oculus device to me..."

I looked at her with bewilderment and she quickly explained.

"You know, a sort of special lens to reveal secret messages with? And look at this, the knobs and dials on the side here? They can be used to adjust how the device works, whether you are looking far away or up close. It's an ingenious design, but why would it need to do both?"

As soon as she said it, it hit me.

"That's it! Ilya, do you still have the map I gave you? The one with the message from your father?"

Her eyes widened with realization.

"Yes, yes I do!" And before I knew it, she had the map out of her pocket and spread out onto the floor, Dr. Astor's butterfly grinning up at us once again. I watched as she collapsed the device back down and began adjusting the dials as she peered through the lens. After a few seconds of searching, I heard a squeal of excitement as she pointed off towards the edge of the map.

"Look, over here!" she said as she passed the spyglass over to me.

As I looked for myself, however, my face went pale. All the excitement was instantly drained from my body, replaced only by a cold, sinking feeling deep in the pit of my stomach. I glared at the little butterfly winking up at me from the page. Why? Why there? Of all the places her father could have picked, he had chosen the single most dangerous territory in all the Commonwealth.

Nuka World...

We were going to Nuka World.

It was once an amusement park, the biggest and most successful of its time. It was completely dedicated to the most recognizable of icons of the Old World, that of Nuka Cola. The soft drink had been so popular in those days it was practically sold on every street corner in America, so it was no wonder that the inventor had eventually spun off his brand into dozens of different products, everything from theme parks to children's programming. Of course, it's not what the place used to be that was so concerning to me...

"Ilya, we can't... there's just no way!" I replied, barely able to find the words to express how bad an idea this really was.

"Huh? What do you mean? All we have to do is get inside and use this spyglass to find the hidden symbol, and that will tell us where to go next! It'll be a piece of cake! Just like when my father used to take me there as a child..."

"We used to go every year," she continued softly, "There was a game we used to play, a contest... It was a lot like this actually. They'd give you a pair of glasses and you had to try and find all the hidden symbols strewn about the park. They would spell out a word and that was the combination to go meet the inventor of Nuka Cola himself, John-Caleb Bradberton! I never could find the last letter, but it didn't matter. My father having the influence he did, always got me in to see him anyway. Mr. Bradberton would give me all the Nuka Cola I could drink and tease me about what was going to happen in the next cartoon... He... he was one of the nicest men I'd ever met..." A gentle tear rolled down her cheek before she quickly came to her senses. She wiped it away on the back of her sleeve before looking back up at me, but it was all I could do not to yell at her.

"Ilya, you don't understand..." I said as a headache began to form behind my eyes, "It isn't like that anymore! Nuka World has been overrun by raiders and mutants for so long, it's nothing but a sick, twisted hellscape straight out of a madman's nightmare! The people there, Ilya... they just ain't right, seriously, they're fucked in the head."

"So, what, that's it then?" She said defiantly, "All this ends right here and we just give up? No, I don't accept that, Mr. Burns. There's got to be another way in without alerting the locals. I knew tons of kids growing up who jumped the gate without getting caught, and we're just two people, after all. How hard can it be?"

I shook my head.

"Are you kidding me? That place is an absolute fortress. I mean, the entire park is completely surrounded by high concrete walls the whole way round, and that's just for starters. Then there's all the different raider gangs inside, vying for power in a never-ending turf war, and we won't even get started on all the abominations roaming the wilder parts of the park. Disgusting, monstrous things... We'd never survive!"

"Dangerous or not, that's where the map says to go, so that's where I'm going!" Ilya said as she rolled up the map and the spyglass, a defiant glare in her eyes, "For once in your life, Jacob, have a little faith... I'm certain we can do this!"

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. It was one thing to solve a few riddles and hack a few computers, but this was Nuka World we were talking about here. Every single tourist, traveler, and trader that had ever crossed its threshold had never been heard from again, or worse, had been found impaled and decorating a spike around the massive walled city. This wasn't just impossible, this was sheer suicide.

"Ilya, I'm telling you, it can't be done! They actually want people to go there, they entice them in with the promise of wealth and security, but it's all a lie... Just so they can torture them in their sick and twisted games. Look, I don't even want to tell you this, but the truth is there is a way in, but it leads right into a death trap, " I trailed off, a dark shiver rushing down my spine, "And that's exactly what that place is... just one giant death trap, waiting for anyone poor, stupid, and desperate enough to take that risk."

"Poor, stupid, and desperate? Why it seems you would fit right in, my boy." A voice suddenly spoke up behind us, echoing off the cold stone walls.

Ilya and I jumped to our feet and spun around, desperately searching for the source of the sound. As we looked to the entrance, we watched in horror as a large, clunky figure slowly walked out from the shadows, a gun held tightly in his robotic hand.

"In fact, all this talk of death traps almost makes me regret you'll never get to see it..."

Even through that Protectron shell, I could sense that mile-long smile from here.

"Hello, Jacob. So very nice to see you again."