The sun was creeping below the horizon by the time I carried the girl down the hill and into a bomb-blasted apartment. I found a secluded room, where I laid her gently down on the sofa and took up watch next to the window. I stared out over the square below, my bloodshot eyes begging for rest, but there was no chance. I'd be up all night for sure, the last thing I needed was for her to wake up and run off into God-knows-what. This was definitely no place for a young woman to be caught after dark.

I watched as the ferals crawled out from their holes and into the cool night air. They shambled aimlessly through the streets below, lost souls of a bygone era, forever doomed to wander. I knew the feeling. It seemed like that was all I was doing these days, and now there was no end in sight.

It was supposed to be easy, in and out with all the guns and goods I'd ever need to live out the rest of my days, but nothing's ever that simple. I was sitting off worse than ever before, not to mention someone still had to explain this whole mess to the girl. I certainly didn't look forward to telling her the truth about her old man, but somehow, I think she already knew.

I looked over at her for about the hundredth time since I had first seen her in that vault. She looked so peaceful as she laid there, the ephemeral light of an old television dancing across her delicate features.

There were a million questions racing through my mind, the same questions I'm sure every Wastelander had asked himself at one time or another. Sure, you could talk to one of the old pre-war ghouls, but 200 years inevitably took its toll on the mind. Nobody was meant to live that long, and memory can be a fickle thing. But this girl? She was someone who had actually lived back then, who could remember. A part of me felt guilty for wanting to know, I despised Vault-Tec and everything they stood for, but still... I couldn't help but wonder...

How had it really come to this?

I watched as one of the ghouls below stepped on an active mine. The explosion blew pieces of him clear across the plaza and left him writhing in agony on the ground. Before the poor beast knew it, his fellow ferals were on top of him, tearing into his flesh and devouring him alive.

This was the only world I or anyone else had ever known. Dog eat dog, and to hell if you thought that was ever going to change. And yet, all around us were remnants of the past, echoes calling out to us from every corner of the world. It was recorded on every holotape, written on every poster, and plastered on every billboard. Forever taunting us with that never-ending question.

How?

I turned away and back towards the girl. She was a mystery all her own. Who was she, and how did she end up there? And what was with that vault anyway? It looked like it had belonged to some conspiracy nut, but she sure didn't fit the profile. Whoever put that place together must have had some deep connections with Vault-Tec, at least the money and influence to know a thing or two. I eyed the Pip-Boy on her wrist and thought to myself (and not for the first time either), what secrets could it be hiding?

I couldn't take it any longer. I carefully unhooked the latch and slid the device gently off of her wrist. At once, I could tell this wasn't your average model. In fact, I wasn't sure if this was a RobCo at all. It had all the features every other portable computer came with in those days; tele-screen, radio, holotape deck, but I'd never seen one with a collapsible keyboard before, let alone an adjustable interface cable that looked like it could plug into just about any port. I booted up the system and green letters flickered across the screen.

Greetings, Ilya Astor

Ilya... what an unusual name, I thought. It reminded me of flowers, and not those dried-up weeds that clung to life out in the Wasteland, but like the ones you saw in paintings and photographs.

The girl began to stir in her sleep, and I moved to sit by her side. Her eyes fluttered open, and immediately a panic came over her face as everything that had happened came rushing back to her. I tried to calm her down, to tell her that she was safe, and that I wouldn't let anything happen to her... but before the words could leave my lips, a small yet powerful fist slammed into my face and knocked me flat on my ass.

"Argh! Son of a... What the hell did you do that for?" I yelled.

"You!" She was shaking with a rage so fierce she could hardly speak. "You... lied to me! What kind of soldier are you? What kind of man?" She snatched the Pip-Boy out of my hands and put it back on her wrist.

"What are you talking about? I saved your life! You ungrateful little..."

"Who are you and where are we?" she demanded, and suddenly I found myself staring down the barrel of my own gun. The little minx must have swiped it while I was nursing my injured pride.

"Answer me!" she demanded again.

"Alright, alright, just calm down, will ya? The name's Jacob Burns, and we're just outside the college square at Cambridge. And yeah, I lied. It was the only way I could get you out of there, no need to thank me by the way," I said as I got to my feet and dusted myself off. I ignored the incredulous look on her face as I sauntered past and slumped onto the couch, beyond exhausted. In the past few hours I'd been shot at, buried alive, nearly vaporized in an atomic blast, and altogether dragged through hell and back. She could do what she wanted, I was done for the day.

"What happened back there?" She demanded, "Those monsters, those robot things, what on earth were they? I've never seen anything like that, not from the Chinese, the Russians, or even the Martians out of a cheap sci-fi mag! I mean... how did they...and why... and...and..." Her eyes teared up as she looked out the window, "Just... what happened?" I sighed, I knew she'd get there eventually.

So I told her. I told her the whole damn thing. How the sirens rang out that morning, but few had listened, assuming it had been just another drill. A flash of light and thousands of lives were extinguished in an instant. Those unlucky enough to survive were drowned in a world of radiation that twisted them into the ferals below. Even to this day, no one knows who fired the first shot, and I doubted there was anyone left who cared, but one thing was certain. By the end of it, all of two hours had passed, and the Great War of 2077 was over. The world as we knew it had ended, and only the Wasteland remained.

By the time I had finished, Ilya was sitting on the couch next to me, the gun in her hand long forgotten. She was quiet for a long time.

"Two hundred years?" Her voice was barely a whisper.

"A little over two hundred and ten, actually," I said.

"My father promised me... he said he had a plan, that he'd leave me a sign or a signal or something if he didn't make it in time. I can't believe he's really gone..."

I wasn't sure what to say, I couldn't imagine what she was going through. I had lost my family, my home, and my honor, but she had lost her entire world.

"Look Ilya... I uh, don't mean to pry, but I gotta ask. How'd you end up in that freezer box in the first place?"

"I don't remember much," she said thoughtfully, "A man came to my home in the middle of the night, told me he worked for my father and that the bombs were on their way. Next thing I knew, I was being rushed away to the vault and climbing into that cryopod. After that, it's all been alarms and running for my life."

"So, you have no idea what was actually in the vault?" I asked.

"No, I barely got a look at it." My heart sank, so much for getting answers.

"Wait a minute," she said, "How did you find me?"

I dug the map out of my jacket and handed it over. She looked at me as if I had just grown two heads (which was entirely possible in this day and age).

"This is my father's handwriting," she said, astonished, "where did you get this?"

"Off some old salesman," I replied with a wave of my hand, "he told me it would lead me to 'the Greatest Treasure in the Wasteland'", I laughed. "Don't get me wrong, your old man had a nice stash, but it was hardly as grand as advertised. He probably just plucked it off some old ruins, I think there's a regional HQ for Vault-Tec downtown."

"No, this... this would have been kept highly classified. It wouldn't have just been lying around. These numbers, what do they mean?" She pointed to a few notes jumbled in the corner right next to the sketch of a small butterfly, the absent-minded doodle of a scientist long dead.

I shrugged.

"Seemed like random numbers to me, I never really gave them any thought," I told her. She stared at them intently, until suddenly, she stood up.

"Do you believe in fate, Mr. Burns?" A pearly grin spread wide over her face.

"Excuse me?"

"This can't be a coincidence. My father may have been a clever man, but this is beyond even him!"

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"THIS! This is a message, and it's meant for me!" She jabbed her finger at the drawing as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"Oh...kay... What does some scribble your dad made two centuries ago have to do with anything?"

"That was my father's nickname for me," she said, exasperated. "He always called me his little miracle, that I wouldn't be here 'if not for the flap of a butterfly's wings'."

"When I was born, I was terribly ill. My mother died during childbirth, and I had to be hospitalized until I was nearly six years old. My father brought me up on mathematical equations and scientific theories, but he couldn't help but throw in a little magic just for me. I mean, I was the girl with a stable of Giddy-up Buttercups, after all..."

"He used to tell me that on the day I was born, I was fated to die... but somewhere, out in the great wide world, a butterfly flapped its wings and changed my future. And so, he would always thank a butterfly whenever he saw one, just in case it was the one that saved my life." She trailed off as she examined the numbers again.

"Oh, come on," I said, "You don't really believe in that crap, do you? It's all random coincidence. I'm just a guy that followed a map, there's nothing mystical about that." But she wasn't listening, she was typing furiously into her Pip-Boy, mumbling to herself as she fiddled with the dials and flipped through the channels on the radio.

"Dang it, I can't seem to find a signal anywhere. Is there a satellite array nearby? Or a transmission station or even a... oh!" She rushed over to the television, pried off the back casing, and began digging through the electronics.

"What're you...?" I started, but before I could finish, she shoved a handful of wires into my arms and was plugging in the interface cable into a hidden port within the tubing. I watched, fascinated, as she flipped through the television channels until at last a signal appeared. The TV crackled until the static finally settled on the "Please Stand By" message in all its monochromatic glory.

"It's always been like that," I told her, "the screen's never changed, not for two hundred years anyway."

She couldn't hear me. She was lost in her own world as she worked out a problem only she could see. I'd heard tales of men who went mad staring at that box, wasted away, just waiting for the damned thing to tell them what to do. Denial's an ugly thing out here, the kind of thing that get's you killed and I wasn't about to let that happen to her.

I grabbed a hold of her arm, but as soon as I did, the static crackled again and a sound trumpeted through ancient speakers. The screen flashed with the message "Incoming Broadcast" and slowly, a grainy image came into focus. A man appeared on the screen.

For the first time in two hundred years, the television spoke.

"Goodbye, butterfly."