The elevator doors hissed open, and Case stepped out into the heart of the Dome. The air hit him instantly—a sharp, sterile cocktail of ozone, antiseptic, and aging coolant. It was the smell of science, or at least, the Big MT's erratic version of it.
He kept his Marksman Carbine lowered but ready. However, something strange, he couldn't even flick the safety off. Above him, the five monitors drifted through the air, their screen-faces flickering with digital "eyes" that pulsed with every word.
"BE WARNED, INTRUDER!" Dr. Klein's voice boomed, vibrating the very floorboards. "YOU ARE IN THE PRESENCE OF THE MIGHTY THINK TANK OF BIG MT! THE COLLECTIVE GENIUS OF THE WORLD!"
"Dr. Klein, I presume," Case said, his voice calm and echoing through the chamber. "And the other members of the Mighty Think Tank: Doctor Dala, Borous, Eight, and Zero."
The screens flickered wildly. The constant, high-pitched humming of their propulsion units faltered for a second as the brains processed the impossibility of a "flesh-thing" knowing their names.
"IT SPEAKS!" Klein's monitor zoomed in, the cathode-ray tube screen hovering inches from Case's face, flickering with frantic static. "Did anyone catch that? Borous, you're working with animals. Translate! Is it a grunt? A mating call? Why does it have so many syllables?"
"IT'S A LOBOTOMITE! HERE! IN THE DOME! AND IT'S ARMED! WITH GUNS!" Borous shouted, his screen flashing an angry, alarm-siren red. He backed away, his hover-jets whining in a high-pitched panic.
"Actually," Dr. 0 interjected, his screen displaying a skeptical, narrowed-eye graphic, "if you'd look at the localized seismograph, you'd realize this 'animal' brought a whole menagerie of heavy-ordnance 'clutter' with it. It's... talking about something. Something specific."
Case smirked, tapping the side of his temple. "Lobotomite? Well, I am one by your definition, but apparently, my brain is still intact. Your Auto-Doc managed to... fix things up, and now it's working better than ever. It fries when it's supposed to, I bet?"
The Dome fell into a stunned, electronic silence. Case knew the game's script—he knew about the brain extraction, the spine replacement, and the heart swap—but in this timeline, the Big MT was still at the height of its stagnant power.
There were no signs of Father Elijah's sabotage yet, and the train tunnels still hummed with pre-war efficiency. The "mess" hadn't fully begun, but the monsters—the Cazadores and Nightstalkers—were already breeding in the lower labs.
However, Case wasn't a lone Courier with a delivery to make. He was a commander with a steel wall of tanks between him and the outside world.
"I believe Doctor Klein, the lobotomite knows something about us—about the Big MT," Dala whispered. Her monitor drifted lower, the screen glowing a soft, oscillating pink that pulsed in time with Case's heartbeat.
She floated closer, her sensor arrays extending like delicate, metallic fingers, hovering just millimeters from the sleeve of Case's combat gear. She made a soft, rhythmic whirring sound that was disturbingly close to a sigh.
"Do you hear that, Klein? The way its respiratory system hitches when I get close? It's so... vibrant," Dala cooed, her digital eyes widening into shimmering orbs of curiosity. She spun slowly in the air, her hover-jets kicking up a faint scent of lavender and old electronics. "Tell me, little breathing thing... do you find our metallic carapaces... stimulating? Do you dream of the static between our thoughts?"
Borous made a sound like a grinding gear. "Dala, stop flirting with the specimen! It has guns! Guns kill!"
"Sounds… odd…" Case answered, shifting his weight. Even for a man who had seen ghouls and super mutants, being flirted with by a floating jar of brain fluid was a new peak of wasteland weirdness.
"Wait," Zero interjected, his screen flashing with a jagged line of calculation. "If you understand us... if you can reason with us without leaking brain matter through your ears..."
"THEN YOU ARE THE ANSWERS TO OUR PROBLEMS!" Klein bellowed, his monitors bobbing in a sudden, frantic dance of realization.
Before they could celebrate their new "discovery," a shrill, grinding sound tore through the chamber. The massive screen located directly behind the Think Tank flickered, the blue static of the Big MT logo dissolving into a chaotic, red-tinted transmission.
The image of another floating brain flickered onto the massive screen, his display pulsing with an erratic, drug-addled intensity. Case didn't even flinch. He knew exactly who was staring back at them: Doctor Mobius.
"If it isn't my old colleagues, the mighty 'Think Tank' of Big MT. Big fools, all of you!" Mobius paused to let the dramatic irony sink in, his digital eyes squinting. "It is I, Doctor Mobius, transmitting from my dome-shaped dome in the Forbidden Zone. A zone… that is, yes… forbidden to you."
Case simply listened. He briefly wished he could tune into the 'Mysterious Broadcast' just to drown out the theatrics with some jazz, but he held his ground. Information was the only currency that mattered here. Currently, the Think Tank was blissfully—and dangerously—ignorant of the world beyond the Crater. Ulysses hadn't arrived yet to lecture them on history or the "Old World Wall," leaving them trapped in their own loop.
"Even now, my deadly Robo-Scorpions swarm across Big MT with their pincers and pointy laser tails!" Mobius continued, his voice rising to a shaky crescendo. "Soon, all science will be mine. The technologies sealed in the research centers cannot save you. So, cower in your 'Think Tank' and wait for the end! Goodbye... that is all!"
The screen cut to static.
"Mobius... always the same broadcast," Klein huffed, his monitor glowing a frustrated orange. "He is clearly mad, driven insane by his flawed and imprecise kindergarten-level research methodology!"
Case opened his mouth to intervene, but Zero beat him to it, his hover-jets whining in a panicked pitch. "What are we going to do? There's no way we can breach the Forbidden Zone! There are those robot scorpions everywhere! The Forbidden Zone—where no brain has ever entered, nor ever returned!"
"Except Mobius!" Borous shouted. "And the technologies that could save us... they are all out of our reach!"
"Look at his cracked monitor!" Klein added, ignoring the physical threat for a moment to judge Mobius's aesthetics. "He has clearly let himself go!"
Dr. 8 beeped a rapid-fire sequence of binary, his screen scrolling with green text. "Maybe we can ask for the lobotomite's help?"
"What? Ask the lobotomite for help?" Zero snapped. "8, I think you need the fluid levels in your logic-assist pumps checked. It's a flesh-thing!"
"If this lobotomite responded to its own name, Dr. Klein, then it is clearly intelligent," Dala crooned, her monitor drifting back toward Case with predatory grace. "Perhaps it even displays heretofore unknown levels of... helpfulness. It has so many functional limbs, after all. Limbs that can reach into small, forbidden places."
"But what of his brain? We scooped that out! We don't even know where we left it! And for putting it back in… none of us have the knowledge!" Klein shouted, his monitor flashing a frantic violet.
Dala drifted closer, her screen a soft, oscillating pink. "Yes, but it's still aware and responsive. Look at it… it's regarding us even now, with its big teddy bear eyes." She paused, her sensor arrays twitching with an almost tactile curiosity. "If we ask it politely, and leave the part about the unnecessary, ruthless lobotomizing out, it might be favorably disposed to us."
Case had seen enough. In his past life, this was where the conversation spiraled into a thirty-minute loop of scientific jargon and circular logic. In this life, with a family waiting in a warzone outside, he didn't have thirty seconds to waste.
"Fine! I know!" Case barked, stepping into the center of the ring of floating jars. "You took my brain out, you don't have the tech to put it back yet, and you've got a fence around this place that keeps me from leaving for the Mojave. I'm having none of it. Which one do you need? And by the way, don't even think about trying to 'process' me, you five brains-in-a-jar!"
"HOW DARE YOU!" Klein's voice boomed, his screen turning a violent, offended red. "YOU ARE A SPECIMEN! A COLLECTION OF ORGANS HELD TOGETHER BY GLUES AND MED-X!"
"I'm the commander of an army of non-lobotomized veterans with heavy ordnance," Case threatened, his voice dropping to a low, lethal chill. "They came from the military, and they aren't affected by your pacification field. If I don't check in every fifteen minutes, they stop being 'surgical' with those tanks and start being 'thorough.'"
He let the silence hang for a moment, watching the screens flicker in a mixture of fear and processing lag. Then, he softened his tone just enough to give them an out.
"I believe, though," Case added, "it'll be a pleasure to work with the finest minds in the whole world. At the moment, you need a solution to Mobius, and I need a home for my people. Let's stop talking about my lobes and start talking about the Forbidden Zone."
"The Forbidden Zone, yes… the key to which is not open to us," Klein added, his monitor flickering with a dull, rhythmic static as he drifted in a tight circle. "Let me remember… my neural processors aren't what they used to be. The data is... archived. Encrypted. Behind a wall of… oh, what was it? Regret? No, static."
"Ah well, I'll clear this lab out. Maybe kill some of your failed test subjects along the way," Case said, checking the charge on his Pip-Boy. "Let me see, you need the X-2 Antennae, the cardiac regulator from the sneaking suit, and the Sonic Emitter, right?"
The entire Think Tank froze. Even Dr. 8's binary scrolling stopped dead, his screen displaying a static-filled "ERROR 404: LOGIC NOT FOUND."
"HOW?" Klein shrieked, his screen flashing a panicked, neon blue.
"He's been reading our sub-routines," Zero hissed, his monitor narrowing as he hovered closer to the glass of his jar. "Or he's a time-traveler. Either way, it's highly irregular. I haven't even finished the requisition forms for the Antennae yet!"
"I have my sources," Case replied dryly, checking the action on his carbine. "Now, here is how this is going to go. My Rangers and my people are staying in the Sink—Mobius's old office. It's spacious, defensible, and it has a view. I will fetch the technology you need, which—as it happens—is the same tech required to unlock the Forbidden Zone. And while I'm at it, I'll be securing the data used to place my heart, spine, and brain back where they belong."
The brains bobbed in their fluid, the electronic hum of the room rising in pitch as they processed the terms.
"THE SINK?!" Klein sputtered. "YOU WISH TO INHABIT THE VILLA OF THE GREAT BETRAYER? THE ARCH-DEFILER MOBIUS?"
"It is... logically sound," Zero interjected, surprisingly.
"And I want the technology in this whole place to be... ours," Case said, leaning forward with a smirk that didn't reach his eyes. "Look around, Klein. You need a staff. This whole place has been a tomb, and let's be honest—you don't even know there's a world beyond the Big Mountain, do you?"
"UNPOSSIBLE!" Klein shrieked, his screen flashing a chaotic, static-filled white. "WE ARE THE THINK TANK! WE ARE THE ARCHITECTS OF THE FUTURE! WE ARE NOT GOING TO LET LOBOTOMITES SEIZE OUR PRECIOUS INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY!"
"Well, you need staffs," Case countered, his voice smooth and persuasive as he paced the length of the central platform. "You need brains to run the tests, hands to calibrate the instruments, and someone to actually do the science you've been dreaming up in these jars. My people? We're the most efficient research assistants you'll ever have. We provide the labor, you provide the genius, and in exchange... we share the patent rights."
Case paused, letting the silence of the Dome amplify his words. "Think about it. Borous, you want to see how your cyber dogs fare against coordinated tactical resistance? Dala, you want to monitor the physiological responses of humans who aren't drooling into their surgical scars? You need us. Without us, you're just five brains talking to the walls until your batteries die."
"HE MAKES A STATISTICALLY SIGNIFICANT POINT," Dr. 8 beeped, a series of green checkmarks scrolling across his screen.
"TEST SUBJECTS... WITH INITIATIVE," Borous mused, his screen shifting to a thoughtful amber.
"I—NO, WE—NEED TO THINK ABOUT IT, LOBOTOMITE!" Klein bellowed, though he sounded more defeated than angry, his monitor bobbing lower in the air.
"I'll let all of you think on it," Case said playfully, adjusting his gloves. "Now, excuse me, I've got technology to fetch. And by the way, you happen to have a certain armament—a gun to unlock the force-field barricades? The Sonic Emitter."
"THE SONIC EMITTER?!" Klein's monitor pulsed a shocked, vibrant yellow. "HOW DO YOU KNOW THE SPECIFIC RESONANCE FREQUENCY REQUIRED TO SHATTER OUR FORCE-FIELDS? THAT DATA IS SEALED BEHIND... BEHIND..."
"You have it, or not?" Case challenged, cutting him short.
"Actually, here you go," Dr. 8 interjected. A robotic arm hissed as it extended from a floor panel, offering the sleek, high-tech pistol without a single follow-up question. "I believe you will find use for it. However, be warned: the base frequency required to destabilize the larger barriers is lost within the data banks of the X-8 Research Facility."
"Great," Case said, accepting the weapon. "And I need the personality chips for the Sink CIU. It should automatically sync once I plug in my Pip-Boy—don't ask me how—but the Central Intelligence Unit can't run a household on base code alone. I need the modules."
"HOW DARE YOU!" Zero interjected, his screen flashing with jagged, angry lines. "HOW DARE YOU MENTION THE WORK OF THAT… PERSON!
"Dare or not, I need a place for my people to resupply," Case said, his voice flat. He wasn't in the mood for Zero's century-old corporate grudges. "If the Sink doesn't have a functional personality, it's just a room with empty shelves. Give me the chips."
"FINE!" Klein bellowed, a panel sliding open to reveal a small tray of glowing circuit modules. "TAKE THEM, LOBOTOMITE! TAKE THE CHATTERING SILICON GHOSTS! PERHAPS THEY WILL ANNOY YOU INTO AN EARLY BRAIN-STEM COLLAPSE!"
"Great," Case said, pocketing the chips and holstering the Sonic Emitter. "Think Tank, I'll see you around. Try not to overthink the partnership while I'm gone. It might cause a leak."
Case turned and stepped into the elevator, the heavy blast doors hissing shut on the five brains. As the lift began its smooth, silent ascent, he felt the hum of the facility vibrating through his boots. He had the key to the crater in one pocket and the "soul" of their new home in the other.
Now he just needed to find the things, find his brain, and make sure the Big Empty didn't swallow his family whole. This would be a great start for all of them, for the new beginning of the desert rangers.