I’ve been tracking you down, from one end of the Mojave to the other, from Zion to the
Long 15 and now… now you're going to tell me everything about Nuka Cola! What's it made
of? Where does it come from? Why is it so delicious and REFRESHING? Why can't I stop
drinking it? And most importantly… WHY DOES MY PEE GLOW IN THE DARK when I drink that
blue soda?
Start talking.
Glow in the dark urine, halitosis, "mild" irritability. Yup, I’ve seen these symptoms
before. Son, I'm afraid you got yourself addicted to Nuka-Cola Quantum.
The regular Nuka-Cola is mighty habit-forming, but that Quantum is bad stuff, and you aren’t
only one who’s developed a hankering for it. Folk all over the wasteland are “Chasing
The Blue Fairy”, as they say.
Unfortunately for you, Nuka-Cola Quantum is awful hard to come by in these parts. The
company that made it is based on the East Coast, just outside of DC, and Quantum was
only released in local test markets. It was an extremely rare collectible even before
the war, and Nuka Junkies have been hunting down every last bottle for two hundred years.
The original Nuka-Cola formula used a secret blend of 17 fruit juices. Quantum has 18 but
it ain't the pomegranate juice that gives it that glow, it's a radioactive isotope with
a half-life so long that there'll be glowing outhouses all over the wasteland for a thousand
years.
Nuka-Cola always had highly addictive properties - even before they added two scoops of strontium.
It's not just the refreshing taste that put a Nuka-Cola machine on every corner in every
town on the continent. Nope, it was all thanks to the ruthless business tactics of mister
John-Caleb Bradberton, and his concoction of habit-forming chemicals.
Bradberton founded the company in 2044, just thirty years before the war, but by the time
the bombs fell, his soda pop had become a ubiquitous part of American culture. I've
heard legends that the company was so influential that they could even sponsor their own, just
to experiment on how humans would fare if they had a nearly unlimited supply of Nuka-Cola.
Each generation got pudgier, plumper, and more addicted than the last.
I- I gotta find that vault.
Good luck. A shangri-la full of soda pop, hidden in the middle of the wasteland? Probably
doesn't exist. Just a pipe dream that strung-out Nuka Junkies tell each other to help 'em sleep
at night when they got the Nuka shakes.
The best source of credible information on Nuka-Cola is a jittery young woman in the
East. She built a little museum to Nuka-Cola underneath a bridge, her tiny shack crammed
with every bit of memorabilia she could scavenge. Had a working refrigerator that kept her cola
iced cold too, and she'd give you a free bottle of cool, frosty pop if you politely sat through
a tour of the museum.
She even had a special vending machine intended to promote Quantum, once it hit the mass market.
Was designed to hold thirty bottles of ice cold Nuka-Cola Quantum.
*Gasp*
And it was completely empty last time I was there.
No...
She would ask anyone who wandered by to scour the wasteland and find her enough Quantum
to fill up her vending machine. Kept trying to bribe people with a recipe for making pie
with Quantum soda, but I can't imagine anyone foolish enough to gather up that much soda,
then just hand it over to a stranger for some pie. She could make all sorts of things using
Quantum as an ingredient, but even she didn't know how to actually make Nuka-Cola Quantum.
But surely someone knows the secret recipe for Nuka-Cola Quantum!
Nope. Closest thing to a secret formula that I ever heard about was for some unreleased
"Clear" soda that never even made it into production. Used to be a gang of neo-Canadians
in Washington was trying to recover it from the offices of the Nuka-Cola plant, but I
think the Nuka Lurks in the factory took care of their safe-cracker. Sorry, kid, but if
you want another bottle of Quantum, you got a looong walk East ahead of you.
But what about this place? I mean- by the glow, it’s shaped like a giant soda bottle.
Like it’s mocking me…
This here is the headquarters of Sunset Sarsaparilla. They were Nuka-Cola's chief rival in the soft-drink
industry. Made root beer, not cola. Old Festus there can tell you about it.
Howdy pardner! Wrangle up a stool and jaw a while!
Rivals you say? Was there ever a... Quantum Sarsaparilla?
I'm sorry, I didn't quite understand that-
Stupid robot doesn't understand anything! Say... what were YOU doing here?
Why were you sneaking around this factory in the middle of the night?
I was telling ED-NA about the chem Fiends who live in this area, and figured I'd grab
myself some sarsaparilla and play a game of Lucky Horseshoes with my pal Festus.
If you're here to challenge ol Festus to a game of Lucky Horseshoes, say "I feel lucky".
You know more about Quantum soda than you're letting on! Tell me everything about Sunset
Sarsaparilla - Or none of us are getting out of here alive!
I do know a little more about soda pop, but that's a story for...
Grrr.
-for the immediate future.