In the ruins West of New Vegas there’s a building with a huge soda bottle right in
front. Greenhorns from out East always think it’s the Nuka-Cola factory, but it’s actually
the home of the West’s favorite beverage, Sunset Sarsaparilla.
Howdy Pardner! Howdy Festus.
If you and Festus are old pals, enter a command now.
Old Festus here will give you the "official history" of Soda pop but-
I'm sorry, I didn’t quite understand that, could you repeat it?
*disapproving beep*
No, ED-NA, I don’t think old Festus was
exactly state of the art when he was built.
*curious beep*
Why? Well, in the back when times they didn’t want their robots to be too human. Humanity
had a tenuous grip on its own survival, and they didn’t need any competition from lifelike
robots. They made simple bots like Festus here to handle work that humans couldn’t
be bothered to do.
*curious beep*
Yup, there have been a few advances in robotics over the last two hundred years. In fact there
are robots so advanced that they can pass themselves off as real humans. And there’s
a whole network of people on the East Coast dedicated to helping these “Synthetic humans”
live free in the Capitol Wasteland.
*interested beep*
Naw. No one in the Capital Wasteland can make robots that advanced. Not even the Brotherhood
of Steel. These synthetic people come from a place called The Commonwealth.
Before the war, America was divided into thirteen Commonwealths. They called it the fifty states
about three hundred years ago but, by the time of the Great War, those states were grouped
together into thirteen larger commonwealths. Nevada used to be part of the "Southwest"
Commonwealth, and the Capital Wasteland was called the "Eastern Commonwealth".
The only place that still goes by the name Commonwealth is far North of Washington DC.
Only a handful of people have ever ventured there and back.
There's a ferryman who claimed
that his old steamboat had made the trip, and there used to be a woman from a church
in the Commonwealth who was trying to convert the swampfolk of Point Lookout to some kooky
religion.
Never been there myself. The corpse of America is home to many scavengers trying to carve
their societies out of the carrion of this nation, and a person can spend their life
walking back and forth across the continent and still never see it all.
By most accounts the Commonwealth is a barbaric hellhole that makes the NCR frontier look
positively civilized. Although there was a fella named Zimmer who used to hang around
Rivet City, and he claimed that parts of the Commonwealth were better off than anywhere
else in the wasteland.
He was full of two-dollar words, but according to Zimmer, the one bright spot in the Commonwealth
is a place called "The Institute". Before the bombs fell, it was a University for smartypants
technophiles. Robert House himself attended the Institute way back when. Since the war,
the nation’s remaining poindexters seem to have congregated there and built a technologically
advanced haven in the midst of the chaos. No outsiders have made it inside and returned
to say what it’s like – although we hear the occasional tale from escaped androids.
Seems like the synthetic humans are so lifelike that they understand they’re being treated
as slaves. Some, at least. They consider themselves equals to the humans that created them, but
their human masters don’t see it the same way, so the synthetics escape and try to blend
in with the humans along the East Coast. The Institute has a Synth Retention Bureau that
hunts down escaped synthetics and brings them back by force.
There're plenty of folk in the Capital Wasteland who don’t care for slavery in any form,
so it isn't surprising that there’s a secret network of people who help the android runners
evade the Retention Bureau. The members of this underground railroad are
tight-lipped about the organization, but wanderers who sniff around places with a lot of scientists
are likely to find a ways to help them fight the good fight. With the aid of the underground
railroad, some synthetics have had their faces reconstructed to look like entirely different
people, and at least one went so far as to erase his own memories. He left recordings
of his plan scattered all over the Capital Wasteland, and he might still be out there
- unaware that he’s a robot, living the life of an ordinary wastelander.
There could be other androids in the world too, secretly living among the humans with
no one aware of their true nature – not even themselves…
*optimistic beep*
No, ED-NA, I’m not an android. I’m just
a footsore- Howdy pardner!
Howdy...
...partner.
Uh…Howdy stranger. “Remember me? Ha. Probably not.”
“You’re a guy that gets around. Sees many faces. I’ll try and jog your memory.
My...
“associate” and I first met you a while back, and I asked you to tell us where Nuka-Cola
comes from…”
Oh yeah! I remember you. In fact, here’s
that robot cowboy I told you about. Howdy Pardner!
“You jerk. You yammered on about the wasteland for four hours, then disappeared and that
scavenger tried to kill me. He tried to kill me over a bottle of soda!! Since then, 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!” Okay, okay, just calm down. I’ll tell you
all you need to know, but that- is a story for-
“Grrr.” …right now. It’s a story for right now.