So I fearfully travelled to The Divide. To walk the Lonesome Road.
Strong, hot winds were there waiting for me, along with an incessible Sun that burned through the storms.
The place was a fucking mess. Even if Mr. House hadn't saved New Vegas from the end of the world, I don't think it would look like The Divide.
The first door I got into was the Hopeville Defense Station, that led to a missile silo. The door was marked by that Old World flag symbol I found all over Big MT. That belonged to him.
Inside I tried to open the Silo doors but the console was locked out and beyond my ability to hack in. Which is rare. So I made way through the Maintenance Level. There I foun a Pod with a robot inside. I unlocked it and an eyebot just like ED-E came out, playing the same music as ED-E did and then a sound file of a kid calling for "Ralphie". I asked him if he was ED-E and what was he doing there and I was able to decypher pretty well what he said in beeping sounds. The Silo had some kind of technology that was able to continuesly scan and then reproduce copies of the original ED-E, the one back in my suite. I asked him if he wanted to come with me and he actually seemed... Happy. If you could say so for a robot. He immediatly played a recording of an experiment his creator made with him, to show me that he could override electronic devices that I couldn't. Only panels with a receiver sort of dish-shaped.
As he had told me, he was to override the Silo Power controls. That way I was able to pull a lever that revealed the actual missile silo, with more ED-E's working on a missile with the Old World Flag on it and also opened a door to the Reactor, that I could use to proceed.
Once we entered the Reactor I found a broken eyebot on the ground. I was able to salvage a module that I could use to upgrade ED-E. That was awesome. When we entered the actually Silo, ED-E seemed scared and played another recording. It was about how someone named Dr. Grant invaded Dr. Whitley's - this ED-E's creator - lab to experiment on ED-E, by order of someone named Colonel Autumn. The whole thing was to show how much Whitney cared for ED-E, because he actually cared that ED-E's damage sensors were online when Grant did the experiment, making it "hurt" for ED-E. I was starting to feel bad for him.
After exiting the silo-itself area we reached a room with two skinned corpses in armor, one of them brutally killed, impaled on rebar. Ahead there were a couple more of those skinned cropses. They were very weird though, three of them had armor that resembled the NCR while the other had Legion armor - one of those I found more ahead. But the room had signs that both corpses had fought side to side against a robot, so I did not understand, Another question was why were they skinned if they had their armors on?
I finally reached a door that had tagged in graphiti "You can go home, Courier", like in the Canyon Wreckage. When we crossed those doors someone started talking to me through ED-E. That voice... Chilling, had me scared just from listening. It was him, the Courier. He knew I worked for Mr. House and told me that the sight before me was what awaited New Vegas and its "Old World ghosts" (refering to Mr. House). I tried to answer accordingly, telling him he should be afraid of me and Mr. House, but all that came out of my mouth was the question of who he was. I couldn't live with the mystery anymore. He said he was Courier Six, like me. Said he was like me in many ways and not like me in many ways either. Told me he had searched for me for long years. That I was hard to kill, survived storms, bullets. He let the oportunity for the Platinum Chip job pass on to me because he knew it would get me killed, but he was wrong. I told him I knew we had never spoke before, because a voice like that... I'd remember. He told me we only met by the roads we travelled. Never in person. He talked about The Divide being my home, because "Couriers can build societies" and a home is "not only the place you were born, but also the place you changed so much".
Avoiding the "home" topic, we talked a bit about The Divide. He told me it was all an old military base and the Silo I just went through, the missile in it, was a nuclear warheads. And there are many others around The Divide. He told me about those corpses I saw, which apparently were the new Divide inhabbitants that were NCR and Legion who had come here to fight at the same time the place all went to Hell. Now they fight side by side, feral, as the new inhabbitants. They were skinned by the "fires of the Divide" - the strong winds - and kept alive and strong by the radiation.
Finally I asked how was he speaking through ED-E. He told me he actually wanted me to find it as he used it as a radio to speak with me. So I told him that, after all the trouble he went through to find me, I was finally there and we could get on with it. He said I needed to destroy some of the warheads. Walk through the nightamares of America that the warheads and The Divide were. Only then I'd be able to speak to him. So I told I'd find the the triggers and that he was next.
So now I have a job to do, given by my personal hunter. I have a feeling this will be epic, either ending well for my said or his.
Love you,
Bill
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