Chapter 99: Chapter 95

The immortality juice turned out to be shit. It was just a temporary reduction to one’s age, and the changes were fast on both after taking the dose or, more dangerously, after the effects wore off. Some of our older subjects died as their bodies couldn’t handle the rapid aging.

Refining it was impossible due to the bullshit eldritch nature of it, and trying to stick the headpiece on different people didn’t make any difference. The research wasn’t wasted though, since I figured out how to sorta copy the age alteration. It took lots of basically coding that kept the body locked down to a specific age, and to ensure that the transition when (or if) the effects wore off would not be too jarring.

The Nexus’ de-aging serum would be one of the deepest secrets that for now, only me, Eva and Cabal had access to. For now, it was only administered to some lucky folks in the Niche Room for observation of any potential long term effects. Once it’s deemed safe enough, it could be a luxury to be offered within our lands for a hefty price.

During the two months I sunk in researching the immortality juice, the Nexus had expanded to cover all of Boston and a good number of the surrounding areas. The Minutemen became incorporated as a policing force as arranged, serving as the softer side of Nexus enforcement over the scarier troopers and utterly cold robots. The assimilation of the independent outposts and settlements was mostly peaceful, I was told.

The USS Constitution returned to being an educational tourist spot after the bots there were reprogrammed via stealthed hacking. After disassembling the rockets and machinery, the wooden ship was restored as best as possible to its original state and left by the coast.

Bunker Hill was peacefully assimilated, though since we already had decent trading hubs in Station 81 and nearby Diamond City, the place was emptied out and the monument was left alone for future repair work. Basically, what historic, pre-pre-War stuff that we could preserve, we did. Bunker Hill, the Freedom Trail, Faneuil Hall… Stuff that made for good school outings. Everything else was leveled to make way for rebuilding efforts.

Since the Nexus owned all the land, and I was the Nexus, I could build me a properly efficient city without red tape and unbudging residents. The only problem now was that we had far more space available than people to fill it with, so lots of empty land was kept aside for now for future skyscrapers and other fuck-your-wasteland-sensibilities structures. In the meantime, we had smaller apartments built up, and nearly idyllic neighborhoods being filled in with wastelanders too confused at the sight of so much healthy greenery.

Oh yeah, we also got up a deathclaw reserve somewhere in the middle of the former Glowing Sea. It was just a vast hilly area with a forest of aged-up trees (console ftw), but it did the job.

The creatures seemed intelligent enough to accept the generous boundaries they were given, and it only took six or so times for them to realize that the troopers in Sardaukar armor lugging food over were neither threats nor add-on meals. Any deathclaw eggs we found throughout the Nexus were sent over to the reserve, where the matriarch would quickly claim for her growing nest.

They were also smart enough to not outright extinct-ify the new deer, cattle, bears that were introduced. Eyebots found that the deathclaws never bothered killing any of the animals, and Curie’s speculating that it’s likely due to the fact that we were still hand-feeding them. Supposedly, they’ve become tolerant enough of the troopers that some deathclaws accepted patting and the matriarch would allow them to directly deposit new eggs into her nest.

With no major threats nearby, and the priority still on stabilizing, the second year went by largely quietly. If you discounted the orgies and slew of new parents from the Companies I had to congratulate. Not that many of the new parents retired from the military, 1st Company troopers especially, but it meant we now had to prep up a reserve system to fill in parental leaves.

It ended up with a heavy restructuring of our military, to nobody’s surprise. Especially since we now had expertise from the Enclave and Brotherhood, a proper training methodology could be set, ranks and responsibilities were standardized, and specializations were established.

Not that 1st Company cared much about the difference in training and roles; the kids just went for the most grueling training course and quite literally all the lessons offered. While not all of them were officer quality, I’m proud to say that my honor guard were all very capable of beating the veteran former Enclave and Brotherhood trainers in mock battles on an even playing field.

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Console tweaking to their latent abilities notwithstanding anyway.

The kids proved ruthlessly smart, out-infiltrating the Enclave specialists in their own game and were way more relentless than Lyons’ people. Of course they preferred just charging angrily at their targets, but I got to enjoy Edward setting up feigned retreats, very sneaky ambushes, and a swift decapitation strike throughout the multiple bouts between trainers and trainees.

Yes, of course I rewarded them all, and as expected, they preferred extra nightly visits and a few orgies over a bump in pay.

I still bumped up their pay after that. They earned it after all.

Speaking of earning, Piper and Cait took the slowdown to go back to school, though their curriculum had to be tweaked a lot to accommodate for voids in some areas and redundancies in others. They endured the classroom well enough, and it made for more fun nights since they needed the stress relief after classes and shitty homework.

Having Curie help them lessened their suffering, though I had to stop Nat from joining in to avoid the embarrassment both girls felt from having the much younger Wright sister pointing out obvious mistakes. Poor morale made for poor students after all. At least Nat didn’t seem too smug about wielding her superior academic prowess.

Just a little, for the first few days, but that was it.

As for myself, I enjoyed city planning and guiding research most of the time. I did not enjoy policy tweaking or presiding over disputes, but a ruler’s got to rule. Touring the lands was nice though, it was very gratifying to see the results of the year’s crazy-fast research bear fruit. Clean air, green plants, proper roads and buildings… What made it better was the genuinely satisfied populace that greeted me.

Had to reject the offers for a fucking though. The rumors of my rampant sexual cravings were already dying down, no need to risk a resurgence.

Come to think of it, we mostly cleared up the whole pedo rumors too. From what Gwen picked up from passing traders, I was now more known as the guy who’ll disappear you for sadistic research, or the one that broke in his closest people with his dick. Not a bad compliment, I guess?

Anyway, as I moved into the third year of entering this post-apocalypse, plans were drawn up to further expand the Nexus Severalty’s borders southwards. I also had a trip planned to visit certain sites in the west for some confirmation. Maybe make it part diplomatic trip, part scouting mission, and part tourist sightseeing.

Oh yeah, had to remember to drop by Quincy first. If Mama Murphy’s still there and potently psychic, I could use some answers.

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