#we tend to call on back hanging over the shoulder bot parts back stacks

[pluralsword]

"that is a cool thing about sunstreaker is that her extra pair of thighs are also guns" is something we casually said on the internet today

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The Anatomy of Melancholy, 20

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Drug culture and human experimentation tw’s.

...This track out of time is coming full circle.

To the East end of Lexington, the remains of Mystic Lakes lay under the ruins of the Route 3 overpass. Angel had assisted ‘Choly in bathing in the water of the Mystic River, both by providing a lookout and getting his back for him. He wished more than anything that he could have simply laid back and soaked, but the area was neither secure nor private. ‘Choly dried himself off just enough to comfortably put on his surgical corset, then with bated breath requested the garment bag from Angel’s storage.

It felt like a step backwards in every sense to be in uniform again. The khaki slacks, dress shirt with US lapel pins, and tie tied precisely. Grateful for impeccable tailoring, he’d have to wait for his suspenders to dry. He toed into his dark brown dress shoes, then affixed his wrist and ankle braces. The Pharm Corps overcoat, complete with its twin caduceus lapel pins, the double silver shoulder bars to mark his rank, and over his heart all the bars from nearly ten full years’ service. His hands went over them in guilt. For the first time since he stepped foot in Lexington, he questioned what he was doing.

Self-agency was a bitch.

The sound of laser fire behind him jostled him from his moment of remorse, and he jumped.

“What! What was it--!”

“There was no saving those articles, Sir,” the Handy Bot elucidated, unable to hide its relish at dispatching with them in such a way. “No amount of Abraxo could have gotten out those stains. You’ve worn them an entire month straight. Today was simply the last straw. Ha Ha!”

‘Choly frowned at his robot meaningfully, forced to commit to the wardrobe change long-term.

“I... suppose it’s for the best,” he ultimately dismissed. “Abraxo is better served for just about anything but cleanliness.”

With a long, distant pause, ‘Choly stared out over the water, able to see Medford from where he stood. Finally putting his PipBoy back on his right wrist, he faced Angel with an odd smile.

“It’s going to be dark soon. We should get back. I have... work to do.”

He sat in the wheelchair as Angel unfolded it again for him, and they were off again through the heart of the city.

“Forgive me for saying so, Sir, but it does my servos such a delight to see you in uniform again. I’ve... missed circumstance.”

“I suppose for lack of anything else, for better or for worse, one can always fall back on the familiar.”

Angel served ‘Choly a small dinner of Cram and a sweet roll, to recover what nutrients he’d lost that afternoon. Once it was dry enough, ‘Choly brushed his hair back into a fresh french twist, then he excused himself for the night, to sort out his own demons. With the Merrick Index and a fresh holotape loaded, he made his way up to his garden office.

As night fell, the incandescent lighting from the office’s wall sconces soothed him, but he still supplemented their illumination with two candles on the edge of the desk in the middle of the room. He stood, and folded up the wheelchair in the corner. Makeshift planters framed the outer edge of the floor and filled the shelves lining the opposing walls, and he had even coaxed a melon plant to take to a hanging planter in the far corner. He smiled as he tended to each bedpan, each wash basin, each bucket and pot in which he had cultivated some manner of strange postapocalyptic life. The delicate pale lavender flowers with their dark foliage, the shallow muddy pan in which he’d revived a cutting from large red water lilies, the handful of tiny glowing stalky mushrooms he’d transplanted from one of the bathrooms in the place. And then his most endeared project in the room, his successes in transplanting the brain fungus from the break room refrigerator.

He then took a seat in the swivel bucket chair at the desk. For some time, he sought mental quiet staring out beyond the overpass outside his accidental window. He opened a fresh can of purified water at the desk and nursed on it in favor of alcohol for the evening, then popped a Mentat under his tongue and got to skimming the leaves of notes he’d tucked into the front cover of the pharmaceutical reference.

There had to be some way to distract Jared from seeking out cyclomorphine as his wonder drug. Now knowing Jared’s means and motives, he could prepare all necessary phrasing with care.

Perhaps, he could shift all focus imaginable on synthesizing the most potent Jet possible. Ultra Jet, fermented to be extra concentrated. It’d probably require a substrate to the mix, to boost the cultures. Jet Fuel, a heterogeneous mix of flamethrower fuel. A literal attempt at lighting up the third eye, it could plausibly take the form of an inhalant, injectable, or edible. Buff-Jet, as Berries-Carey had once proposed, an attempt at throttling pineal uptake of the entheogen. He could provide an entire veritable candy shoppe of chems to the raider outfit.

Anything but cyclomorphine. Surely, the constituents had died with civilization. He didn’t want to think about the finite morphine stock in the lab downstairs, if even in the context of how once it ran out, Psycho might be impossible to synthesize ever again.

Owing to the source of his hypothetical Buff-Jet recipe, he eyed the brain fungus mounding up in the pan along the wall. The most psychedelic mushrooms he knew of, they all tended to grow on dung, or on other fungi. He wondered whether the secret to infusing Mentats with Jet would either be found in feeding brain fungus to brahmin... or cultivating brain fungus in brahmin manure. He annotated these ideas, in the hopes of running them by Jared. He never wanted to sample Jet again in his life, if he could help it... and yet, the fingers of addiction crawled at the fringes of his personal space.

Of course that acute an exposure would have rendered dependency. Revolted to be reminded again of the afternoon’s experience, he squirmed in his seat and eyed the bottle of whiskey on the desk. He shook his head of the compulsion and drank more water, then did his best to focus on his task.

Flipping through the Index, he browsed the various formulas for synthesizing saucier chems like Daddy-O or Daytripper. They required patent-protected precursors, for the most part, and he sighed in nuisance that recreating these sophisticated synthetics was beyond him in his current capacity. He wondered... Perhaps, in other branches of the pharmacy warehousing, he might put his hands on pharmaceutical precursors such as these. For as much as he endeared himself to the sublingual facility of Mentats, barring Berries there was no crisper clarity than that bestowed by Daddy-O. Chasing the injection with Daytripper... usually smoothed out the resultant short temper and social clumsiness of having your brain run faster than your mouth. No contraindications existed strong enough to deter the intent from stacking Daddy-O with Mentats, either.

Though, as far as mode of dosage went, if ‘Choly had to pick how he took a chem, he far preferred to eat or drink it. Needles had such a high rate of injection site necrosis, depending on the chem, and regular Daddy-O abuse was right up there with Psycho in terms of that risk. He trusted Berries, no matter how clinical and exact the cholinergic high of Daddy-O felt. He didn’t much trust inhalants, either. Alimentary uptake was the safest, in his clinical and personal opinions both, and that left him right back at Mentats.

He eyed the brain fungus again, and sniffed pathetically. Perhaps the night that had birthed Melancholy from Berries and Jet Carey might have gone differently, had the Berries and Jet been compounded for compatibility. To his knowledge, drug culture hadn’t determined the means to marry psychedelia with nootropics, possibly for the best, and yet... in his desperation to find something, anything, better and more appealing than Psycho, he found himself seriously deliberating the means to precipitate Jet-Tats. The chemist fell asleep at his desk, scrawling chemistry notes.

“Sir, it’s time for breakfast,” Angel chirped from the office doorway.

‘Choly picked up his head and looked to the Handy, then nodded and followed in the wheelchair with his half-can of water. Once in the break room, Angel offered a box of Sugar Bombs and a mug of black coffee, which he greeted. After some time, he cleared his throat.

“Call it nerves if you want, Angel, but I would like to store a few things in you for safekeeping. You’re the safest place I have to hide just about anything. You’re... holding something very valuable right now, in fact. Could you...”

Angel had a blind spot just about where its owner had installed the false bottom in its storage, so it swerved and dilated its ocular lenses curiously before turning its back to 'Choly so that he could take a look inside himself. He pocketed the revolver, and tucked the Merrick Index inside along with all his notes. While he was in there, he counted only five bottles of Melancholia.

“Here, follow me around for a bit and add to your stock as indicated. All the Melancholia... And all the morphine and cyclomorphine... and all the barberine... Toiletries...” The list went on for around an hour before Angel insisted he be on his way to work.

“Things will be just fine, Sir. You were most ragged when you came home yesterday. Today will go so much more smoothly, I assure you!”

“I certainly hope you’re right.”

Jared already manned the Jet rig by the time Angel parted ways and ‘Choly wheeled across the assembly line floor to meet him.

“Ah, chemist. I expected you to be late. Yesterday must have done a real number on you.” Jared glanced at him, then got a better look when the initial glance didn’t add up. “You changed clothes.”

“You’re certainly chipper and compassionate today.” ‘Choly watched with a thoughtful frown as the black raider finished loading the bucket of manure into the spigot. Suddenly, in proximity to the rig, he felt utmost gratitude to port an ensemble with head-to-toe military grade water and stain repellent. “Yeah, after yesterday, the clothes I had were done for. What’s on the agenda?”

“Well, if your memory didn’t conveniently lapse, you should have brought me something very specific. Do you remember what that was?”

Deadpan, ‘Choly produced the Nagant from the hip pocket of his military jacket and held it out for him handle first. Jared looked it over, then checked out the rudimentary sight on it. With a low, impressed whistle, he aimed the thing at 'Choly. The chemist flinched despite knowing the firearm had no bullets.

“So this is a Russian pistol. I’ve been thinking. Little verbal slips here and there. You being able to confidently identify the make of this thing. Supposing you are a man out of time. That you really are from before the War. You were a Commie, weren’t you?” He laughed darkly at 'Choly, who straightened in his seat.

“I’m Russian. That’s right.”

“From the look of that uniform, you didn’t fight for the Reds, though. You defected. Betrayed your country.” The raider walked to the other end of the assembly line with the revolver in hand, forcing ‘Choly to keep up to sustain the uncomfortable conversation. At a workbench, he began to tinker with the thing to get acquainted. “What made you do it?”

‘Choly trembled, not sure whether he was more indignant or threatened.

“You have to know? Same reason I plied for your graces. Money, at first. Asylum. Opportunity. The Chinese were already vying to subsume the Motherland before the United States military approached me and offered me a pardon of my nationality in exchange for my service. They could overlook that I was Russian, as long as I did what they needed of me without question. I’ve...” He swallowed. “I’ve always followed anything that looked like security, and... this... this outfit is the most secure I’ve felt since I thawed out.”

He bit his tongue before tacking on a not that it’s a good frame of reference.

“An answer I both did and did not expect from you. I’m strangely pleased with you, chemist. Lacking your brains, I wish more people in my outfit had your sensibilities. You have your priorities straight.”

“Do I? I just handed over your capacity to administer whatever chems you want, to whomever in the room you want. Tell me I haven’t just fucked up. Promise me I didn’t just make the second worst mistake in my life.”

“And what, pray tell, do you say takes the cake?”

“Not being more adamant with my commanding officers, as to the side effects our experiments were having on the soldiers. We lost lives just through gross clinical negligence. I nearly lost my humanity in all my years of service, forced time and again to prioritize results over the safety of the test subjects. And... and you’re asking me to stand by while you do exactly what I did two hundred years ago.”

“A... military chemist.” Jared’s eyes went wide, and he turned from the dismantled gun with a wild grin as he gripped Melancholy by the shoulders. “You’re a fuckin’ Deenwood chemist. Holy fuck-in’ shit. I knew I struck gold when I laid eyes on you. You’re going to cook Psycho for me. The Jet ain’t cutting it.”

‘Choly’s head swam hot and his extremities numbed. When his left leg began to spasm, he clamped his elbow down on it forcefully to glare at Jared.

“The hell do you know about the Deenwood Compound.”

“I know that these experiments you’re doing your best not to describe were perfecting Psycho. Don’t play stupid with me. You can take credit for all your fine work. God!” The raider let go of him to throw up his hands in delirious disbelief. “I’ve got a fuckin’ Deenwood chemist right in front of me. And you’ve wasted all this time dicking around with Buffout, and Jet... when you could have been making my outfit the good shit! God--!” He cackled, and suddenly the gun itself paled to everything else transpiring.

“I, I can’t entice you with literally any other chem on the planet, can I.”

“Barring X-Cell, you’re the best thing I’ve ever had in my sights.”

The mention of the highly experimental drug boxed ‘Choly’s ears, and he did his best to ignore just how much Jared seemed to know about ‘Choly’s employment.

“I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the precursor for Psycho is extinct.” Another worst possible remark, at the receiving end of Jared’s instantaneous glower he choked down errant saliva despite a dry mouth. “Cyclomorphine is a morphine analogue. Painkillers. Opiates. Morphine comes from a plant called opium. Without it, Psycho can’t exist.”

“Painkillers...” Jared crooked his tongue in the corner of his mouth a moment, and stared a hole through ‘Choly. “Painkillers, like hub?”

“What.”

“Hubflower. Those dark purple plants with the light purple flowers. What else could you have wanted them for? Wastelanders keep the petals to chew on when they’re hurting. Makes the whole tongue go numb.”

“Are you trying to tell me... that there’s a good chance my office contains potted descendants of the poppy.” His heart clung to his throat. Jared had sidestepped every possible objection he could have to the prospect. “I have potted plants... in my office... the flowers of which--” His voice broke off in a sweating squeak.

“Cool it, you little Nimrod. Don’t blow a gasket. What’s the matter with doing for my outfit what the government had you do? You know it pays well. How did you put it? All the money, asylum, and opportunity you could ask for. You're not in a position to turn me down. Fuck this shit. We’re done with the Jet. We’re going for the gold. You’re going to test hub to confirm it’s a match for the chem you need. And you’re going to be my Psycho cook.”

“I... certainly look the part, don’t I.” Shakily, he raised his right hand to his forehead and saluted him to the best of his abilities. “Captain Alan Carey of the Deenwood Pharm Corps, at your employ.”

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