The suburbs of Providence
Useless.... Useless... Useless...
Stacks of old plates, drawers of bent cutlery, cabinets of perishable (and long perished)food. Scavenging wasn't the most consistent of providers.
Tink was rummaging through the musty, abandoned carcass of what had once been a stylish suburban home. She had cursorily checked the bedrooms, which had been empty of anything more valuable than some twine, peeked into a washroom that housed nothing more than the rancid overflows of a long overwhelmed sewer system and a packet of mentats in a cabinet, and a living room whose television lay shattered on the splintering hardwood floors.
Sometimes she wondered what it had been like, but it was easier not to try. The past was gone.
The kitchen now. She could live without more electronic baubles to tweak and toy with, but she wouldn't fare well without food.
She cautiously opened the fridge. A warm, rancid smell greeted her, and she gasped a breath as she quickly grabbed a can of spaghetti sauce and a bottle of Nuka-Cola. The beverage seemed nigh-on indestructible, and she was thrilled to find some. One of life's few pleasures.
She sat down at one of the kitchen chairs, and popped the cap off on the edge of the table, carefully placing the bent metal in a pocket.
Tink wasn't much to look at. She was a slip of a fourteen year old girl, clad in faded old clothes darned and patched a half a hundred times in various places. She wore a dark purple hooded sweatshirt, the colour worn in some places so much that the white threads stood out. He jeans were faded until they were almost white, but a patchwork of scraps of fabric kept them together. Her t-shirt over her scrawny chest was white, and had the faintest hint of once reading
Disneyland.
Her face was pale and narrow, and her hair long and as ark a brown as her eyes. A black backpack hung from her back.
After a moment of deliberation, she tapped a few keys on her Pip-boy. It wasn't a bad habit to occasionally check the radio signals, they had led her to interesting things before. She spun the knob freely, listening to the whine of empty static, dead airwaves.
...and scientific undertaking. Any man or woman, human or ghoul able to assist in any possible way is welcome.
Tink's eyes widened. Scientific undertaking?!? In a world where the most intelligent life she seemed to meet was content to kill her and take her stuff,
science? it was too good to be true. Nevertheless, she turned up the volume.
The reward will be as follows: Any findings will be split up between the entire party. Negotiations possible. Interrested parties are to report their interrest at the most important pre-war christian landmark in Providence, Rhode Island. Scientist seeks partners for great explorational and scientific undertaking...
The teenage girl deftly muted the computer, shouldered her back, and finished off what was left of the warm, sweet, but pleasantly bubbly beverage. It would be a risk, certainly... But she didn't want to spend her whole life combing subdivisions for useful components.
But what Christian landmark? A church, sure, but there had to be more than a handful in the city, and she knew less than nothing about the city's history.
The answer presented itself after a moment's thought: A library database.
She made her way out into the house's backyard, briefly consulted her map, and made her way through the comparative safety of backyard suburbia toward the nearest library.
