Trading within the Nexus was a far cry from the usual wasteland experience. With Bunker Hill no longer a trading hub, Lucas Miller, like other traders, had to completely change his modus operandi. It cost a fair amount, especially after he and a good number of Bunker Hill traders were censured for being Institute informants.
The punishment came in the form of an increased tax for the next ten years, after everything save for the clothes on his back were claimed by the Nexus as a downpayment. Until the fine was paid off, he was stuck within the Nexus. No one was stupid enough to dare try leaving its borders, not with the Obelisks just waiting for an excuse to light up and add another layer of fine ash to the land.
But Lucas continued being a trader since it was just about all he knew, and his probation kept him away from other, more profitable and more secure forms of employment.
It wasn’t too bad though, tax and limited movement all considered. For one, he was able to claim the license to own and operate one of the new public trucks that the Nexus was putting out on sale. It sure as hell beats walking with brahmins, even if the paths got a bit bumpy in the few bits of less developed areas. The road network within the Nexus was extensive and very impressive to someone who could appreciate the power of logistics.
While more automobiles were being produced for the citizens to own and use, Lucas wasn’t reckoned that he wouldn’t have to worry about traffic for a while. The underground rail network was expanding along with the roads, and was cheaper and far more convenient to use, in some cases being faster than driving straight to your house’s doorstep. But traders needed to haul cargo though, so Lucas had to drive his literal truckload of goods on the quiet, safe roads from settlement to settlement.
And boy was it safe. Nevermind the Sentinels tasked to surveil him, the robot patrols along the road and occasional groups of Sentinels darting through the air ensured that you could walk from one end of the Nexus to another without worrying about ambushes, raider tolls, or even vermin surprises. And if there was a proper cloud of Sentinels flying overhead, all Lucas had to do was just make sure to not be driving in the same direction for a while.
The drive wasn’t too bad either, as the view was impressive enough for Lucas. Stretches of formerly untamed and broken wilderness or ruins were leveled and were in various stages of development, progressing rapidly every time Lucas drove by them. Large, ordered swathes of farmland occupied one area, a residential zone sprung up in another, and occasionally he’d find the robots tearing into the ground to establish the next underground station.
Nice landscape aside, the only reason he hired guards to accompany him was because the travels were that quiet and rather lonely, plus the outlying settlements that were not fully assimilated or used to the Nexus were far more comfortable seeing a trader with his scary guards than the lone trader that looked so out of place in the Commonwealth before this.
If not for his own crimes and the punishment levied on him, Lucas would probably be enjoying the whole thing far more. Despite the cut in profits, he was definitely making far more than he used to before the Nexus took over. People no longer scrabbled up their meager savings to buy food and water, but could now afford to spend their allowances on useless luxury goods to pretty up their homes.
Lucas no longer carried armor pieces, trading out the bulky space and weight for far more profitable common clothes. Socks, shoes, dresses, shirts and pants… The goods churned out from the Nexus’ textile factories and artisan craft shops were in ludicrously high demand in the border settlements who were only just getting used to the sense of total security their new ruler was providing them. People wanted to indulge in clean, fresh clothes in new styles and far brighter colors compared to the stuff scavenged from ruins.
And Lucas would help them fulfill that desire in exchange for a few credits.
Some traders were simply selling the credits themselves, under the special license from the Nexus. As it was the only legal tender within the realm, supposedly the settlements beyond the borders were keen on stocking up the currency in anticipation for their own integration once the Nexus expanded. Others were eager to hoard credits simply because they wanted to migrate there without having to lug a sackload of caps for currency exchange. It made sense, especially with the current rate of seventeen caps to one Nexus Credit.
Since he was restricted within the Nexus borders, Lucas couldn’t get in that game, though he wasn’t too interested anyway. Having to go back out to the wild wasteland, worrying about ghouls and raiders and super mutants jumping you at night, just to reach a rundown shanty town with no clean water? Fuck that.
For now, Lucas will happily pay off his dues, and wait for the day his savings could be used to buy himself a nice home near the coast. He already had an eye for a decent one with a view of the Castle.
Now, if only Sev could expand the borders faster so Lucas could drive to more settlements to make bank, before the current ones got too developed that they could simply take the fucking subway to the commercial centers. Or worse, had those centers built right in them.
*****
The migration into Nexus lands came with a huge culture shock for Dr Madison Li. She had been hopping between towns and outposts cautiously, initially a tad bit paranoid after hearing about the fall of the old Institute (everyone’s calling it the Changing of the Institute), and later on after hearing how Brotherhood of Steel met, antagonized and then got promptly annihilated by the Nexus.
Despite her doubts and her fear, she pushed on and was greeted by a land so changed from the wasteland beyond it that Madison had to look over her shoulder to confirm that there was a wasteland behind her that quickly turned to verdant grasslands before her. The robots were polite enough, for sadistic-looking hulks of metal. After she had given her credentials as a doctor, along with admitting her past affiliation with the Brotherhood in Project Purity, a car, a proper, running car, came to pick her up to drive her towards the processing center.
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Sev had heard of and was interested in her work, it seemed, and the fears the doctor harbored for her life were proven false. She was given work in Research Center Ix, a place to stay, and a freedom that was utterly absent in her time with the Brotherhood.
Madison found herself and her work highly respected by the willing scientists of Ix and even some of the Institute prisoner-scientists not drowning in resentment. While she had misgivings about the opaque and sinister operations within Blacksite Tleilax, it was far more preferable to having her work completely stonewalled, railroaded or caged.
They had let her pick and work on her own research projects, given her a team of robots and people, and there was no such thing as appealing for funding. The only hiccups she encountered throughout the four months in the Nexus were specialized equipment that weren’t invented yet, and on two occasions dealing with materials that were too pure, untainted by the rad-corruption of the wasteland.
The former was always promptly solved by Eva, who quickly designed and built the required devices in less than a week (usually within a day, if Madison could provide enough details to aid in the design), and the latter was solved by simply dosing the specimens in rads, or finding a new branch of research by going ahead anyway.
Madison learned after her second report of a failed testing that Sev and his advisors didn’t care that results were slow or hit dead-ends. As important as her work in innovating radiation-free tech and breaking through new applications for the de-radiator, it seems that Sev didn’t have the impatience nor the penny-pinching held by the other leaders Madison had the displeasure of working with.
A request to try replicating Project Purity? Go ahead. No need for pesky negotiations of budgets or timetables.
The first prototype was a failure? Ah, shame. Here's a restock and let's hope it gets better next time.
Not enough personnel? Provide an estimate and Eva will send in twice the number of Mr Brainies.
Another twelve hundred fusion cores used up to pursue this? Well, here’s twelve thousand more incoming just in case. Where do you want to store it?
It was a different kind of madness, but one that Madison was quick to embrace. The Nexus appreciated her work, respected her words (that she alone was responsible in delaying the new fertilizer compound just for a triple check kept her awake through a few nights) and more importantly, it was a genuinely good place to work in. Tleilax was a punishment detail and the no doubt unethical mysteries there were an exception to all this, but she could stomach it, knowing what class of people were sent there and what came out of it.
When Curie came with a request for Madison to give a lecture on radiation damage, of course she happily accepted. People who wanted to hear her thoughts on a subject she was passionate about? In an actual university, a place of higher learning?
Madison felt that her opinion of the Nexus could never go any higher after that.
And then she was shown the library nearby the education center. One of many, she was assured. A look inside left her staring slack-jawed at the collected knowledge within. The doctor was used to the hoarded and highly guarded ways of the Brotherhood and the Enclave, but here…
Information scavenged, researched or looted was copied and stored in physical and digital forms for general consumption. Shelves lined the halls, filled with books covering obscure and mundane topics. The computer terminals had virtually full access to those books as well, with a printing service provided too. What would be deemed as priceless treasures worthy only of a general’s eyes or sealing it away, the Nexus had in public for anyone to see.
She found the scraps of pages she had given up on chasing to aid in attempts at her fusion miniaturization, along with the rest of the whole damned book. The offhand topic of Vertibird engineering she eavesdropped Brotherhood scribes talking about? Madison found twenty-two books in the terminals related to that, not counting the journal articles, just like that.
As usual, only the research discovered in Blacksite Tleilax was absent in the databases and shelves, but at this point Madison felt it was a fair trade. Some things were worth keeping a secret, especially if such things were as destructive as the weapons available in the Nexus.
Madison spent a lot of her free time in the libraries, becoming somewhat of a regular there. She became rather well known, as students from the nearby schools and campus would seek her for aid in solving this equation or that problem, or more often than not, simply to chat with the brilliant scientist and see what hobby magazine she was currently engrossed in.