A tattered cot dressed in rotting, perpetually dampened sheets. This is where my story begins.
The pain I felt as though I should've had on account of the bullet that pierced my skull what seemed like seconds prior? Completely nonexistent, replaced by a general sense of grogginess, not uncommon for suddenly being awakened (though as I previously pointed out, it felt like mere seconds since the last conscious thought I could recall). However, as I tried to sit up, a sudden wave of nausea came over me, almost forcing me to vomit. Accompanied by this sudden sickness, any attempt at fully opening my eyes was met with a blurry field of vision. Despite that however, I could vaguely make out the silhouette of a man seated in front of the cot, a streak of gray running across the area where his upper lip should've been.
Behind the man, I began to see other ambiguous objects: a circular object hanging from the wall above (I presumed this to be a clock), syringes resting on a shelf to the right, adjacent to the wall that jutted further back into the room at a point subtly to the right of where the figure sat, and lastly (also, most importantly) the machine in the farthest corner of the room.
Before I could eyeball the last object further, the man cut me off by rising to his feet and taking two hurried paces to the edge of the cot, and dropping his hands down on my shoulders.
"Woah, woah! Easy now, easy," he said as he shook my shoulders slightly to ease me out of whatever trance I found myself trapped in. However, unbeknownst to him, he triggered a brief flashback to a similar situation between myself and the Egyptian Snow Pharaoh, which only served to drag me further into the realm of not caring where in the world I was. "You've been out cold a couple of days now," he continued, and it was at that point when I finally came back down to earth. Days?
"Huh?" I couldn't help but mutter; the shock rendering me incapable of forming a coherent question, as too many were running in my head when the utterance escaped my lips. However, as the man began to speak once more, I found my attention sucked away from what he was saying, back at the odd contraption at the far corner. His voice soon became little more than a low rumbling, no words, just sounds. However, that soon changed when he pushed another, smaller but equally alien device in my face and demanded I take it. Hesitantly ripping my eyes away from the machine; almost afraid that it would disappear if it wasn't in my line of sight at all times, I looked into the screen of the device in my hands, only to see my own wide eyed reflection staring back at me. I don't think I realized how taken aback I was until I locked eyes with my own face.
"This is a ridiculous design for a mirror," I stated before even realizing I was saying anything. That was a bad habit I had fallen into, speaking without thinking. One that would serve to get me in trouble quite a few times during this journey. A curious occurrence passed subtly by my vision; there was a slight delay in when I said the words, and when my reflection mimicked my mouth's motions. Curious, but amusing.
"It ain't just a mirror, lady." He didn't seem too amused. Agitation began slip into his voice; I could hear it despite his efforts at keeping upbeat and professional. That was about the time he plopped his hands down atop mine, and used his skeletal fingers to coax mine to grab onto one of the dials on the right side of the machine.
With the slightest turn of the dial, my reflection's appearance contorted into a figure that, as ashamed as I am to admit, made me jump. Honestly, the new face that appeared was not some horrendous monstrosity designed in the pits of Hell (or anything as dramatic). As a matter of fact, I would go so far as to say the new face was rather attractive (I'm not sure if that would make me a narcissist). However, the sheer unexpectedness of the happening (though I guess if I had listened, this wouldn't have happened) shook me to my very core. With a slight hesitation and a hope that I didn't complicate matters further, I flipped the dial back to its previous position, glad to see my face again, the way it should be.
I regret this now, as my postmortem curiosity is really getting the better of me.
"I reckon I got it pretty right, huh?" he asked with a chuckle. I could only smile and nod, for fear of saying something stupid. "What's wrong? Gone quiet on me?" he persisted, trying to coax a response out of me.
"Where am I?" my mind finally thought to ask. The chuckle returned, and he stood back up from the chair he reacquainted himself with.
"You're in Goodsprings, hon."
"Where?"
"Goodsprings. You're from the Strip, aren't ya?" I'll be the first to admit, I had no idea what he was talking about. Without a word, I shook my head and averted attention to the floor, before clumsily getting off the bed.
"I take it you're good to be up and about!" he said, almost condescendingly, though I took no issue with it. Doctors always seemed to sound like that to me. I wonder why...
Wait, no I don't.
"Well, why don't you walk down to the end of the room, right by that there Vigor Tester machine?"
Yes, that's what the machine was called. Sounds kind of stupid, the more you say it. However, this was one request I'd gladly oblige. I shuffled across the room as fast as I could, almost losing my balance and faceplanting.
Yet, the machine proved to be interesting in all the ways I wasn't expecting; the jist of what it did, was measure in numeric quantities certain attributes that one would think immeasurable by any scales. Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, and Luck. Combined, the words form the acronym S.P.E.C.I.A.L. Way to be subtle, designer of the machine.
As for results, they were average to say the least. As would be expected, my Luck was low, but I didn't need a machine to tell me that much.
From there, he made me sit through a painstakingly long psychiatric evaluation before finally letting me leave, but before that he had one last question he couldn't help but utter as I pulled the door to his office/home open:
"Hey, I don't think I caught your name?"
"Jessie."
"Well, I can't say that's the name I would've picked for ya, but if that's your name, that's your name."
What? I didn't feel like sticking around further and being subjected to more asinine inquiries, so I let that passing remark slide and stepped through the door, into the painfully bright sunlight of what I presumed to be Goodsprings.
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