Kharima's Notes

''The following are Kharisma's files, written on plastic flimsies. All of the files Megan was able to save were around 200 years old. There was one random file Megan snatched up at the last moment, somehow finding the strength to save it despite the attack. This file was different from the others and is presented last.

Files in roughly chronological order:
Batch 1: "There is nothing left. We are all dying. I write this in case it is found, so someone will know what happened to us." This section sparsely covers Kharisma's life shortly after the bombs fell. She and everyone around her appeared to be dying of radiation poisoning. She laments that she is an old woman who can do little to help the band of survivors, and her English is poor enough that communication is difficult. They do their best to help her, though. As time goes on, even though everyone has sores and is losing their hair, Kharisma doesn't seem to deteriorate more than cosmetically, while the others die one by one.

Batch 2: "If I am going to live, such as it is, I will make a record of it. I think everything has been lost, and so even small records of before will be valuable." All of the survivors from Kharisma's original group are dead. She thinks it is three months since the bombs fell. She doesn't mention until this point that she lived in Tacoma before and after the bombs fell. She recognizes that she looks like a dead thing, but is not dead. She does not know why she survived, and thinks her situation is unique. But she still needs to eat, and so she picks through the ruins. Her arthritis is not so bad as it once was. A strange thought to have when you are covered in burns that don't hurt.

Batch 3: "It appears I am not the only person who survived, assuming I am alive. The others don't look like me." She tries to make contact with the military (probably military?) forces that start moving through (and looting) Tacoma, but they are afraid of her appearance. She eventually flees east, making her way into the Tacoma outskirts. This area, as well as the southern parts of Tacoma, were badly damaged by the bombs. She finds herself feeling energized, even when she can't find much to eat, but other scavengers leave the area alone, or die, showing symptoms similar to her old companions. The military never comes here.

Batch 4: "I think, that even though I am alive, the person I was is now dead." This section is almost an obituary to her old life. Kharisma describes her life in Lithuania, a housewife with a loving husband, two daughters, and a son Modestus, her youngest child. Her daughters married into solid families. Her husband was offered a job in the United States, and they moved there when her son was 15. Her husband died two years after they moved to the states. She took on maid work to support herself and her son, until he turned down an opportunity to go to college to join the military instead. He said he was bored with school and wanted something more exciting; she knows he is lying. He graduated in the top ten percent of his high school class in 2048. She settled into a role as a live-in nanny for wealthy families as Modestus embarked on a military career.

Batch 5: "The years drag by, hand to mouth." Kharisma has started to realize that she is not going to die of natural causes. While she doesn't precisely feel good, the infirmities of old age bother her less and less… and this scares her. This is the world she will be forced to live in, alone, undying and feared by humans. She begins to despair, until she hears whispers that there are others like her. She begins to make her way east, towards Hanford, and the rumored community of other radiation poisoning survivors called Othello.

Batch 6: "I cannot go back there. Something felt wrong, fundamentally wrong." As she passes through the Cascade Mountains, Kharisma discovers a Vault entrance in the eastern foothills. She had heard about Vaults from her son, but while he had encouraged her to sign up for one, it had just never seemed that important. The door to the Vault was open, but there was no sign of habitation or looting. Based on the number on the door, it was Vault 646. Or maybe just 6, based on the neatly folded jumpsuits in the extruder? It is unclear. Kharisma found a room she recognized as a lab and gathered as many holodiscs as she could carry from the shelves. She planned to explore the Vault more, but she suddenly took ill, for the first time since she had changed. Something about the place disagreed with her, and she knew, on some level, it could destroy her. She made note of where to find it in her notes, and kept that knowledge as a trump card.

Batch 7: "The rumors of a city of people like me were greatly exaggerated." Othello is a broken place, not that different from the remnants of eastern Tacoma that she used to haunt. The only difference is that there are already ghouls haunting it when she gets here, including some that seem to have no memory of being human, only a vague, animalistic sentience, and a desire for food, despite the fact they don't seem to need it to live. On the positive side, she has the holodiscs from Vault 646 and a reader. There are many scientific texts. While she has no background in science, and all of the holodiscs are in English, she has time. The year is 2089.

(Approximately half of the files were lost while you fled. Based on the organization, they were more or less in chronological order, and Megan saved the earliest of the materials.)

Unique File: This file is printed out dot matrix-style. This is a fragmented military file on a Modestus Norbut, a U.S. army lieutenant who served from 2048 to, presumably, when the bombs fell in 2077. He would have been 47. He was a corporal when the U.S. moved into Mexico as an occupying force 2051, and received small, steady promotions in the years leading up to the annexation of Canada in 2072. He was stationed CFB Chiliwack, 50 miles from Vancouver. He was considered to have the right personality for holding a foreign region with minimal damage to local resources, and never sent to the front lines as a result. He was distrusted for his communist background (Lithuanian parents).