Goodsprings Source

Late afternoon tints the clear blue sky a light orange around the edges.

The young woman takes a seat on the cement lip of the rightmost weathered rectangular well, scooping out handfuls of warm water to sip. She takes a moment to admire the quite stillness of the Wasteland stretched out around her.

ED-E hums through the air in small circles around the back to back water wells coming to a stop in his original position.

"Hey, Ed," she asks her companion, taking a few more handfuls of water wiping away the stray dribble on her chin. "What if Doc Mitchell isn't in Goodsprings anymore? What happens then?"

ED-E tells her he's sure, but if worst comes to worst, they may have to find a way into the NCR Consulate to ask the Ambassador.

"The last time you were sure, it didn't pan out so well." She heaves her overstuffed mail satchel onto the dusty ground, digging around the numerous boxes. "Maybe…maybe we're not on the right track. Maybe retreading old ground isn't the best way to find mom."

The spheroid bot goes quiet as his internal mechanisms turn over the thought. He tilts and drifts off to one side as his processors try to formulate an alternative plan.

The daughter gasps as she brings out one of the larger packages and reads the recipient's name. "He's still here, Ed! Doc Mitchell is still here!"

The bot does a hop-spin maneuver in place, goading her onwards to Goodsprings.

With renewed vigor, she tucks the package under her arm, heading Northeast over the gently sloping hill.

Goodsprings

Seated at the top of the highest hill, the cozy, white façade of a large residence stands in contrast to the faded browns permeating the town of Goodsprings.

Propped against the side of the house is a rickety ladder with a figure dressed in Pre-War Spring wear standing on the middle wrung, bucket of paint in hand.

"I thought you said he wore overalls," she asks Ed as they approach the man slathering generous amounts of whitewash on a weather-beaten porch pillar with an oversized paintbrush.

ED-E comes to the conclusion that this man is not the doctor as they come to a stop at the top of the hill. He points out the difference in hair and age as she tries to get his attention.

"Excuse me, Sir," she shouts up at the distracted man. "Where can I find Doctor Mitchell?"

The man shoves the brush in the bucket full of white, wiping the sweat from his brow. "You're lookin' at him."

Her brow furrows under the bill of her red ball cap as she cocks her head. "But you're…not old."

The middle-aged man laughs, climbing down from his rickety ladder, paint bucket in hand. "If I had a dollar for every time I've heard that, I'd be able to afford to get my supplies." He hops off the bottom wrung, offering his hand in greeting. He thinks better of it, however, seeing the wet dabs of white on his fingers. "You're probably looking for the old Doc Mitchell. I'm sorry to say he passed away about a year ago. I'm the doctor in Goodsprings now, Edward T. Mitchell." He crosses to the front porch, an unconscious slump dropping his shoulders. "No relation, in case you're wondering."

"Oh…" The daughter purses her lips, feeling the corners of her eyes grow watery. "I'm sorry."

"Yeah, so am I." The man heaves a drawn out sigh. "If you want to pay your respects, he was buried under the water tower at the top of the hill, otherwise you can come inside if you have an appointment or need more digestives." He nods in the general direction of the tower before turning around and heading inside.

She notes an air of resignation from the new doctor at the mention of Doc Mitchell's name as she informs him of his delivery. The young woman stows the package slip, scratching the forming beads of sweat under her red baseball cap. "We should go pay our respects after we get some supplies," she tells the bot humming quietly at her side, heading toward the dusty buildings lining the sleepy town's main street.

Goodsprings General Store

A warm wind blows a single tumbleweed between the wide alleys of the main street buildings. The brown, weather-beaten buildings, patched and repaired with sun bleached wood too many times, sit unobtrusively in their fine layer of desert filth. The occasional resident of the sleepy town can be seen in their dirt yard harvesting meager crops or turning the hard-baked soil.

A cheerful little bell rings above the door of the General Store, prompting the fresh faced occupant behind the counter to look up from the book she's reading. "Hi there," the woman enthusiastically greets. "Welcome to the General Store."

Arcadia gives the short, blonde woman a smile and curt nod, checking over the mostly barren shelves. She carries the last three bottles of Sunset Sarsaparilla and a few overripe Banana Yucca fruits to the store front. "It looks a little empty," the daughter comments, watching her do sums on a piece of scrap paper. "You must get a lot of business."

"Oh far from it," the blonde woman tells her, finishing her calculations. "The supply caravans from the Happy Trails office are just slow today."

"Happy Trails is doing business here? I was told they did their business farther up North."

"Well they did, until they decided to open an office near the canyon pass heading North." She rings up the total on her push-button register. "Will that be cash, or caps?"

"Caps."

"That'll be sixty-eight caps."

The travelers grouse silently at the high price as the girl pays. She leaves with the meager supplies toward the still standing water tower.

Goodsprings Cemetery

Her and the bot stop at the crest of the hill, eying the mounds of dirt and freestanding headstones of the empty town's graveyard. "We found him, Ed." The daughter heads toward one of the more modest crosses toward the left of the water tower. She removes her red cap, looking down at the headstone in revered silence.

The spheroid bot quiets his hidden engines, hovering lower to the ground as he leans his body forward.

At the other side of the tower, a man in dirty Pre-War Park Stroller wear mutters apologies to a freshly covered grave, scratching hard at his arms and chest.

As she reflects on what little her mother has told her of what the doctor use to do almost three decades ago, something bothers her enough to have the urge to ask her companion. "Why would the doctor say 'more digestives'?"

The man at the other grave bursts out into tears, telling the lump of dirt he's sorry before running down the hill toward a makeshift sign painted in red and white.

The two travelers watch the wailing man for a handful of seconds before ED-E springs into action, booping fervently at the girl to follow him.

"What do you mean Deathclaws?!" She takes off full speed down the hill.

The man in the sweater vest huffs and puffs across the hard baked desert, pulling at the uncomfortable layers covering his body. "Just make it stop," he pleads, wiping at the tears rolling down his blotchy red cheeks.

"Hey," Arcadia shouts at the running man. "Stop! What are you doing?!"

The old bot beeps at her to move faster as he fires a warning shot in front of the man. He doesn't sense any change of direction nor speed, so he fires at the dirt again. No change is what his sensors tell him once more. Ed beeps at a higher pitch as the young lady passes him, almost out of breath.

She curses in Latin, straining to pick up speed as the duo see the sign growing bigger against the orange and red of an early evening sky.

The hysterical man passes the sign boundary as the young woman takes her last gasp of air before giving up. She hunches over, wheezing and heaving, watching the man run across the scrubby valley towards an inevitable doom.

The Eye-bot stops abruptly at the girl's side, pointing out the obvious in a quiet tone.

"IknowEd," the daughter sputters out in a single hard breath. "I'msorry."

The bot's improved sensors catch a large moving object far off in the distance for the briefest of moments before it moves away again. He gives off the impression of staring off into the distance, his round body listing and antennae drooping.

Arcadia tries her best to snap him out of his sudden melancholy. "Remember what mom said, Ed, feel the moment, don't wallow in it." The young woman pats the side of his body. "Your emotions are still prototype algorithms."

He shakes off the feeling, very literally, perking up his antennae. He asks the daughter if she saw what happened before the man ran off.

Arcadia tells him what he already knows; a man in nice clothes crying over a grave. "He was scratching a lot, though. Maybe too much, now that I think about it."

ED-E demands someone answer for this as he floats back toward the cemetery hill resolutely.

Doctor's Office

The young woman, angry eye-bot in tow, pounds her fist on the door of the new doctor's house.

A muffled voice from inside tells her to come in.

She peeps through the first doorway to her right, finding the doctor busy jotting in a blank book with a pile of various textbooks open on the coffee table in front of him in the sitting room the next room over. "Doctor-"

He interrupts her with a wave of his pencil. "Go sit on the bunk in the next room and I'll be with you shortly."

The girl grabs an angry Ed by the front grill to keep him from floating over to the doctor. "We have some questions, Doctor."

"If you're here about what I put in the digestives, ask the Followers, it's their medicine, not mine." The man's attention never deviates from his notes.

Arcadia holds back the bot, hissing the word 'prototype' from between clenched teeth as she shoots him the stink eye.

ED-E calms down, letting her know his dislike for the middle-aged doctor's attitude.

"Doctor Mitchell, there was a man at the cemetery who looked very sick."

"Then tell him to come wait in the next room, I'll be there in a moment." The doctor turns the page of one of the many open textbooks in front of himself, mouthing the words on the page as he reads silently.

"He's dead, I think. He said something about how sorry he was and ran off toward the valley where the Deathclaws stalk around."

The clearly frustrated practitioner puts down his pencil and sighs deeply as he gets up from his seat on the worn, brown couch. "I'll collect his body, thank you for telling me." Doctor Mitchell maneuvers around the standoffish duo blocking the doorway toward the lopsided metal shelf holding old wooden crates bereft of contents.

"But what about the Deathclaws, Doctor," the young lady queries, watching him pack a doctor's bag with supplies and a large, white sheet.

The middle-aged man snorts, giving her a restrained chuckle. "I haven't seen a Deathclaw since that business in Modoc. That old sign out there is meant to scare people away from the Radscorpion nests dotted all over the canyon." The doctor excuses himself, heading quickly for the front door.

"Comedunt vermes ut manus et pedes," she mumbles as the front door closes.

ED-E glides over to the coffee table, scanning the books left open. He reads out loud choice quotes on the open pages. "Common side effects of natural remedies…internal allergic reactions…sub-dermal bacterial infections…"

"That's interesting," the daughter comments, joining him at the table. "Is he doing research?"

Unsure, the duo scans the already open pages, trying to make sense of the overload of information.

"I wonder if this could be connected to the scratching," the daughter wonders, checking the doctor's notes. At the near front of the brand new journal, pages of paper photographs are stuck carefully inside with scrawled observations all around them. "Stages of 'infection'," she accentuates the overly large quotations with her fingers. "Rash…incessant scratching…expanding sores…green oozing lesions…and more question marks." The young woman has a thought. "Could the lack of population be due to an 'infection' spreading?"

ED-E tells her the town, even back then, has a somewhat, lackluster population.

"Still, there should have been some growth." Arcadia plucks the picture from the journal labeled "excessive itching" and stows it in her side satchel. "Would the saloon be the place most people gather this time day, Ed?"

He beeps yes.

"Then let's go."

Goodsprings Saloon

Inside the dimly lit inner sanctum of the old saloon, both sets of eyes turn to meet the newcomers at the open front door.

"Well I'll be damned," the elderly woman behind the bar exclaims as they close the door behind them and cross to the half-circle shaped bar. "I haven't see a suit like that since the doc patched up that Courier lady all those years ago."

Arcadia mentally rebukes herself for not having picked something less conspicuous to wear. "Speaking of which, ma'am, I heard she passed through here recently. You wouldn't happen to know where she left to, do you?"

"We ain't in Arizona, honey, my name's Trudy." The dusty brown haired woman behind the bar takes a rag from under the counter and proceeds to shine the scratched, faded wood. "The only person to see her last was the doc, but he kicked the bucket about a year and a half ago. I remember she came back with one of those truck vehicles and a couple of NCR soldiers to buy supplies and liquor before leaving again."

"How long ago was this?"

"I'd say about three or four years ago."

"Three years, one month ago to be exact," the man in patched overalls corrects from his seat at the booth. "Twelve days after I was contracted to stay in this quaint little purgatory." He scowls down into his scratched glass of water, grumbling about his bad luck.

"Don't mind him, he's just the city boy that minds the Oil." Trudy waves off his last remark, putting away her cleaning rag.

"Did they say where they were going by any chance?"

"Not in so many words, but Sunny Smiles was there at Doc Mitchell's around that time, she might be able to tell you more."

"Where can I find Sunny Smiles?"

"Well, if she ain't laid up with the sickness yet, she's either tracking in the nearby hills, or the Doc has her pickin' flowers for his medicine."

"Why would the doctor need medicine," Arcadia queries, cocking her head.

"I'm surprised you ain't heard about the sickness that's infected almost the entire town, it seems like the whole of the Mojave has. It's why the only people that stop here are either desperate, a Follower, or they're NCR and need Oil."

"Then how come you're not sick?"

The old woman shrugs. "Don't know. Maybe I got a stronger Constitution than most. There's about four of us left who don't have any symptoms, and the Doc is as baffled as the rest us."

Her lips curve into a gentle frown as she ponders this predicament. "Thank you for the information, Miss Trudy, we'll be off." Before the girl can hop off her barstool, the bartender stops her with a stern word of warning.

"You best wait until morning before you go exploring. I wouldn't recommend you go out at night."

"Why not?"

"I got two words for you: 'The, Ghost'."

"The Ghost," Arcadia parrots in the form of a question.

"Yeah. Why do you think the cliff above Goodsprings Cave is called Ghost Rock?"

"Oh please." A young man in overalls takes a swig of his drink, rolling his eyes. "You old timers believe anything passersby tell you. Next you'll be telling stories about the Ghost trying to steal Corn Oil."

"We sure as hell have been around here a lot longer than you have, so how about you shut your trap and let this 'old timer' talk." The older woman grabs a small glass from under the bar top.

"What is the Ghost," Arcadia inquires, her brow furrowing in serious contemplation.

"It's basically the Wasteland boogieman if you ask anyone around here," the man in overalls explains. "The story goes something along the lines of 'The Ghost only comes out at night, kills Raiders, and steals the souls of lost or dead travelers'."

Trudy grabs a bottle of whiskey from the middle shelf directly behind her and uncorks it, sniffing the contents. "A couple of travelers who've seen the Ghost say it moves around on two legs and shoots a pistol, but it's almost as fast as a feral ghoul." She pours herself a glass, sipping it carefully. "They also say it's dressed like one of the Desert Rangers at McCarran, but with a big hat."

"A big hat…" The young woman turns to the bot hovering at her side. "Hey Ed, you don't think-"

ED-E makes it clear that he is thinking what she's thinking.

The daughter heads for the door, thanking the woman for her time.

Outside, the round, silvery desert moon hangs high in the sky, surrounded by pinpricks of brilliant white stars.

"I thought mom said he left after Hoover," she tells the bot as she hops off the saloon porch.

The old bot tilts left to right, but explains that her mother made that assumption because he was hard to find after the battle.

"And if it is mom's Ghost friend, would he know something about the sickness?" She has another thought. "But if it's not him-"

Before his young charge can talk herself out of going, he insists she visit the cliff above the cave regardless.