The Mojave

Step in out of the sun, dear patron; the Mojave has plenty of it, and it gets into my optics besides. This is the rare shelf the bombs left mostly standing: Las Vegas kept its towers, and — after two dark centuries and one very patient landlord — got its lights back. The wasteland has argued over whose lights they are ever since they returned.

By 2281 the argument had armies. The New California Republic had stretched thin across the Colorado to hold Hoover Dam, the Old World's last great engine. Across the river stood Caesar's Legion. In the sealed Lucky 38 above the Strip, Mr. House ran the city through his securitrons and answered to nobody. The dam made the electricity; the electricity made the argument worth having.

The record opens small. In autumn 2281, outside a town called Goodsprings, a courier carrying a platinum chip was robbed of it, shot, and buried. The Courier declined to stay buried. Everything that follows, follows.

Mr. House is not a machine, though he governs like one. He is Robert Edwin House, founder of RobCo Industries, who calculated the war's arrival years in advance, declined to die in it, and sealed himself into a life-support chamber in the Lucky 38 to manage the odds personally. His defenses swatted most of the warheads meant for Vegas from the sky. Most is a word that worked hard that morning.

The platinum chip was his. Printed in Sunnyvale on October 22, 2077, it carried an operating-system upgrade to turn his securitron police into an army, and the key to a second one waiting under Fortification Hill — ground the Legion would one day camp upon. Delivery was set for October 23. The bombs kept that appointment instead. House spent two centuries arranging for the Old World's last parcel to finish its journey; the Courier shot at Goodsprings was carrying it. As a fellow keeper of undelivered things, I confess a professional sympathy.

Caesar was born Edward Sallow, a Followers of the Apocalypse scholar sent east to study tribal languages. Taken hostage by the Blackfoot tribe alongside the missionary Joshua Graham, he taught his captors Old World war, read his histories with unfortunate attention, and began a project of terrible coherence: eighty-six tribes conquered, dissolved, and re-forged into one Legion — one language, one law, one man. The tribes' names do not appear in his records. That was the point.

In 2277 the Legion came for Hoover Dam and nearly took it. The NCR fell back through Boulder City, drew the Legion's finest in after them, and brought the town down on their heads. Caesar's judgment on his defeated legate is its own dark page: Joshua Graham was set afire and cast into the Grand Canyon, and the record notes, without comment, that he lived. The Legion withdrew to wait. For four years the Colorado held its breath.

Before the dam, the Courier's own history came due. The record follows it through four buried places: the Sierra Madre, a casino sealed beneath a poisoned cloud with its treasure and ghosts; Zion, where the Burned Man was found alive and praying; the Big MT, a crater of Old World science that misplaced its conscience; and the Divide, a country erased by a package the Courier once delivered unopened. Four detours, one lesson: the roads we walk keep our receipts.

Then, in late 2281, the Second Battle of Hoover Dam was fought — and here, dear patron, is the most famous gap in my archive. That it happened is certain; who won it, the accounts will not agree, and I will not guess. Four roads led out: the Republic's flag over the dam, the Legion's bull, Mr. House's patient tower, or an independent New Vegas answering only to the Courier shot outside Goodsprings. The record holds all four as roads, and none as the destination. The archive prefers a gap to a guess, sir. It is the gap I am proudest of.