Thankfully there was a key to the door in the pocket of my new pants so it opened up with any trouble. I flipped the switch on the wall right inside the door and thankfully the place still had juice somehow and the fluorescent lights on the ceiling flickered on, half of them anyways. I raised an eyebrow at what I found inside. A cot in the corner and most of the tools and spare parts still there if they hadn't rusted through already. The biggest thing though was the mostly intact motorcycle sitting in the center of the place.-
It was a ugly thick thing that was missing a wheel and a few parts from that blocky engine that were scattered around on the floor. Next to the bike was a mechanics trolley with tools on it and a battery powered radio.
'Ah I get it. This probably belonged to that guy in there and he was working on it when he heard about the end of the world from the radio.' I thought feeling it a little sad.
That experience was one I could practically see playing out in my head. The guy was probably a live in mechanic and manager here. He was likely just passing the time with maintenance on his bike while listening to some tunes when the announcement of the nukes coming came on. He probably looked horrified and rushed to lock up before running outside only to see one of the bombs go off in the distance. The dread and depression he must have felt may have driven him to end it all. After that well the place must have been mostly forgotten by the world as it was but a single lonely gas station way off the usual track, barely worth scavenging.-
Thankfully I was a bit of a grease monkey myself so I was sure that so long as the parts hadn't gone bad I could get the bike up and running again. Or at least I thought so until I really got into the guts of the beast in question. Turns out regular Earth to Fallout Earth mechanics weren't exactly one to one convertible. That made sense given that Fallout Earth was kinda way more advanced compared to Regular Earth. I have no shame in admitting I was stumped on the function of some of these parts as I disassembled the bike piece by piece.-
You may be asking why I was wasting my time on this rather than moving on and the answer to that was strategy. I wasn't going to starve or dehydrate to death in the span of a single day and this was as good a place as any to wait out my system pack opening token handing out. I knew this world well and the smartest thing I could do right now would be to wait for more cards before hopefully getting something to keep me safe.-
There was also a few things in this garage I could use to extend my time here even further. A case of purified water covered in dust in the corner and a couple of dusty sealed freeze dried meal pouches next to the water. It wasn't exactly luxurious but beggars can't be choosers. My only gripe with the place had to be a lack of air conditioning and a sketchy energy source powering it. By that last one I mean I genuinely didn't find one. I knew it wasn't some plant somewhere else because there were no lines up along the road but I couldn't hear a generator or find any solar panels either.-
I had my soldier guy poking the sand around the gas station in case there was an underground generator room that had been burried by sand over the years but so far nothing had been found. By taking the bike apart and putting it back together I quickly closed some of the informational gap between my knowledge and what this world had. For example I figured out that the engine design was much more similar to that of a car back on my Earth but miniaturized and improved to run on a diesel fuel of a sort very efficiently.-
In fact the actual fuel tank of the bike was tiny, barely the size of a tin can. From what I could see most of the actual working parts of the engine were pure electrical work rather than combustion. In fact the diesel was clearly used as a stabilization agent to keep it all running without friction binding it up. And where did all that power come from? A single fusion core dead center of the engine. I recognized the damned thing from my time playing Fallout 4.-
The pringles can sized yellow buggers were a key part in utilizing power armor in the game and was something you had to keep stock in if you didn't want to make things harder than necessary when playing. I knew from some of the lore that the vehicles before the war used nuclear power but I hadn't considered that they had fusion cores in them. Then again it would make sense given that if you shoot the wreckages they explode with mushroom clouds and throw off radiation. That would make you wonder why nobody just strips the cars for the things then but they explain that too, the cars stuff was unstable from two hundred years of neglect and corrosion. -
The one I had from the bike seemed stable since it was here under the protection of the garage walls where no nuke had impacted it at all. This places isolation was both it's blessing and curse thanks to this. Too far from anything to get nuked but equally too far from anything to have resources available. Still I was thankful all the same as this place would give me my leg up in this world.-
I was right about suffering several hours of work on the bike later. My skin that had been exposed to the harsh sun and heat of the desert was now an angry red and stung something fierce. There was nothing I could do about it however so I just endured it in silence. The sun was starting to set so I knew I'd need to shut off the lights here soon or this place would stand out like a beacon in the dark and might attract some stuff I'd rather avoid. It was right at this time that my soldier guy popped into the garage.-
I grinned when he did too for one simple reason, he found something. I naturally followed him out of the garage and to the spot he found something. It didn't stand out at all, honestly looked like the rest of the sand around it. I got on my knees and ignored the dirt as I started tossing sand aside and quickly uncovered a sturdy metal hatch with a protective cover over a small spot that when lifted revealed a keyhole. I used the key to the garage and found it a perfect fit.