"Deccanus." Adam said as he entered the room. "What are you doing?"
"Contemplating my life." He said without breaking line of sight with the inactive TV.
"What do you mean?"
"I once was a legionaire, a soldier part of an empire that spanned a distance greater than any other, I was a part of a large whole, working towards our great goals. But I am no longer that man. Now I sit here, on this old world couch, in this old world shelter, using old world healing medicines, with an old world soldier. I… do not think my younger self would like what I have become…" He said hesitantly. Adam sighed softly and then walked further inside, grabbing a chair from the adjoining dining room, spinning it around, and then turning to look at him.
"Just because your younger self would not be pleased does that make your actions now wrong?" Adam probed.
"I… don't know." Deccanus said, uncertain.
"We can never know the path our lives will take us, we all have an idea of what we will do, how we want our lives to take shape but it does not always go our way." Adam gestures around him. "I thought I would always be able to live my life the way it was before my world ended. I thought I had a nice peaceful retirement to look forward to, that I could enjoy margaritas on the beach till the end of my days after doing my job as an American to help preserve our freedoms. However the world ended, I had to adjust." He paused again for a moment and then continued. "My younger self would be appalled, he would see the state of the world, the fact I have to fight for my dinner, and cry. But that is okay, because this is my life. My younger self does not control the direction my life goes nor the paths I take. And if I got to speak to my younger self I would tell him it was going to be okay. Maybe my life is not the way he imagined, but I like it. Sure I would rather be looking forward to a radiation free future with plenty of drinks on tap but what I have here isn't that bad either. And for me that is enough." Deccanus remained quiet for a few moments before turning to look at Adam.
"I feel as though… every day I move forward I lose more and more of my identity as a member of the legion. My only home, my people, what am I without my Legion?" He asked rhetorically. However Adam answered him anyway.
"Deccanus." Adam returned resolutely. "You will be Deccanus, my friend, no matter whether you live in a vault and allow yourself to use stimpacks or live outside using a medicinal balm. Maybe you are 'less legion' than you were yesterday. That changes nothing. We all grow, we learn, we adapt. Perhaps what you are becoming is far more suited to living without your legion, perhaps you will live a lot longer because you are adapting. And perhaps because you live longer you can carry on the name of the Legion for many more years. Who knows? What I do know is none of these questions need to be answered now. You can sleep in this vault, safe, and preserve your strength for the battle to come, or you can leave here and sleep under the stars and join us when the time is right. I cannot make this decision for you. But I know you will make the right one." Adam said before he got up and then patted Deccanus on the shoulder. "I think you'll find that a healthy mix of old world and new world lessons is the best way to live. At least in my opinion" He smiled and then turned to the inactive TV.
"Also you said you like stories? These things can play movies from the old world, plenty of stories to watch. There are no television shows anymore but it looks like you can still watch some movies. Try it, you might find you like movies as much as I do." Adam then turned to leave, leaving Deccanus alone with his own thoughts. As Adam walked out of the room he heard the TV turn on in the distance and the quiet sounds of a movie starting.
Adam had one more mission before he turned in for the night. He found the construction protection walking around aimlessly through the halls and told it to stop.
There was a discussion that was started by the man who gave Adam his RobCo license about why, when put into idle mode, or given no or loose directives, the protection model robot would default to wandering around aimlessly. As if on a patrol but without a mission. As his instructor put it 'the illusion of efficiency'. It came down to one simple thing. A potential buyer feels better about a wandering protection than one that sat still.
According to the instructor the concept came from the same reason why, when your boss suddenly shows up near you, if you were doing nothing, you will pick up a broom and start sweeping, or make yourself appear busy at your computer, or whatever else you can do to make it look like you are working. Realistically there are times that no work can be done. This is true for robots too. However if a protection was just to sit still doing nothing when not ordered it would not evoke the feeling that the robot was worth the money to buy it.
On the other hand, having the robot wander around, even aimlessly, gives the impression that it is doing something even when it is not. Regardless of how true it was, this was the directive of the CEO of RobCo himself, Robert House, so no one was about to argue with him.
Regardless of why, the protection, when separated from Rae and without orders, started to mindlessly wander the halls. However Adam knew what he wanted him to do next so his idle time was over.
"Protectron, come with me." He ordered.
"Understood, following." The protection said back as Adam headed towards the exit of the Vault.
He wasted no time opening the door and walking outside, protectron in tow as he did. Once outside he could see how little light was left as night had fallen but for a Protectron the lacking light was no issue.
Adam walked over to one of the piles of rubble and sifted through the pile for a moment before he found a brick. Not a broken, cracked, or misshapen brick, but one that was still very much intact just simply stuck in the pile of rubble.
Adam showed the brick to the protectron and spoke.
"From this point on until I order you otherwise I want you to go through all of this rubble and collect every single intact brick you can find and stack them all over here." He ordered as he placed the brick down in an open spot. "Do not cease until I have ordered you to stop or until you run out of rubble to look through within a 500 yard radius from this spot. For everything else, put it in a pile over there." He said, pointing to another open spot.
"Confirmed, beginning construction." The protectron said as it began to walk past Adam and begin to look through the rubble.
Adam had thought about how best to use the protectron for a while and this was the conclusion he came to. Ultimately the construction protection was built for one thing, building. Maybe one day he could make use of the foundations that still remained here and reconstruct some of the buildings in the area but for now simply finding any of the still usable building material might be nice. If nothing else the bricks that were still usable might be worth something in Midway, after all they could still be used to build things. Besides this sort of grunt work was exactly what robots, especially protectron, were good for. They could work all night without issue and be much more thorough than any human. And this way the protectron would actually be contributing rather than just existing in his home.
This did remind Adam he still needed to fix up Buddy and the other protectron, both of whom were left in the corner of the entrance room of the Vault by Rae however that was a problem for tomorrow, besides likely he couldn't be fully repaired without spare parts so all he would do is try to fix what he could. However for the moment he wanted to sleep, so sleep he would.
Finally, after an interesting day he headed inside the Vault, back to his room, and went to bed, ready to tackle whatever problems tomorrow brought.