Life in the vault was strange. My internal clock was shot from my unconscious self being dragged in, and the fact that we were literally underground. I couldn't describe the vault as claustrophobic but it came close because I simply couldn't see the sky at any time I wished. I had even gained slight insomnia due to these conditions. The vault had solutions for these problems but it was still grating. It certainly didn't help that my meetings with the overseer and his people were always long and detailed, leading to my healing brain quitting long before everyone else.
The worst part was the vault itself. It was nice and big, and had plenty of open spaces but it was so repetitive and maze like that I often just took a seat in the halls to wait for someone to find and guide me around. The children had even made a game of that. Of course it all had a balance. This place had the best small tech facilities I'd ever seen. That could be owed to the two experiments of this place.
The first and even public experiment was human physiology improvement via a mix of DNA altering techniques and extreme training. I had gotten ahold of the public files on that and found it to be some kind of spartan project. They had obviously aimed to make super soldiers for the military and that experiment was crushed by those who underwent it when they found the scientists were secretly brainwashing them.
The second experiment was humanoid robotics. It was the less developed of the two and had been killed off early on as the dwellers had found the lead scientist was in a horrid sexual relationship with the A.I he had created. There were only two examples of the original experiments that survived the near annihilation of the experiment.
The first survivor was biological to technological connection. A biotech connector better than what was available pre-war. Currently it was being carefully expanded on by the vault as prosthetics and improvements. Howard had a leg prosthesis that still functioned long after the original project.
The other survivor was a true humanoid robot with an A.I mind that was as close to real and living as they could get. Unfortunately it was frozen in a massive chunk of ice after its mind failed. From a single look at the public info on it I could tell what was wrong. Mobius had been the one to solve the problem of A.I in this world going crazy. Most robots that were stable and had a personality were only stable because their creators made them in such a way by accident.
Mobius had presumably figured it out and thus made all his A.I have fixated personalities. A toaster bent on world domination and destruction didn't seem very stable till you found that it was still functioning well and did its job. Even a larger A.I like the one controlling the sink was stable because it had a fixation or obsession for serving its master or inhabitant like it was a butler.
The A.I of the humanoid bot had clearly been corrupted by time as its mind had nothing to focus on and too much of everything else to do or see.
Past that all was the facilities they had. The humanoid robotics experiments had culminated in the bots the dwellers sent to the surface. They were expensive but completely worth the cost. I had definitely fought a pre-war bot as I definitely wouldn't have done very good against the vault bots. They had upgraded and integrated the lasers, improved the armor, and overhauled the A.I mind completely.
These bots were smarter than assaultrons and Mr.Gutsys combined, when it came to battle. Tough as sentry bots with human mobility and no fusion core cooling bullshit. And their weapons were no longer made for peace and control by force. A blast from these bots lasers could have one shot me or crippled me in my power armor frame from the battle of Hoover dam. They could shoot vertibirds out of the shy with ease and immediately after be precise enough to cut the tail off a mutt from half the city away.
Then of course was my project and the vaults current project. Mine mixed with theirs as I could now look into my pipboy and what it did. This crossed the vault project of cyberdog research multiple times. The cyberdogs on the surface were factory produced by the pre-war automation of the city. The ones the vault were working with were made from a strain produced in the human enhancement experiments. They were all around better than normal dogs and could compete with cyberdogs. With cyberdog training and augmentation these dogs could likely go against deathclaws.
They certainly weren't Gabe levels of cyberdogs but they got pretty close. I was already working on a wrist mounted weapon that projected the lethal force of the cyberdog barks. The sonic projector technology I'd previously used or made was like comparing a bow and arrow to an RPG and launcher. The new thing was much smaller and packed much more of a punch.
The bio to tech connection technology was my main focus however. It was a specialty of this vault and it was clear that it was the best place to start with my pipboy. So when I finally got into figuring things out, I was forced to start with the actual connection technologies. What connected the pipboy to me was a massive amount of needles and tubes, linked directly to my nerves. Internally the pipboy handled everything else.
The needles and tubes picked up and sent out signals while the pipboy translated and controlled. Past that was the other parts. Small lightweight tubes or wires had slowly been released from the pipboy in my flesh and they snaked their way up into my body. As they made their way up they linked to certain nerves based on the pipboys guidance through its signal control. Once those connections were established more would move past them.
I couldn't tell fully how far they had gotten inside of me but they'd progressed enough to communicate with most of my body. After the physical connections were traced and investigated, I went on to the pipboy itself and its programming. The internals were easily scanned and made understandable. The complex structure of the devices was contrasting in its surprising simplicity.
My first look was like looking into any advanced computer or such in my first life but much smaller. It was a simple design with massive flexibility and the durability that marked this worlds tech as special. Finally was the programming. It was way to advanced for me to understand most of it. It even forced multiple coding language changes throughout to make more complex code, or to scramble attempts to reverse engineer it or something.
However I didn't give up and dug into it to figure out how functioned. Unfortunately, all that digging was time wasted as it was just Robco programming but better. This programming would be revolutionary outside of pipboys but no one had used it in such a way. I simply had to assume there was a reason for that as it was a Robco creation, and they wouldn't hesitate to use it to make more money.
I found out a few days later that the specific programming of pipboys allowed for C.A.M.P and G.E.C.K compatibility. That however meant that my pipboy was also different. Its physical structure didn't allow for that. It was made for access to specialized auto-docs that were never put into production, in or out of the
Big Empty. That part was annoying but it gave me access to that same auto-docs schematics and those of other medical tech.
That, I already knew but it was good to know that it was more of a trade off than me simply loosing access to advanced technology. It also wasn't like I couldn't get a right handed pipboy or have someone else use one. The people of the prewar United States weren't paranoid about lefties or anything so there had to be left handed pipboys or whatever.
Finally, after figuring out my pipboy for the most part I left to work on my getup for leaving this place. Fabrication of the armor was trivial, as was imbedding basic tech. The hard part was the helmet. I had the technology down here to fill it with everything I wanted and more. My current design was a massive failure but got me closer to my final product.
A CBRN filter was hard to find down here but I eventually dug one up in the deep storage of the vault with the help of the vault quartermaster. Making a PAPR for the filter and a scuba setup came afterwards with some annoyingness as the fabrication machines took hours to make the tanks for some reason.
A basic HUD and some AR were surprisingly easy and accessible till I remembered that some working cybernetic eyes had been developed here and they supposedly had such things. Powerful speakers and mics were also accessible and effective, with an armored version already made and used by the dwellers. Integrated optics and adaptive senses were much more challenging but the optics were already designed in the form of the vaults humanoid robots.
The adaptive senses changed my helmets overlays and other systems to match my environment or protect against things that could harm me. The helmet and visor itself could catch a laser but the light flash would still get through. That was why most power armor helmets had heavily tinted eyes with very powerful flashlights to counter the low light from that inbuilt protection.
Sound protection from explosions or constant loud noise was heavily dampened already but anti noise could be used to protect against even worse. That protection was practically useless against actual sound based attacks but at that point I'd have bigger problems.
Three days passed as I perfected my helmet and helped the overseer plan out the vaults future connections to the surface. The BOS were their best bet as there was no NCR here and the other factions would want to wipe out the vault. These people would also fit right in with the Brotherhood as they already had people who subscribed to the Brotherhoods system and the older dwellers had suffered from vault techs bullshit.
Two weeks later I was judged fully healed and ready to go. That was also the day I finished my armor and got my cyberdog back. The dwellers had reprogrammed him to follow me till I left the city and he'd function as the prototype for their scouts. The overseers protege John wanted to start removing the legion from the city and that meant eliminating the resources they got from this place. The resources were the only thing keeping them here and the cyberdogs were perfect for ruining them.
Once my armor was finished and my healing complete, I began preparing to leave. I didn't want to stay any longer than I had to. The people here were all a bit weird and I hated the discussions and planning of the overseer. It didn't help that I was getting a bit claustrophobic. I was used to normal life in the surface and while I could tolerate this place that didn't mean I liked it. Eventually I informed the overseer that I was ready to leave and wen to bed.