For a while there I felt like I was losing my groove with this story. Vaults aren’t fun places to write, especially not when you’re trying to bend a universally-mocked canon plot to a protagonist of your own creation.

There’s something in this chapter, though, that makes me think it’s coming back. This one’s heavy on Butch - if you’re reading for him, read on!

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And now look again, and see what will naturally follow if the prisoners are released and disabused of their error. At first, when any of them is liberated and compelled suddenly to stand up and turn his neck round and walk and look towards the light, he will suffer sharp pains; the glare will distress him, and he will be unable to see the realities of which in his former state he had seen the shadows; and then conceive some one saying to him, that what he saw before was an illusion, but that now, when he is approaching nearer to being and his eye is turned towards more real existence, he has a clearer vision, -what will be his reply? And you may further imagine that his instructor is pointing to the objects as they pass and requiring him to name them, — will he not be perplexed? Will he not fancy that the shadows which he formerly saw are truer than the objects which are now shown to him?

Far truer.

And if he is compelled to look straight at the light, will he not have a pain in his eyes which will make him turn away to take and take in the objects of vision which he can see, and which he will conceive to be in reality clearer than the things which are now being shown to him?

True, he said.

And suppose once more, that he is reluctantly dragged up a steep and rugged ascent, and held fast until he’s forced into the presence of the sun himself, is he not likely to be pained and irritated? When he approaches the light his eyes will be dazzled, and he will not be able to see anything at all of what are now called realities.

Not all in a moment, he said.

He will require to grow accustomed to the sight of the upper world. And first he will see the shadows best, next the reflections of men and other objects in the water, and then the objects themselves; then he will gaze upon the light of the moon and the stars and the spangled heaven; and he will see the sky and the stars by night better than the sun or the light of the sun by day?

Certainly.

Last of he will be able to see the sun, and not mere reflections of him in the water, but he will see him in his own proper place, and not in another; and he will contemplate him as he is.

Certainly.

He will then proceed to argue that this is he who gives the season and the years, and is the guardian of all that is in the visible world, and in a certain way the cause of all things which he and his fellows have been accustomed to behold?

Clearly, he said, he would first see the sun and then reason about him.

And when he remembered his old habitation, and the wisdom of the den and his fellow-prisoners, do you not suppose that he would felicitate himself on the change, and pity them?

Certainly, he would.

- Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave”

And we’re back, and better than ever! You know I wrote this entire thing this afternoon? Ahahaha oh god it probably shows.

It’s both exciting and weird to think that this story is over halfway done. It’s also weird to be taking more and more from FO3’s canon plot, as opposed to making it up as I go. I will endeavor mightily not to make it as corny and bad as the rest of the Fallout fandom thinks it is.

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You’d never believe it, but I’ve actually been working on this chapter on and off ever since I finished the last one. Vault 87 is a crucial place, both in the game and this story - and the last thing you wanna do is screw it up.

And to all of you that worried Mass Effect hijacked me for good - worry no longer!

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