FEV research logs

Research Log, Doctor Edgar Blackburn. Number One. Under any other circumstance, it would feel foolish to begin recording these before my work has even meaningfully begun. I developed this habit during my graduate studies. A tool, helping me as much to retain insights as to preserve my failures. Here, when nothing about what I am to undertake is normal, I break with tradition and start these logs now. Posterity requires this moment be kept. What I am about to do will almost assuredly make of me a villain in the eyes of many. My work is distasteful, and must be conducted in secret. Here, for whatever person may one day hear this, I say for the record that what I will do I do out of love. An unselfish love that knows no rest. Not for a person. No clichéd deceased spouse or lost child motivates me. Humanity is my love, though none would accuse me of excess sentiment. We are a species tormented by the ravages of the Great War, reduced to vermin eking out an existence in the rubble of the world that was. The mistakes of my past are writ on the face of every survivor living in fear of the mutated horrors that stalk the Wasteland. I can correct this. I must. We are not meant to live like this. There is a way forward, to free us from the horrors we...I...created. Yet, I fear the failures that lie between me and the future I see. They will be many, and they will cause a great deal of pain before I am done. The sins of West Tek must be undone. The price will be extreme, but it must be paid. If my life is included in that price, I will pay it gladly. I record this log not to seek forgiveness. I neither deserve nor require it. I ask only that you, my hypothetical listener, know that the things to come are not the product of ill-intent or a sadistic mania. One day, good will come of the evil I am set to do. I hope that you are there to see it, and understand. End log.

Research Log, Doctor Edgar Blackburn. Number Five. The creators of the Forced Evolutionary Virus were idiot savants. They saw weapons, soldiers to win a war that would end almost as soon as it began. They had discovered a means by which we could seize the reigns of human evolution, and all they could envision was more efficient death. My colleagues at West Tek were likewise fools. They made the virus a plaything and Huntersville their ant farm, shaking it to watch them scurry. The FEV was never meant to create abominations. At its core is something wondrous and hopeful. I will free it from what they made of it. Humanity will have the future it should have had, and a better human will build that world, free from fear. End log.

Research Log, Doctor Edgar Blackburn. Number Thirteen. Whatever the prior occupants of this Vault may have done, I must thank them, especially Chief Engineer Doctor Memling. The good doctor, while a respectable scientist in his own right, had the classic engineer's idiosyncratic approach to maintenance. His additions to the Vault reactor and electrical subsystems provide me with ample points of connection to directly access mains power. Between this and certain defects in reactor shielding, I have invaluable resources for my research. My first attempts in this area is more disappointing, however. Lacking Memling's expertise, my electrical impedance tests failed dramatically. The unintentional discovery of a new method of rapidly cooking a mole rat fails even in that regard: Molerat exposed to several thousand volts at significant amperage does not make for an appetizing sight. Nonetheless, these results are duly recorded and I believe my understanding of the system is sufficient to produce more useful results in the future. End log.

Research Log, Doctor Edgar Blackburn. Number Seventeen. I am no longer alone in this endeavor. Against all odds, I have made contact with a former colleague, Doctor Farha, whom fate preserved as it did me. Doctor Farha was reluctant when I first described my aims. The testing that will be required, and the failures, give her pause. Even at university, we clashed on the ethical boundaries of research. Regardless, I have convinced her to aid me despite her doubts. I will continue to work here in Vault 96, in secrecy. Doctor Farha, meanwhile has established a laboratory suitable for mass-production. She has acquired a foundling of sorts, a young woman by the name of Nellie Wright. She seems something of a prodigy. I believe it was Ms. Wright's enthusiastic support of my ideas that convinced Doctor Farha to acquiesce to my request for aid. Farha has also brought in Jain. I knew him from university, and our time at West Tek. This work is his chance at redemption as much as my own. End log.

Research Log, Doctor Edgar Blackburn. Number Twenty-Two. In retrospect, my enthusiasm for the cryogenically-preserved specimens in the Vault was excessive, if not actually misplaced. I am down to the last four viable test subjects. Further research is at an impasse unless I move to human subjects. Obtaining volunteers will be impossible. The necessary experimentation to even approach a functional result will be unavoidably fatal to some. I will have to take extreme measures to obtain subjects. Thousands, perhaps millions of lives will be saved. Utility trumps sentimentality. End log.

Research Log, Doctor Edgar Blackburn. Number Thirty-Eight. The capture of human test subjects is itself less difficult than I imagined. The people of Appalachia are in bad need of medicines, and lone travelers are easy to approach when one is a doctor. I tell myself these acts are necessary - the work too important, and I cannot complete it without living human subjects to experiment upon. Yet as I compound failure upon failure, in my quiet hours I question what I have made of myself in pursuit of this goal. I began this enterprise fully cognizant of what it might take, but even with that foreknowledge I could not comprehend the weight of it. Have I become no different from that fool Elias, a font of monsters with no humane end in sight? Am I deluded in believing myself capable of success? These moments pass. I push aside those doubts and focus on the work before me. The people of Appalachia need this. The world needs this. Let them vilify me when they learn what I have done. I will make a better future for them, even if I do not live to see it myself. End log.

Research Log, Doctor Edgar Blackburn. Number Fifty-Seven. I begin to doubt my own sanity at times. My efforts, while not without progress, continue to fail to bear real fruit. The FEV seems almost deliberately malignant, as if it had a consciousness and rejects my every attempt to bend it toward a benevolent end. I have come to recognize the signs of imminent metastasis and conversion to the so-called "Super Mutant" state. I am ill-equipped to deal with the product of such failure, and have taken to disposing of these unfortunates outside the Vault itself. I regret that my current methods of disposal may, in the short term, increase the Super Mutant population in Appalachia, but it cannot be avoided. End log.

Research Log, Doctor Edgar Blackburn. Number One Hundred and Twelve. My work's demand for human subjects has increased dramatically as I make ground toward my ultimate goal. To this end, I have contracted with a group of mercenaries calling themselves the Hellcat Company. Trustworthy, if such a term applies here. They display a useful moral flexibility. They do not question the nature of my work or my need for human subjects, and I do not illuminate them. Already they have begun acquiring new subjects at far greater pace than I could, and a contingent remain to guard the Vault itself. I must be careful. A mercenary is only as loyal as their pay, after all. My control of the Vault security systems keeps them in check for now. End log.

Research Log, Doctor Edgar Blackburn. Number One Hundred and Forty-Eight. I can feel the end approaching. The equations fall into place, and I can see the shape of it, the perfected FEV, even in my restless dreams. That vision of the goal is the only succor now. What I have done to reach it can never be washed away. I have been right, but that is small comfort. I give them numbers now, and try not to listen when they speak to me, pleading. I prefer to sedate them when removing them from their holding cells Unconscious, they cannot weep, or stare accusingly at me. I cannot make them understand that we are alike part of a greater destiny. They think me inhuman, uncaring. I know I would be no different, were our roles reversed. I do not blame them for hating me. I lie in my cot at night and see their faces. I remember them all, and wait for sleep to carry me to the visions of when I can finally stop. Final candidate number three is ready for verification. I am within two, perhaps three iterations of success. Will I be able to sleep untroubled when this is over? Or will punishment for what I have done be a mercy, freeing me from its memory? End log.