"You know what Nina? I'm in a charitable mood. What do you need?"
"We need you to hack into the central GZS computer system to bring the elevator down."
"Wow, I didn't expect that one. What's going on?"
"Can you do it?" Nina asks without answering your question.
"Well in theory I might. I've fucked around with that computer when nobody was around in the past, but I've never really gotten into the inner workings of the system, and I've read as much as I can about the shelter itself. Damn thing's touchy though. I just worry that if I do the wrong thing I'll end up shutting the whole shelter down and doom us all."
"You mean doom yourself."
"Well that too, but you still never told me what you want to bring the elevator down for."
"Are you gonna do it or not?"
"Okay, what happens if I don't?"
"I'll just get one of my own people to attempt it and hope they don't doom us all accidentally."
"(Sigh) Well played Nina, you know I'm gonna do it now. Alright, let's go."

You and Nina enter the Community Shelter computer room, where a couple of Nina's tech's are tinkering with the Central GZS computer.

"What are you doing!? Give me that!" you yell taking a screw driver away from one of them. You recognize them both Todd and Charles if you remember correctly.
"Oh man, its you! Okay, don't get mad!" Todd says backing off. Charles does like wise.
"Sheesh, I'm not going to shoot you! I'm just trying to prevent you from fucking up what's basically our life support system! Its barely working right as it is! I swear GZS put us in a death trap down here."
"Alright then do you need any help? Or should we leave you alone while you do this?" Nina asks.
"What do you think fearless leader?"
"Right. Come on let's go."

Nina and the other two leave and you get to work. You first do a system scan to what's going on exactly. Wow, this place really is in some bad shape! You can see where some fixes have been made, but without a really skilled technician routinely checking in on stuff, things are never going to get better in this place, you shutter to think what would've happened with Ron still in control. This place might've very well lost all power. You're sort of glad you've begun to take an interest. MAYBE after you manage to get the elevator down you might just volunteer to upkeep this thing.

You start delving into the inner working of the system; GZS really didn't want folks bringing the elevator down! You accidentally cut some lighting temporarily which causes you to hear some yelling from a distance.

"Oh toughen up." You say to yourself.

You continue to work and eventually you successfully override the safety protocol for the elevator and it starts its decent.

"Ha ha, I rule." You say as you come out of the computer room.
"Did you do it?" Nina asks.
"Sure did. NOW are you going to tell me why we're bringing it down?"
"You'll see for yourself. Leon, bring both of the perverts out, this has been a long time coming…"

You notice that everyone's standing around right now, like some special event is going down. Leon eventually comes back with Ron and William in tow, and he looks like he roughed them up first so they'd struggle less.

The elevator door opens up for the first time.

"Put both of these…criminals in the elevator Leon." Nina says. Leon does so, with a lot of protesting and pleading from both, but another couple punches shut them up. Now you know why Nina wanted you to bring the elevator down…exile. If this was a year ago and they were throwing Ron out in the wasteland for his bungling of shelter management, you'd probably be the first to applaud. But what's going on right now is for the wrong damn reasons, and you know Nina's just being a petty bitch who's still harboring resentment for shit she really brought on herself with completely clueless judgment on her part.

"Alright, Nina I know you're fucking upset because your make believe boyfriend turned out to be a fag, but that was a goddamn year ago…"
"Shut up! This has nothing to do with that! This is about justice! These two are in violation of GZS guidelines carrying on with…"
"Oh will you shut up about that shit? I'm starting to believe the entire GZS Corporation were a bunch of fucking loonies with too much time on their hands! They build these fucking shelters that break down all the goddamn time, with no way to get back to the surface and trapping everyone down here."
"Why the hell are you defending these two? You've never been one to give a fucking shit before! You know I've never seen you pursue any women around here even if you were slightly appealing enough for any of them to have you. What are you gay too?"
"(Sigh) No, Nina because if I was I'm sure you would've been the first one to want to spread your legs for me. Look I'm just saying this ain't fucking right okay?"
"Oh and YOU'RE the fucking expert on what's right? You fucking KILLED a man! You fucking snuck a gun in here a shot somebody! So is the gun an extension of your manhood and you just couldn't live without it?"
"Y'know Nina, you seem awfully pre-occupied with my sexual habits. Shit, if you want me to fuck you already just come out and say it and stop beating around bush. I'd say that's what you've been needing since you got in here anyway, because I haven't seen YOU with anyone either, that didn't turn out to be a complete fucking homo of course."

Your remark is met with a long period of silence. The rest of the shelter population has been in absolute awe, this is probably the most exciting thing that's happened since you shot Elliot. Nina looks at you hard and recomposes herself.

"Are you going to send the elevator up, or not?"

You grab and kiss her

Something comes over you, maybe it was the tension or the hostility or maybe you were just horny, but you grab Nina and kiss her passionately. Fortunately for you, she returns the gesture. Now nobody knows what to think they all just stand around watching, they're probably just glad you didn't shoot anybody this time. William and Ron are still recovering from their beating and staggering in the doorway of the elevator.

Nina stops you just for a moment to address everyone. "The exile is off, everyone go back to your lives…and YOU are coming with me!" then she starts pulling you back to her room.

You and Nina relieve a lot of pent up sexual energy that day. A lot of things change after that…


Four more years pass...

You and Nina are an item now, which makes you somewhat more social by necessity (unfortunately) its not all bad though since she's the one that's still shelter leader and has to do all the major work. She does a good job hence the reason she's stayed in power. (Though not surprisingly William and Ron still vote against her, even if she did apologize)

You're now in charge of maintaining the central GZS computer system which you insist on doing primarily by yourself, though Charles and Todd assist you sometimes. Eventually you manage to get the damn thing running at near maximum efficiency and nobody has too many problems with things breaking down anymore.

The Shelter's population has grown a bit now; the only good thing about the shelter was the design to make allowances for a population growth. Of course now there's rug rats running around which means Nina appoints a person to start being a "teacher" of sorts for when they start getting bigger. Fortunately there are a couple of those already in the shelter. Kyle and Brenda are now the main medical practitioners, though you doubt if they'd be able to do open heart surgery, they're competent enough to keep people in relatively good shape and they keep trying to learn more whenever possible with the medical database provided and from books. (You still don't understand WHY you're the only competent tech though! "Gah! Read the books! Study the schematics! It's not difficult!" you're constantly saying and that's to Charles and Todd!)

Then there's the elevator. After the near exile incident, it was still considered a good idea to have it accessible at all times just in case. What you eventually did was install a call button and did some re-wiring to do just that, though nobody has ever dared to actually go up to the surface. (And nobody's ever gotten thrown out either)

You begin to wonder what the surface looks like now though from time to time.

One night while lying next to Nina…

"Hey Nina, you ever wonder what's on the surface now?"
"What? It's probably an uninhabitable wasteland."
"Well maybe, but we've been down here five years, it might look different."
"Yeah, and it might not. Go back to sleep."
"You know I just thought about it, everyone's vehicles are up there. I bet we could strip them down for parts or something, maybe some of them will even work. We could drive around and see what's going on else where."
"What? I don't want you going up there! The elevator is a last resort thing just case something bad happens! And since when do you want to play great explorer? When you first got here you never left your room!"
"I dunno, maybe your socialization has made me a little more extroverted."
"Hmm, knowing you, you probably just want to get away from the increasing population here."
"Ha ha, maybe. But I still wouldn't mind just taking a quick look outside, and to inspect the vehicles like I said."

Nina now sits up.

"No! I don't want you going up there! There's probably radiation still all over the place! I don't want you getting radiation poisoning or mutating or something!"
"I'll be fine! I won't go too far, I just want to…"

Nina grabs a hold of your hand.

"NO! I don't want you going up there! It's not safe!"
"Alright, alright, calm down. I won't go anywhere."
"You promise?"
"Yeah!"
"Alright then, I don't want to hear anymore about it. Our life is here, not up there. I love you too much to lose you."

The both of you lie back down, and Nina holds on to you tightly, putting her head on your chest almost in an effort to make sure you're not going anywhere tonight.

Of course now you're lying awake REALLY wondering what the surface looks like.

The next day you're working with Charles and Todd doing the usual mundane routine. They're talking about the same stupid movie they've watched over and over in the community living area. Shit you feel like you're at work again. The GZS central computer hasn't been giving you trouble for quite some time, and you know there's a big meeting going on in the conference room…

Maybe you could sneak out and just take a quick look on the surface for awhile. You could let Charles and Todd look after the computer, you know they're capable of doing that.

You go up to the surface

The temptation is too great, you have to go. You're just too curious not to.

"Hey Todd, and Charles I think you guys are ready to monitor this thing by yourself. I didn't get a lot of sleep last night, and I'm going back to my room to take a short nap, don't tell anyone alright?"

Todd and Charles just look glad that you're showing some confidence in them for once.

"Yeah, sure it's cool. We won't tell anyone." Todd says.
"Alright, I'll be back. Remember just monitor, don't fucking touch anything!"
"Okay! Got it!"

You leave the computer room and look around; the shelter almost seems eerily empty right now. Nina's no doubt got everyone's attention with her speech in conference room and all the kids are being looked after by someone in the children's room created a couple years back.

You make your move. You run to the elevator, open it and get inside. You take a deep breath and press the button up, no time like the present to test it person.

The elevator begins its ascent, you begin to wonder what you'll see above, you then check you pistol just in case what you see is unfriendly. Finally the elevator opens up to the same foyer you entered five years ago. Looks exactly the same, except the payment machine is now offline in fact the screen is cracked. There's a crowbar lying on the floor and the doors to the outside look like they were pried open. You see the outside world for the first time in five years. From where you're standing, it doesn't look too bad; maybe the devastation wasn't that great in this area. Somebody or possibly several people were here at one time attempting to get in.

You take the crowbar and jam it in the elevator door so it doesn't close on you. There's no call button up here either since it was the payment machine that opened it up. You make a note that if you're able you'll have to install another one up here, and shake your head at the typical shitty GZS design of its shelters. They built this thing like a high tech mass coffin as far as you're concerned; you're convinced that if it wasn't for you up keeping and tinkering, everyone would've been dead due to shelter failure by now.

You exit the foyer and go outside, you see a bright light. It's the sun; you forgot how bright it could be. You see everyone's cars still parked here, well almost. You can tell that few of them must've been taken at one time; a lot have just been plain vandalized. Your van still looks the same though, nobody in their right mind would steal that thing, and it already looks vandalized. You wonder if it would still start, but you left your keys to it in the shelter. You doubt if it would though.

It occurs to you for the first time, the shelter might not exactly be "safe", granted its not safe by design, but you're thinking safe from bad people on the surface. Its possible these folks who passed through here stealing vehicles and vandalizing them might've just been trying to scavenge whatever they could find. The surface certainly can't be a comfortable place to live now. Maybe they were just looking for safety. Of course it's equally likely they were looters and other bad types.

The shelter community isn't exactly a bunch of "warriors", besides yourself, Leon, and maybe a few others you doubt it they could handle a bunch of hardened surface raiders who've been living in the wasteland for years. Granted the elevator wouldn't allow for a large invasion of these types of people to take place, but it still makes you wonder if precautions shouldn't be taken.

You need to get back though before everyone finds out what you've been doing. You rush back to the elevator (Throwing the crowbar back on the ground) and take it down hoping that nobody is wandering around when you exit the thing.

When you arrive at the bottom, you half expect to see a crowd to meet you, but its dead silent still, you quickly head back to the computer room where Charles and Todd are talking about another movie.

"Hey you're back. So what did you see on the surface?" Charles asks
"Yeah were there mutants and shit?" Todd adds

You're a little taken aback.

"What?! How did you guys know?"
"Sheesh! Come on, we're not the morons you think we are! You told us to monitor the computer system, and when you used the elevator, the computer mentioned the elevator was in use, we put two and two together. So how was it? Is it all desert and shit with people dressed in leather walking around?"

You nearly slap yourself in the head for forgetting that little oversight on your part.

"You watch too many movies Charles; no I didn't see any of that. At least not in the immediate area. And YOU two don't know I went up there and I mean you don't tell ANYONE! If Nina found out, she'd a pitch a bitch at me. She's already made it clear that she doesn't want me going up on the surface."
"Don't worry we're not going to say anything. I dunno, I think maybe we should start going to the surface though, I mean this place can't support a growing population forever. Eventually we're going to have to start expanding out." Todd mentions.
"Yeah, but that probably won't be for awhile, we a got a lot of room still. Lots of supplies too, and with us in charge the food and water dispensers are working perfectly now." Charles retorts.

You roll your eyes "With us in charge" actually it was you who made sure the damn things wouldn't be breaking down on a regular basis. Still Todd makes a good point and it was something you were thinking about too. Maybe you should address this further with Nina after all her being the shelter leader she's the one that could enact a plan about it.

Later that night, you're in bed with Nina wondering if its time to tell her she should think about expansion…

You let it go

No, you better just keep it to yourself. You don't want Nina getting pissed at you, you know how high strung she's able to get sometimes. Besides the population isn't growing that much yet, there are plenty of supplies. If someone gets the idea that going to the surface is necessary, you're sure that someone else will bring it up. No point in you getting in trouble. You go back to sleep and just hope Charles and Todd keep quiet about your little excursion to the surface.

A few weeks later you find out Nina's pregnant, now you start to wonder about having enough room in the future. You still don't bring it up, because you don't want to upset Nina anymore in her "condition".

After Jack is born, the surface thing is still in the back of your mind, but now it's been so long, you just feel it's easier not to address it to Nina. So you don't say anything.

Five years pass…

Ten years have passed and the shelter is starting to get a little crowded. After all there isn't too much to do in the shelter that hasn't already been done, so sex is always (as it always has been) a popular way to pass the time. The result of that fun activity is too many babies.

At this point now you say something to Nina about the surface, she's a little reluctant about the idea, but sees that it might be necessary. Unfortunately the rest of the council doesn't see it that way. Many of them have been here so long now that going to the surface is almost unthinkable. Despite great protest Nina overrides the council's advise and goes ahead with the plan anyway. This doesn't make her too popular.

For one reason there's the decision of who is suppose to live on the surface, many people have full blown families now, they're a little unwilling to risk taking them up. So that means the single or childless people get the boot upstairs since they have less to "lose". That doesn't go over too well either. People start protesting loudly about being kicked out of their homes since they have as much right to stay too.

One day, you're in the computer room at the time arguing with Charles who happens to be single, and giving you shit about Nina's new policy. Todd is pretty much indifferent to the idea since even though he's single he doesn't mind the idea of going to the surface, he just thinks you should've said something to Nina a long time ago to implement this plan sooner before everyone had a whole mess of babies. 

That's when you get the word.

Kyle comes in to tell you that during one of Nina's speeches William (Who would've been one of those kicked up to the surface along with Ron) attempted to assassinate Nina with a scalpel he stole from the medical supplies. Leon managed to stop him with extreme prejudice by breaking his neck. But its not ending there, people are starting to riot and call for someone new to be the shelter leader.

You're pissed off now, you storm into the conference room ready to kick everyone's ass who DARES to try to hurt Nina again. You fire your pistol into the air causing everyone to take notice. When you get over to Nina, she's pleading for you to not shoot anybody. The assassin was already taken care of; there isn't any more need for killing.

While that might be the case that still doesn't solve the problem of everyone hating Nina (And probably you too as well) if she gets thrown out of her position, the next step might be to try to throw you guys out of the shelter.

Part of this you feel is your fault, you could just roll the dice here or you could attempt to take the hard line approach.

You let democracy run its course

"Alright Nina, we'll do it your way." You put your pistol away and take Nina back to your room for the rest of the day.

Time goes by and Nina gets voted out. The position of shelter leader is eliminated and a council is formed instead. They begin to implement some changes. Nina's idea of having people live on the surface is squashed, the idiots in charge claim that everything will be all right and only in cases of extreme punishment will people be sent to the surface. The other change is that you are to work less on the computer system.

And so it begins, they're trying to faze you out, so they don't need you anymore. And if they don't need you anymore they can kick you out of the shelter. (It looks like you are going to be the only people deemed "criminal" enough to be exiled to the surface) You saw this coming.

That's the second time you anticipated events and did nothing, you could kick yourself.

However there's still the question of them trying to MAKE you leave, you are the one that owns the gun after all and not one person has ever dared to try to take it from you. You decide to start working out on a regular basis just in case.


That day comes soon, when a couple people attempt to wrestle it from you, fortunately you've been expecting that, you end up shooting them both dead. People are really starting to hate you now, threats are being made that if you and your family don't leave, then not you, but Nina and Jack are going to suffer the consequences.

You respond with a similar threat of your own that if anything happens to either of them that you're going on a postal shooting spree starting with everyone's kids and won't stop until you're out of bullets, and then you'll fuck up the central computer that powers everything in the shelter. Given your past, people believe you too. People stop harassing you and Nina, but they still "shun" you 99 percent of the time.

It doesn't matter though since as more years go by there's even less room in the shelter, and less supplies, now you're not even charge of the computer system anymore and it's barely being run properly by Todd and Charles. Things are starting to break down again. You're seriously starting to think about leaving the shelter voluntarily.

"Nina, let's leave. Surely there's gotta be something better out there. I mean staying here is like waiting to die. We gotta get out of this place."
"But what about Jack? I mean we're going into unknown territory here. Things could be dangerous up there."
"It probably will be dangerous, but what the hell we've been living in an enclosed space with a bunch of people who hate us for years, and both experienced death attempts. Its not like we're strangers to it."
"Well…shouldn't we at least stay until the very end?"
"If we stay until the very end, we might not be getting outta here because by the time everyone's crammed in so tight with no more supplies or properly functioning equipment, everyone's going to be panicking and rioting. No, we need to leave while the getting is good. You and Jack start packing up all your vital stuff. I'll be loading up on some supplies that we might need. We still need to travel light, but make sure you and Jack bring as much water as you can carry."

Soon you, Nina and Jack are ready to go. Everyone's wondering what you're doing and then all eyes are on you when you open the elevator door. You take a moment to address the huddled masses.

"Well we're leaving now, I'm sure you're all as glad about it as we will be. Before we leave though I'd just like to say a few things. If any of you fucktards have a lick of sense you'll abandon this over priced coffin, and coffin is definitely an accurate term with how cramped it's getting in here. Hell the place is even starting to smell like one, with all the shower break downs. Its like watching something slowly die…hmm I think I saw that show already, when the world got blown to shit years ago. Don't need to see it again and the first time was more interesting anyway, so enjoy your downward spiral experience losers!"

And with that you and your family leave the shelter.

As you look out before the wilderness in front of you, you can only hope there's something else out there, but even if there isn't you know you'll make it somehow.

You and your family begin to walk…