"Where to next?" Piper asked after they left the vault. The sun was setting earlier and earlier every day, and it was dark by the time they left Vault 81.

"North, about time we got a beer, don't you think?"

"Huh?"

"Beantown brewery. It's north of here. It's run by some raiders, but I've got an in."

"An in? How'd you get an in with Tower Tom?"

"You know him?"

"I know of him."

"Yeah, and a lot of other people too. Kessler from Bunker Hill wanted me to drop off a message for Tater Tot and tell him to stop shooting at all the caravans passing through."

"That'll go over well, what do you have to offer him?"

"Vodka and Scotch." Nate said, patting his backpack.

"How much stuff do you have packed in there?" Piper asked curiously.

"A lot. A lot of a lot."

"What kind of Vodka do you have?"

"You might like it, it's not really suppose to have a taste, but this one was made with lemons." Nate reached up behind his shoulders and pulled out the bottle without looking. Twisting off the large cap, it was large enough for a five count shot glass pour.

"Here." Nate said, pouring Piper a little. "You can either slam it, or sip it."

Piper went for the medium between, letting the alcohol rest in her mouth and it immediately made her eyes water. She spat it out and coughed. "Eugh! That's! That burns! That's disgusting!"

"Yeah. This is the cheaper end of vodka, not the one I personally like, but it'll get you drunk. Good with cranberry juice."

"I don't drink much anymore."

"I can tell."

Piper coughed louder, and Nate took the bottle, and felled a stream of vodka into his mouth without putting his lips on the bottle. She grimaced as Nate drank.

"What about you, lightweight? You want a sip?"

"You give that stuff to your dog!?" She asked.

"<Bark! Woof!>" Meathead wagged his tail and sat down.

"Yeah. If the water's bad, drink booze." Nate said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Do you know what the price of water is these days? Ten caps for a quart. This here is forty ounces of vodka, and I got it for seven caps. Can you believe that? Seven caps. I don't even want to say how much this stuff is worth, because I don't know the dollar value of a bottle cap. All I do know is, is that booze is fucking cheap in the future."

Pouring Meathead a shot, he placed it on the ground, and Meathead wrapped his mouth around it, then lifted his head and shot it back, "Good Boy! Gu' boy!" Nate said, patting Meathead and scratching his ears.

"You want one more?"

"<Woof!>"

"Alright, one more." Piper scratched at her right eye, feeling it twitch and tick. She couldn't unsee what she was seeing. Nate poured Meathead another shot and then he wiped off the cap and but the bottle back into his bag.

"Alright. Feeling fine. Let's go."

\111/

Walking north, they passed Oberland station, and circled around to the North where they walked right up to the Brewery and knocked twice, then entered.

"Hello?"

"Who's there?"

The candle lit interior of the brewery was a tap house in the front, with an old bar setup and brewery in the rear. The tables were all shoved to the side, and in the bar were beds laid down on the floor. "It's Nate. I'm looking for Sparta."

"Who the hell are you?"

"I'm the guy who gave Sparta a Fat Man."

"You gave a raider a Fat Man?!" Piper shouted, slugging Nate in the shoulder.

"It was a good trade, my life and- "Turning towards the three raiders aiming guns at them, "In exchange, they wouldn't shoot us."

"Go get Tom." one of the raiders said, it was too dark to see their faces, but one tapped the other on the arm, and took off running into the brewery.

Three minutes passed, and Nate leaned against the counter, looking around while Piper was eyeing Nate. "What? I had to give it to her, not like I could lug around a thirty pound Fat Man in downtown Boston, those things are heavy! Each mini-nuke weighs a pound! That's a lot of luggage to be dragging around, especially if-"

"Stop talking." One raider commanded.

"I'm talking about helping one of your bosses, Sparta. Has she been back yet within the last week?"

They gave Nate the silent treatment, and after four minutes from when the raider left, he returned with four more raiders and a man wearing cage armor.

"Who are you, and why are you here?"

"Sparta sent me." Nate started with. "That, and Mayor Kessler from Bunker Hill wants you to stop shooting at her Caravans, but first, Sparta."

"She was here. She's gone. She told us about a vaulter. What are you doing here?"

"Keeping the peace. What did Sparta say to you about me? Did she mention anything about the deal we made?"

"You fill a room with caps, and we don't kill you."

"Anything about all the drugs? Anything about that?"

"Nate what are you talking about?"

"Badtfl building, lots of drugs, guns, and booze, I had to make a deal or get shot."

"So, where's my caps?" Tower Tom asked.

Nate laughed, "You don't understand. My deal, was to fill the cell in the BADTFL building full of caps, in a year. It's been less than a week, you're jumping the gun, here."

"No, you're the one jumping the gun." Tower Tom said, pulling out his pipe revolver pistol.

Nate was silent. "If you shoot me, you'll never get your caps, your drugs, or your food. You know what would be better than pointing guns at each other? Drinking! You thirsty? I got vodka and scotch. Let's pour some drinks, and talk about what you need, and how we can go about getting it. Sparta said you sent her out for food? I can get you food, all you have to do is consider a few good options. Make some good choices, and food will come rolling through the door."

Tower Tom lowered his pistol, "Follow." He commanded. Intrinsically, he knew that every single person here was starving, on the edge of up and running out on the gang. They were already going to the edge of the field where grass grew, and ripping out plants by the roots and eating them.

"Guns." He said, asking for them. Nate and Piper relinquished their rifles and guns. They were dropped by the door leading into the brewery. "Bag." Nate took off his pack, taking the bottles out backpack, and then Tower Tom shook the backpack loose. The zipped pockets and tied down straps kept everything else in, so Tower Tom threw it against the wall.

Lead through the brewery, they were shown into the office and Tower Tom snapped his fingers, pointing to a desk. "Sit." He told Nate. "You. There." He told Piper. Meathead came in quietly, and crawled under the desk, gaining as little attention as possible. They sat on the opposite side of the desk, with their backs to the corner.

"Talk."

Laying his pistol on the desk, his hand was still wrapped tightly around the handle.

"What do you need most?"

"I need food. You said to Sparta you were going to fill a room with caps, and they bring back crates of drugs. Tell me how do you plan on doing that?"

"Sell the drugs, make caps, use it to buy supplies, this creates a cycle of an economy based off drugs that is very profitable. The food situation however, is going to require a ceasefire."

"I should go out and raid the farms near here, and take the food. You'd be powerless to stop me."

"You're right. But, think about this decision a month from now, say the farmers don't have any food now, or any caps because you took them all, so they needed to leave. So now, a month later, those farmers are gone, along with the crops because a month ago, you already took them. Now the farm is deserted and empty, and you can't go back and raid the same farm again, because there's nothing there. The farmers took all their food and left, but where does that leave you?" Nate asked.

"It leads you to situations where you need to send your people out, like Sparta, far out, away from your main base, your main hub here, in order to get more food. How long does it take for people to go from Charlestown to here? Half a day, loaded down with all the supplies they find, maybe a day or two?"

Tower Tom nodded.

"So, you send groups like Sparta out, but she decides to raid a few settlements around her as well, and leave them with only a little bit of food. That group, that was ten people you sent with her, that's a big group. Ten people all eating and needing food." Nate poured a glass of Vodka for Tower Tom, and one for himself, and a cup for Piper.

"Cheers. So they all drink and eat food. Let's say they get a months worth of food while they're gone. Say they're gone for two weeks, and by the time they get back, they only have half that amount of food left to distribute among everyone here. How many people are there here in your brewery?"

Tower Tom looked off to his right, and a raider responded for him. "Twenty."

"Twenty raiders. That's double the amount of the group you sent out. Now what happens is that two weeks worth of food goes three times as fast with everyone here, so you immediately send everyone out again, but they needed to take supplies with them, which leaves you with a weeks worth of food for twenty people. That means if the one weeks worth of food feeds ten people every day, it will feed twenty people for three and a half days. What turned into a month's worth of food is now gone in a week." Nate reasoned, trying to get him to believe in the paradox.

It was the age old logic of the Tortoise versus Achilles, where the Tortoise argued that he could win against Achilles if he had a head start in a hundred foot long race. By the time Achilles started, the tortoise would be halfway. By the time Achilles reached the halfway point, the tortoise argued he would be at least three quarters of the way to the finish line. The argument continued on and on where Achilles reached the three-quarters marker, the tortoise would be 7/8ths of the way to the finish line, and on, and one, until Achilles gave up and never raced the tortoise, believing he could never beat the tortoise because of Zeno's paradox.

"My biggest problems right now are Red at the Federal Ration Stockpile, they have scores of food, but won't share. I'm holding Red's sister, Lily, hostage. And now they're giving us all the food we need, so, what other decisions do I need to make aside from killing you both and taking everything you have for myself?" Tower Tom said, leveling the pistol with Nate.

"You'd make more money, caps, and have more food, if you keep people like us alive. Someone has to grow the food, someone has to pick the crops, some one has to ready it for delivery, and bring it here anyway. So if you kill me, then you'll be the one who has to go out and pick the crops yourself.

"I'd get my men to do it." Tower Tom argued.

"But do they want to do that? Wasn't the whole point of raiding not to care about what other people do, and to not care about the wellbeing of others? How long would your men farm before they said, fuck this? I'm through."

"Then we'd go back to raiding."

"If you raided all the surrounding farms, then there wouldn't be anything to raid, it would be all gone. No more food. No more people to raid."

"Then I'd send them out farther."

"Into other raider's territories? Your people would have to face down possibly tougher gangs, and fight fire with fire. Can your men handle that? It's easier to attack defenseless settlers, isn't it?"

"Then what do you suggest, if you're so smart?"

"This is the point I've been trying to get to ever since I got here. Mayor Kessler from Bunker Hill wants to send caravans west of here, but she tells me your men have been shooting all her caravans, and killing her messengers. If you decide to stop attacking the caravans, then they'll stop here along the way to trade with you." Nate looked around the office. "I see you have plenty of beer, people all across the Commonwealth love beer, they'd love to trade beer for food with you. All you need to do is use your resources and manpower to make more beer. If you make more beer, then you'd have more to trade. Same with when I was talking with Sparta, if you have an excess of drugs, then sell it off! Make some caps! Make some money! I guarantee that you could be drunk with bellies full of food every night for the rest of your lives if you stopped attacking caravans, and started trading with them."

Tower Tom leaned, looking off to the left and right.

"Alright. Tell Kessler, she gets to pass through my territory, if they give us food."

"They need to have something to bring back though, they can't just give you all their food, they need something in exchange, otherwise all of their resources will dry up."

"That's not my problem."

Nate rolled his eyes, realizing he was back to square one.

"Nate."

"Hold on Piper. Let me explain this a different way. If you managed to raid every single settlement in the entire Commonwealth, and it was just you and your gang, and everyone else was dead or moved away, who would be there to give you food?"

"My men."

"And if they decide to just leave you, because they don't like having to travel two weeks to get food from the closest settlers, and now it's just you, and you're all alone, here in a brewery full of beer, who is going to go out and get food?"

"Me."

"But, you've already raided everything. There's no food, no preserved cans of food anywhere left in the Commonwealth. Where do you go? What do you do?"

"I'd leave and go somewhere else."

"Okay, let's say you do that, do you have anyone with you? Or is it just you...Remember, your entire gang left you because they didn't like traveling that far out to find food.

"Just me, I can survive."

"Okay. So, you're all alone. You're walking along, and just when you think you come to a settlement you can raid, there's fifty raiders from a different gang that all hate you, and demand you give over everything you have. What do you do?"

"I'd fight back."

"Against fifty raiders? There's just no way. They shoot you dead, and now Tower Tom doesn't exist anymore. That's what happens."

Explaining the pitfalls of a raider based economy to someone who never was afforded the luxury of a proper education was harder to Nate than ripping out his own fingernails. It was considerably easier with all the excess radiation he was exposed to over the last week, making the nails a bit more brittle. But, the long roundabout explanation seemed to be sinking into Tower Tom's thick dense head.

"Okay," Tower Tom finally says after a long thirty seconds of thinking it over. "So what happens when we stop attacking caravans?"

Nate took a drink and savored it 'Ahh' "After you stop attacking caravans, you invite them here, to your door, and you give them beer and caps in exchange for food. Whatever excess beer you brew, you sell at seven caps per bottle. Do you want me to write this down? You sell the beer at seven caps per bottle, and buy empty bottles from people, ordinary people, settlers, farmers at two caps per bottle. That way it's called a deposit. The beer costs five caps to make and fill into a bottle, but the cost of an empty bottle is one cap, and a cap on top of course is...a cap. Five plus one plus one equals seven. So for every beer you sell, you make five caps. If you sell six beers, that's thirty caps you and your people make. If you sell twenty beers, that's one hundred caps. If you sell seven hundred beers, then holy smokes, that's three thousand five hundred caps worth of profit to you and your people. All of that could be used to by more grains from the farmers, instead of raiding them, now your buying from them, and then the farmers get to use that money to hire more people, and grow their farm. So instead of a man and woman out farming a little spit of land, now there's twenty people out there all farming and the farm is ten times as big. See what happens, Tom?"

Nate took another drink, and Tower Tom finally got the clue to do the same. His face soured at the taste, but he kept drinking. Piper tried choking hers down, although she only held her little cup and sipped at it.

"Yes. I see what you're getting at."

"You create an economy, Tom. Now, instead of raiding the farmers, or telling your own men to go out and farm, you send your men to protect the farm from being raided by other gangs! Do you get me? Do you understand?" Nate asked, nodding his head. Tower Tom took another drink from his cup of vodka and held it out for more.

"Yeah."

"Good." Nate said, pouring Tower Tom's cup of vodka very full. "Now, I can solve your Red problem, if you show me Lily."

"Oh no, she's dead. The bitch tried to kill me so I shot her."

\111/

Fuck. Fuck-ity Fuck. "What the fuck you fucking fucker? You killed her? So what does Red know?"

"Nothing! I forge letters and say it's from Lily." Tower Tom says, drinking large gulps of vodka. Nate balled up his fist until his knuckles were white and lightly tapped it against the table. "So, what do you think I can do about Red?"

Nate thumped his fist against the desk three times, sharing a heated glance with Piper.

"Soon." He mouthed to her.

"Tell you what, Tower Tom. I go to Red, and get her to hand over the Federal Ration Stockpile to you, make her clear out and I'll make sure she never knows you killed her sister, Lily. I'll even make sure that Red wont kill you when she finds out."

"You can do that?" Tower Tom asked, Nate poured vodka all the way up to the rim of Tower Tom's cup and gestured for him to keep drinking. "How? What could you say that'll get her to stop caring about her sister?"

"I'll tell her something so mind boggling, yet true, that she'll have no choice but to leave."

"I'm waiting." Tower Tom said.

"She escaped, and is hiding with a gang in the west."

"What gang?"

"What gangs are there to the west of here?"

"The one's at Nuka-World. There's the Disciples, the Operators, and the Pack."

"There you go, Tom. She's hiding off with them trying to convince them to come back and take you out."

"But how's that going to get her to leave the food?"

"Because, you'll demand that she leave the stockpile, with all the leftover food there, in exchange for the information of where her sister is, and then flee to go find Lily. She won't lay a finger on you. She will be a little mad, but her men are going to be furious with her that she's giving up such a good base in exchange for her sister, but I guarantee she won't hurt you at all."

"Nate, what are you talking about?" Piper insisted on knowing.

"I'll explain the deal to them just as I did with Tower Tom here, and I'll tell you everything on the way when we're not here! Nate said through gritted teeth, forcing himself to smile at her.

She got the message, "Now, drink up, Tower Tom."

"Just Tom. The Tower part gets too much to listen to. This vodka's pretty good."

"You're the boss, Tom. It's Polish vodka, this stuff used to be moderately expensive before the bombs fell."

\111/

"Please tell me you're going to kill him?" Piper asked after they left the brewery.

"Oh, I'm gonna slit his fucking throat. That dumb motherfucker, we're going straight to Red, and we're telling her the whole story."

"She'll be pissed though, and that whole deal you set up with him is going right out the window. Red will move in and take over, you realize that, though, don't you?"

"I'd rather work with a kindred spirit who lost a member of their family than I would with a kidnapping murderer. Fuck him, and fuck his shitty beer. It tastes funny. You mind if we take a detour?"

"Go right ahead, I want to see this one through. How are we going to prove that Tower Tom killed Red's sister, though? What if she says we're bluffing?"

"Piper, let me introduce you to another feature on the Pip-Boy." Nate brought up the screen, and it was an audio screen with a timer and a progress bar. "I recorded the entire conversation, from start to finish. Let's see..."

Skipping through the conversation, Piper was amazed when Nate came to the point where Tower Tom confessed.

"...you send your men to protect the farm from being raided by other gangs! Do you get me? Do you understand?"

"Yeah."

"Now, I can solve your Red problem, if you show me Lily."

"Oh no, she's dead. She tried to kill me so I shot her."

"What the fuck, you fucking-fucker? So, what does Red know?"

"Nothing! I forge letters and say it's from Lily."

"Damn. So. You're really gonna bring some laws back into the wasteland, huh? I noticed the bit where you said Red wasn't going to lay a finger on him."

"You're right, she won't. I will. I'm gonna end the fucking insanity going on in the wasteland one suffering choked-out motherfucker at a time."

"Scary."

"It's Halloween. What else do you expect?"

\111/

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