Carlos looked at him. “I’m guessing you’ve never had the opportunity to see a film, huh?” he asked. “I’ve only seen working cars from the film archives in the Vault. It all looks so flashy and calm – being able to travel great distances in relative leisure, a great big rumbling machine under you… I thought it looked great. You’re not the only one who wonders what it really was like. It seems like it was definitely taken for granted back then, before the war.”
Carlos turned back to carefully unscrew just about anything he saw, dropping screws and small pieces into the bowl one by one.
“Eh, not so much. Don’t really have a working television and I dunno how to watch anything on my terminal, so it’s uh…. it’s pretty much just books for me.” He shrugged, idly picking at a thread sticking out from the knee of his pants as he watched Carlos work. “Maybe sometime you can get somethin’ runnin’ so we can watch some shit, huh? That could be our next project, heh.”
Carlos laughed. “That would be kinda fun,” he admitted. “But to find any intact film reels… I wonder if it’s possible. After we work on the turret system, if you want.” Carlos removed the next casing – one that covered a large bar of metal that led from the board toward the fan. “This part right here – the funny-shaped bit of solid metal – it leads heat from the mainboard over to the fan here so that the fan can drive the heat out of the terminal.”
The Perfect Scientist 