Revenge of the Lobotomite [TL/DR warning]
As a player of FNV, I have both spared and destroyed the Think Tank, during the numerous times I have completed OWB.
In the fan-fiction I'm writing, the Courier is determined to put them down. In the excerpt quoted below, which is a flashback, he gives his reasons, and describes his methods.
Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/14560369/10/Back-to-the-Madre
(n.b. for better reading on that site, I suggest toggling for the narrow text column, and adjusting font size. Also, their site can be a bit buggy sometimes--nothing an FNV player can't cope with, though :-) )
>I might have conquered Big Mountain, but soon I was reminded that I did not control this place. Others were in occupation. The Think Tank had been extinguished altogether, but many of their creations laboured on. Among them were my fellow Lobotomites-the ones not lucky enough, as I had been, to have had Benny operate on them, before Dr. Dala.
>Countless were the victims of the Think Tank's thoughts, yet those scientists had never done half of what they'd thought of doing. That morning, half a dozen more of their brainchildren had come to the Dome's vicinity, to protest their defects.
>I persisted in my sunny optimism, and shot them all in the head. Christine's rifle, scoped and silenced, made it easy. They fell without noticing, and the mechanical hum of the Empty went on undisturbed.
>I casually inspected the bodies, rifling through their effects, as I have done to my own victims, countless times.
>I used to tell myself that a Lobotomite's life had ended under Dala's electric scalpel, long before the soulless "skinvelope" ever crossed my path, and dropped in my crosshairs.
>But the Harmonicas I find in their pockets, and the Toy Cars, and the Teddy Bears, all propose a different theory. Lobotomites have their amusements, and also their beliefs, far beyond the ken of their defunct makers, the Think Tank. Proof lay in the Cuckoo's Nest, where the Lobotomites have dedicated an altar, to their vengeful Toaster-God.
>It takes a field specialist, like me, to make such discoveries. So I no longer tell myself that I'm not killing people, when I kill Lobotomites. I only tell myself that I try to make it quick.
>For the mad scientists of the Tank, though, I had not made it quick. I had allowed every one of those fuckers ample time to think-and Think!-about what was being done to them. A life can flash by in an instant, but these people had worked for centuries, so I gave them more than an instant, just to make sure that their reflections were not unduly cut short.
>For over two hundred years, Doctor Dala had played the surgeon. She had quibbled daily with her colleagues, and pleasured herself, while lobotomizing or vivisecting one human being after another.
>I finished searching another Lobotomite: some poor, now-nameless lady, who must have stumbled, as I once had, into the endless cycle of Big Mountain's obscene, science-a-rific ritual. In the morning sunshine, I stayed awhile beside this dead woman, and thought back, to the day when I had played the Purifier, and scoured out the Think Tank.
>The weather had been fine that day as well. My Brain knew what I intended to do, and had gone up to The Sink. There, it could bathe in a cool vat of biogel, and stay tuned to the show, in comfort.
>In my skull, meanwhile, the Tesla Coils were sizzling, as I devised for my enemies an appropriate end, each according to their credentials.
>With my minds reconciled, I had dressed for the occasion, donning the jumpsuit of an ordinary Lobotomite. Then I went downstairs, and put on the Goggles. As I approached the masters of the Big Empty, I gazed upon them through those lenses: the gaze of a skinvelope, inane and merciless.
>The Think Tank had called me a Lobotomite for weeks. When Doctor Klein saw me, he shouted, "The Lobotomite returns-our Lobotomite!" I looked the part, but then I did what no other Lobotomite could do.
>I jeered at him, "It's time for a little experiment, Chief. I hope you find it interesting, because the subject is going to be you. The Pacification Field is down, and I have come to harvest your data."
>Klein got the Glove of Doctor Mobius, right in the eye. Then in the left eye. Then in the mouth. All his screens went black and blue, while his screams went to sparks and static. Seniority beatdown.
>I went along the list, taking names and ticking off boxes. My Brain, by remote link, calmly tabulated the results.
>Next was Doctor Borous. The great Dog-torturer heard Gabriel's Bark, for the last time. Then he curled up whimpering, and died. Death-tention for the Principal.
>Doctor Eight had pioneered the radio-controlled slave collar. Father Elijah had stolen those collars, and fried Eight's voice. I had worn one of those collars around my neck. To compliment both inventors, I opened fire with Elijah's LAER, and Eight was rendered into a figure of crackling ash. Thus, stage by stage, Science! ever improves upon itself.
>That loveable loser, Doctor O, had talked nostalgically about Little Yangtze, the Think Tank's "old human farm." So I chopped him apart, with the Inversal Axe of Prisoner Number 34. As the Zero went null, with a big slash through him, I smiled and said, "By the way, Muggy sends you his regards!"
>Finally, there was Doctor Dala. She was the sensual type, and liked a warm touch. I decided to slip into something more comfortable: my Superheated Saturnite Power Fist. Then I lovingly crushed each of her exquisite little vivisectors, and let her perish slowly, oozing hot biogel all over the laboratory floor. I took one of her FOV monitors, and bent its arm backward, so that she could enjoy the sight of her own form, grotesquely broken. My work done, I stretched and yawned.
>The Think Tank had certainly tried to fight back, but their kind of peer review could not confound my superior methodology. They hurt me a bit, but at that time, I was Heartless and Spineless. I had plenty of chems, Auto-inject Stims, and a batch of Battle Brew. When I was done, the Auto-Doc was waiting upstairs, to cure my bodily hurts. In terms of results, therefore, I regarded the day's experiment as an historic success.
>Today, however, the bright memory of it was clouding my optimism. I went on, westward, to the Hexcrete Archipelago.
I hope you enjoy the passage, and I thank in advance anyone kind enough to offer feedback.