Fallout: New Vegas' Mojave Baseball League

[StLee]

I was 23 years old, real time. I was 13 years old, physically. During the day I was a student. Because of my accident, I was behind my peers, so my 23 was equivalent to the typical 19-year-old. In other words, I was an underclassman.

“Are you a genius?” one of my classmates asked me. We were five minutes into a history class, but the professor was not there yet. He had the hairstyle and fashion of a person who would forever follow yet forever be put into a position of leadership. Good-looking, from a wealthy family, and not an original thought in his head.

“Why do you ask that?”

“Since you’re a kid. How did you get into college?”

“I’m probably older than you.”

The Shadow Man stood next to me. He was watching, whispering. “Tell him what you know,” the Shadow Man said.

My classmate laughed at my joke.

“It’s true,” I said. “I have an aging disease. I haven’t aged since I was 13.”

“That’s cool.” He didn’t believe me, but what else do you say to a person who has a disease?

The Shadow Man whispered to me. “There were other side effects, too,” I said. “For example, I can see into the future.”

“Uh, huh,” he said.

I started writing down a note. “The teacher will walk in at 2:07,” I said. “He will say this. Exactly.” I handed him the note.

At 2:07, our professor walked in huffing and puffing. He paused and shouted out, “Sorry I’m late. I was in a car accident and totaled my car.” He breathed hard again. My classmate looked at me. His eyes were bulging from utter surprise.

After class, the classmate approached me with more questions, all about the future. I tried to shrug him off, but he wanted to know. He was a believer. Finally, I agreed to tell him, but I had to ask him the Shadow Man’s questions.

The first two questions were general questions about his major and family background. I wasn't sure what the purpose was other than maybe to see if he was sincere in his answers. Then I got to the third and most important question to the Shadow Man.
“Do you want to know when you’ll die?” I asked.

“Will I be young?” he asked. I could see the future now. The Shadow Man quit whispering. There were three near futures possible here if I just said one thing. It was sudden, but then I felt like I was the Shadow Man in color. I whispered to my classmate, “You must answer the question first.”

“OK, then. Shoot.”

“You’ll be an old man. 84. You’ll die of a heart attack.”

“Oh, whatever. I don’t care if I die when I’m 84.”

He started to walk away, content. He looked back at me. The future was near. I whispered.

“What?” he shouted back. Future one finished.

“I said, ‘Look both ways.’”

He was puzzled. He hesitated. He had heard that expression before but couldn’t remember where. Future two had passed.

He turned and began to cross the street, still thinking. The bus carrying a visiting university’s baseball team plunged into him, killing him instantly.

The Shadow Man stood there watching. He had not meant to, but he had given me his power. Now not only my dreams could manipulate the past and future. The Shadow Man was angry.

[StLee]

I awoke in a room with nothing but a soft mat and pillow. There were no doors or windows or even a chair to sit on. The Shadow Man was sitting there shaking his head when I woke up. He was flashing, like a blinking stop light. Physical shadow. Emptiness. Physical shadow. Emptiness. He was flashing and then changing from a shadow to a person. He was becoming something with a shape. Was that me in the future? But then he was changing more. Not just me but a child. A woman. An old man. A boy. He was flashing into being hundreds of others. I thought I was alone as some freak of nature, but could there be others who could manipulate time, too? It could explain a lot.

Time passed and the Shadow Man flashed one last time and then was gone. The wall of my enclosure opened. No one entered, so I exited. On the outside I saw nothing but one long, metallic hallway. There were no signs of life, at least not there, so I started walking, not knowing what to expect.

At the end of one of the paths, I came to a door that had a sign reading, "Open to the future." I opened the door and found an empty auditorium. On the stage was a single chair with a spotlight focusing on it. I walked around the auditorium and could feel a presence there but saw no one. When I got to the chair, I felt something pulling at me, something so feint that I could almost hear it telling me to sit. Then I listened and sat. Before me, shadows came to life. Thousands of them in the audience. They were sitting there and they were observing me.

"Who are you?" I asked.

"Who are you?" they parroted.

"Where am I?" I asked.

They asked the same.

They would not answer my questions, so I started talking and telling my story. The fall. The Shadow Man. The manipulation. Was I Villain? Was I God? If I am God, who are they? Is this Mount Olympus? Or some form of the afterlife? Am I on the island?

For each word that I said, a thousand words echoed and small light started shining and spreading and engulfing me until...

I was back in that empty room. This time, though, there were doors leading in all directions. Each door had a sign. "Others." "Past." "Present." "Future." I opened the door to "Others" first.

Inside was another room. There sat a young boy dressed in peculiar gear. He was wearing what I could best describe as a burlap potato sack, though it was much different. When I looked at myself, I realized I was wearing the same thing.

"Who are you," I asked.

"Tommy," he said.

"Do you know where we are?"

"No," he said. He sounded defeated. "But I feel like I've been here a long time."

"Where are you from?" I asked.

"Scottsdale, Arizona. You know, where the Giants train. Are you one of them?"

"I don't know what They are."

"Oh, so you're not." He looked relieved. "I'm tired of them. They always confuse me."

I could tell Tommy was different than me, but I was not sure what was going on. After talking to him a long time, I learned what I needed to know. He, too, had memories of being somewhere else and then being here. We later moved not to where we were but when. Tommy was in 1956. I was in 2010. There was more to the paradox than I could know.

[MacIsaacM]

This might just be the most fantastic thing I have ever seen.

Kudos for the incredible creativity. I love it.

[StLee]

Tommy wasn't the only one. I met people. Many people. All with pasts very different than my own. Some of the people were even more peculiar because they did not claim to be from the past. Granted, the past people were interesting, like the woman pilot who claimed to be the first of her kind. And the author Bierce. He had interesting stories to tell. I even met a president's daughter named Theodosia, or "Theo," for short.

However, the more peculiar people were those who claimed to be from the future. Indeed, the "Future" doors took me to those people. There was the laser gun designer, the aeronautics engineer, the American-born captain in the Chinese army, the eloquent mutant, the Vault-Tec assistant CEO, the vault dweller. At the time, these people were science fiction characters come to life, and for them, I was just as peculiar as any other. None of them, neither past nor present, had the Shadow Man as a companion.

Then there was the "Present" door. After I had exhausted all of the other doors, I opened that one. The flash again engulfed me, and I woke up on a beach. It was shortly after sunrise, and there was no one else around me. I looked around to gain my bearings. San Diego? No, the sun was rising over the water. Atlantic Coast? In the distance I could see buildings, so I walked towards them. What was this language? Where was I? I had a hotel key and a business card in my pocket. My clothes had returned.

I discovered through a series of questions and puzzled looks that I was in a place called Busan, South Korea. No one knew exactly where the hotel was, but one enterprising soul used his cellphone to call the hotel. I was then led to the correct place and entered the room. Inside the room, I had stashes of traveling gear, cash, maps, and a travel plan. It was like I had been busy, but I had no memory of anything but being on that...alien ship.

[StLee]

Once They took me, "he" seemed to lose me for a long time. In time, I was invisible. For a while, anyway. I became a little more visible after a few incidents. What can you say when you are standing upon the banks of the Mississippi and above you Chinese missiles are raining down onto the land? I know what I did. I **** my pants.

Two days after the bombing, I came to. Was I passed out? Killed? Taken again? I couldn't remember, but the potato sack on me told me what I needed to know. I was saved from the bombs, only to be back again and lying on a metal table in a metal medical room. A nurse with cherry red hair and tits trying to punch her in the face walked in, saw me, screamed a startled scream, and ran out.

Not even five minutes later a barrage of people in security uniforms and suits burst into the room.

"Who are you?" the salt and peppered one with the deep gray suit and a gold lapel asked. He looked to be a CEO of some sort.

I blinked. I could not ****ing remember. But I did remember something. Something about bombs. "Bombs," I said.

A man in his early 20s wearing a camouflaged soldier's uniform stepped forward. "What the **** kind of name is Bombs?" he spat.

"Huh? No, that's not my name. My name is..." I searched through my memory. The boy. The boy. "Tommy," I said.

"Tommy, how the hell did you get in here?" another suit-bearing quinquagenarian asked.

"I-I don't know. I was working on a shipyard in St. Louis when bombs started falling. It's the last thing I remember."

"You were outside when the bombs fell?" the CEO asked. "So you're contaminated? Get the Doc out of the goddamn bar right now!"

All of the people in the room stepped away from me. It was as though I were a monster. Contaminated. Is that contagious?

The doctor came in after a few minutes with a Geiger meter. Clean, the results said. But then the key question came up.

"This vault has been sealed shut for over two months. How did you get inside?"

"Like I said. I don't remember. Where am I?"

"Not in St. Louis. This is West Virginia. Vault 76, to be exact."

"So I made it into a vault after all," I said aloud. "Got denied out west a year ago."

"You get around, don't you?"

"You could say that," I said.

As time passed, I was accepted in the Vault. The vault was much different in feel from what I expected a vault to be like. In fact, it felt as though there was something in the air. My codename for the Vault was Cupid's Lair. Sex and sexuality were alive and rampant there more so than any place I had ever been before. As a person who appeared to be about 19 or 20 years old, I was quite active.

Of course, like everything else in my life, as good as things were, they could not last. Though I had forgotten about my past, in time it came barreling through my life again. Just under ten years after entering the vault, still only a short time after the war had ended, I woke up from a rather intense dream to find myself in another place in another time, and again I had to go through the process of rebuilding my life and appearing to be an amnesiac. Someone or something was seriously ****ing with my life.

[Tyke]

Remarkable!

[StLee]

As my journeys throughout the wastes progressed, I thought on that young man I met on the mothership. I projected him onto people. When I met a Tommy, I had compassion for that man because I remembered that scared boy and it was my own way of making amends for what They had done to him, for plucking him away from his mother.

It's funny because, like any Tommy I met, I also had compassion for every Jerry I met, too. When I was a boy, when there was still such a thing as TV, there was a cartoon with a cat and mouse. I would watch them hammering, maiming, intimidating, bullying, horrifying, and tormenting each other for hours. And yet, at the end of each episode, I could feel that they were just two pawns on the universe's chess board. They actually had compassion for each other, but the directors and artists forced them into violence. Strange, but that cat and mouse shaped the way I always approached the Tommys and Jerrys in my life.

Only one Tommy ever took a shot at me. I actually didn't find out his name was Tommy until after I had already put a .22 between his eyes. On his person, he had a love letter with a really well-done drawing of himself and the girl. The love letter was written by her, addressed to "My sweetkin Tommy." I buried that young man. Too bad the Vipers got to him before I did. Maybe he and his "sweetkin" could have been together forever. That young man was the only one I bothered to bury in all of the wastes. For the others--not named Tommy, of course--I had to kill out there, they were coyote and fireant feed.

[StLee]

10.29.90

Lee was busy after the news of Yes Man. He was checking on contacts and looking into what he could do to "make it right," as he kept telling me. I was nothing more than a follower, but I could feel that Lee had been making plans that did not include me. In summary, my tale of my time with Lee was coming to an end.

However, I had to make another trip with Lee. Well, I had to make many trips, but this is the only one worth recounting in detail. It was a short trip in the Strip to the Tops Casino. In the Tops, we went into the presidential suite where I remembered as the place where Lee said he ended Benny's life. Benny, of course, was the man who shot Lee near Goodsprings so long ago. Lee had been talking about Benny lately. How Benny did what no one else could do to Lee. Get a drop on him. No one else, he said, but that mysterious stranger he was always fearful of out in the desert.

Tommy Torini, of course, was the third owner Lee had known, including Benny and Swank. Lee didn't tell me why we were visiting Tommy, but he wanted me to tag along on some of his business, so I went with it without question.

Tommy was in the presidential suite waiting for us. He greeted Lee and gave him a hug and he nodded in my direction.

"The man with the plan," Tommy said. "What can I do for my buckaroo?"

"Trying to tie up loose ends," Lee said. "You had any visitors with a scheme of any sort?"

"I'm on tops of the Tops, baby. Everybody and his French girlfriend has a plan, know what I mean? Like you and your play thing right here, fetch my drift?"

"Sorry, Tommy. No time for play. Some **** is going down. Need some answers."

"I get it, Master Lee. You have some karate chopping to do. That's your thing, and I'm your Ace King. So what can I do you for, exactly?"

Lee motioned us all to the bar. We sat there and the bartender complied by uncorking a bottle of whiskey and pouring us all a drink. I let my sit, Tommy took a quick sip, and Lee spiked his down and turned the cup upside down.

"Didn't know you were so fond of whiskey," Tommy said.

"Tommy, I've had some troubling news lately, and I need to find out how deep the rabbit hole goes."

"Don't know what a rabbit hole is, but if it smells like pussy, I'm game for a crawl."

"To put it simply, I'm not welcome in the Mojave like I used to be, so I'm trying to make it right. I want to know who came to you and what the plan is."

"I can talk around her?" Lee nodded that it was OK. "You mean a plan other than the one you and the ghoul gave me?"

"What are you talking about? Which ghoul?"

"Jerry Nicks. The one that hooked up with the old owner here after the bombs fell. You know, you told me all about it."

"I told you? I don't remember that."

Tommy fiddled with his eye patch. "You OK, baby? Maybe some sleep can do the body good."

Lee bowed his head and then looked at Tommy in the ... eye. "I don't remember talking to you about a plan. And I don't remember being with a ghoul. It's been that kind of week. Can you remind me of the plan."

"That's funny," Tommy laughed. "You don't even remember that you told me that if anyone asked, even you, not to tell? You rockin' without a guitar, baby."

"Well, in this case, it looks like some of the plans have gone awry. I've got securitrons with my name on the top of their attack list, so it would be good to know what mines I'm stepping on before I step foot off the Strip."

"Mines are the damnedest thing," Tommy said. "My mines minded their own damn business, until Papa had to bring home some food for us starving children. Then they didn't mind their mine business anymore. Papa went boom. So I know what you're saying, baby, about the mines.

"Say, baby girl, all quiet and mysterious. I ain't ever caught your name and I most certainly ain't ever caught your game."

I didn't know it, but Tommy was using one of his old tricks of diverting a conversation. Lee held up his hand to show that it would not work.

"Tommy, this is more important than you know. What was the goddamn plan?"

"It's funny," Tommy said. "When you came walking in here with the ghoul, I thought you was coming with a hit man. When that ghoul started doing all the talking and you just sat there for the most part other than whispering your whispers, I thought I was going the way of the house cat, declawed and gutted. But then your older than the bombs ghoul started telling me about the problems you been having with the NCR. Well, I've been having me some problems, too, with all these taxes rising and it looks like the NCR is trying some funny business to shut us all down. But then you knew that. Whispering your creepy ass whispers.

"So when the ghoul starts laying out the plan for assassinating the President, well, I changed a little. I was scared you were going to knife my second eye out. But killing the President? I wish that you had come here to knife me. But I'm your ally, Lee, and I ain't gonna question nothing you do out here in the Mojave. You the boss."

Lee interrupted. "That was the plan? To assassinate the President?"

Tommy cocked his head. "You done gone cuckoo, mon frere."

"Tommy, Tommy, Tommy. There are two of me, don't you see? One who loves and one who kills."

"Which of you is the one here today?"

"The one who loves, Tommy. The one who is trying to make this all right."

"So you talking two of you as in two different people, or are both of you rattling inside your head right now having an arm wrestling match for who's playing the game?"

"It's complicated," Lee motioned for another drink. "Now what I need to know is how far in motion this assassination plan is and what is needed to do."

"We got a meeting with the Prez in two months, my man. Casino council. Guess old Sassy Cassie forgot to mention that to you. The ghoul got me some undercover plans to get a weapon in hand and a way for my man to get in and out undetected. It will be a super shock for all, two fingers and pinkie, if you know what I'm saying."

"Who is the key in making the assassination happen?"

"Why yours truly, of course. I'm the only sweet talking jibber jabbering love bucket they got in this whole casino business. The rest are a little anally reticulated, you know?"

"Don't kill him."

"Why, baby? Your killing self and the ghoul made a great argument why. Now why are the loving you and sweet tits right here who is creepier than the whispering you going to tell me not to do it?"

"Because if you do it, you bring the full wrath of war down on this area. In time, if the NCR oversteps its bounds, the people here can fight them off. If you kill the President, everybody in the desert becomes an enemy of the state, and the people aren't going to have a chance against sneak-attacking rangers and securitrons. Killing the president is bad. Really bad."

"Au contraire, my bearded man. Killing the president makes my life hella easy."

Lee drank down a second glass of whiskey. "I'll make it right. I'm going to go after the puppeteer. Don't kill the president."

"I made my decision, Master Lee. I love you and all, but I can't follow the Mr. Love you on this one. I want my bad ass superhero back."

"Then you got him." Lee slammed the glass on the bar, shattering it into large shards. He picked up one of the shards from the bar and jammed it into Tommy Torini's neck. Tommy sputtered, his good eye with the look of horror at what Lee had done, and then dropped to the ground dead.

Lee turned to the bartender. "It's in your best interest not to tell anyone who did this." The bartender nodded back.

Lee then turned to me. I, too, was in shock. "One day you will understand. In the meantime, get me that goddamn ghoul."

"Who?" I said. I didn't know who he meant. I had never met a ghoul named Jerry Nicks.

"He calls himself, 'Zombie.'"

[StLee]

I saw myself in a dream. Back to the past I zoomed in my dream to that moment on the mountain. I was still in the stream. I still slipped and slid my way down towards the cliff. I still saw the Shadow Man watching me. But then I stopped on the edge of that cliff. I don't know why, but water rushed past me as I stood up and walked out of the water to the dry rock near me. My family, standing on the plank bridge above me, was in exasperation, their mouths all agape in unison.

I walked out of that water, but that man was there. He came out of the shadows, too. He was not very old, and had a trimmed moustache and goatee, just like I have now. His eyes, his hair, everything about him looked familiar. I was standing on a mountain with my family in shock from my near-death experience, and this man whom I recognized but did not know walked up to me out of the shadows. The teenager me in that dream was not sure who the man was, but I most certainly knew him. He was me. Today as I appear. He was the me who walks in the wastes trying to make this world a better place. But this version of me was not the same. He congratulated me for surviving. He pointed at the cliff and told me how lucky I was. He led me to the cliff to look at the jagged rocks waiting below had I not escaped that rushing river.

Then he pushed me.

[StLee]

Night after night, year after year, it was the same. I was me in a different setting, a different life, in places I had never seen or never even existed in the first place. And every time, the Shadow Man would be there. He always looked exactly as I do now. He was not me, though. I could never be him. He was my evil twin, as far as descriptions go. He would kill a different version of me, except that in time, he was not so successful.

You see, he was killing version of me after version of me, but it occurred to me that most of the deaths were in the form of easy victims. Teenage me. A version of me taking a bath. Another version of me trying to help schoolchildren out of an overturned bus. Each time that the Shadow Man would emerge from the shadows, the version of me I was dreaming through would recognize him as myself. That was the initial shock. And then he would just murder that version of me right there.

Dreams can be celestial messages. These dreams were warnings of some sort. Everything seemed to be fragments of millions upon millions of alternative universes. The Shadow Man may have very well been looking to be the only one of us left, just like that movie I remember watching from when movies still existed. It was about some guys who were battling for immortality of some sort, but they had to murder all the other people with the same power, which in turn made them more powerful. Was that what he was doing? He was killing each alternative version of me for him to be all-powerful? No, that made no sense. Would I not be more powerful, too? But...I was. I had some of his powers of vision. Of alternative futures. Of future manipulation. Maybe that was what he was doing. He was seeing each version of the future, and he decided that each person needed his future changed, just like I had done to others in the past before I turned away from that power.

Each morning I awoke from my dreams angry. Each day I sought out the unjust, the bully, the murderer, the evil. I could not find the Shadow Man, but I made it my mission to bring peace back to a land where the governments of the world had failed. I would make peace by snuffing out those who did not pursue or value peace. Violence for a peaceful endgame. That is how I became a warrior of the wastes.

[StLee]

He waited until the chaos of it all was gone. Why not arrive in the middle of the night when I was exhausted from three straight days of battling Vipers in the wilderness and I slept a deep, deep sleep? He could have slashed my throat and been done with it.

Instead, he used different tactics. He had people chip away at me, looking for my Achilles Heel, perhaps. The number of people willing to serve him was astounding. They came at me over and over, and again and again I quelled their thirst. But he remained in the shadows. He would not reveal himself, which reminded me of the dreams. When he did reveal himself out of the shadows, that was the time when he struck.

Battle tactic advantage: me.

[StLee]

Everything that led me up to this point in my life was created upon a mountain in what was once North Carolina. I had no idea what that place would look like or be like post-war. Hell, I really had no idea where exactly in North Carolina I had to go, but I knew that I needed to go there. To that place. Where I was created. To see him. The Shadow Man.

This will be the final battle of my heroic adventure. This will be the final words I write, ever. In this case, I must return to the place where both the Shadow Man and I were created. The place where the lines of universes were shaken so bad that millions of universes suddenly intersected. Only there could I hope to destroy the Shadow Man.

[StLee]

A long time ago, long before the Great War, there used to be this style of game called RPGs. In those games, your characters would level up and level up, fighting more difficult monsters and bosses until they reached the very end, the final boss, where the game would then be over after winning and saving the world.

Today, I am on my way to fight the final boss. Game almost over.



{Author's note: I can't delete the post, so please know that I messed up the year. The correct date is 11.2.2290. Don't tase me, bro.}

[StLee]

My purpose, to tell Lee’s tale to those who read this later, is now done. For all that I have seen, for all that I would rate as what is needed in the post-apocalyptic world to keep it turning, I never thought I would draw this conclusion:

Lee created hope that will run deep through this section of waste and will remain for a long, long time. Only the people who chipped away at Lee’s accomplishment could be called true enemies of the world. Politics are politics. But Lee’s war was won, even if he could not see it through to the end.

Only a few days after killing Tommy Torini, Lee received a tip that the ghoul was in a hideout in the Mojave. Lee went out to pursue “Zombie,” as he called him, Jerry Nicks. After that, I never saw Lee again. Like I said in my introduction, though, the load of fresh deathclaw carcasses convinced me Lee was alive and OK. Perhaps he went in pursuit of the “Shadow Man” after he found and killed the ghoul. Who knows?

On a related note, one day, a few years ago, not long after I joined up with Lee in his post-heroic quest of fixing the Mojave, I was sitting on the side of Red Rock with a group of people in Lee’s contingency. We were traveling the wastes, looking for people who could contribute in any task they had talent for doing, even things as simple as collecting herbs and fruits for the old or disabled. I was really young, but I had one of those “epiphanies” Lee spoke about only a few years before. Lee was the North Pole and I was a magnet drawn to him. I could not explain how or why, but one day when I was a teenager, I woke up from a dream and knew that I had to seek out Lee. My past life was no longer important. I had a purpose.

The dream I had was exactly as I was experiencing on Red Rock. I was there with Lee as he was telling the people sitting around the campfire about this game that he was spreading. He was mentioning names I would have mostly ignored, but on that day, I had a graphite stick and an empty journal ready to be filled with notes. Lee spoke of guys named Dee Babe, Bob Gibson, Ron Gidree, Ricky Henderson, Big Mac, Charlie Hustler, Mantel, Tryst Speaker, Trout, Pull Holes, the Big Hurt, the Hawk, Strawberry, Esau Moon, Eden Jay, and many more. He talked about what they could do and how their very names could send chills through people of yesteryear. In my dream, I remembered that same sort of speech. I also remembered how Lee was giving the speech in my dream and also whispering to me about other things at the same time in my mind. It was surreal.

Just as in the dream, as we were sitting there listening to Lee speak, something told me to look away from Lee to a spot just left of the fire. There, looking at me, was Poseidon. You may remember him from the story. He created the RNC screens. After that night, he never stopped looking at me.

In Lee’s last journal entry, he told me ‘Congratulations.’ I think I know what he meant. To me, he gave me hope of something else. A Historian with a future.

To the Mojave, he gave them baseball.

[Tyke]

This has been truly excellent and it has been a privilege to follow along. You have a real talent, my friend, and I hope we will hear lot's more from you in the future. Thank you.

[StLee]

Originally Posted by Tyke

This has been truly excellent and it has been a privilege to follow along. You have a real talent, my friend, and I hope we will hear lot's more from you in the future. Thank you.

Thank you, too, for following and encouraging me to continue! This dynasty is not quite finished. There is still the narrator's postscript, something that any player who has played the Fallout series will know. However, I am in still in the process of collecting data for those posts.

Also, a new dynasty is coming soon, though it is not as fantastical as this one.

[Tyke]

Sorry to have jumped the gun - but delighted there will be a little more! And even better that you have another project in the works.

[StLee]

I'll post the narrator's post script and then some of the history of the Mojave Baseball League leading up to its final years.

[StLee]

War. War never changes.

After Lee left, the strong arm of the New California Republic continued to slam its weight on the citizens of the Mojave, especially those of New Vegas. What was once a breeding ground for all those hip joints of The Strip—chems, tribals, prostitutes, and even the casinos—were eventually deemed illegal and shut down by 2293.

In time, the Mojave Baseball League became a shell of itself, surviving more through momentum than interest. All of the hope the Mojave once possessed after the events of the Second Battle of the Hoover Dam were turned upside down following Lee’s peace pact with the NCR and its subsequent ousting of Lee and those in his corner.

In 2306, the people had enough of it all, and the People’s Rebellions began. At first, the NCR had an easy time picking off defectors. But the guerrilla efforts of a few unlikely heroes changed all that. One of the biggest heroes, a guy who went by the name Poseidon, single-handedly shut down the entirety of the NCR’s online networking system. He passed on his secrets to other rebels before he disappeared east along with his wife, a person who called herself Dee Storian.

Those secrets Poseidon passed on helped the rebels to destroy the entire NCR fleet of automatons. In addition, since many of the NCR soldiers had ties to the Mojave and strong feelings for the area, more than half of the local army defected. Because of victories in the Mojave, the NCR lines had become weak, and people were tearing down bases and encampments everywhere, rendering the NCR obsolete.

Due to unhappiness of the people within the state of California, President Kimball resigned in 2307. He had been president of the NCR for 31 years and had kept his sights in and on the Mojave that entire time. His successor had been the vice president for the last 12 years, Sunshine Jones.

By 2310, the NCR was no longer a government entity east of the California border. President Jones signed a treaty drawing direct, permanent lines on what were once the California and Nevada borders. The Nevada Alliance, as well as portions of the former states of Arizona, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and West Texas became allies of the United Desert States, which was part of what eventually became the New American Alliance. Before that time they were bordered on the east by the powerful United Coast Guard.

As part of the UDS, the Mojave went back to some of its old ways. Casinos reopened their doors, though the feel was much different at first. People began again to rebuild destroyed cities and communities. The networking system went back on line and people were able to join online discussion forums. A surprisingly high number joined forums seeking to help and improve the area, starting a wave of progress and stability never seen since before the Great War.

Baseball was also spreading in popularity. There were many community leagues throughout some of the other areas of the UDS with strong leadership and interest. Some former players of the Mojave Baseball League became ambassadors to the game and helped establish leagues that eventually became part of a greater regional league.
Though the Mojave Baseball League shut its doors in 2306, baseball in the area held strong with many community teams battling it out in the Mojave. In 2320, the United Desert States Baseball League began operations with eight teams competing to be the UDSBL champions in what they called the Desert Series. Two of those teams were the New Vegas Gamblers and the Boulder City Mojavians.

Though he went by a different name at that time, Lee returned to the Mojave many years later, many years after all those he ever knew there had passed on long, long ago. The place had changed much in that time he was away, but one thing held on, fighting for dear life. Baseball. He found as a new entity in New Vegas, in what was once Vault 21, the Mojave Baseball Museum. In the museum, he found the Historian’s chronicles of endless entries of Lee’s founding of baseball, as well as thousands of other memorabilia and personal accounts about the founding of baseball in the Mojave. For the first time in many, many years, Lee cried.

Despite Lee’s efforts, the Mojave would never be a place of absolute peace. However, in those brief periods of peace, when one had a chance to venture out into the wilderness of the former Jacobstown without fears of being bombed, sniped, or eaten, one could almost smell brahmin-buttered popmaize wafting through the air. One could almost hear the moans and jeers of a disappointed fan base. One could even almost see the barkchew-stained dugout. To Lee, baseball was utopia, just like the days of his youth long before the Great War. Baseball was the ever-necessary escape from the next war soon to come. Because…

War. War never changes.

[StLee]

In 2293, the Mojave declared gambling illegal, leading to the immediate shutdown of the casinos in the area. Through various community and corporate sponsorships, the casino teams did not shut down but simply changed hands, allowing the MBL to keep its doors open.

Ultra Luxe moved to Nipton and became the Nipton Phoenix, a former team of the Prospects League.
Gomorrah became the Red Rock Khans.
Tops became the Aerotech Mutants.
Boulder City dropped the Atomic Wranglers name and became the Centaurs.
Goodsprings dropped the Lucky 38s name and became the Prospectors.

Changed logos below: