You deposit the X-22 specimen into GS, not bothering to hear whatever sick response he gives you and instead continue to work through and organize the data gathered.

You’re so lost in this work that two days pass of you reading, eating, drinking and sleeping.

Klein: COURIER, REPORT TO THE THINK TANK. IMMEDIATELY.

Putting down a report on something called “super-concrete”, you head down the elevator and prepare yourself for whatever the Think Tank has found out.

You step into the dome and meet the Think Tank, all in their usual positions.

Klein: WE HAVE WORKED WITH THAT PERVERT GS-2000, AND WITH INPUT FROM THE SINK AUTODOC AND OUR OWN SCIENTIFIC GENIUs…WE HAVE DETERMINED……NOTHING!

[What?]

Dala: That’s not true, Dr. Klein. We have not come to a consensus, that’s far from determining nothing.

KLEIN: POTATO, POTATO. THE END RESULT IS THE SAME, THE ANALYSIS WAS INCONCLUSIVE.

0: That’s still not true, technically. We have three different theories. Mine is-

KLEIN: DR. DALA AND I’S THEORY, THE CORRECT ONE, IS A DELAYED RELEASE OF A BIOLOGICAL AGENT BY THE DASTARDLY CHINESE.

Dala: While we were working on a strain at the X-22 facility, the USAMRIID Facility on the East Coast was working on another, very similar product. Dr. Klein and I believe it was stolen before the war, poorly tweaked and launched at us during the nuclear exchange. Either it was inert before some bumbling prospector found it, or it was just recently unleashed through a faulty timing mechanism.

That’s…actually not a horrible theory. You’re not sure if you agree, especially as it popped up in both the Mojave and Zion. Though you don’t actually have a sample of the Zion strain. It could actually be the Boomer Blight just misreported or naturally mutated.

[And what are the other two theories?]

0: I’m not disagreeing with the source, I trust Dala when she says it’s from those brain dead government scientists over in DC. I just don’t think it was stolen and released by the Communists. It probably escaped during the war, gradually made its way over here though one way or another, and was warped through radiation, the FEV and who knows what else in the wastes.

Klein: Preposterous. And what do you have to say about the hack job in changing the genetic makeup of the X-22?

0: Yes, it is amateurish in nature, but there’s no concrete proof it was done by hand. Given 200 years and a vast continent to transverse, anything can happen.

[Well, what’s the last theory?]

Klein: DR: 8, DON’T EVEN THINK OF UTTERING IT.

8:$&@(!&.$;@8473 (Aliens.)

Huh. Well unfortunately that’s also a possibility.

[Okay, is there anything else to note?]