Cherlynn Hearth: Wasteland Detective #0

I first made the acquaintance of Ms. Cherlynn Hearth upon answering an ad posted at the Brass Lantern seeking a roommate to share expenses at her residences at 221 B Baker Street, Megaton.

Oh, come on, Cher. Do I have to read this?

You know, I hate it when you're drunk. Can I at least do the other one?

Awesome.

OK, Lessee.

Of all the gin joints in all the wasteland, she had to walk into mine.

Oh, come on!

Cher?

She's blacked out. Let me read this into the record the way it actually happened.

You see, the Wasteland's most famous consulting detective actually came out of one of those vaults from before the war. When she was a little girl, the other kids were reading comics, watching vids. Atomica, Rachel the Barbarian, Captain Cosmos and Drake Tungsten the Chrono Cowboy. But not Cherlynn Hearth. The only Hubris Comics title she ever cared about was The Inspector.

She read voraciously, learning anything and everything she could about, well, actually, anything and everything she could. I have ever marveled at the keen insights and towering intellect my friend employed to index a plethora of facts used to draw accurate conclusions from seeming nothing...

Oh, hell. She's got me doing it now.

See, Cher is so smart, remembers so much, sees so many little details... If you've been through the the books and vids she brought back from the Archives, people like Sherlock Holmes, Joseph Bell, Greg House, Adrian Monk.. They come along one or two a century. Cher is one of them.

She gets so bored, with her brain running on overdrive all the time that she has to have some coping mechanisms. One is the drinking.. She would never sleep otherwise. Not that she does very often. I read that Tom Edison and Nick Tesla only slept 20 minutes at a time every few hours. I sometimes catch Cher dozing in a corner. I think she does that. But a body needs rest, too. So whenever we have a genuine day off, out comes the key to the liquor cabinet.

The other way she occupies herself is by role playing her heroes. Its supposed to be.. how does she put it.. “An ironic affectation designed to invoke ingrained memetic folklore archetypes and thus distract.” Which is a fancy way of saying she does this Columbo thing, making people think she's a little nuts. Seems to work. And it makes her happy.

I know, though, its also for her. All this time later, she never has quite gotten over her daddy abandonment issues. And if you tell her I said that, I'll clock you good. Anyways, she wears this thing she found, an old fashioned trenchcoat with some kind of armour plating. I've seen the like on some of the Enclave officers. Never has told me where she got it.

When she's using that big brain of hers and acting all goofy, she plays up that trace of an accent into sounding like she's from poor flooded Londontown and uses her whole name. Cherlynn Hearth. I think that if I ever meet Doctor James Hearth, I might slap him once for that. She went so far as to put up new street signs calling the short ramp up to her place “Baker Street” and painting “221B” on the door. Whatever, it makes her happy.

When the guns come out, though, she starts the tough gal routine, tries to sound like she comes from Old Chicago, and calls herself Cherry Heart, like the old stories about Sam Spade and Mike Hammer and whatever other crazy last-named gumshoes they used to have running around. I usually play along a little. It makes her happy.

Depending on whether “the game is afoot” or she puts the damn fedora on, she calls me either Watson or Kiddo. Of course, my actual name is...

Crap, she's gonna vomit. I have to keep her from choking on it and the damn dog from eating it. I'll pick this up in a bit and tell you about what she did before we met.