[u][b]The Switchboard - J6 (Signal Operations) Office[/b][/u]

G1-49 pulled the incoming message off the teletype machine once it finished printing. She did not know why the humans here always wanted hardcopy of documents instead of simply reading them off the secure terminal, but it wasn't her place to question it. Scanning the printout, it had been picked up by the reclamation unit in Springfield an hour ago, and forwarded for analysis after Advanced Systems at the Institute couldn't decipher it due to the brevity of the message. The source of the Signal had been triangulated to a point outside the Commonwealth, in Pennsylvania...Scranton to be specific.  She took it to the office of the Duty Analyst, currently a graduate student in Mathematics all of nineteen. A boy his age  Institute side would not have this level of responsibility and authority, but Will's parents had made the trek from the Capital Wasteland with Dr Li, and the Brotherhood refugees did things differently. 

"Will", she said as she handed him the printout, "this came in from the Institute side, they couldn't crack it and wanted to know if you could help."

"Thanks, Gina", Will said as he accepted the document and did his best not to stare, synth or not, she was pretty, and quickly scanned it. "Scranton? That's weird." He reached for the phone, and dialed J6 (Intelligence Operations). 

"Amanda? Henry here", he said as he leaned back in his chair, and spun to face his desk, "What do we have on Scranton, PA? Team Golf in Springfield picked up a message from that area, and Li's people can't crack it. Ok, I'll wait". He waited while poor Amanda had to take time from preparing her Psych Dissertation to answer his inquiry. He looked at G1-49 and smiled. "I'll take it from here, thanks Gina."

As she left the office, she wondered why she felt so odd when Will smiled at her, a odd warm sensation that wasn't at all unpleasant. She was pretty certain he liked her in the way humans liked each other, to the point of giving her a name (based on her designation), and the idea didn't bother her at all. But it was too dangerous to act on it, Grandfather's policies were quite clear, only widow(er)s could have a personal synth. After a incident involving a small group of Robotics personnel about ten years ago that no-one would talk about, this was strictly enforced. Fraternizing with Will would at best get her sent back to the Institute, at worst mind wiped and reprogrammed. That she couldn't bear. 

Meanwhile, Will finally received a answer from Amanda. Scranton was occupied by a gang called the "Athols"...a bad pun on the original home of the Raider Gang, in a town called Athol in the Northern Commonwealth. They had begun as a self-defense gang, but eventually ended up running protection rackets and occasional raids on caravans heading between Boston and Albany. For that, and declaring fealty to the Pitt, they were forced out of the Commonwealth by the Minutemen in the '91 campaign. Definitely not the sort that would be broadcasting such a message.  

Will shrugged and scanned the message into the local secure database, which was linked to the legacy DIA mainframe that had been bleeding edge tech before the War, and was still capable of giving Advanced System's mainframe a run for it's money. The Database could only be access from inside the Switchboard, even Institute researchers had to relay in to access it, which is just how everyone involved wanted it. The Database was chock full of things that didn't need to be common knowledge, and also contained their copy of the Brotherhood archives that the elders had brought from the Capital Wasteland with them....the main link to their own history before they joined the Institute. The only other complete copy was buried with Elder Lyons in a bunker in West Virginia....but he was a baby then so had no idea where. With the war with the Unity coming, a operation was being planned to retrieve them, and the Elder himself, so the Muties couldn't desecrate him and the archives.

With the message scanned in, he ordered the search program to execute. Surprisingly, it quickly returned a result. 

[color=00a651]>MESSAGE FORMAT IDENTIFIED
>VALID FORMAT FOR BOS FIELD COMMUNICATIONS 
>CODE AUTHENTICATES FOR 18JUL2277 (FINAL) CODEBOOK
>DECRYPT? (Y,N)[/color]

Will pushed Y, and the decrypted message scrolled onto the screen. 

[color=00a651]>MUTANT ATTACK IMMINENT, LOCATION: 40°26′39″N 79°57′11″W. URGENT ASSISTANCE REQUESTED. -ASHUR, I.[/color] 

Will used his non secure terminal to retrieve the coordinates in the message. They came up as the location of a building in Pittsburgh, or the Pitt as it is called now. The "Cathedral of Learning", on the campus of the University of Pittsburgh, to be specific. Whatever this was, this wasn't the work of some punk Raider gang, that was for certain. He ordered a printout of the result on the secure terminal, and grabbed both printouts and headed for Mrs Peabody's office. With Mr Peabody away supervising the reclamation ops at Nuka World and Springfield, she was in charge, and would know what to do. After all, she was there for the Last Days and knew more than he did about it all.