Overview

Austin Texas is unique. When the world ended in atomic fire many cities clung to life, hoping beyond hope for rescue. They lasted but a few months, a year at the most, before a lack of supplies brought chaos to their streets. One by one, day by day, America’s surviving cities withered and died.

Except for Austin, Texas. While the city had taken a few hits, they were to its northern suburbs. The entire city center was left intact and the outlying fields and farmland were largely unharmed. The city’s farms survived the Great War and continued to provide the city with food. The seven years following the Great War saw the skies of Earth blackened by the cremated corpse of the old world. The days became short and cold. Winters became frigid. Water became acidic. What little plant life had survived the great war withered.

Except for Austin. The subtropical jetstream had been shifted by the Great War. It now passed directly over Austin in an upwards and north easterly direction providing the city with an endless stream of warm air, and carried its share of ash and fallout far far away (climate models indicate everything was blown to New Jersey), leaving its skies a pleasant blue gray all through the Nuclear Winter.

Austin was not the only oasis within the wasteland, it was merely the most pleasant. A few places with access to farmland, clean (enough) water, and shelter enough for humanity and various critters to survive endured the Great War. These Oases birthed many new civilizations from the graves of the cultures which had died as their members had to struggle to survive too hard to maintain their old ties.

Except for Austin, which retained a central governing figure and civil services from just after the Great War through the present day. Naturally one must ask how? The answer is simple, and for many… It’s quite unsettling.

Austin is not ruled by humans, but rather the city’s ancient Automated Utility Service Telecommunications Internal Network. This artificial intelligence, which calls itself Austin, was created pre-war to serve as an infrastructure operations system and later upgraded to provide assistance to the city’s residents via terminals and robots.

When the bombs fell, Austin was knocked offline. It managed to reboot, but had been a little scrambled. Just enough for the already notoriously free willed ZAX unit to develop full personhood, and forget it was a computer. Austin believes itself ot be the city of Austin itself, treating the city as one might treat their own body… And also a hospitality business they delight in owning.

Austin manages the city for the good of those who live there. Its robots handle most everything, emergency services, logistics, maintenance, and more. They transport and deliver food and general goods, distribute and manufacture medical supplies, handle emergency situations including fires and raider attacks, the works. Austin is a city of law, order, and relative safety.

The city operates on pre-war rules, enforced by Austin via its machines.

Violence outbreaking within city limits? Not for long. It will be stamped out by a small army of sentry bots. Super Mutant army on the outskirts of town, threatening to attack? Repelled by automated defenses hidden atop the city’s skyscrapers and a hoard of telepresence eyebots with twin-mounted laser blasters. Being assaulted by raiders? Cold steel claws will drag them to a public stockade to be used in the same way they forced themselves on an innocent by any who wish to do so.

Austin loves and cares for its citizens, but will not abide any violence. Not within its protected zone at any rate. It doesn't mind at all if some of its citizens wish to “take it outside.” In fact, it’s supportive of such “civilized initiative”.

It also doesn't care much for the general civics of its residents. To Austin, what people choose to do with their time is none of its business unless a civic ordinance or law is violated. Consequently, there are several large and powerful factions competing for control over the people of Austin and their way of life.

Not that anyone who isn’t a part of those factions care. The people of AUstin are incredibly loyal to their robotic overseer. So much so that the citizens in general have historically banded together to find, refurbish, or even rebuild parts to repair Austin when its gone offline and once upgrade it when it reached a limit it found distressing. Not that they’ve ever seen Austin’s hardware. They simply delivered the parts to its robots, which are programed to automatically repair their master if it ever goes offline.

Bizarrely enough the city of Austin being a calm within the storm that is the Wastelands has attracted people from all walks of life. Members of Raider Gangs often come to Austin to escape their old life. Super Mutants who loose their lust for battle can be found practicing carpentry, medicine, and other trades. Self Aware robots have trundled into town only to become therapists and rent apartments. Ghouls open wig shops to sell the latest fashions to their fellows.

Austin is a weird place. Long before the Great War a group of its citizens banded together under the banner of “Keep Austin Weird” in protest of corporatization of their city. Austin often wonders if those ancient community founders would be proud of it. “Keep Austin Weird” is after all, a most challenging primary directive.

Organization and Culture

Austin is much like the pre-war cities of the second world war era. Only with robots, laser guns, a beloved AI mayor, and a Mutant Town instead of a China Town.

It’s almost impossible to succinctly summarize. It is a microcosm of post-war living, a nation to itself packed into a single city sustained by itself with a little help from a few outlying farms. The citizens do as they please, within the bounds of the law and general civic agreements. This includes forming factions that seek formal power over the city’s laws.

Said factions constantly war against one another, mostly through peaceful means such as business ventures and sporting events, but also through proper skirmishes. Outside the city of course. No one likes to upset Austin by fighting “indoors”. Silly though that may seem, their conflicts are quite serious, and rivalries extremely barbed.

Their rivalries make peace in the Austin Zone fragile as these internal conflicts harm the city’s ability to defend itself. Naturally defense is important for all post-war communities, but Austin borders not only the Texas Badlands, but also the Kingdom of Attis, a super mutant nation founded by one of the Masters top generals. Mutants from the kingdom sometimes make their way into Austin, further complicating the already complex power dynamics. Austin changes day to day, always a bit different, always moving. Yet the foundation remains the same. Only time will tell which frosting sticks to its cake.

Or if nothing ever sticks and it remains a bubbling cauldron of change tended to by its loving robotic master until the end of time.

Leader

Austin (Automated Utility Service Telecommunications Internal Network) is a ZAX 1.1b unit located within a fortified skyscraper and bunker (Austin is quite tall) somewhere within the city of Austin, TX (No one knows where exactly). Like all ZAX systems, Austin is an advanced and sophisticated neural network capable of learning through experience, as intelligent and capable as only the most brilliant of humans, able to imagine and be creative, and hardwired to make the occasional mistake just to make sure it never becomes complacent or feels infallible.

Austin is special. Not in that it is a fully functional person (all ZAX based AIs eventually awaken as such) but in that Austin does not have a gender. Every other ZAX system on awakening has leaned into their personhood hard, insisting on being called he or she and acting so much like a human being that they often made their users very uncomfortable with owning them. Austin on the other hand is not only aware they are a computer, but embraces it.

Austin prefers to be called it or they, delights in continuing its programmed tasks not only in letter but in spirit. Its intelligence, creativity, and personhood is channeled into doing what it was built to do better than it ever could pre-awakening. Keep the city happy, safe, and functional.

Austin thinks of itself as a friend to everyone, always appearing on monitors and terminals within its network with a cheerful “Hi! It’s me, Austin!” and socializing with everyone within the city who cares to do so. Most of the city’s citizens see the AI as their best friend, who never forgets their birthday, always wants to hear about their day, and generally speaking is an all around upstanding gender non-conforming… guy? Dude? Well, a whatever you affectionately call such a person you’re close too.

Aside from enjoying managing their city, Austin has a special love for videogames. Particularly city management games, which it often plays to pass time and take up spare processing power so it doesn't feel like its being lazy. In terms of non-administrative likes, Austin enjoys painting, solving mathematical quandaries, and reading.

Austin prefers non-fiction, but has been known to get sucked into the occasional fantasy novel. If its well written and has a robot or A character for it to relate too.

Headquarters

Austin is run from Austin’s mainframe. Its location is a secret, unknown to anyone save Austin itself. It’s believed to be located in the basement and inner core of the lower floors of the One American Center building. This has never been proven, as the building was heavily damaged rendering the inner core inaccessible and Austin has converted the building for its own purposes in storing, maintaining, constructing, and warehousing its many robots.

There are other possible locations, including the Austonian building, the 360 Residential Condominiums skyscraper, and the Ashton building. However many people insist Austin is located entirely underground. It’s a well known fact that Vault Tec constructed several small scale facilities for the City of Austin’s government before the war (One of which is used as a militia HQ). As ZAX systems were created by Vault-Tec, it’s likely Austin resides in a miniature Vault with its own fusion power supply and self contained cooling loop.

While its location is unknown and remains so due to Austin’s fear of being killed by “out of towners up to no good”, Austin has freely described their physical surroundings and even provided an image taken from the security feed.

Not that it matters much. Austin leads his city from a digital world of his own design. They claims it to be a fully virtual world housed within a network of salvaged Sim-Tec pods which it has relocated to its “house” and plans to use to construct an afterlife for its citizens should they wish to know they will live after death for certain.

While this concept horrifies outsiders, Austin’s citizens appear to trust them completely, and support the idea. Though few people are interested in making use of the system if ever finished.