Cambridge Polymer Labs

Cambridge Polymer Labs is a location in the Commonwealth.

Background


Cambridge Polymer Labs, LLC was a privately-owned company established by Jon Elwood, Ericka Elwood-Woolum, and Wilfred Bergman in 2074 to research experimental smart materials that could be used to enhance the functionality of existing suits of power armor. It was made possible by a generous grant from Colonel George Kemp and the Defense Experimental Research Project Initiative, after their research into nucleostrictive and piezoelectric polymers caught their eye.

Its last military contract before the war was the development of piezonucleic lining for power armor, allowing the power armor's lining to convert ionizing radiation into electrical energy fed directly into the suit's batteries. Initial studies led the research team under Jon's wife, D.Eng Ericka Elwood-Woolum, to hypothosize that by taking a known piezoelectric material, Lead Zirconium Titanite (PZT), and properly applying a polymer of Gold and Lithium Hydride might produce the desired effect. Initial tests proved the method had been sound. Unfortunately, the weave destroyed itself rapidly, making it unsuitable for extended deployment. The team changed the dosing pattern on the gold to produce thinner strands through the material. The increased surface area would help dissipate the thermal energy, much like a heat sink.

This approach successfully created an efficient material with a lifetime of years, rather than days, at a negligible cost to harvest rate. Colonel George Kemp, the military liaison for the project, rejected it out of hand, as the new material shredded under intense use. It was unsuitable for use as power armor lining and the Colonel threatened to pull funding. The team returned to the drawing board. The Colonel's anger in each conversation with the project leads was his character flaw. As such, when he called the Laboratory for a status update in the morning of 23 October 2077, Elwood immediately picked up on his unusual calm. The Colonel, well aware of the incoming nuclear warheads, requested that Elwood keep his team working in the lab until the project was completed.

Nuclear war comes
He soon realized that it was a warning. Although Cambridge received a direct nuclear hit, the laboratory building was spared the nuclear devastation, thanks to other buildings shielding it from the blast and its own reinforced structure. Elwood immediately issued an e-mail to the entire team, mandating overtime and lying that the project was nearing completion (leaning on his wife's authority) and promising coffee, donuts, and Spuckies for the entire team to breeze them over. As for what was happening outside? That was just training exercises performed by the United States military. In the meantime, he scrambled to find a ham radio and reestablish contact with the military, as all external connections were fried by the EMP. Only one person on the team was privy to the truth: His wife. He asked her to maintain the lie to avoid a panic among the researchers and ensure the completion of the project, as it was the only thing the military was willing to accept in return for extraction. Conning them was out of the question, as lying about the possession of vital military assets or intelligence was tantamount to treason. Despite the assurance, Ericka was still skeptical: They've been working on the problem for weeks and were unable to find a way to prevent the nanoweave from falling apart under the strain of use. Even if they found a solution, it could take days to program the new dosing pattern. The lie couldn't hold up that long and even if it did, she questioned the morality of keeping them away from their families in a time of need. However, she eventually went through with this plan.

She wasn't aware that Jon was shot while scavenging for the radio and supplies. A stray bullet hit him in the shoulder on the way back, compounded by his exposure to nuclear fallout. He decided to keep the team sealed inside the lab, even as tensions inside the laboratory increased and his condition worsened. The wound refused to heal on its own. Days of extended isolation wore the researchers down and the promises of being released home when the project was completed started to look like a thinly veiled lie issued by an insane slave driver. The team was rapidly fracturing and falling apart, with some trying to escape the lab on their own. Some of the staffers tried to drill through the clean room to get out of the laboratories, stopping at the hardened outer wall that was impervious to their tools. Wilfred Bergman, an Anchorage veteran and a talented IT specialist took the isolation particularly hard and started discussing taking a more oblique angle. His deteriorating mental state was an Eureka moment for Ericka. In order to solve the thermal dissipation problem, the team could attempt to change the dosing pattern so that it would produce nanoholes angled towards the surface. That way, the material might be able to reflect the most direct radioactive particles and trap only those coming in at an oblique angle to the material. It would achieve a lower energy harvest, but the heat dissipation issues would likely be solved.

Death
Unfortunately, it came too late to save the research team. Months of seclusion and exhaustion caused Bergman to snap when he realized that radiation has been seeping into the laboratory area, courtesy of its internal reactor. The shockwave cracked the containment lining, endangering the entire team, but Jon Elwood still refused to unlock the clean room. In desperation, Bergman started hacking through security protocols to seize control over the facility and release the entire team. Elwood tried to keep him at bay, but his condition deteriorated rapidly, as the festering wound in his shoulder turned septic. Elwood tried to discourage him, mocking Bergman's service in Alaska during the Anchorage Reclamation as a distraction and claiming the intrusion countermeasures installed by the CIT were undefeatable. The confrontation between them doomed the research team. Bergman locked down the isotope containment room to contain what he believed to be the source of the radiation and demonstrate his ability to Elwood, inadvertently dooming Mary Goodman to death of radiation poisoning and locking the team out of the only source of U-238 needed to complete the project. If Elwood did not release the team from their dungeon, he would trigger a security breach alert in the laboratories. In doing so, the facility's defense systems would activate and initiate a sweep of the area, attempting to destroy any intruders (i.e. the science team), but also releasing the locks on the clean room and other doors. Bergman was the only one with military training. The rest of the science team was terrified, particularly when he refused to believe that the completion of the project would result in Jon letting them go.

It was January 16, 2078 when the hammer fell. Jon Elwood was dead, unable to meet Bergman's demands, and Bergman was about to trigger the security breach. The desperate science team tried to reach his laboratory through the crawlspace, but they were too late. At 4:17 AM, Bergman triggered the automated defenses, ensuring the demise of everyone associated with the project.

A silence fell on the facility after the purge was completed. It would continue for over two centuries, until the Sole Survivor set foot inside the building, now ruined and infested with feral ghouls, the remnants of the research team.

Layout
The labs are divided into two halves, connected by a side corridor. The entry area consists of the director's office accessed through the staircase, an archives area on the upper floor, and a collapsed briefing room on the left. The Director's office is locked with a Master-level lock, but becomes accessible once the location's quest is completed.

Labs are accessed through a corridor containing the locker rooms and showers and a clean room. Once the player enters the laboratories, they are stuck inside until they complete the Cambridge Polymer Labs quest; see the article for details.

The labs are centered around a single hall, arranged in a semi-circle. The labs C2, C4, and C5 are located on the lower level, while labs C1 and C3 are located upstairs. C3 is locked behind an Expert-level terminal, but there is a collapsed ceiling in the corner of C1 that leads into the vents above; at the end of the tunnel is a hole that allows one to drop into C3. The isotope containment area is accessed using a Novice-level terminal located inside the isotope control room (to the left, facing the room).

Inhabitants

 * Molly
 * Director
 * Feral ghoul (Fallout 4)

Notable loot

 * The Piezonucleic power armor chest is can be taken from the conveyor belt after mixing unidentified sample 611 (gold) with unidentified sample 3111 (lithium hydride) and U-238.
 * An issue of Massachusetts Surgical Journal is on the Director's desk.
 * A fusion core is in the display case in the corner of the Director's office.
 * A hazmat suit is in the storage room south of laboratory C4, on a shelf in the corner.
 * Unidentified sample 611 (gold) is in laboratory C3, beside Bergman's terminal.
 * Unidentified sample 413 (gallium) is on a shelf lining the windows of laboratory C4, among flasks and beaker stands.
 * Unidentified sample 65 (tungsten) is on a cabinet in laboratory C5, which is accessible through a hole in the wall of C4.
 * Unidentified sample 3111 (lithium hydride) is on a shelf in the storage room south of laboratory C4.
 * Unidentified sample 11317 (hydrocloric acid) is on the console beside the polymer coating applicator terminal in laboratory C2.
 * Unidentified sample 49 (cobalt) is in laboratory C1, on the desk in the back corner, next to the skeleton of Tom Franklin. The suicide note is on the same table.
 * U-238 is in a test tube stand on a shelf in the northwest corner of the the isotope containment room, which is on the north side of the lab. The door to the containment room is locked, and must be opened using the terminal in C5.
 * The radioactive containment password is in laboratory C3, on the counter left of the Bergman's terminal.

Appearances
Cambridge Polymer Labs appears only in Fallout 4.