Welcome to Tranquility Lane. This bizarre place – the setting of Chapter 6 in Fallout 3 – is a simulation concocted by one Dr. Stanislaus Braun. You may know him better as Betty, the girl on the playground.
Your challenge in Chapter 6 is to escape Tranquility Lane. At first glance, the only way to do that seems to be to play along with Betty. But she wants you to kill everyone!
Do you really want to become the Pint Sized Slasher and hunt down the innocent citizens of Tranquility Lane? Well, if you do, continue playing your Evil character and carry on.
If you don’t – and you want to maintain that Vault Legend status – then here’s how to escape Tranquility Lane while gaining some karma points.
Speak With Old Lady Dithers
Play along with Betty as long as you want. When you’re through being vicious and evil, search out Old Lady Dithers. She lives on the northeastern edge of town.
At some point she’ll probably come up to you babbling about how you don’t belong there – it’s all a big experiment. She may be old and batty, but she’s right.
She’ll give you a clue to go on, too. The Abandoned House (on the northern edge of town) contains a failsafe terminal. If you can figure out how to access it – although it’s unclear how – you can ruin Braun’s plans and leave Tranquility Lane on your own terms.
How Do I Access the Failsafe Terminal?
When you enter the Abandoned House, there are a number of items to interact with. When you use one, it creates a musical tone. If you play around with them, you can create simple melodies by using them in the proper order.
The trick of the puzzle is to recreate the proper melody. Oh, if only it were easy!
There are some clues in the game to help you. For starters, the background music in Tranquility Lane contains this melody.
If you start guessing, you’ll also be given some clues. After you hit a certain number of wrong notes, the game will play back the proper note. If you can keep straight which item creates which tone, you can figure the puzzle out on your own.
Or, do it the lazy way. Here’s the order you need to use the items: Radio, Glass Pitcher, Garden Gnome, Glass Pitcher, Cinderblock, Garden Gnome, Glass Bottle.
Chinese Invasion Plan… Go!
As soon as you hit the last note, a computer terminal will appear to your right. Go ahead and play around with it. There’s a lot of interesting flavor text about Braun’s evil experiments.
It turns out he’s been torturing the people of Vault 112 for two centuries, and Tranquility Lane is only his latest simulation.
When you’ve had enough, read the documentation for the Chinese Invasion Program and activate it. This will summon a bunch of Chinese soldiers who – despite being part of the simulation – will kill the other citizens of Tranquility Lane permanently.
As the documentation tells you, Dr. Braun cannot be killed by the soldiers. Once everyone else dies, he’ll be stuck in his own simulation forever – all alone. Ahh, the irony.
Oh, and don’t worry, the Chinese soldiers can’t hurt you either. They seem to think you’re a friend, and even if you try to jump in the way of their bullets they just go right through you.
When you tire of watching the invasion, talk to Betty. You can question Betty/Dr. Braun about some things, and when you’re satisfied with the plot devleopment you can escape through the door that magically appears next to you.
Then it’s back to the Wasteland and on to Chapter 7. Time to trek back to Rivet City and get Project Purity back on its feet.
