Tom grinned as he tugged at a pipe fitting. "You'll find out when you come with us ... you'll see things you could never imagine."
"I don't know if I'll come with you."
He looked up from his work and stared Earthward. "Why?"
"Well ... Jason ... he says there isn't much left to see. And it's all radioactive and diseased."
"Nonsense."
"But Jason says...."
Tom snorted. "Jason hasn't been out of the settlement for six years. I walked from Chicago to the settlement a year ago. I went through a dozen cities ... they're wrecked, and the radioactivity count was higher than it is here at the settlement, but it's not high enough to be dangerous."
"And you want to explore those cities; why?"
"Let's just say I'm a historian," Tom answered while his hands manipulated complex wiring unconsciously, as though they belonged not to him but to some unseen puppeteer.