Several days have passed and there’s a whir as the elevator pod reaches the bunker. The woman has returned with the first group from their clan. She looks in confusion as her partner waddles out, now bursting with comically inflated curves, dressed in the elegant finery of the pre-downfall Madame. He explains to the woman what has happened over the days she was traveling and the robot’s insistence that he is the Madame and the costs of that.
The man says they have to dismantle the robot, but the woman says no. The robot is the only one that can access the filters, water systems, and food replicators. If they get rid of the robot, the bunker will soon lose all its value and their clan will be back out in the wasteland. Whatever its malfunction, the robot seems to require that it serves Madame Opalton, no matter how many decades ago the real one died off.
At the man’s instructions, the robot befriends the members of the clan as they finish moving over to the bunker area and it provides them with food, water, clothing repairs, and healthcare. Happy to have help cleaning up the bunker garage and the ruined pods, the robot sees the others as staff devoted to taking care of the Madame’s manor so it welcomes the group.
Content with maintaining the man at the “proper” level of health and curves of the Madame, no other members of the clan are transformed and they revere the man for his sacrifice that has led to the first stable colony any of the people have ever experienced. The group remains small to limit the strain their population has on the resources, but the clan is healthy, happy, and thriving.
Over the generations, the small colony starts to grow. The people can use their tools and information from the bunker and robot to try to revive the land around the dwellings. Eventually, they’re able to push some of the desert back, forming a small oasis that soon attracts other travelers. Hope grows in the community and it’s all thanks to the figure of Madame Opalton, who has taken on an almost religious significance. As time moves forward and Madame Opalton passes on, the robot casually addresses a new person in the colony as Madame Opalton and brings them to the manor to assume the role. No one understands the methods the robot uses in identifying the next person chosen for the role, why the robot does not notice that its Madame has been multiple people, or that the robot seems to acknowledge that the Madame is hundreds of years old in its mind but it seems unconcerned with any of that. The meaning of the original Madame lost to the next generations, the role is cherished and competed for by man and woman alike. To be chosen as the next Madame Opalton is the highest honor of the wasteland.