The Outer Worlds guide: The Long Tomorrow side quest walkthrough

Early on in The Outer Worlds, you’ll need to make a tough choice for the city of Edgewater: Help hypochondriac Martin Abernathy, or trust Esther to give medicine to the town. You’ll likely pick up this quest during the A Small Grave Matter task from Silas.

Here’s how you find the experimental anthrocillin, and what happens when you give it to Esther instead of Abernathy, or vice versa.

Picking up the quest

To first get the quest, you need to talk to Martin Abernathy in his home near the Saltuna Cannery. When you talk to Martin, he’ll tell you he’s dying of what he suspects to be the plague. Tell him you’ll help him find some medicine, and walk out the front door. When you hit his porch, you’ll hear a woman telling you you’re making a mistake.

Turn left and you’ll find Esther looming nearby. Talk to her and she’ll explain that Martin is a known hypochondriac, meaning he has a serious fear of getting sick … even if he doesn’t have any illnesses at all. Esther wants to give the medicine to the town.

You have a decision to make, but you’ll need to actually get the medicine first.

Retrieve the cache of medicine

Grid View

• Obsidian Entertainment/Private Division via Polygon
• Obsidian Entertainment/Private Division via Polygon
• Obsidian Entertainment/Private Division via Polygon

From Martin Abernathy’s front door, turn right and walk through the giant gate. There’s a strip of buildings here that the town of Edgewater’s abandoned. Follow the long path past these buildings until you run into even more. Follow the quest marker and sneak into the back of the Emerald Vale Community Center — watch out for the yellow disks in the backyard because they’re mines.

Inside the Emerald Vale Community Center

Inside, you can loop around and take the door just past the vending machines. You’re now in the central hall of the community center, and the medical room is just to your right. But it’s locked. You have two options here: Use resources to break it open with a traditional lock pick, or kill every marauder in the community center.

Our best advice for taking out the marauders is to make a pit stop at the vending machine you passed. There’s a light machine gun in here, and it’s great for mowing down multiple melee-focused enemies at once. Buy it, equip it, and move in to the first hallway you passed.

Kill the marauders in here by any means necessary — stealth might save you some health, but you didn’t buy this cool new gun to sneak around. One of the marauders has a key to the medical room, so search their bodies after they go down.

Once you have the key, or you’re ready to pick the lock, return to the medical room door and open it. Walk into the room, and look to your left to find a bag of medicine sitting on a cart. Grab it and head back to town.

Turn in the medicine

Obsidian Entertainment/Private Division via Polygon

Back in Edgewater, you now have to make your choice. Do you give the medicine to Abernathy or Esther? The good news is we know what happens when you pick either of them. Keep in mind that if you missed talking to Esther before, she’s still there next to Abernathy’s house, and is more than happy to offer you payment.

• Esther. If you’re looking for more money and a cleaner conscious, we recommend going with Esther. With a small charm boost, you’ll earn 1,000 bits from her.
• Abernathy. If you’re just looking to stay loyal to Abernathy, you can persuade him into giving you 800 bits for your trouble.

As far as we’ve been able to tell, there are no further implications to this choice. Go with you gut, and move on to the next quest.