BioShock: Rapture

by John Shirley

  “First time I heard you say it since you been here.”

  “I haven’t got the muscle to take over Rapture—without Rapture’s help. Without its people helping me, Reggie.”

  “You got some kind of revolution t’ing in mind?”

  “Civil war—and revolution. I’m pushing Ryan with the smuggling—rubbing it in his face. I gave him his chance to let me have Rapture my way. He didn’t go for it. Now, we bait the trap. See, people stand by him because he’s the shining example, right? But if he breaks all his own rules, does a corporate takeover … acts like a dictator … that’ll turn people against him. And they’ll need someone to guide them. You get it? I haven’t got the power to hold him off for long any other way. So I dig a hole, cover it up … and let him rush into it.”

  “But you could end up getting killed in this little war, boss.”

  “I’m counting on it. Frank Fontaine has to die. But … I’ll still be here, Reggie.”

  Reggie laughed softly and raised his glass. “Here’s to you, boss. You’re the one! You sure as hell are!”

  Apollo Square

  1957

  The lights were dimming for evening over the coliseum-sized space of Apollo Square. The enormous four-faced clock hanging from the center of the ceiling showed eight o’clock, as Andrew Ryan said, “This simply cannot continue.” His voice was low, and grating.

  Bill nodded. “Right enough, guv,” he said softly. He was thinking of the hangings.

  But Ryan probably meant the chaos that had been surging up lately, in Apollo Square and Pauper’s Drop. In other parts of Rapture.

  Pistols holstered under their coats, Andrew Ryan, Bill McDonagh, Kinkaide, and Sullivan stood together just inside the opening of a passageway that led out into Apollo Square. Karlosky was behind them, down the corridor, watching the back way; Head Constable Cavendish and Constable Redgrave were standing a few paces to the right and left, both carrying tommy guns. Rising up the brass-trimmed art-deco ornamented walls to either side of the doorway were the sleek sculptures that had once reminded Bill of hood ornaments: elongated, silver figures of muscular men reaching for the sky with rocketlike verticality, and holding up the ceiling in the process. To the left yellow lettering on a scarlet banner read:

  THE GREAT CHAIN IS GUIDED BY YOUR HANDS

  But it was the hanged men, across from them, that captivated their attention …

  Ryan was making his monthly inspection of Rapture. “We’ve had repair crews in ’ere, working on leaks,” Bill said, “and the constables did a good job of protecting them. Nicking mad splicers, bunging ’em in the Dingley Dell. But it’s getting right crowded in there. And in the morgue. I mean, just take a butcher’s at that, hard to…” He chuckled to himself. He’d almost used the Cockney “rhyming slang,” “hard to Adam and Eve,” meaning “hard to believe,” but that would be a pretty confusing expression in Rapture. “Hard to believe it’s come to this.”

  Standing in an open space, just inside the farther doors, was a crude wooden platform and on it a T-shaped gallows made of planks pulled up from around Rapture. Bill had seen the gaping holes where the planks had been the day before. From each arm of the T, a man’s body hung.

  Apollo Square stank too. It stank of dead bodies. There were five of them Bill could see, four men and a woman, the corpses scattered widely about the big room, sprawled awkwardly in brown puddles of dried blood. And there were the two hanged men, slowly turning on the ropes at the far side of the big room.

  The tram tracks were intact; there was no train at the moment. As far as Bill knew, the trains were still running. At Artemis Suites, faces peered out at them from the darkened recesses of the doorway. Trash lay about the square, some of it stirring in the ventilator breeze. Music played from somewhere, so distorted Bill couldn’t make out what it was at first—then he recognized Bessie Smith. She seemed to be asking to be sent to the electric chair.

  Laughter cackled mockingly from the ceiling. Bill looked up to see a spider splicer creeping across, upside down beside the big windows.

  “Maybe you can bring him down, Cavendish,” Sullivan said, glowering up at the splicer. “I don’t know how good that tommy gun is at this range, but…”

  “No!” Ryan said suddenly. “It is not against the law to use ADAM. It is not against the Rapture law to walk on walls or ceilings so long as you don’t damage them. If he breaks a serious law—shoot him down. But we’re not going to shoot them like rabid dogs out of hand. Some of them are employable, eh Kinkaide?”

  Kinkaide sighed and shook his head doubtfully. “Employable? Only sometimes, Mr. Ryan. Offer ’em ADAM, they can be persuaded to use the Telekinesis, move the bigger Metro parts about for us. But they get distracted and fight too much. Couple of them were supposed to be moving pipes into place, ended up throwing them at each other like spears. One of them impaled, right through. Took a long time to get the pipe clean afterward.”

  Ryan shrugged. “ADAM will be controlled, in time.” He paused thoughtfully, then went on: “As for the rogue splicers, we will only kill those we have to kill. We’re going to control them, and we’re going to have some strict rules. We will end the vigilantism; we will end the vandalistic graffiti; we will stop people from getting into lunatic fights with one another. We won’t tolerate these oafs blasting out flames without thinking—disruptive fires starting. Burned up one of my splendid new curtains at the Metro station!”

  “How do we get rogue splicers under control, guv?” Bill asked.

  He took a deep breath, his face hardening with determination: “For starts—we are going to enforce a curfew. We’ll require identification cards at checkpoints. We will increase the presence of security turrets and security bots at key points … Ah, speak of the mechanical devil … daemon ex machina…” He smiled wryly.

  Two security bots whirred around the edges of the voluminous room, flying side by side, miniature self-guiding helicopters, each about the size of a fire hydrant but blockier, with built-in guns. They made Bill nervous—he never trusted the bots not to shoot him, since they were mere machines, even though he and the others here wore identification “flashers” that told the bots they were friends.

  He ducked as the robots flew by, always afraid their whirring copter blades would slice into him if they came too close. The choppering security bots continued on their way, circling the big room, watching for anyone who might threaten Ryan and his entourage.

  Then the full import of Ryan’s words began to sink in. “’Ere, guv—did you say curfews? Checkpoints? You mean—all over Rapture?” Hadn’t Ryan always claimed that that was the kind of thing the Communist dictators pulled?

  “Yes,” Ryan said, gazing balefully at the bodies twisting on the gallows. “Everyone will have an ID card. They must restrict themselves to authorized areas, and the ID cards will tell us where they’re supposed to be. There’ll be a curfew until further notice. We’ll have to institute the death penalty for more crimes. We can all see for ourselves how tough the situation is. And we’re losing population. We’ll have to recruit new people to catch up … meanwhile, we’ve got to get things stabilized. We’ll have to set up a serious large-scale raid to take Fontaine down. We’re going to destroy him this time. And take over his business—for the good of Rapture. Run it responsibly…”

  Bill was stunned. “Take over Fontaine’s business? But—doesn’t that kind of run against the whole spirit of Rapture?”

  Ryan frowned. “Sometimes we have to fight to protect that spirit, Bill! Look what happened—right here in Apollo Square. Three constables shot dead! We’re going to see to it that all enemies of Rapture are caught—and punished!”

  Bill felt disoriented, almost dizzy. Ryan was sounding more like Mussolini than a man who advocated pushing out the limits of human freedom. “You plan to take over Fontaine’s plasmid business—by force? That’s not exactly the free market at its best, Mr. Ryan.”

  “No. No it isn’t. But Fontaine’s threatening Rapture
with destruction! The whole colony will fall apart if we don’t act, Bill. He wants chaos! He wants it because, for a demagogue of his sort, preying on the weaknesses of the masses, chaos is opportunity. Chaos is the fertile ground where the likes of Fontaine will sow the seeds of power! Lamb’s followers thrive on it too!”

  “I concur,” said Kinkaide, nodding. “We’ve had enough chaos. You have to draw into some prescribed limits sometimes. Time to get tough. To take the offensive.”

  Bill found himself wondering if Ryan’s shift into the offensive might be exactly what Fontaine wanted. Were they playing into Frank Fontaine’s hands?

  Atrium, near Fontaine Futuristics

  1958

  “Hey there, fellas,” said the cheerful voice on the PA system. Frank Fontaine listened to it abstractedly as he walked across Fontaine Futuristics, to Training and Extraction. “You know that nine out of ten ladies prefer the athletic man? Why stay on the sidelines when the new SportBoost line of plasmid tonics can turn you into the jock you’ve always wanted to be? Come and visit us at the Medical Plaza for a free two-hour trial. You’ll appreciate the difference; she will too…”

  Fontaine struggled inwardly to banish the squirming discomfort, the trapped feeling that rose up in him when he walked up to a restricted area. No reason to feel trapped. He had two good bodyguards with him—you needed two, nowadays—there was Reggie, and there was Naz: the grinning, swarthy splicer looking like a mad Jesus with his long greasy hair and curly brown beard. He wore stained fishery-worker coveralls, his twitchy hands fiddling with that curved fish gutter he liked to carry. Naz was proof you could train a splicer, keep them in hand. Sort of. He was big on the SportBoost plasmid. Took way too much of it—but it kept him alert.

  Fontaine knew he should feel safe. Lately, though, the closer he got to the Little Sisters, the more trapped he felt. The public-address announcement coming on at that moment wasn’t helping. The woman’s soothing voice was saying:

  “The Little Sisters Orphanage: In troubled times, give your little girl the life that she deserves. Boarding and education free of charge! After all, children ARE the future of Rapture.”

  Orphanages. It had suited his sense of irony, and maybe fed his bitterness, to create an orphanage.

  Signaling Reggie and Naz to wait out in the hallway, he went through the double doors, the security bots rising up in the air at his approach. The bots scanned him and drifted away, whirring to themselves.

  A few strides more and automatic turrets, looking like swivel chairs equipped with guns, swung to take him out, recognized his flashers, and settled back down.

  Fontaine went down the hall to the little nursery-like cells where the girls were kept awaiting implantation—and harvesting. He looked through the window in the door and saw two children playing with a wooden train set on the floor of the rose-colored room. The “Little Sisters” developed a strangely uniform look, in their little pinafores, their faces and bodies remarkably similar thanks to a side effect of the sea-slug implantation. The sea slugs were like tapeworms inside them …

  They’re not human anymore, he told himself.

  After all, if you cut one of those kids, they instantly stopped bleeding. Cut off one of their little fingers, and the finger grew back, like she was some kind of lizard. The ADAM repaired them. That wasn’t human—they were superhuman, almost. They didn’t seem to get any older, either. They were in some weird state of growth stasis.

  Brigid Tenenbaum came drifting up to him. She had that ghostly look about her again, like a stiff ventilator breeze might blow her away. Maybe he needed to resume their sexual relationship. But she was the one making excuses lately. Which was fine with him.

  She looked through the window at the little girls. “They seem … okay,” he remarked. “I always worry we’re gonna get an inspection in here, people are gonna think, ‘Oh, them poor little tykes.’ But they don’t seem unhappy.”

  Tenenbaum only grunted. Staring through the window, she took a cigarette from a pocket of her white lab smock and a holder from another pocket, united them, and put the holder in her mouth. Fontaine lit it for her with his platinum lighter. She blew the smoke into the air … but still said nothing. The hollowness in her eyes, the gauntness in her cheeks, making Fontaine think she was not so far from a “little sister” herself.

  He went on, mostly to fill the silence: “But then we get people so broke in Rapture now they just turn their kids over to us.”

  “The children are not … unhappy, as such,” Tenenbaum said, her speech carrying cigarette smoke slowly into the air. “Not in the usual sense of unhappy children. They barely remember family. Their minds—their minds are strange. The ADAM, the sea-slug connection—these make them strange. I find being around them very…” She cleared her throat. There was a wet gleaming in her eyes. “… very uncomfortable. Even with … with those things implanted in their bellies, they are still children. They play and sing. Sometimes they look at me…” She swallowed. “… And they smile.”

  He glanced at her. Was she cracking up? “You get paid good, Brigid. Times are hard in Rapture. You want to continue to get that research funding, just accept what you gotta do for the check.”

  She didn’t seem to hear him. Or she didn’t care. She just kept smoking, sucking through the holder, and gazing dreamily through the window at the two little girls, holding the smoke till her words carried it out. “They do not act so—unhappy. The Little Sisters. But—in their souls, they … Germans say ‘schmerzensschrei.’ They ‘feel the pain.’”

  “Their souls! No such thing as souls.” He snorted.

  “There are stories people on plasmids are seeing ghosts in Rapture…”

  “Ghosts!” He shook his head disdainfully. “Lunatics! Where are you and Suchong in battling the side effects of the plasmids?” It was a key question for Fontaine—he figured the time would come when he’d need to use plasmids personally. Maybe a lot of them.

  She didn’t respond. Fontaine felt a flare of anger, took her shoulder, turned her sharply to face him. “You listening to me, Tenenbaum?”

  She looked quickly away, stepping back, refusing to meet his eyes. Her voice was monotone, with perhaps a trace of amusement. “Are you trying to frighten me, Frank? I have been to hell in my time.” She got all dreamy again. “I did not find tormentors there. More like kindred spirits … but these children—” She looked through the window again. “They awaken something in me.”

  “Something—like what?”

  She shook her head. “I do not wish to speak of it. Ah—you wish to know about … side effects? Yes. ADAM acts like a benign cancer. Destroying native cells and replacing them with unstable stem versions. This instability—it transfers amazing properties, but…” She sighed. “It is also what causes damage. The users, they need more and more ADAM. From a medical standpoint—catastrophic. But—you are a businessman.” She gave her peculiar little smile. “If you take away side effects—not addictive, perhaps. Not addictive, you don’t sell so much.”

  “Yeah. But we need two strains of the stuff. The best stuff—for people like me, when the time comes. And the regular plasmids for everyone else. You work on that, Tenenbaum.”

  She shrugged. She stared at the children, becoming dreamy again. After a moment, she murmured, “One of the children—she sat on my lap. I push her off…” She touched the glass of the window, before going on, letting smoke drift slowly from her mouth as she looked languorously through the glass. “… I push her off, I shout, ‘Get away from me!’ I can see the ADAM oozing out of the corner of her mouth!” She closed her eyes. Remembering. “Her filthy hair hanging in her face, dirty clothes, that dead glow in her eye … I feel—hatred.” Her voice broke. “Hatred, Frank. Like I never felt before. Bitter, burning fury. I can barely breathe. But Frank…” She opened her eyes and looked at him, for one surprising instant. “Then I know—it is not this child I hate.”

  With that, Brigid Tenenbaum turned suddenly on her heel and stroll
ed distractedly away, back toward the lab, trailing cigarette smoke behind her.

  Fontaine stared after her. She was cracking up. Maybe he should have her taken out. But she was too valuable. And Ryan would be making his move. Everything was almost in place …

  “Mr. Fontaine?”

  He jumped a bit, startled by Suchong’s voice. Turning to the scientist as he bustled up from the other direction. “Christ, Suchong, you don’t need to sneak up on people like that.”

  “Suchong is sorry.”

  “The hell you are. Listen—what’s going on with Tenenbaum? She losing it or what?”

  “Losing … it?” Looking the same as ever, each hair in place, his glasses polished, Suchong gazed placidly through the window at the sight that had so moved Tenenbaum. It was as if he were looking into a cage containing lab rats, which was, of course, just what he was doing. “Ah. Perhaps so. Suchong sometimes thinks she loses … objectivity.”

  “Speaking of nutty females—you follow up on that one I told you about? For that special project?” This was what he’d mainly come here for today.

  Suchong glanced up and down the hall. None of the assistants were in earshot. This was top secret. “Yes.” His voice was barely audible. “You were clever to put the listening device in this Jolene woman’s rooms. She spoke to one of her friends, a woman named Culpepper. This woman Culpepper, she tries to educate Jasmine. Talks to her about Ryan. To convince her he is the great tyrant, and so on.”

  “Yeah, Reggie told me; he went over the transcripts. You think he doesn’t tell me everything first? Culpepper’s turned against Ryan. And Jasmine Jolene’s pregnant. Or maybe I should say Mary Catherine’s pregnant—that’s her real name. So—did you make her the offer?”

  He bowed. “Tenenbaum made offer—she accepts! Money. So she doesn’t need Ryan to live. In exchange for the fertilized egg. Ryan’s baby! She came to lab, Tenenbaum extracted diploid zygote!”