BioShock Rapture

“I couldn’t miss the contraband rules.” Fontaine chuckled. “Being as you posted them in my office, in big black letters. Or your man there did.”

Sullivan grunted to himself.

“I think you understand me,” Ryan said, carefully keeping his tone civil. “The fisheries could be a weak link…” Ryan hesitated, choosing his words carefully. Fontaine was a forceful entrepreneur, and Ryan liked that. He’d even outbid Ryan Enterprises for some shop space. All in the spirit of Rapture. But Ryan needed to let Fontaine know where the boundaries were. “The only thing a fisherman should bring to Rapture is fish.”

Fontaine winked—flashing a smile. “We have no trouble identifying what’s fish and what isn’t, Mr. Ryan. There’s the smell. The scales.”

Reggie laughed softly.

Ryan cleared his throat. “We’re all individuals here, Fontaine. But we’re also part of the Great Chain of industry … The Great Chain unites us when we struggle in our own interest. If anyone breaks that chain by bringing in contraband, that’s a weak link. Even ideas can be contraband…”

Fontaine smiled. “The most dangerous kind, Mr. Ryan.”

“I do wish you luck, and a prosperous business,” Ryan said.

“Might feel more like I’m part of things if you invited me to join the Rapture Council,” Fontaine said mildly, lighting a cigar with a gold lighter. “Care for a smoke?”

“No. Thank you.” Ryan examined the cigar. “I presume that is a Rapture-made cigar?”

“Naturally.” Fontaine raised the cigar for Ryan to see.

Ryan smiled noncommittally. “You perhaps have the impression the council is some grand, powerful organization. It’s a very loose commission to oversee enterprise, keep a bit of an eye on things without interfering. Time consuming, to be honest.” Ryan wasn’t enthusiastic about bringing the glib, forceful Fontaine into the Rapture Council. He liked competition, but not breathing down his neck. “But ah—I’ll take your request under advisement.”

“Then we’re in good shape!” Fontaine said, blowing blue cigar smoke in the air.

The man seemed relaxed, certain of himself, unworried. And maybe there was something in his eyes that Ryan recognized. A hint, a flicker that suggested Fontaine’s willingness to do whatever he had to do … to get what he wanted.

Olympus Heights

1949

“Mr. Ryan likes to talk about choices,” Elaine was saying. “And I keep wondering if we made the right one, coming to Rapture in the first place.”

“We did, love,” Bill said, glancing around the comfortable flat with some satisfaction. He patted her pregnant tummy absently with his left hand, his right around her shoulders. They sat gazing out at the sea from their viewing alcove.

Before opening day, Ryan had purchased a great many furnishings wholesale and warehoused them in the undersea city, selling them at a profit to Rapture entrepreneurs. He’d brought in raw materials too, and a modest manufacturing base had sprung up.

Elaine’s tastes didn’t run to the rococo excess found in so much of Rapture. She had chosen simple lines, craftsman-style furnishings: curving dark wood, polished redwood tables, silver-framed mirrors. A smiling portrait of Bill—his mustache curling up, his russet hair starting to recede—hung over their shark-leather living room sofa. Materials found in the undersea environs around Rapture were being increasingly used in furnishings—locally mined metals, many-hued corals for tabletops and counters, glass from deep-sea sands, even beams and brass from sunken ships.

The curving window of the viewing alcove, the glass arching over them sectioned by frames of Ryanium alloy, looked out on a deep channel between towering buildings. An uneven dull-blue light prevailed through the watery space; the new, glowing sign across the way, seeming to ripple in the funhouse lens of the water, read:

FUN IN FORT FROLIC!

ALWAYS A GRAND FLOOR SHOW AT FLEET HALL!

“I don’t mind the smell of Rapture,” Elaine said. “It’s kind of like the laundry room of the building I grew up in. Kind of homey. Some of it.”

“We’re working on that smell, love,” Bill put in. “The sulfur smell too.”

“And I don’t mind so much not seeing my family. But Bill—when I think of raising a child here…” She put her hand over his, on her swollen belly. “That’s when I worry. What will the schools be like? And living without churches, without God … And what will the child learn of the world up above? Just the hateful things Ryan says about it? And—will she … if it’s a she … will she really never get to see the sky?”

“Oh in time she will, love—in time. Someday, when Mr. Ryan thinks it’s safe, the city will be built higher up, above the waves. And we’ll come and go freely, Bob’s your uncle. But that’s a generation off, at least. It’s a dangerous world out there. Bloody atom bombs, innit?”