BioShock Rapture

“Ha, ha, Archie!” the other fisherman called gleefully to him, going to pick up the ball. “You finally got that bath you been avoidin’!”

“Screw you, Stiffy!” Archie called, splashing off toward the approaching boat. “Ahoy there, give me a hand; I’m comin’ aboard!”

“Ah, whatya scared of a skinny little dame for!” Stiffy yelled, laughing.

She approached Stiffy, putting on a professorial, officious manner so that he wouldn’t try to become too familiar.

“You throw the ball—it is very … unusual for you, no?” she asked, staring at his hands. She’d stood by and observed when Suchong had examined him. “Your hands—one paralyzed, the other only half working, this I remember. You carry some things on shoulders, not do so much work with hands.”

“Sure—that’s why they called me Stiffy. I got another kinda Stiffy, lady, if you—”

She gave him her severest frown. “Do not trifle with me! I wish only to know—how you can catch ball now. With fingers that were paralyzed. Dr. Suchong repaired your hands, yes?”

“Suchong? Hell no! Made a lotta excuses. Funniest thing. We had a net fulla fish, see. I was scoopin’ ’em out of the net, sortin’ ’em out—that much I could do, anyhow—and there was some kinda sea slug mixed in with ’em, floppin’ around. Weirdest lookin’ little slug you ever saw! Little bastard bit me on the hand!” Stiffy chortled. He didn’t seem angry about it at all. “I didn’t even know they could bite! Well, my hands got kinda swole—but when the swelling went down”—he looked at his hands in renewed wonder—“they started to come to life!” He tossed the ball in the air and deftly caught it. “You see that? Before the little bastard bit me, I couldn’t do that, no way, no how!”

“You think it was sea slug that release paralysis?”

“Something in that bite—I could feel it spreading out, like, in my hand!”

“Ach! Indeed!” She peered at his hands. Saw the curious bite marks. “If only I had this creature … You can find another such sea slug?”

“I still got the same one! Chucked it in a bucket of seawater! It was such a crazy-lookin’ little thing I actually thought I could maybe sell it to one of you scientist types. You wanta buy it?”

“Well—perhaps I do.”

Sofia Lamb’s Office

1950

“I guess … I guess I shouldn’t have brought my kids to Rapture. But they told me we had to come together, the whole family, or nothin’ … They said they needed skills with a boiler, I’d be taken care of and make a pile of dough…”

Dr. Sofia Lamb was watching the middle-aged man in the workman’s overalls pacing back and forth in her office, wringing his hands. “Wouldn’t you like to relax on the couch as we work on this, Mr. Glidden?”

“No, no I can’t, Doc,” Glidden muttered. He sniffled, as if trying not to cry. His eyes were bruised looking from fatigue; his thin lips quivered. His big hands were reddened from his work in the geothermal plant. “I need to get back home. Ya see, my wife, my kids, they’re alone in the new apartment … if you can call it an apartment. A dump is what it is. Lotta shifty characters around there. I feel like the kids ain’t safe in that place … We’re havin’ to share it with another family—there ain’t enough housing in this crazy town. Nothing I can afford, I mean. They said there’d be more housing here … and better pay. I thought it was a road-to-riches thing, like the Comstock Mine … They talked like…” He bit his lip.

She nodded, shifted in her chair, and made a note. She’d heard a similar story from a number of workers she’d interviewed as part of her project for Ryan. “You feel you were … misled about what would happen here?”

“Yeah, I—” Glidden broke off, stopping in the center of the room, staring at her suspiciously. “You … you work for Ryan, right?”

“Well, in a manner of speaking—”

“So no, no I wasn’t, what’d you say, misled.” He licked his lips. “They were straight with me.”

“It’s all right; you can say what you really think,” Sofia said reassuringly. “It’s true that these therapeutic sessions will be summed up in a report—but I’m not naming specific people in my report. It’ll be about the trends…”

“Yeah? How come this ‘therapy’ thing here is free? I wouldn’t-a come except my wife says I’m all tense and like that … but … free? Nothing’s free in Rapture!”

“Really—you can trust me, Mr. Glidden.”

“So you say. But supposin’ I get fired because of this? Maybe they blackball me! So I got no work! And then what? You can’t leave Rapture! You … can’t leave! Not even you, Doc! You think he’ll let you leave if you want to? Naw.”

“Oh, well I…” Her voice trailed off. She hadn’t given much thought to leaving Rapture. There seemed so many possibilities here. But what if she did try to leave? What would Ryan do? She was afraid to find out. “I’m … in the same boat, so to speak, with you, Mr. Glidden.” She smiled. “Or under the same boats.”

He crossed his arms in front of him and shook his head. He wasn’t going to say anything else.