BioShock Rapture

“Good, good.” Julie turned impatiently back to Bill. “Bill, I’m glad I ran into you. I need to talk to you about the boss—just for a minute. Alone, if you don’t mind.”

Bill turned to his wife, wondering how she’d feel about it. “You mind, Elaine?”

“Go on, I’m fine. Do as you like.”

“Back in a mo’, love.” Clearly she wasn’t fine with him strolling off with Julie, but Elaine was a cheerful girl most of the time. It wouldn’t do her any harm to feel a little jealousy now and then, keep her from taking him for granted. He kissed Elaine on the cheek and walked off toward the little bridge with Julie, hands in his pockets, trying to look as unromantic as possible.

“Don’t mean to drag you away from the little lady,” Julie said in a way Bill thought was a bit condescending toward Elaine. “But I need an ally, and I know you love this park.”

“Right. What’s afoot, Julie?”

“I tell you, Bill—here I am, a batty plant woman working for years to expose the Japs in the jungle, melting away plant life, and now I’m down here trying to do the complete opposite. ‘We’ll create a second Eden down there,’ Ryan says. All that, and now he wants to turn this place into a paying tourist attraction—for residents of Rapture, I mean.”

“What? But I thought this was a public park.”

“So it was to be. But he doesn’t really believe in public ownership of anything. And he’s trying to keep up with Fontaine. So he’s raising capital. Which means charging for everything you can imagine. Hires me to build a forest at the bottom of the ocean—then turns a walk in the woods into a luxury. Something you have to pay for! You know how he is. ‘Should a farmer not be able to sell his food? Is a potter not entitled to a profit from his pots?’ But what am I going to do? He’s my boss, but he listens to you, Bill. Maybe you can talk him out of this. We need some kind of free public space in Rapture. A commons. People just need it—they need the breathing room.”

Bill nodded, glancing at his wife, pleased to see Anya Anyersdotter had stopped to talk to her. Elaine was smiling. She liked Anya, a smartly dressed little woman in a pageboy haircut, prone to freethinking. Anya designed shoes and clothes and had her own boutique—one of Rapture’s success stories.

Bill turned back to Julie. “But here, what am I to do, Julie? You know about his own private forest fire?”

“What? No!”

“Oh yeah. Tells me: ‘I once bought a forest. Then they,’ says he, ‘claimed the land belonged to God—demanded I establish a public park there. A public park, where the rabble can stand about gawping, pretending they’ve earned that natural beauty! Land that I owned! Congress under that bastard FDR tried to nationalize my forest—so I burnt it to the ground.’”

“Not truly…”

“Oh yes. Truly. You think he could be talked into making anything into public property?”

She made a soft little grunting sound and shook her head. “Maybe not.” She gestured at the gemlike parkland around them. “Once he told me, ‘God did not plant the seeds in Arcadia. I did.’ But I designed all this—with a little help from Daniel Wales…”

“I think we ought to trust Mr. Ryan. He’s known what he’s been about so far…”

“Yeah well—it doesn’t end there. He’s even talking about a surcharge for oxygen! He says the air in Rapture is only there to breathe because Ryan Industries provided it!”

“Oh Jay-sus.” Bill lowered his voice. “Here comes that bloody prat Sander Cohen…”

Sander Cohen approached over the little bridge, arm in arm with two bored-looking young men wearing hunting outfits, though they carried nothing to hunt with. Cohen wore Tyrolean lederhosen, suspenders, and a mountain climber’s hat with a purple feather. The leather shorts exposed his knobby knees. He looked peculiarly pale—but that was largely because Cohen had whiteface makeup on, almost like a mime, though he was a long ways from a stage. His wiry, up-curling mustache seemed to quiver at the ends when he saw Bill. “Ah! Monsieur William McDonagh! Madame Langford!” Pronouncing the names, for no apparent reason, as if they were French.

“Cohen,” Langford said, with a curt nod.

“Sander,” Bill said. “You gents out for a stroll, yeah?”

“We are, in fact!” Cohen said. “These young rogues drank a bit too much. Taken a little too much SportBoost too! Talked me into a walk in the park. Though the Muse knows, I don’t like parks, you know. Revile them, actually. Reminds me of animals.” He squeezed the arm of the man on his left. “Not this sort of animal. This very sophisticated animal is Silas Cobb, Bill. You must have been to his darling little shop, Rapture Records! I suppose you might say it’s mine too—I’m an investor.”

Cobb was a skinny fellow with a shock of brown hair and a dreamy expression. He snorted and said, “Yeah. He pays the rent for my ‘darling little shop.’ Which just happens to have everything Mr. Cohen here ever recorded.” He brightened as he added, “And some other people too—Sinatra, Billie Holiday.” Cobb was still drunk, swaying in place.