BioShock Rapture

“Just get outta my face or the next one’ll toast you, Griggs!” Babcock shouted, jabbing an angry finger at the smaller man. Babcock was a tall man with fat cheeks and patchy hair, greasy coveralls. He had one of the odd skin reactions people got from plasmid use, this one on his scalp, making an ugly mesh of red welts. Part of his hair had fallen out around it.

Toby Griggs was squared off with him—a puny, fox-faced fellow, hair slicked back; he had a tart way of talking and a lively sense of humor. Sam had always kind of liked Toby for his spunk. Toby worked as a salesman in one of the shops off Fort Frolic and still had his wrinkly green-and-black-checked suit on.

“Back off or I’ll electrocute you, Babcock!” Toby crowed as energy crackled between the fingers of his raised right hand. “I’ll strap you in the electric chair standin’ up!”

Sam wasn’t surprised that Toby had spent his paycheck on a plasmid from Fontaine Futuristics—Toby had been talking about how a good plasmid could be an equalizer. He was a little guy and didn’t like to be bullied.

But Babcock had always seemed levelheaded—and he had two small girls to think of—plump little twins. Yet there was Babcock, using Incinerate!, making a ball of fire appear in his hands.

Toby Griggs had a look in his eyes that made Sam think of a rooster back home on the ranch about to jab a rival with its beak—that mean glitter in its little eyeballs. As for Babcock, it looked to Sam like the mesh of red welts on his head was pulsing in rhythm with his angry panting. A wavery column of hot air rose from the fire flickering over Babcock’s hands. Strange that the flames emanating from his fingers didn’t burn them—but plasmids were like that. It seemed to Sam that heavy plasmid use made people into something like rattlesnakes, not hurt by their own venom.

Toby and Babcock danced around each other, teeth bared, wild-eyed, drool running from the corners of their mouths, energies simmering in their raised hands. To Sam their threats sounded like babbling; like they were barely aware of what they were saying.

“Threatening me, Babcock?” Toby howled. “Is that right? Is it? I’m tired of you big slobs pushing me around! Why do you think I paid good money for this plasmid? I may not eat for a week, but I have power to keep plug uglies like you from throwing your weight around! I’m a new man! I can feel it! I’m no one to screw with now, Babcock! Back off or die!”

“Die? Me? I can burn you to a cinder! I swore I’d defend my family against anyone who threatened them, and I’ll do it!”

“No one’s threatening your family! You’ve been getting nutty from the moment you got that plasmid!” Toby snarled. “You can’t handle it! Maybe you took too much EVE and not enough ADAM—ya don’t know what you’re doing! You’re nuts, Babcock! Batty, crackers, crazy! Back off or I’ll put a charge in you that’ll turn your head into a thousand-watt lightbulb!”

“How are you gonna do that when you’re a burned-up cinder, Griggs, huh? Answer me that!”

Fire whirled restlessly, roaring in Babcock’s hands, as if it were eager to destroy.

Toby Griggs growled to himself and took the offensive. He twisted his shoulders about, grimacing with insane concentration. Electricity writhed from his fingers, crackling through the air at Babcock, just as Babcock’s wife—a pudgy, mousy-haired woman in slippers and a loose blue frock—came rushing up to him on her short legs, throwing her stubby arms around him. “Noooo, Harold!” she yelled. “Don’t do that! You’ll get us killed!”

Then she let out a pealing shriek as the Electro Bolt struck her and Babcock at once … an extra-big bolt of blue-white lightning—everything Toby Griggs could summon up.

Onlookers screamed as Babcock and his wife went rigid. The two of them were doing an absurd little dance together, locked in a fatal embrace as the current raged through them, sparking blue from their bared teeth. Mrs. Babcock’s hair stood on end; her dress caught fire …

Their eyes smoked and then boiled out of their heads. Their faces contorted.

The charge burst and sparks flew into the walls and floor as Mr. and Mrs. Babcock, flesh fused in a grotesque mock of marriage, fell in a limp, smoldering heap.

“Oh my God,” Sam muttered, staring at them. “They’re dead! Toby Griggs, what have you done!”

“You—you all saw it!” Toby said shrilly, backing away from the gathering crowd between the bunks. “He threw a fireball at my head! He was raving, completely out of his gourd! He was on a plasmid high! He can’t handle his plasmids, and he just … he tried to … tried to kill me! He…”

Then Toby bolted, dodging past grasping hands, out the front door of the suites.

Two little girls, the five-year-old Babcock twins, came tiptoeing up together, clutching each other in life as their parents clutched each other in death.

“Mommy?” quavered one little girl.

“Daddy?” quavered the other.

Two little girls. All alone now. Orphans. Two little sisters …

Fontaine Futuristics, Rapture

1955