BioShock Rapture

“We have too few sea slugs,” said Brigid Tenenbaum, squinting into a microscope at a dead gastropod, as Frank Fontaine entered lab 23. These new research digs were bigger, roomier, with ports and windows, levels, and a balcony-walk looking down on the central concourse of Fontaine Futuristics. Tenenbaum turned, frowning thoughtfully to Fontaine. “Only special gastropod works for ADAM mutagen and base for EVE … and these, all gone.”

“We’ll have to cut back plasmid production,” Fontaine said gloomily, looking at the remaining sea slugs squirming in the aquarium. Ugly little fuckers. “Couldn’t we breed the little bastards? Create more sea slugs with, what do you call it, animal husbandry?”

“Perhaps in time. But very slow process, much experimentation, maybe years. Better is to increase individual sea-slug production of mutagen—of ADAM. This can be done more quickly—if we use host.”

“A host? Oh … Maybe we can hijack a ship, send you down the sailors.”

“We try adults already. Two subjects. They sickened and died. Screaming—very noisy. Irritating. One of them reached to me…” She looked in wonder at her hand. “Tried to hold on to my hand. Begging, take it out, take it out of me … But children! Ah—it likes to be in children. The sea slug is happy there.”

“It’s happy … in children? Well—how’s it work exactly?”

“We implant sea slug in lining of child’s stomach. The sea slug bonds with cells, becomes symbiotic with human host. After host feeds, we induce regurgitation, and then we have twenty, thirty times more yield of usable ADAM.”

“And how do you know it works so good on kids?”

Dr. Suchong answered him as he pushed a gurney into the room. “Suchong and Tenenbaum experiment on this child!” Stretched out on the gurney was what appeared to be a sleeping child, a rather ordinary little white girl in a dressing gown, strapped to the wheeled hospital bed. She was perhaps six years old. Her eyes opened—she looked up at him sleepily, gave him a distant, fuzzy smile. Drugged.

“Where in hell you get that kid?”

“Child was sick,” Tenenbaum said. “Brain tumor. We tell parents maybe we heal. We implant sea slug in her abdomen, inside. It cures her tumor! We keep her tranquilized—she talks in her mind to sea slug…”

As if in response, the little girl lifted a hand—and touched her own belly caressingly.

Tenenbaum gave a little satisfied grunt. “Yes. She will be productive.”

“You intend to use this child to create a new plasmid base…” Fontaine shook his head. “One child? Will it be enough? The market for it is exploding! People are going wild for the stuff! I was going to start major marketing, stores, maybe even vending machines…”

“This is tester child,” Suchong said. “We need more, many more. Implant, feed, induce regurgitation—much mutagen produced, much ADAM. Better if not tranquilized. We must prepare hosts for this. Condition them!”

“How come it … it likes children?” Fontaine asked. He could almost feel a sea slug squirming in his own belly. Sheer imagination, but the thought nauseated him.

Tenenbaum shrugged. “Child stem cells are more malleable. More … responsive. They bond with the sea slug. We need children, Frank—many children!”

Fontaine snorted. “And where are we supposed to get those? From a mail-order catalogue?”

Dr. Suchong frowned and shook his head. “Suchong has not seen such catalogue. Not needed. Two children available already. Orphan girls. Babcock twins. They stay with people in Artemis Suites—their parents dead. Both parents killed by plasmid attack. And they are girls, the right age—perfect! We pay to bring them here.”

“Okay; they’ve got to be kids—but why girls?” Fontaine asked. “People are even more protective about little girls.”

Tenenbaum winced and turned back to the microscope, muttering, “For some reason girls take sea-slug implant better than boys.”

Fontaine wondered what little boy they’d experimented on to determine that and what had become of him. But he didn’t really care. He didn’t.

And in fact—there was one place that could supply children for all sorts of things. “So—just girls, eh? That’s okay; that’ll just be fewer bunks in the orphanage.”

“Orphanage?” Tenenbaum blinked in puzzlement. “There is an orphanage in Rapture?”

Fontaine grinned. “No, but there will be. You just gave me the idea, with this thing about the Babcock orphans. I’ll donate the money for the orphanage! Yeah! ‘The Little Sisters Orphanage.’ We’ll get our adorable little plasmid farms … and we’ll train ’em up right. We got to do this soon! I’ve got more orders for plasmids than I can fill in a year!” Something about the idea energized him. He felt a kind of shudder, almost a release go through him as he thought about it. Orphanages. Like where he’d grown up. Orphanages leading to money. And money … leading to power. “Money and power, Brigid. Money and power! It’s all right there, low-hanging fruit for the plucking … in a gatherer’s garden.”