BioShock Rapture

“Going too far is the splicer way,” Greavy said dryly. “They all go rogue in time. They’ve gotten obsessed, this bunch. They’re all about their plasmid splicing. Injecting Fontaine’s mutagens, looking for EVE to activate it…”

Bill McDonagh and Ruben Greavy were standing by the tram tracks in Apollo Square, watching the tram go by. Adhering like geckos to the metal sides of the slowly moving trams, the spider-splicer couple was ordinarily dressed, but their heads and cheeks were knobbed with ugly reddish welts, growths from abusing ADAM and EVE.

Shifting his heavy toolbox from his left hand to his right, Bill reflected on how tempting plasmids were. He could use that wall-climbing power for getting at difficult-to-fix places in Rapture. He could use the new telekinesis plasmid to move objects about, adding an extra pair of invisible hands to a job. One man could do the work it would normally take three to do.

But Bill knew better. Some could take them and stay more or less sane for a while. But keep taking them—and you eventually went barking mad.

He watched as the male spider splicer grinned clownishly into the tramcar from its roof, head dipping to stare upside down in a window, leering at the passengers cringing back from him. “You lovey snuggle ducks!” he yelled hoarsely. “You little chocolates in this chocolate box of steel!” He cackled something more that Bill couldn’t hear as the tram trundled away from him and Greavy. But he could see the giggling woman reaching in through a window, clutching for someone’s arm …

A gunshot cracked from inside the tram, and smoke drifted out the open window as the female spider splicer jerked her arm back. She screeched in pain and fury, and her splicer partner fired his own gun into the window while clinging upside down. Then the tramcar slipped from sight beyond the kiosks.

Bill sighed and shook his head. “Out of their ever-lovin’ bloody minds, they are!”

“Yes, I suppose so,” Greavy said thoughtfully. “But I think of it as part of a Darwinian process. This madness, these side effects—they’ll die of it, eventually, fighting each other, perhaps. A possibly necessary winnowing in Rapture. Ryan and I knew something of the sort would come—some vector of purging. Eventually plasmids will be developed with fewer side effects. These early users are like guinea pigs…”

Bill glanced at Greavy. He’d never liked the man much, and that sort of comment was one of the reasons. “We’d best get to that inspection You think we should call the constables about that gunfight?”

Greavy shrugged. “There are so many gunfights now, so much antagonism—the constables can’t deal with most of it. Ryan’s attitude is that if two consenting adults want to duel, let them.”

Troubled, Bill led the way across the tracks and down a short stairway. Workers hoisted a big sign into place at the entrance to a new institution built into a leased space. The sign, with silvery metal lettering, read:

FONTAINE’S

CENTER

For the Poor

Framing the lettering was a relief sculpture, one on each side, of hands reaching down, to pull other hands upward …

“Never thought I’d see that in Rapture,” Bill muttered, as they paused to watch. “A charity!”

“Shouldn’t be here at all,” Greavy said, frowning. “Just makes things worse. Charity trains people to be dependent. It’s in the natural order of things for people to strive and fail—for a good number of them to fall by the wayside, and … you know. Just die. Fontaine’s Center for the Poor!” He snorted skeptically. “What’s that a front for?”

“Anybody else, I’d give ’em the benefit of the doubt,” Bill said. “With Fontaine—I’ve got to wonder what the bastard is up to…”

“Politics,” Greavy murmured. “Political allies. Maybe his own little army—the army of the poor…”

“He’ll have no shortage of poor to draw on,” Bill said as they moved off. “Artemis Suites and Pauper’s Drop are stuffed with blokes out of work—and if they work, they still feel crowded and underpaid. Not everyone can start their own business. And if they do, who’ll clean the toilets?”

“You know where Fontaine gets the money for that charity?” asked Greavy with rhetorical pompousness. “From selling ADAM! And why are a lot of the poor impoverished? Because they’re addicted to ADAM! They’re spending all their money on it! The irony is naturally lost on the hoi polloi…”

They walked to the nearest wall, not far from the entrance to an apartment complex—and almost immediately Bill felt cold water dripping on his head.