BioShock Rapture

The one-act musical mercifully ended to a smattering of applause—although Dr. Steinman stood up, clapped lustily, and shouted, “Bravo! Bravissimo!”

Fontaine helped Diane into her wrap. Maybe he could get her to a bar. After a few drinks, she might remember her cigarette-girl origins.

But suddenly Ryan was coming down the aisle, shaking hands with people, nodding—waving to Diane. “Sorry I’m late, darling…”

So much for that. But the evening wasn’t a bust. Despite having to watch Cohen flounce about, the play had given Fontaine an idea.

On the way out of the theater, he paused to gaze at one of Ryan’s earliest propaganda posters. “Rapture is the hope of the world…” it declared—over a picture of Andrew Ryan holding the world on his shoulders. Andrew Ryan as Atlas?

Looking to see that no one was watching, Frank Fontaine tore the poster down.

Bill McDonagh’s Flat

1956

Sitting on his sofa near the big sea-view window, Bill McDonagh wondered if keeping records of his “thoughts and impressions of life in Rapture” was really a good idea. He’d tried it for a while, but it didn’t come naturally. Ryan was pushing for everyone to keep recordings of their problems, their plans, for some kind of planned historical retrospective, and it was becoming something of a fad. But Bill was starting to wonder exactly how it might be used against a man …

The tape recorder was sitting on the coffee table by a mug of greenish beer. Neither seemed appealing. He glanced at the clock on the wall. Seven. Elaine would be home from Arcadia with the little one soon enough. If he was going to do this, he’d better get to it. He reached for the tape recorder, but somehow his hand found his way to the mug of beer instead.

He sighed, put down the beer, pressed the Record button on the device, and began: “Rapture’s changing, but Ryan can’t see the wolves in the woods. This Fontaine fellow … he’s a crook and a proper tea leaf, but he’s got the ADAM and that makes him the guv’nor. He’s sinking the profits back into bigger and better plasmids and building them Fontaine poorhouses. More like Fontaine recruiting centers! ’Fore we know it, bloke’s gonna have an army of splicers, and we’re gonna have ourselves a whole heap of miseries.”

He switched off the tape recorder. There was a lot more on his mind—but he was reluctant to make his doubts about Rapture a matter of record.

The phone on the coffee table rang. He answered the phone. “Right, Bill here.”

“McDonagh? It’s Sullivan. We’ve had another three killings in the Upper Atrium … and the council is calling an emergency meeting…”

Council Conference Room

1956

Andrew Ryan wasn’t sure he wanted this special meeting of the Rapture Council. But he was reassured to see Bill McDonagh and Sullivan come in. He still felt he could trust those two.

Only six people had shown up this time, and they were gathered around the oval conference table in the ornate, gold-trimmed little room near the top of the highest “air scraper” in Rapture. Anna, Bill, Sullivan, Anton Kinkaide, Ryan, Rizzo.

Ryan missed the presence of the late Ruben Greavy. And he could have done without Anna Culpepper, who liked to put her oar in without having anything useful to say. He should never have allowed her on the council.

Ryan toyed with an untasted cup of coffee, feeling his age. His role as Rapture’s guide and mentor was becoming a weight—he could almost feel it pinching his back, making his bones creak. And some on the council were making it worse, always prodding at him with their feeble little ideas. Meanwhile, Rapture’s problems had become Andrew Ryan’s: crime, subversives, foolish use of plasmids, constant maintenance problems … these required real vision to overcome. He was seeing that more and more clearly. A man needed a willingness to institute big solutions to big problems.

“We’re so close to the surface here,” Anna said, sitting down with a cup of tea. “It makes me think it wouldn’t be so bad to have a few … excursions to the surface world … just close by, on a boat, I mean…” She looked up at the glass ceiling, just a yard or two under the surface of the ocean. Moonlight penetrated the waves, came glimmering down to color the room’s electric illumination with a blue-white paleness, making Anna, gazing upward, look as if she’d put on whiteface. That made Ryan think about Sander Cohen—he was glad Cohen hadn’t come. The performer was getting ever more socially peculiar. He’d sent a Jet Postal note, begging off with some enigmatic excuse about being “caught up in the hunt for art, which must be captivated, bound to the stage, in preparation for the titanomachy.”

Titanomachy? Whatever was he talking about?

Ryan glanced up as a shadow passed over them: the silhouette of a large, sleek shark swam overhead, circling the lighted room in curiosity.

“In time,” Ryan said, “we may have an excursion, Anna. All in good time.”