BioShock: Rapture

“On my walk today I had an encounter with a pair of them… he, a lumbering palooka in a foul-smelling diving suit, and she, an unwashed moppet in a filthy pink smock. Her pallor was off, green and morbid, and there was a rather unpleasant aspect to her demeanor, as if she were in an altogether different place than the rest of us. I understand the need for such creatures; I just wish I could make them more presentable.” He chuckled to himself at that, took a sip of his martini, and made another diary entry: “Could I have made mistakes? One does not build cities if one is guided by doubt. But can one govern in absolute certainty? I know that my beliefs have elevated me, just as I know that the things I have rejected would have destroyed me.” On one of the buildings outside, a light flickered and went out. He sighed. “But the city… it is collapsing before my…” He hesitated. Not able to finish the thought. It was unbearable. “Have I become so convinced by my own beliefs that I have stopped seeing the truth? But Atlas is out there, and he aims to destroy me—to question is to surrender. I will not surrender.”

A letter arrived in the pneumatic tube: Ryan heard the distinctive swish of its arrival. He got wearily up, fetched the message back to his easy chair.

Grunting as he sat, he fumbled it open. He was losing some dexterity in his fingers.

He unfolded the letter—and recognized Diane McClintock’s handwriting: