BioShock: Rapture

Inside, though, this plane wasn’t much like a bomber. Except for the sound, the vibrations through the floor, the curved “inner skin,” it could easily be a luxury suite at a hotel. The Victorian-style chairs and sofas were bolted down, but they were luxurious, their silken red cushions trimmed in gold. Lace curtains were elegantly swept back from the windows with silk cords. The cabin was quietly served by three liveried servants and a chef. Behind a stainless-steel bar, an Asian servant in a red and black jacket, with gold braid, looked up attentively as they passed.

But Ryan wasn’t after drinks yet. They passed through a red velvet curtain into an after cabin, smaller, with a metal table bolted to the center of the floor. On the table was a fairly large object, rising like a ghost under a white muslin covering. The room contained almost nothing else—except taped to one interior wall, to the left, was a full-color drawing of a crowded, highly stylized city. It reminded Bill, at first glance, of the Emerald City of Oz. Only the city in the colorful drawing appeared to be underwater—a school of colorfully sketched fish swam past its windows. Was it Atlantis, the day after it went down?

Ryan strode dramatically up to the table and whipped off the cover. “Et voila!” he said, smiling. He had revealed a scale model of the city. It was all one structure formed of many lesser structures, all in the industrial-arts style, as if the designer of the Chrysler Building had made an entire small city to go with it. The model was about three feet high, a construction of linked towers, sheaths of green glass and chrome, transparent tubular passageways, statues, very little open space between buildings. The structure seemed quite sealed off, and indeed Bill made out what appeared to be air locks near the bases of several towers resembling artfully turned lighthouses. Outside the air lock sat the mock-up of a small submarine. Through one of the miniature city’s transparent panels he saw what looked like a tiny bathysphere, partway risen up through a vertical shaft.

“This,” said Andrew Ryan, breathing hard as he said it, the muslin sheet dangling at his side, “is Rapture!”

A surge of turbulence hit the plane at exactly that moment, making the model city quiver dangerously on its table.

Bill stared at it, careful in the turbulence. “Right. Lovely, innit? Rapturous, like.”

“No Bill—Rapture is the name of this city. What you see here is just the core, the downtown you might say. Its foundations are already under construction—a habitat for thousands of people beneath the waters of the North Atlantic.”

Bill gaped at him. “You’re taking the piss!”

Ryan flashed one of his pensive smiles. “But it’s true! It’s being constructed in secret—in a part of the sea rarely plied by anyone. The architecture is glorious, isn’t it? The Wales brothers designed it. Greavy’s been implementing their vision—and now so will you, Bill.”

Bill shook his head in wonder. “It’s—being built right now?” The turbulence died down, to Bill’s relief. It brought ghostly memories of being in a plane hit by flak. “How big’s Rapture to be, then?”

“It will be a small city, hidden away under the ocean… Miles to a side… lots of open space inside it. We don’t want claustrophobia…”

The model’s shape reminded Bill of the densest parts of Manhattan in some ways, all those buildings packed together. But in this case the buildings were crowded even closer, and even more interconnected.

“Do you see what’s in there, through that little window?” Ryan pointed. “That is going to be park land… a park under the sea! I call it Arcadia. We have a system for bringing reflected sunlight down, as well as electrical light. Arcadia will help provide oxygen as well as being a place for relaxation. Now here you see—”

He broke off at a sudden rough turbulence and the boom of thunder, somewhere close at hand. Both men looked nervously at the window opposite the drawing.

Bill put one hand to the edge of the table and ducked to see through the port—black and gray storm clouds billowed angrily outside, flickering with lighting. “Dodgy ride coming.”