BioShock: Rapture

Somewhere over the Atlantic 1946

“It’s a converted Liberator, really.” Andrew Ryan led Bill McDonagh through a big, humming aircraft cabin, toward the tail. “A stratocruiser now—United Airlines has ordered eleven of them for luxury flights. But this is the prototype. Of course, this is a prop plane, but the next generation will be jets…”

“Saw a fighter jet in the war, my last trip out,” Bill said. “ME-262 it was. German prototype. Didn’t even engage us—I reckon they were test flying…”

“Yes,” Ryan said distractedly. “Fast and efficient, the jet engine. Haven’t bothered developing them—not as aircraft—because after the North Atlantic project we hope to need no aircraft. We’ll have a great many submersibles—and in time we’ll hardly need those. We hope to be entirely self-sufficient…”

Submersibles? Bill must have misheard him.

Bill had mixed feelings about being on this plane. The drone of its engines was just close enough to the sound of the bombers he’d flown on in the war. He’d taken a ship to get to the USA, after. He’d had enough of planes. Seen his best friend turned to red marmalade that last time out.

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.”

Another boom, another quiver, and Bill closed his eyes, trying to will away the pictures rising in his mind. The boom of a flak shell, the clatter and whine of many small, vicious impacts. Another shell exploding just outside, a section of the bomber hull suddenly gone, blown out by the Jerries. Wind roaring in through the ragged gap like a mad house invader, as Bill McDonagh, radioman, sees the curly-headed Welsh lad, a green little blighter just a week out of training, being sucked backward against a five-foot breach in the curved metal wall, pulled hard by the sudden drop in air pressure, the boy’s face contorting in terror. Bill shouts to the pilots, “Reduce altitude!” as he rushes to the young flyer, gripping a stanchion with his right hand so he can try pulling the Welsh lad back with his left—knowing full well it was no good. The boy screams as the suction around the breach jerks him harder into the jagged edge, the sharp metal ripping through his left shoulder; his blood precedes him, streaming out through the gap—and then he follows it, just gone like a magic act, vanished into the roaring sky. All that remains are scraps of torn clothes and skin flapping on the ragged edges of the bulkhead. The boy is falling somewhere, out in the gray mist. Bill clings to the stanchion as the bomber angles sharply down to equalize air pressure…

“Bill? You all right?”

Bill managed a sickly grin. “There’s a reason I took a ship to America ’stead of a plane, guv. Sorry. I’m all right.”

“I think we both need a drink…”

“Right you are, Mr. Ryan. That’s the very medicine…”

“Let’s have a seat in the main cabin and ride out this storm. We should be at the airport in another hour or so—winds are behind us. Then it’s to the ship. Come on, I’ll have Quee pour you the best single malt you ever tasted, and I’ll tell you about the Great Chain…”

* * *

The bar in Staten Island was almost deserted tonight. But Captain Fontaine was there, as arranged, sitting in a booth in the dim corner, frowning at his beer. Just waiting for Frank Gorland.

Captain Fontaine did look a lot like the man who called himself Frank Gorland—but he was more weather beaten, a little older. He wore a red watch cap and a long green corduroy double-breasted coat. His calloused red hands showed the life he’d led at sea—first as a smuggler, now as the head of a small fishing fleet.

Gorland ordered a bottled beer from the stout barmaid, who seemed to be flirting with a drunken marine, and carried it over to Captain Fontaine’s table.

Fontaine didn’t look up from brooding on his beer as Gorland sat across from him. “Gorland, seems to me that every time I run into you, something goes wrong.”

“How’s that? What about all that cash you made from what I did for you on your last cargo?”

“Your cut was near as big as mine, and all you did for it was run your mouth.”

“Well, running my mouth is how I live, friend. Now look, Fontaine. You want the information I have or not? I’m offering it for free. I’m hoping we can work together again, and we can’t do it if you’re in jail. So you’d better cock one of those shell-like ears—I’ve got word they’re going to wait till you head out— and raid you on the way back.”

Fontaine slurped at his brew. “They… who?”