BioShock: Rapture

Wales grunted. “Oh, that he has. Two stations completed, a good deal of rail laid down. He’s down in Sinclair Deluxe, supervising construction.” He sniffed and drew a pipe from his coat and then stuck it in his teeth but didn’t light it. “Complains he needs more workers, of course. They all do.”

“The Express is its own business,” Ryan pointed out. “Let him get busy and hire more workers himself. Those who are finished working on the outer shell can start on the rail.”

He turned to gaze out the window at Rapture again. Who knew how long it would take to grow—this almighty expression of his will that could continue proliferating in steel and glass and copper and Ryanium, long after Andrew Ryan himself had passed away…

PART TWO The Second Age of Rapture

I believe in no God, no invisible man in the sky. But there is something more powerful than each of us, a combination of our efforts, a Great Chain of industry that unites us. But it is only when we struggle in our own interest that the chain pulls society in the right direction. The chain is too powerful and too mysterious for any government to guide. Any man who tells you different either has his hand in your pocket, or a pistol to your neck.

—Andrew Ryan

6

Apollo Square, Rapture 1948

Standing on the stage with Ryan, Bill McDonagh exulted in Ryan’s speech as it boomed through Apollo Square. Rapture rose in sturdy magnificence around them.

“To build a city at the bottom of the sea! Insanity! But look around you, my friends!” Andrew Ryan’s voice boomed, with only a little feedback squeal. Wearing a caramel-colored double-breasted suit, his freshly barbered hair slicked back, Ryan seemed to emanate personality from the podium. Bill could feel Ryan there, to his left—and the almost frighteningly deep conviction in his tone kept his listeners riveted. The crowd of more than two thousand seemed a bit stunned by their surroundings when they’d first come. Now Bill could see them nodding, the pride shining from their faces, as Ryan told them they were a unique people in a unique place—each one of them with a chance to make their own destiny within the walls of Rapture. Those at the front were mostly the moneyed patricians, eccentrics, and pioneering professionals Ryan had recruited. The determined blue-collar types milled at the back of the crowd.

Hands clasped in front of him, Bill stood to Ryan’s right and as close to Elaine as propriety allowed. Beside Bill and Elaine stood Greavy, Sullivan, Simon and Daniel Wales, Prentice Mill, Sander Cohen, and Ryan’s new “personal assistant,” the statuesque beauty Diane McClintock. She looked like she fancied herself a queen. Bill had heard she was originally some cigarette girl Ryan had picked up—and now she was putting on airs.

Under the bunting-swathed stage overlooking the square, a tape recorder took down Ryan’s speech. He planned to record all his speeches and put edited sections of them out as “inspirational talks” on public address throughout Rapture.

“But where else,” Ryan demanded, “could we be free from the clutching hands of parasites?” His deep voice resonated in the gleaming windows looking out to the shadowy, light-shafted depths of the sea. Bill nudged Elaine and nodded toward the windows as a school of large fish swam up to the glass. The fish seemed to be taking in the speech, ogling Ryan as if awestruck. She hid a smile behind her hand. Bill wanted to take that hand and kiss it, draw his new fiancee away from this pensive crowd, up to the privacy of his apartment in Olympus Heights—celebrate the culmination of so much hard work with another sort of climax. But he had to be satisfied with winking at her, as Ryan went portentously on: “Where else could we build an economy that they would not try to control, a society that they would not try to destroy? It was not impossible to build Rapture at the bottom of the sea! It was impossible to build it anywhere else!”

“Hear hear!” Greavy said, leading a patter of applause.

“The ant society misunderstands the nature of true cooperation!” Ryan boomed. “True cooperation is enlightened self-interest, not grubbing parasitism! True cooperation is not based on the bloodsucking that the parasites call ‘taxation’! True cooperation is people working together—each for their own profit! A man’s self-interest is at the root of all that he accomplishes! But there is something more powerful than each of us: a combination of our efforts, a Great Chain of industry that unites us. It is only when we struggle in our own interest that the chain pulls society in the right direction. The chain is too powerful and too mysterious for any government to guide. The Great Chain may sound mystical…” Ryan shook his head contemptuously. “It is not! Some would imagine the hand of their so-called God behind every mystery! The best of human nature, the laws of natural selection—such is the power behind the Great Chain, not God! We need no gods or kings in Rapture! Only man! Here, man and woman will be rewarded with the sweat of their brows. Here, without interference, we will prove that society can order itself with unfettered competition, with unfettered free enterprise—with unfettered research! I have scientists in Rapture working on new discoveries that will astound you—and the persecution of the small-minded is all that kept those discoveries from happening till now. Science will advance without the oversight of pompous tyrants who would impose their personal view of ‘morality’ on us.” He cleared his throat and smiled, his tone becoming friendly, fatherly. “And now, in celebration of the opening day of Rapture—a song performed by Sander Cohen, written by Miss Anna Culpepper…” Anna Culpepper was an unfinished English major, a naive but ambitious young woman whom Ryan had recruited out of her third year in college and who fancied herself a lyricist.

Wearing a tux, the impish performer stepped up to the microphone. Bill winced. Cohen got on his nerves.

From somewhere canned music played, and Cohen sang along.

“The paradox of our city
is the freedom of the chain,
the chain that holds youuuu
to meeeee,
a chain that oh so strangely,
so very strangely,
Sets me at lib-er-tyyyy—
As the blue world scintillates
outside our gates,
and the fish gyrate and the lovely,
lovely ocean awaits…”

It was a sluggish number, taking a long time to reach its chorus, and Bill lost interest, letting his attention wander to the majesty of Apollo Square, Rapture’s “Grand Central Station”…