BioShock: Rapture

“You know we cannot trust anyone outside Rapture, Bill. We’d have American intelligence agents down here, or the jackals from the KGB, fast as…” He snapped his fingers.

“It can be hard for some down here, sir. There’s some as wonder if they made the right choice immigrating to Rapture…”

“I have no respect for quitters! You don’t visit Rapture—it’s a way of life!” He shook his head bitterly. “They are spineless! They were told, before they came, that there were certain inviolable rules. No one leaves! There is no place for men like us on the surface.”

Bill was in awe of Ryan; he knew it, and Ryan knew it. But maybe it was time to give Ryan some guff about this lockdown. Because he was afraid that if Ryan stuck to this policy, it could be explosive. “It’s human nature, guv’nor, to want freedom to come and go. People get stir-crazy, like, when you pen them up. You believe a man should make a choice—but how can the poor sod choose to stay in Rapture? We took that choice away!”

“A man has thousands of choices in Rapture. But that one he gave up when he came to this world—a world that I created. I built it with money and resources earned with my sweat! It’s all a lot of absurd whining! In time we will expand Rapture across the seabed and there will be far more room to move about.” He flicked his hand in a gesture of contemptuous impatience. “They entered into a contract coming here! In the end, our choices make us what we are. A man chooses, Bill! They chose—and they must accept the responsibility.”

Bill cleared his throat. “Natural enough for some blokes to want to change their minds…”

The bathysphere reached its destination, clunking into place, and the hatch creaked open—but Ryan made no move to get out. He remained in his seat, looking at Bill with a new solemnity. “Have you changed your mind, Bill?”

Bill was taken by surprise. “No! This is my home, Mr. Ryan. I built this place with my bare hands.” He shrugged. “You asked what I’ve heard…”

Ryan looked at him for a long moment, as if peering into Bill’s soul. Finally, he nodded. “Very well, Bill. But I’ll tell you something. The residents of Rapture will be purged of the habits of ant society! They must learn to stand up beside us, like men—and build! I plan to start a new program of civic education. Banners, a great many more of them—educational announcements on televisions and public address, and billboards! I’m bringing in someone to help us train them to see that the world outside Rapture is the real prison… and Rapture is the real freedom.” Ryan climbed out of the bathysphere. “Come along, Bill. Come along…”

8

Andrew Ryan’s Office 1950

“Miss Lamb,” Diane announced. “Dr. Sofia Lamb…” There was a certain coolness in her voice as she said it, Andrew Ryan noted. Had she already taken a dislike to the woman? Dr. Lamb had been a kind of missionary, both physician and psychiatrist, working in Hiroshima before and after the bomb—maybe Diane was intimidated. Diane was sensitive about her working-class background.

“Escort her in. Have the guards wait outside.”

Diane sniffed but went back into the outer room and held the door for Sofia Lamb.

“He’ll see you now, Dr. Lamb,” Diane said, as if wondering why he was seeing her.

“Splendid. It’s been a long journey… I’m curious to find the final chamber of this great nautilus shell of a city…”

Ryan stood politely as she strode in. Dr. Lamb carried herself like the educated, well-heeled elite professional she was. He knew protocol would matter with her.

She was tall, almost cruelly slim, her blond hair coifed into large curls atop her head. She had a long neck, a narrow face with stark bone structure, icy blue eyes behind stylish horn-rimmed glasses, lips darkly rouged. She wore a navy-blue dress suit with sharp white collars and dark blue pumps.

“Welcome to Rapture, Miss Lamb. Won’t you have a seat? I hope your journey wasn’t too exhausting. It’s a pleasure to have you join us in our brave new world.”

She sat in the chair across from him, crossing her long pale legs. “Brave new world—a reader of Shakespeare! The Tempest, was it not?” Her long slender fingers expertly extracted a platinum cigarette case from her small handbag as she went on, looking blandly at him, “O brave new world that has such creatures in it…”

“Are you surprised, Miss Lamb, that I’m familiar with Shakespeare?” Ryan asked, coming around the desk to light her cigarette with a gold lighter.

She blew smoke at the ceiling and shrugged. “No. You’re—a wealthy man. You can afford to educate yourself.”

It was not an obvious criticism—yet somehow, it was condescending. But she smiled—and he saw a glint of charisma. “I must say,” she went on, glancing around, “this place is remarkable. Quite astonishing. And yet no one seems to know about it.”

“As few as we can manage. We work hard at keeping it secret. And we shall require you to keep it secret too, Miss Lamb. Or should I call you Doctor Lamb…?”

He waited for her to say, Oh, call me Sofia. But she didn’t. She merely nodded, just faintly.

Ryan cleared his throat. “You are well aware of the driving forces behind Rapture—its philosophy, its plan. The Great Chain…”

“Yes, but I can’t claim to completely understand your… operative philosophy. I am of course attracted by the possibilities of a new society that has no… no interference from the outside world. A self-sustaining colony that might rediscover human possibilities—the possibility of a society free from the warmongering of the upper world…”

“I understand you were in Hiroshima when…”

“I was in a sheltered, outlying place. But yes. People I sometimes worked with were burnt to shadows on the walls of their homes.” Her eyes held a flat horror at the memory. “If the modern world were a patient in my care…” She shook her head. “I would diagnose it suicidal.”

“Yes. Hiroshima, Nagasaki—they were a large part of the reason we built Rapture. I suspected you might understand our imperative, after seeing what happened there, firsthand. I’m certain the surface world will commit nuclear suicide in time, Dr. Lamb. One generation, two, three—it will happen—and when it does, Rapture will be safe, here below. Self-sufficient and thriving. Rapture is deliverance.”

She tapped her cigarette ash into the brass floor ashtray beside her chair, nodding eagerly now. “That is the great appeal for me. Deliverance. A new chance to… to remake society into something innately good! Everyone has a duty to the world, Mr. Ryan—and we’ve lost all that, up above, in all the grubbing chaos of that perverse civilization…”

Ryan frowned, not exactly understanding her. But before he could ask her to elucidate, she went on:

“And I was gratified to hear that everyone has equal opportunity here! Including women, presumably?” She glanced at him questioningly. “In ordinary society the male hierarchy crushes our dreams. They see a woman with a spark”—she crushed her cigarette out angrily in the ashtray—“and they crush it out! ‘Lady doctors,’ as they call them, are sometimes tolerated. But… real advancement for a woman in the field? No.”

“Oh yes, I see…” Ryan thoughtfully stroked his mustache with the ball of his thumb. Theoretically everyone in Rapture started on an equal footing—and anyone could rise to the top with hard work, enterprise, talent,