BioShock: Rapture

for trash pickup but he—!” Gravenstein pointed across the street at the big man stepping out of Shep’s. Gordon Shep wore a big blue suit, his swag belly straining out of the jacket; he had a jowly face, an unpleasant gold- toothed grin, and an enormous cigar in his hand. Seeing Gravenstein pointing at him accusingly, Shep crossed the street, shaking his head disparagingly, and managing a good deal of swagger despite the obesity.

He pointed at Gravenstein with his cigar as he walked up. “What’s this little liar here yellin’ about, Mr. Ryan?”

Ryan ignored Shep. “Why should this man be responsible for your trash, Gravenstein?”

Bill could guess why. He remembered that Shep here had diversified…

“First of all,” the smaller man said, shaking, clearly trying not to shout at Ryan, “it’s not all mine!”

“Feh!” Shep said, chuckling. “Prove it!”

“Some of it’s mine—but some of it’s his, Mr. Ryan! And as for what’s mine—he runs the only trash- collection service around here! He bought it two months ago, and he’s using it to run me out of business! He’s charging me ten times what he charges everyone else for trash collection!”

Bill was startled. “Ten times?”

Shep chuckled and tapped cigar ash onto the pile of garbage. “That’s the marketplace. We have no restraints here, right, Mr. Ryan? No price controls! Anyone can own anything they can buy and run it how they like!”

“The market won’t bear that kind of pricing,” Bill pointed out.

“He only charges me that price!” Gravenstein insisted. “He’s my grocery competitor! He’s got more business than I do, but it’s not enough; he wants to corner the grocery business around here, and he knows if garbage piles up because I can’t afford to pay him to take it away, nobody’ll come to shop at my place! And nobody does!”

“Looks like you’ll have to move it out yourself,” Ryan said, shrugging.

“Who’ll look after my shop while I do that? It’s a long ways to the dump chute! And I shouldn’t have to do that, Mr. Ryan; he shouldn’t be gouging me, trying to run me out of business!”

“Shouldn’t he?” Ryan mused. “It’s not really a business practice I admire. But the great marketplace is like a thriving jungle, where some survive and become king of their territory—and some don’t. It’s the way of nature! Survival of the fittest weans out the weaklings, Gravenstein! I advise you to find some means of competing—or move out.”

“Mr. Ryan—please—shouldn’t we have a public trash-collection service?”

Ryan raised his eyebrows. “Public! That sounds like Roosevelt—or Stalin! Go to one of Shep’s competitors!”

“They won’t come clear over here, Mr. Ryan! This man controls trash pickup in this whole area! He’s out to get me! Why, he’s threatening to buy the building and have me evicted, Mr. Ryan! Now I believe in competition and hard work, but—”

“No more whining, Gravenstein! We do not fix prices here! We do not regulate! We do not say who can buy what!”

“Hear that, Gravenstein?” Shep sneered. “Welcome to the real world of business!”

“Please, Mr. Ryan,” Gravenstein said, hands balling into fists at his sides. “When I came down here, I was told I’d have an opportunity to expand, to grow, to live in a place without taxes—I gave up everything to come here! Where am I to go, if he drives me out? Where can I go? Where can I go!”

A muscle in Ryan’s face twitched. He looked at Gravenstein with narrowed eyes. His voice became chilled steel. “Deal with it as a man should, Gravenstein—do not whine like a child!”

Gravenstein stood there, shaking helplessly, pale with rage—then he ran back into his store. Bill’s heart went out to him. But Ryan was right, wasn’t he? The market had to be unregulated. Still, there were other problems cropping up in Rapture from predatory types…

“Say there, Ryan,” Shep said, “how about coming in the office for a drink, eh?”

“I think not, Shep,” Ryan growled, walking away. “Come along, Bill.” They strode onward, and Ryan sighed. “That man Shep is an odious sort. He’s little better than a mafioso. But the marketplace must be free, and if some eggs are broken to make that omelet, well…”

There was a shout from behind. And a yell of fear.

Bill and Ryan turned to see Gravenstein, hands trembling, pointing a pistol at Shep in the midst of the passageway. Gravenstein shouted, “I’ll deal with it like a man, all right!”

“No!” Shep shouted, stumbling back, the cigar flopping from his mouth.

Gravenstein fired—twice. Shep shrieked, clutching himself, staggering with each shot—and then fell like a great sack of dropped groceries onto the passageway floor.

“Dammit!” Ryan grunted. “That, now, is against the rules! I’ll have a constable on the man!”

But that would not be necessary. As Bill watched, Gravenstein put the gun to his own head and pulled the trigger.

Sofia Lamb’s Office 1950

Sofia Lamb balanced her notebook on her knee, poised her pen, and said, “Tell me about this feeling of being trapped, Margie…”

“There’s one way I can get out of this burg, Doc,” Margie said in a flat voice. “If I kill myself.” She sat up on the therapy couch and chewed a knuckle. She was a slender, long-legged, brown-haired woman in a simple blue dress, worn-out white flats, a small, shabby blue velvet hat. The paint on her fingernails hadn’t been renewed for a long time; they were patchy red. Margie had a sweet, lightly freckled face with large brown eyes, her face going a bit round, and her belly pooching out—she was a couple of months pregnant. “But maybe not. Maybe killing yourself doesn’t get you out either.” Her large brown eyes seemed to get larger as she added in a whisper, “I’ve heard there’s ghosts in Rapture…”

Sofia leaned back in her chair and shook her head. “Ghosts are in people’s minds—so is the idea that you have to escape. That’s just… just a notion that’s haunting you. And… after what you’ve been through…”

“What I been through—maybe I got only myself to blame.” She wiped tears away and took a deep breath. “They said I’d have a career as an entertainer here. I shoulda known better, Doc. My ma always said, you don’t get a free ride in this world, and she was right. Ma died when I was sixteen, my pop was long gone, so I was on my own, working as a taxi dancer when I got recruited for Rapture. I come here, fulla hopes and dreams, end up in that strip joint in Fort Frolic. Eve’s Garden, what a joke! All the big shots come there, grinnin’ like apes at the girls. I’ve seen Mr. Ryan there even. When he got interested in Jasmine Jolene—what airs she put on, I can tell ya! The manager of that place, I wouldn’t have sex with him. So he fired me! It’s not supposed to be part of my job…”

“Naturally not…” Sofia wrote, Consistent pattern of disappointed expectations in patients.

“So I tried to get work some other place in Rapture—waitressing, ya know? Nope, no work. Sold most of my clothes. Ran out of money, ran outta food. Living on stuff cadged outta trashcans. Asked to be taken back to the surface. No way, sister, they tell me. Never thought I’d ever end up a whore. A little dancing for money, sure, but this—selling my ‘assets’ to those fishermen down at Neptune’s Bounty! All the damn day in the bar—or on my back in the rooms they got out behind. And Fontaine—he said I had to give him a percentage. My ma always said so: I get stubborn—and I told him to go to hell on a sled. He tells that Reggie to knock me around.”

Sofia clucked her tongue sympathetically, and wrote, No recourse for those stricken by bad luck. No WPA here. Nothing to catch those who fall. Enormous potential for social ferment.

“You’re in my care now,” Sofia said soothingly. Her heart was wrenched at Margie’s story. “I can even offer you a job.”

“What kinda work?”