BioShock: Rapture

he’d just seen a sample of plasmid power. “If that’s true, ADAM is the ultimate score. ADAM—and EVE. It’s fuckin’ amazing.”

Tenenbaum nodded, looking through the door at the sea slug in the aquarium. “Yes. The little sea slug has come along and glued together all the crazy ideas I’ve had since the war. It can resurrect cells, bend the double helix—so that black can be reborn white, tall can be short. Weak can become strong! But we are just beginning… there is more we need, Frank. Much more…”

Fontaine grinned—and winked at her. “You’ll get whatever you need! Fontaine Futuristics will transform Rapture! I feel it in my bones.”

Tenenbaum looked curiously at Fontaine—right at him. But he suspected she could look right at him only because she was thinking of him as a specimen. “Really? You feel that in bones?”

“Nah, that’s just an expression—what I’m saying is, this is going to go big. And it’s got to be presented big. I’m going to buy space from Ryan Industries… and we’re going to move Fontaine Futuristics out of this dump, into the best-designed location in Rapture! It’ll look like the inside of a mansion, with lots of decor and sculpture so that people’ll sense the power behind those doors!” He broke off, shaking his head. Thinking that he was starting to sound like… a businessman.

Won’t have to do it long, he told himself. The bunko possibilities in this one are all about selling something to people they only think they want—until they’ve got it. And once they’ve got it—it’s got them. Meaning I’ll have ’em in my hip pocket.

Suchong glanced at the sea slug—and licked his lips. Something was troubling him. “But Mr. Fontaine— there is danger.” He looked gravely at Fontaine. “Danger in using ADAM—and in developing plasmids. You should know before proceeding. Come this way. You shall see…”

They went down a metal-walled corridor, feet clumping on wooden planks. The air at this end smelled like raw chemicals and curdled human sweat. They came to a steel door stenciled

SPECIAL STUDIES: KEEP OUT.

Suchong put his hand on the knob…

“Perhaps we should not go in!” Brigid Tenenbaum said suddenly, not looking at either of them but holding the door shut with the flat of her hand. She stared at the closed door.

“Why?” Fontaine asked, wondering if they were planning to lock him up in there. It occurred to him that maybe he should be careful around scientists who strap random people to tables and inject them with things…

“It is dangerous inside—perhaps diseased…”

Fontaine swallowed. But he made up his mind. “There can’t be any part of this I don’t know about. It’s all my business.” He wanted plasmids—bad. But he needed to know what the risks were. If this was something that exposed him too much…

She nodded once and stepped back. Suchong opened the door. Immediately, a disturbing, unnatural smell emanated from the room. It was a scent Fontaine would expect from exposed human brains when the top of the skull was sawed away…

His stomach lurched. But he followed Suchong one step, just one, into the room. “We try to mix some genes from sea creatures with human,” Suchong was saying. “Give man powers of certain animals. But…” The musty, ill-lit rectangular chamber was about thirty-five feet by thirty, but it seemed smaller because of the shifting heap of the thing that dominated it. Clinging to the walls opposite Fontaine was something that might’ve once been human. It was as if someone had taken human flesh and made it as malleable as clay—bones and flesh made pliable—and plastered it onto the wall. Beaded with sweat, the mass of human flesh seemed to simply cling there, spread over two walls and a corner. A bloated face muttered to itself, at the center of the creature, near the ceiling; several human organs were exposed, including a heart and kidneys, damp and quivering, dangling like meat in a butchery from crust-edged gaps in its body, the creature’s big limbs…

“What the hell!” Fontaine blurted.

The thing’s beak clicked and muttered in response.

Fontaine turned and dashed from the room. He went five paces down the hall and, feeling dizzy, gagging, came to a stumbling stop, leaning against Rapture’s cold metal bulkhead.

He felt a surge of relief when he heard the door of the Special Studies room clang shut. Tenenbaum and Suchong strolled up beside him, Suchong with his hands casually in his coat pockets, looking faintly amused. Tenenbaum seemed almost humanly concerned for him.

“So…” Fontaine swallowed bile. “You got this process under control or not?”

“We do now,” Tenenbaum said, looking thoughtfully at the yellow overhead light. “Yes. We will not be producing more of… those.”

“Then—I want you to do something for me. Kill that thing in there. Incinerate it. No traces left—I want no bad publicity. I want more plasmids like the one that makes lightning. But more variety. More controllable… easy to package… Stuff that makes a man smarter, stronger. The stuff that makes us money. You understand? Money!”

Ryan Amusements, Rapture Memorial Museum 1954

Stanley Poole stood at the outer edge of the small crowd waiting for Dr. Lamb to begin. Discreetly passed-out flyers in maintenance station 17 and Apollo Square advertised “A Free Public Lecture by the Eminent Psychiatrist, Dr. Sofia Lamb, on a New Hope for the Working Man.”

The lanky, swan-necked blonde in the modish horn-rims stepped up in front of the museum’s Rapture Grows tableau, with its stylized images of Rapture’s founding workers. She gazed at the little crowd like a prophetess, her benevolent expression condescending but motherly, her smile infinitely knowing. She pressed the button to start the museum tableau’s recording. A friendly male voice intoned, “After the platform is secured, work progresses at an astounding rate. Designed to be the foundation of Rapture, workers toil around the clock to create the metropolis you see today.”

“Do you hear that?” She clasped her hands behind her back and chuckled ironically, making eye contact with the small crowd—mostly low-level workers, all listening raptly, though Poole realized that Simon Wales was there too. “That recording,” Sofia Lamb went on, “is a compact little insight into Rapture! ‘Workers toil around the clock to create the metropolis’! And in the Laying the Foundation exhibit, right over there—what does the recording say?” Her voice was mockingly arch as she recited: “‘Engineers work to overcome obstacles, such as diamond-hard rock, obstinate sea life and unexpected casualties!’ Think about it, my friends— how much needless suffering have we taken for granted?” She shook her head sadly. “Unexpected casualties? Oh, Andrew Ryan fully expected them! He just didn’t care! A great many lives were lost in building Rapture—those lives were sacrifices to the ‘god’ that is the human ego! Ryan’s ego! The common man and woman in Rapture is overworked and underpaid; they’re left exhausted. They toiled around the clock to create this city—but how much of what they created do they really share in? What did Andrew Ryan really offer—but paper? A little something called Rapture dollars… mere documents, paper money! Paper for paupers! And precious little of that! Who, I ask you, really owns Rapture? The people who built it? or the plutocrats who control it? The many—or the few? You know the answer!”

A good many in the crowd were nodding. Some frowned, unsure—but most seemed convinced. They’d been thinking something of the sort themselves, Poole supposed. Here was someone who said it right out loud… Dr. Sofia Lamb. A psychiatrist—using her psychology on the common man.

“This woman Lamb is becoming troublesome, Poole,” Ryan had said. “See what she’s up to. Stay discreet…”

If Ryan could hear this, Poole thought, he’d blow his carefully barbered top.

Sofia Lamb paused thoughtfully, then pointed at the ornate walls. “Rapture looks like a great big palace at times, doesn’t it? It abounds in luxury—but where’s housing for those who maintain it? You’re crowded into places like Maintenance Seventeen! But that’s traditional in a palace, isn’t it? There are the luxury quarters for the elite—and then there’s the little cubbyholes under the stairs where the servants live! Palace