BioShock: Rapture

“But the implication is that a bigger bomb will come,” Wallace pointed out. “Otherwise, why a bomb at all?”

“God’s truth, that. Think they’re oppressed, do they? That supposed to tell us what they want? Bloody vague, I call it.”

“What’s vague?” Ryan asked, hurrying in. “What’s happened?”

“Here, Mr. Ryan—you oughtn’t to be here!” Bill said. “There could be another bomb!”

“A bomb!”

Wallace shrugged. “More like a firecracker, sir. Spreading confetti—with some kind of political warning on it. Not much damage.”

Bill handed him the slips of paper. And watched Ryan’s face go red, his hands trembling.

“So it’s begun!” Ryan sputtered. “Communist organizers! Probably that Lamb woman’s followers…”

“Could be,” Bill said. “Or mebbe someone who wants us to think that’s what’s going on here…”

Ryan looked at him sharply, crumpling the paper up in his fist. “Meaning what, exactly, Bill?”

“Dunno, guv. But…” He hesitated, knowing Ryan’s mixed feelings about Frank Fontaine. Ryan seemed to like Fontaine. Didn’t seem to want to bring him down. “Someone like Fontaine might use this political muck to shift power around in Rapture…”

Ryan looked doubtful. “Someone, yes—but Fontaine?”

Wallace cleared his throat. “Rapture does have its vulnerabilities, Mr. Ryan. Doctors can be kind of expensive here. Fontaine could point that out. Sanitation, even oxygen—all charged for here.”

Ryan looked at him with narrowed eyes. “What of it? I built this place. Ryan Industries owns most of it. People have to purchase property, compete their way to comfort, here!”

Wallace gulped but went bravely on. “Sure, Mr. Ryan, but—people working for most merchants here aren’t getting paid much. There’s no minimum wage so it’s kind of hard to earn enough to save and, uh…”

“The resourceful will earn! We have possibilities here others don’t have—no restriction on science, no interference from the superstitious control systems people call religion! These malcontents have no case! And I must say, Wallace, I’m surprised to hear these Communist ideas from you…”

Wallace looked genuinely alarmed at that. Bill hastily put in, “I think all he’s saying, guv, is that the appearance of unfairness gives these Commie blokes a chance to get their snouts in. So we’ve got to be on the watch for ’em.”

“That’s it!” Wallace said quickly. “Just—on the… on the watch.”

Ryan gave Wallace a long, slow, silent appraisal. Then he looked back at the remnants of the message bomb. “We’ll watch all right. I’ll put Sullivan on this. With all speed. Right now—let us find a safer place for a convocation…”

“For a—right, guv. For one of those. Out this way, sir…”

Bill had told himself, for his family’s sake, that everything was going to work out. But he could no longer ignore the stunningly obvious:

Rapture was cracking at the seams.

12

Artemis Suites 1955

“I was working in the lighthouse today,” Sam said glumly. Sam Lutz was tired. His back ached as he sat beside his wife and watched their daughter play beside the family bunk beds.

Sam and Mariska Lutz were sitting on their bottom bunk in the crowded number 6 of Artemis Suites—a “suite” intended for a few people, but which the Lutzes shared with nine other families. They ignored the argument and bustle and jostling from the rest of the apartment and watched Mascha playing on the floor by the bunk with two stiff little dolls Sam had made for her from scrap wood. One of the dolls was a boy, one a girl, and little Mascha—a pale black-haired child, with flashing black eyes like her mother—was making them dance together. “La, la-la la, the rapture of Rapture, your heart it will capture, oh la, la-la la-a-a!” she sang, her reedy voice providing the music for the dance. Some song she’d heard piped over the public address in one of the atriums.

“It was good you could get the work, Sam,” Mariska said as she watched Mascha. Her diction was good— she’d taught English in Prague—but her accent was thick. They’d met when Sam was stationed in Eastern Europe after World War Two. Circumstances had made it almost impossible for her to marry him and go back to the States—but in ’48 they were approached by a recruiter from Rapture looking for Atlantic Express laborers. It was a way out of the wreckage that was left after the war. A way out of the U.S. Army.

Only Rapture wasn’t an out. He felt trapped here. The work had finished up, and Sam got laid off. And he’d been summarily informed he wasn’t allowed to leave the underwater colony. There was beauty in Rapture, sure—but people like Sam didn’t have much chance to appreciate it. It was like Sofia Lamb said: most people here were like the backstairs servants in a palace.

“Yeah, I needed the work, sure,” Sam admitted. “But it was just two days’ worth. Not enough to get us out of here. Need enough to get our own place in Sinclair Deluxe, at least.”

“There are some rooms they don’t use behind Fighting McDonagh’s—Elaine told me about them. Maybe they would let us have them cheap! The McDonaghs are nice.”

He grunted. “Maybe, but… not sure I’d want the girl there. McDonagh’s night manager hires out those rooms to women from Pauper’s Drop… desperate women, if you know what I mean…”

“And is it so much better here?”

“No.” Then realizing that gloom could be catching, he smiled and patted her hand, leaning close to whisper, “Some day I’ll take you home to Colorado. You’d like Colorado…”

“Maybe someday.” She twined her fingers with his, looking nervously around. “Best not to speak of such, here. We have food and shelter now…”

Sam snorted. He looked at the other people shuffling back and forth in the close, malodorous suite. And all the other rooms and suites in the Artemis building were just as crowded, just as prone to tension.

Little Toby Griggs appeared to be arguing with big, chunky Babcock again. Something odd about those two. It was as if in a moment they’d transform into two cats arching their backs and hissing. Then Babcock turned and walked away between the bunk beds. Griggs followed…

There were two rows of bunk beds in what should have been the living room. Seven more against the two long walls in the bedroom. Junk piled in the corner. Not enough storage. He hoped the toilet wasn’t plugged up again. Smelled like it might be.

And someone had been putting graffiti on the walls. Ryan doesn’t own us! it said. Become the body of the Lamb! That would have to come down before the constables saw it.

“Oh, if you were up in the lighthouse,” Mariska said suddenly, “you saw the sky! That must have been nice!” Her eyes were wide at the thought of seeing the sky again.

“Yes. I only had a few seconds to look at it. They had us busy fixing the entry bathysphere. We had to bowse up three hundred yards of steel spool and set it in place. Not easy with just three of us and only a hand- cranked winch. And it was cold up in that lighthouse shaft. It’s winter on the surface. I remember crossing this ocean in a troopship this time of year—cold as hell and the waves higher than the ship, all of us seasick.” He made a mental effort to force memories of the war out of his mind. It was helped by Toby Griggs and Babcock arguing loudly on the other side of the bunks. He tried to ignore them—you had to screen most people out, in these conditions, if you wanted to stay sane.