“So … if I volunteer to be a test subject for these plasmid experiments,” said the man with the scars on his wrists, “I’ll be let out of here…” Carl Wing shrugged. “Sure, I got that part—but won’t I just end up locked up in some other place in Rapture?”
Sofia Lamb hesitated. She was sitting with a therapy subject in the small, overlit, metal-walled Persephone infirmary, and as the lank-haired, nervous little man in the prisoner’s jumpsuit looked trustingly at her, she suddenly wanted a cigarette. She’d given up smoking, but right now she would’ve paid a great many Rapture dollars for a single smoke. But he was looking at her with his sad green eyes, and she had to respond. “Um—ye-es, in a way,” she admitted, remembering to smile. “You’ll be in a … a research facility. But you’ll be able to help the cause, there, in time—it will give your life meaning. You did say, Carl, that you felt like your life was meaningless, that you had no identity here in Persephone. That…”
The words died on her lips. She just couldn’t go on. It all sounded so hollow. She was proposing to play Sinclair’s game and send this man to be an experimental subject. And she thought about Eleanor—her own child, the subject of experiments somewhere in Rapture …
I’ve lost my way, Sofia realized.
She’d been working with other prisoners in Persephone, partly to get the warden, Nigel Weir, to trust her—and partly to indoctrinate the “patients” with her philosophy. She was creating moles who would be activated when she sent them the prearranged signal, as part of her scheme to escape Persephone and overthrow Ryan …
The therapy sessions with Persephone prisoners under the auspices of working for the warden had seemed necessary. Part of the deal was prepping some of them for Sinclair’s experiments.
But abruptly—it had become unbearable. And as she realized that, another realization swept over her like water crashing through a collapsing seawall. The moment has come.
She cleared her throat and said, “Carl—we’re going to change course here, you and I. You won’t have to volunteer for … experiments. If you want to help our cause, then simply go to your cell and wait till the doors unlock and you hear the signal we talked about. ‘The butterfly is taking wing.’ Then … head for the guard’s tower. Overwhelm anyone who tries to stop you.”
He gaped at her. “The tower? Really? When did you decide—?”
She shrugged and smiled ruefully. “Just now! I felt the movement of the body—the True Body of Rapture! Truth is in the body, Carl! The body is speaking to me—speaking through me!—and it is declaring that the day has come. Now go—and don’t speak of this to anyone! Wait for the signal!”
He nodded eagerly, his eyes shining.
She went to the door, called for the guard, and had Carl escorted back to his cell. She didn’t need an escort herself—she had a pass that allowed her to move freely from one part of Persephone to another, so long as she didn’t try to leave the facility.
But today, she decided, as she strode down the corridor, she would become the one issuing passes—she would make the move for which she’d long prepared. She prepared for this day—but she hadn’t felt ready, till this moment. It wasn’t just Carl or the others like him. It was the thought of Eleanor—the painful fact of Sinclair and his scientists warping the girl’s powerful but innocent mind. She could bear it no longer.
Sofia looked at her watch—Simon Wales, the most enthusiastic of her highly placed converts, should be coming for his visitation now. Perfect—and no coincidence. The true body of Rapture had planned it all. The body is truth; truth is in the body.
Would Simon have the courage to do as she asked? Many times he’d claimed he would do anything … anything … she asked of him. Today that claim would be tested.
She arrived at her cell, leaving the door open, in keeping with her special privileges—the same privileges that made it possible for her to receive Simon Wales here. He arrived in under a minute, looking fatigued but resolute.
“Dr. Lamb!” His eyes seemed feverish; he was dressed in a priest’s garb, she noticed, complete with collar, and he’d grown out his beard. The butterfly-shaped broach he wore clipped to his shirt pocket was a bit out of place—but it signified that he had emerged from the cocoon to become one of Lamb’s flock. A flock of butterflies—but butterflies with wings of razor-sharp steel.
“Have you become a priest, Simon?” Sofia asked, glancing up the corridor toward the other cells.
“I’m a priest of your church, Dr. Lamb,” he said hoarsely. He ducked his head in submission to her.
“Then you are ready to do anything for the cause of the body?”
His head snapped up, his eyes glinting hotly, his hands clutching and fisting. “I am!”
“The day has come! I cannot wait any longer. Thinking about Eleanor … and all that I’ve had to do here … I simply can’t wait another moment.”
“But—Sinclair is here; I saw him go into the Persephone control tower! Shouldn’t we wait till he’s gone home?”
“It doesn’t matter. Warden Weir will send him out at the first sign of trouble.” She smiled. “The warden too awaits my signal.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “You’ll take this pass from me.” She took it from around her neck and hung it over his. “Go to the tower; show the camera the pass. They’ll unlock the tower. You’ll step inside and shoot the guards there—then throw the Emergency Cell Unlock switch … we’ve already discussed its whereabouts!”
“I remember!” he said, licking his lips.
“When the cell doors pop open—and the cellblock doors with them—you’ll get on the public address system and announce, ‘The butterfly is taking wing!’ That’ll be the signal—”
His voice quivered with hushed excitement as he said, “Yes—oh thank God—the signal to set you free!”
“I will take Persephone over—but I won’t leave here immediately, till we have complete control of the area. We’ll send for our followers to surround the area and protect us. When the time comes, I’ll go to find Eleanor. Meanwhile—this place will change from being my jail to being my fortress.”
“And the gun?”
“The gun you’ll need is hidden in the utilities locker. You remember the combination?”
“I do!”
She squeezed his hand. “Then go!”
He turned and rushed from the cell, showing not a flicker of hesitation. He would either die in the control tower—or he would do the job. Simon was no gunman—but he’d been practicing, as per her orders, and with a little luck and the element of surprise …
Sofia waited tensely on the edge of her bunk, wringing her hands. Thinking about Eleanor.
Within ten minutes, the other cell doors suddenly clanged open, released from within the tower. A uniformed Persephone guard looked around in confusion. “What the hell is going on?”
Simon’s voice boomed from the Persephone public address: “The butterfly takes wing! You know what to do! The butterfly takes wing!”
The prisoners responded with the gleeful howls of men suddenly set free, their long pent-up fury expanding like a released spring.
She listened to the scuffling turmoil as the prisoners rushed from their cells and swarmed over the guards. She winced as shots were fired—but Sinclair’s prison constables were quickly overwhelmed. There was some shouting, hooting, two more gunshots—screams. Inarticulate cries of triumph. An alarm warbled—and suddenly cut off.
Sofia took a deep breath and stood up, deciding it was safe to come out of her cell. She stepped into the corridor—was met by Simon Wales, who was grinning with wolfish delight as he rushed up to her. A pistol smoked in his right hand; his left hand was red with blood.
“We have Persephone!” he crowed. “Sinclair has fled, the guards with him—the ones we didn’t kill! Weir is still here, but he says he’ll take your orders! It’s all yours, Dr. Lamb! You’re in control of Persephone!”
Hephaestus
1957
Bill McDonagh hummed along to the Andrews Sisters song playing over the PA system as he tightened the salinity sieve. The song suddenly switched off, replaced by Andrew Ryan’s sonorous voice—one of Ryan’s canned speeches.
“What is the greatest lie ever created?” said Ryan over the public address, in his deepest intonation. There was a treacherous intimacy in that voice, like a quietly angry father. “What is the most vicious obscenity ever perpetrated on mankind? Slavery? Dictatorship? No! It’s the tool with which all that wickedness is built. Altruism.”
Bill sighed to himself. He was no great believer in charity. But if people wanted to extend a helping hand, that was their business. Ryan’s fierce rejection of altruism had been there all along. Lately, with a whole class in Rapture suffering, it was starting to grate …
“Whenever anyone wants others to do their work,” Ryan went on, “they call upon their altruism. ‘Never mind your own needs,’ they say. ‘Think of the needs of…’ of—whomever! Of the state. Of the poor. Of the army. Of the king. Of God. The list goes on and on.”
“Right,” Bill muttered. “And so do you, Mr. Ryan. Go on and on, that is…” He glanced over at Pablo Navarro, working across the room with a clipboard. Might be a mistake, saying that kind of thing out loud. But Pablo seemed focused on writing down heat readings.
From the speakers near the ceiling, almost from the very air, Ryan went inexorably on: “My journey to Rapture was my second exodus. In 1919 I fled a country that had traded despotism for insanity. The Marxist revolution simply traded one lie for another. And so, I came to America, where a man could own his own work—where a man could benefit from the brilliance of his own mind, the strength of his own muscles, the might of his own will.”
Now that view, Bill thought, using a tiny screwdriver to adjust the filter, was something he could appreciate. It was a view that had helped bind him to Andrew Ryan: a man being judged on what he’d achieved, what he could do—not on class, religion, race. Sure they were going through a rough time in Rapture, but he still had faith that Ryan’s grand vision would see them through …
Quiet rage simmered in Andrew Ryan’s voice as he went on, “I thought I’d left the parasites of Moscow behind me. I had thought I had left the Marxist altruists to their collective farms and their five-year plans. But, as the German fools threw themselves on Hitler’s sword for the good of the Reich, the Americans drank deeper and deeper of the Bolshevik poison, spoon-fed to them by Roosevelt and his New Dealers. And so, I asked myself, in what country was there a place for men like me? Men who refused to say yes to the parasites and the doubters. Men who believed that work was sacred and property rights inviolate. And then one day the happy answer came to me, my friends: there was NO country for people like me. And THAT was the moment I decided … to build one. Rapture!” Ryan finished his speech, and the music came back on. Cheerful boogie-woogie played.
“Yeah, he decided to build Rapture,” Navarro said wryly as he came over to write down readings on the meters near Bill. “He built it, and he gave us the come hither, acting like it’d belong to us too. But it’s all his, really, Bill. You ever notice that?”
Bill shrugged, glancing nervously at the door. This was pretty seditious talk, the way things were lately. “Mr. Ryan did use his own money to build Rapture,” he said, wiping grease from his hands with a rag. “My way of thinkin’, we’re all leasin’ space from ’im here, Pablo. Some have bought space. But Mr. Ryan still owns most of Rapture, mate—he has a right to think like Rapture belongs to him…”
“Yipped like a true lap dog,” Navarro muttered, walking away.
Bill stared after him. “Pablo,” Bill called out. “Mind what you say to me. Or I’ll crack you one across the beezer.”
Pablo Navarro turned to him—gave a little twisted smile. And simply walked out of the room …
Frank Fontaine’s Office, Neptune’s Bounty, Rapture
1957
Late night in Rapture. Frank Fontaine sat at his desk in a cone of yellow light, writing busily, chuckling to himself now and then. A forgotten cigarette, going out, spiraled smoke from a seashell ashtray. A pint of bourbon stood beside the ashtray; he’d used it to sweeten the cup of coffee that had long ago gone cold.
Fontaine worked with pen, paper, and an open book, poring over the account by John Reed of the lives of Soviet idealists—a book he’d had to smuggle into Rapture—and he was getting lots of juicy material for his Atlas pamphlets. Just a paraphrase here, a change in terminology there, and presto: he’d soon have the Atlas manifesto.
Of course, he’d borrowed from Sofia Lamb too. She still had her followers. With luck, they’d become his followers. When the time came …
Hearing a soft whistling, Fontaine glanced up nervously toward the door. One of his guards was strolling by the window of his office, tommy gun in hand, whistling a tune to himself.
Getting jumpy. He poured a little more bourbon into the coffee, took in a mouthful, and grimaced.
He set to scribbling again. “Who is Atlas? He is the people! The will of the people in the form of…”
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