“Really—you can trust me, Mr. Glidden.”
“So you say. But supposin’ I get fired because of this? Maybe they blackball me! So I got no work! And then what? You can’t leave Rapture! You … can’t leave! Not even you, Doc! You think he’ll let you leave if you want to? Naw.”
“Oh, well I…” Her voice trailed off. She hadn’t given much thought to leaving Rapture. There seemed so many possibilities here. But what if she did try to leave? What would Ryan do? She was afraid to find out. “I’m … in the same boat, so to speak, with you, Mr. Glidden.” She smiled. “Or under the same boats.”
He crossed his arms in front of him and shook his head. He wasn’t going to say anything else.
She wrote, Subjects are typical in mistrust of Ryan and feeling of alienation. Social claustrophobia at boiling point for some. Financial status a key factor. Higher incomes show less anxiety … She underlined higher incomes and then said, “You can go, Mr. Glidden. Thanks for coming in.”
She watched Glidden rush from the room, and then she went to her desk, unlocked a drawer, and took out her journal. She usually preferred it to the audio diaries. She sat down and wrote,
If the Rapture experiment fails—as I suspect it will—another social experiment could be carried out in this strange, undersea hothouse. The very conditions that make Rapture explosive—its sequestering from the outside world, its inequities—could be the source for a radical social transformation. It’s something to consider … the danger of even contemplating such a social experiment is enormous, however … I must not let this journal fall into Sullivan’s hands …
Sofia put the pen down and wondered if what she was contemplating was too risky. Politics. Power … An idea that was becoming an idée fixe. Possibly it was sheer madness …
But madness or not—it had been growing like a child within her all the time she’d been in Rapture. She’d been quietly gestating the notion that what Rapture could destroy—men like Glidden—it could also save, if it were guided by a new leader.
She could turn Rapture sharply to the left—from within.
Dangerous thinking. But the idea would not go away. It had a life of its own …
Pumping Station 5
1950
Bill McDonagh was switching on drainage pump 71, to pump out the insulation and ventilation spaces in the walls of the Mermaid Lounge, when Andrew Ryan walked into station 5. Rapture’s visionary genius was smiling but seemed a bit distant, distracted.
“Bill! How about taking a quick inspection walk with me, as we’re both near Little Eden. Or are you handling an emergency?”
“No emergency, Mr. Ryan. Just a bit of an adjustment. There, that’s done it.”
Soon they were strolling along the concourse of Little Eden Plaza, walking past the gracious façade of the Pearl Hotel. People ambled by, couples arm in arm, shoppers with bags. Ryan seemed pleased by this evidence of thriving commerce. Some of the shoppers nodded shyly to Mr. Ryan. One rather matronly woman asked for his autograph, which he patiently provided before he and Bill hurried on.
“Anything you’re particularly concerned with, ’round here, Mr. Ryan?” Bill asked as they walked past the Plaza Hedone apartments.
“There’s talk of chemical leakage, and we had some kind of complaints at a shop in the area, so I thought I’d look into both at once. I don’t care much for complaints, but I like to know what’s going on and had some free time…”
They came to a corner that was covered with what appeared to be a thick green-black chemical leaking from a seam in a bulkhead. It smelled of petroleum and solvents. “There it is, Bill—were you aware of it?”
“I am, sir. That’s why I was adjusting the valves in station five. Trying to cut back on flushing so I could reduce this ’ere toxic overflow. There’s a factory upstream, you might say, or anyway upstairs from ’ere, turns out new signs and the like. Augustus Sinclair owns the place, what I remember. They use a lot of chemicals, dump them in the outpipes—but they corrode the pipes, and the solvents work their way out to the sidewalk. What might be worse, the rest of it gets dumped outta Rapture, Mr. Ryan—I checked on it. These chemicals, they go out into the ocean and down current—could be they’ll get all mixed up with the fish down there. We could end up eatin’ these chemicals when we eat those fish.”
Ryan was looking at him with arched eyebrows. “Really, Bill—how ridiculously alarmist! Why, the ocean is vast. We couldn’t possibly pollute it! It would all be diluted.”
“Right enough, sir, but some of it accumulates, what with currents and eddies, and if we create enough of a mess—”
“Bill—forget it. We’ve got sufficient concerns right here inside Rapture. We’ll have to replace those pipes with something stronger, and we’ll charge Augustus for it…”
Bill gave it one more try. “Just thought it’d be better if he’d use chemicals that wasn’t so corrosive, guv. Could be done, I reckon, if—”
Ryan laughed softly. “Bill! Listen to yourself! You’ll ask me to regulate industrial waste, next! Why, old Will Clark, up in Montana, created a wasteland around his mines and refineries, and did anyone suffer?” He cleared his throat, seeming to recollect something. “Well—perhaps some did, yes. But the world of commerce is restless; it’s like a hungry child that keeps growing and never quite grows up—it becomes a giant, Bill, and people must get out of its way or be stepped on by its ten-league boots! Oh, I’ll look into stronger drainage pipes outside factories, to prevent a mess on the sidewalk. Ryan Industries will bill Rapture, and Rapture will bill the factories. Come along, Bill, this way—ah! Here’s the other problem…”
They’d come to a shop in Little Eden Plaza called Gravenstein’s Green Groceries. Across the “street”—more of a wide passageway—and a little ways down was another, larger business called Shep’s ShopMart.
Reeking garbage of all sorts was piled up high in the gutter around Gravenstein’s. Bill shook his head, seeing every kind of garbage imaginable, most of it decaying. The fish heads were especially pungent. Shep’s, by contrast, looked immaculate. A small man in a grocer’s apron rushed out of Gravenstein’s as they approached; he had a hatchet face and flaplike ears, intense brown eyes, curly brown hair. “Mr. Ryan!” he shouted, wringing his hands as he ran up to them. “You came! I must’ve sent a hundred requests, and here you are at last!”
Ryan frowned. He didn’t respond well to implied criticism. “Well? Why have you let all this trash pile up here? That’s hardly in the spirit of the Great Chain…”
“Me letting it pile up? I didn’t! He did! Shep did it! I will pay any reasonable price 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
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