John Shirley: BioShock: Rapture

Thanks to Eric Raab and Paula Guran.

Special thanks to Dustin Bond for additional game research.

Special thanks to everyone who put up with my bitching.

Sullivan, chief of security, found the Great Man standing in front of the enormous window in his corporate office. The boss was silhouetted against city lights. The only other illumination was from a green-shaded lamp on the big glass-topped desk across the room, so that the Great Man was mostly in shadow, hands in the pockets of his crisply tailored suit jacket as he gazed broodingly out at the skyline.

It was eight o’clock, and Chief Sullivan, a tired middle-aged man in a rain-dampened suit, badly wanted to go home, kick off his shoes, and listen to the fight on the radio. But the Great Man often worked late, and he’d been waiting for these two reports. One report, in particular, Sullivan wanted to have done with—the one from Japan. It was a report that made him want a stiff drink, and fast. But he knew the Great Man wouldn’t offer him one.

“The Great Man” was how Sullivan thought of his boss—one of the richest, most powerful men in the world. The term was both sarcastic and serious, and Sullivan kept it to himself—the Great Man was vain and quick to sense the slightest disrespect. Yet sometimes it seemed the tycoon was casting about for a friend he could take to heart. Sullivan was not that man. People rarely liked him much. Something about ex-cops.

“Well, Sullivan?” the Great Man asked, not turning from the window. “Do you have them?”

“I have them both, sir.”

“Let’s have the report on the strikes first, get it out of the way. The other one…” He shook his head. “That’ll be like hiding from a hurricane in a cellar. We’ll have to dig the cellar first, so to speak…”

Sullivan wondered what he meant by that cellar remark, but he let it go. “The strikes—they’re still going on at the Kentucky mines and the Mississippi refinery.”

The Great Man grimaced. His shoulders, angularly padded in the current style, slumped ever so slightly. “We’ve got to be tougher about this, Sullivan. For the country’s good, as well as our own.”

“Sir—I have sent in strikebreakers. I have sent Pinkerton men to get names on the strike leaders, see if we can… get something on them. But—these people are persistent. A hard-nosed bunch.”

“Have you been out there in person? Did you go to Kentucky—or Mississippi, Chief? Hm? You need not await permission from me to take personal action—not on this! Unions… they had their own little army in Russia—they called them Workers Militias. Do you know who these strikers are ? They are agents of the Reds, Sullivan! Soviet agents! And what is it they demand? Why, better wages and work conditions. What is that but Socialism? Leeches. I had no need of unions! I made my own way.”

Sullivan knew that the Great Man had the benefit of luck—he’d struck oil, as a young man—but it was true he’d invested brilliantly.

“I’ll… see to them myself, sir.”

The Great Man reached out and touched the glass wall, remembering. “I came here from Russia as a boy—the Bolshies had just taken the place over… We barely got out alive. I won’t see that sickness spread.”

“No sir.”

“And—the other report? It’s true, isn’t it?”

“Both cities are almost entirely destroyed. One bomb apiece.”

The Great Man shook his head in wonder. “Just one bomb—for a whole city…”

Sullivan stepped closer, opened one of the envelopes, handed over the photographs. The Great Man held the glossy photographs to the window so he could make them out in the twinkling light of the skyline. They were fairly sharp black-and-white snaps of the devastation of Hiroshima, mostly seen from the air. The city lights were caught on their glossy surface, as if somehow the thrusting boldness of the New York skyline had itself destroyed Hiroshima.

“Our man in the State Department smuggled this out for us,” Sullivan went on. “Some in the target cities were… atomized. Blown to bits. Hundreds of thousands dead or dying in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A great many more dying from…” He read aloud from one of the reports he’d brought. “‘Flash burns, radiation burns and trauma… It is expected that an equal amount will be dead of radiation sickness and possibly cancer in another twelve months or so.’”

“Cancer? Caused by this weapon?”

“Yes sir. It’s not yet confirmed, but—based on past experiments… they say it’s likely.”

“I see. Are we indeed certain the Soviets are developing such weapons?”

“They’re working on it.”

The Great Man snorted ruefully. “Two gigantic empires, two great octopi struggling with one another—and equipped with monstrous weapons. Just one bomb to destroy an entire city! These bombs will only get bigger, and more powerful. What do you suppose will happen, in time, Sullivan?”

“Atomic war is what some are saying.”

“I feel certain of it! They’ll destroy us all! Still… there is another possibility. For some of us.”

“Yes sir?”

“I despise what this civilization is becoming, Sullivan. First the Bolsheviks and then—Roosevelt. Truman, carrying on much of what Roosevelt began. Little men on the backs of great ones. It will only stop when real men stand up and say ‘no more’!”

Sullivan nodded, shivering. At times the Great Man could convey the power of his inner conviction, almost like a lightning rod transmitting a mighty burst of electricity. There was an undeniable power around him…

After a moment the Great Man looked curiously at Sullivan, as if wondering how much he could be trusted. At last his employer said, “My mind is made up, Sullivan. I shall move ahead on a project I was toying with. It will no longer be a toy—it will be a glorious reality. It entails great risk—but it must be done. And you may as well know now: it will take, perhaps, every penny I have to make it happen…”

Sullivan blinked. Every penny? What extreme was his boss going to now?

The Great Man chuckled, evidently enjoying Sullivan’s astonishment. “Oh yes! At first it was an experiment. Little more than a hypothesis—a game. I already have the drawings for a smaller version—but it could be bigger. Much bigger! It is the solution to a gigantic problem…”