They call it a Festival of Lights and The Holiday Season.
He remembers it vaguely by some other name, but it hardly matters to him what that name was. The only reason he notices any change at all in the massively high ceilings, and the glittering glass walls is because he was pulled from babysitting duty to put up the decorations.
It's not so bad, stringing up lights and putting up various green things to add the celebration, it's boring work, he has to pay attention to what he's doing and not because someone is going to get him but because he might fall if he doesn't.
He likes the red and green, it reminds him of something but he's not sure what.
The colored lights sparkle like glass against the black of the forever night that surrounds all of them and they look very nice, but they tend to flounder and drown in the bright lights of all the stores and the houses that never seem to
He wonders if the green stuff smells, he has another vague memory that it does.
"Ryan Industries reminds you to find something for that special someone in your life. Show them you care this Holiday Season!"
The public announcement system talks a lot, and he is only sometimes interested in what it says and when he pays attention to it he finds that it just says the same things over and over again. For instance, he knows that there is a sale going on at Fontaine's Department store for the Celebration of Lights, and that now is the perfect time to get the wife and mother a new oven with the new and improved Radar Range.
He doesn't have a wife or a mother, does he? No one he knows would like a Radar Range, at least he doesn't think they would. Doris wouldn't want one, would she? She isn't a wife or a mother though, so she can't have one.
"They're such freaks aren't they?" He turns his massive head slightly to bring into view the slender copper headed woman watching them with her male companion.
"Couldn't they make them look nicer?" She continues on, under one arm are packages, all nicely wrapped, stacked close together. He wonders who they're for, what is in the pretty wrapped boxes.
"Don't be silly, darling, if they looked nicer then people wouldn't keep away from them and the little sisters." The male is carrying even more packages in his arms, the top of his hat poking out from over them. Sometimes, when he ducks down it looks like a pile of gifts is talking and wearing a hat.
He goes back to his job, adjusting the edge of lights in order to make them even with the other side. Doris would like a package like that, wouldn't she? Something wrapped and pretty, with a bow on it, that's what he sees people carrying all over Rapture, they are all smiling and chatting with one another. If these boxes make people smile and laugh then it seems to him that a box would make Doris smile and laugh as well and he likes it when she does that.
He has come to two conclusions. He comes to these conclusions a lot because he forgets a lot of things. The first conclusion he comes to is that Doris is his favorite. Maybe he's not supposed to have favorites, but he does, and she is it. Sometimes he gets another little girl to follow around and it's never as much fun, they don't talk to him the way that Doris does. They run away and he has to make sure to keep up and it's just not the same.
Doris is his favorite.
The second conclusion he's come to is -
"THEY ARE TAKING THE CHRIST OUT OF CHRISTMAS!" In the dim and slightly sulfur scented back room of Doleman's bar, the preacher thundered down his words, pale hair damp from perspiration and the atmosphere of the room. "The big devils in their big cities can call it whatever they want, but this is Christmas, this is the precious time of our Lord's birth and they are intent to drive him out of it in the name of greed and profits. Make no mistake, friends, our God is an awesome and mighty God, no man, no force of nature can drive him from his creation!"
Mary Doyle always liked listening to the preacher speak. She didn't think he was an actual preacher, Andrew Ryan wouldn't ever let an actual man of God down into Rapture, but he had a way with words, he had been a teacher or something. He talks about it sometimes, when he gets a few drinks in him. Well, she figures, no man is perfect, no woman is either – down in Rapture they all have their vices.
A hand on her shoulder and she twitches, nearly jerking away and reaching for her gun before stopping herself. Things have changed in Rapture, in her, and things are hardly safe in her new found occupation. The penalty for smuggling anything, but especially religion and inflammatory outside propaganda is death, a painful death if not a public one and she would be damned before she would let Andrew Ryan's thugs end her. She'd go out fighting, taking out as many of them as possible. Her thoughts didn't used to be that way, she wasn't so violent before, wasn't so angry – but things had changed, she had changed, and while she had no proof of this, Mary was pretty sure the splicing didn't help. It was necessary though, this all was. When your enemy was fast and strong, when you were outnumbered, you had to take any advantage you could.
Of course not everyone thought this way, a few members of their little community would frown upon hearing what she had done. Changing God's work was a sin.
"Well ain't you a little jumpy, Mary? You itchin' for somethin'?" Jack Perkins leered at her from under the shadow of the brim of his cap.
"I don't know what you expect, going up behind people and grabbing them like you do." A huff and she properly turns to face him, arms crossed over her chest. He is the devil, this Jack Perkins, but he was smart, handsome, and their connection to the outside world. Jack could get his hands on anything and he knew it, and he charged a pretty penny because he knew it.
"It's all that junk you've been puttin' in yourself, them plasmids, soon you'll be seein' ghosts…"
Her gaze drops and flicks over to the man in the center of the circle, still ranting, still preaching about the all-seeing, all-knowing gaze of God. In between sips of beer, in between scripture verses he warns about the sin of greed, of avoiding that sale at Fontaine's, instead how they should focus on the needy this Christmas year. The poor, the destitute, the orphans.
Mary Doyle looks back at the man in the shadows.
"I assume you came here looking for more than just a chat, what do you have for me?"
A slow chuckle, like they have all the time in the world. "Don't get impatient, don't greedy on me Mary, you heard the preacher, greed is one of them deadly sins." But he gives her what she wants. "We had to move the drop ahead of schedule, the last site we picked ain't safe no more."
Her brow furrows in thought.
"You think Jonas talked?"
"Goddamn right he talked," the shadowed man growls, his eyes flicking toward the red faced preacher, as if silently asking forgiveness for taking the Lord's name in vain in his holy house.
"You don't get hit with that many volts of electricity and not talk. I don't blame the poor bastard, a few nights with Ryan's men and I'd be selllin' my ma out in order for the pain to stop." He straightens and reaches into his coat pocket for cigarettes to add to the already smoke laden room. "Some of us got military experience, Mary but ain't none of us signed up or trained for what they dish out on the other side. There ain't no rules here, even the krauts had rules they had to follow for POWs."
He didn't have to sell her on it, though she listened to his words anyway. Everyone knew the risks and everyone knew that there were some people who had faster breaking points than others, it was sort of part and parcel to the game.
"Just let me know the new place, that's all, we'll make-do." And a silent sigh and another shadowy grin from Jack.
"Of course, lovely, we'll give them top dwelling sinners a New Year's Eve they won't forget."
One day he watched two dirty men get shot down by flying machines for breaking into Le Marquis D'Epoque. He watched it happen like he watches everything happen, as an apathetic audience member, a stone wall between him and his charge. As long as those machines didn't touch the girl entrusted to his care, whatever happened didn't hardly matter to him, didn't hardly even register. The sight made one impression on him, and that was that he didn't really want to be in the way of those flying things with the bullets, they would be annoying and potentially deadly if there were enough of them.
So he had to come up with a way to get around them.
Which was difficult because he wasn't made to think, he wasn't made to come up with clever plans and schemes in order to get what he wants. He's not supposed to want, at least that's what he thinks, and generally he doesn't want, but this is different, this isn't for him.
It's for Doris.
So he comes up with a plan.
And it involves a dead man, not really dead, that wouldn't work, but freshly dead – and those are becoming more and more common he thinks. Sometimes they find a lot of them on any given day, sometimes not a lot at all, but they always find one.
So he finds one and carries it through the silent streets of Rapture to Fontaine's Department store, up to the fourth floor.
(Housewares, Lil Tots Toys, and Women's Fashion.)
And forgets his plan.
So he stands, idly, dead man on his shoulder, looking around – watching out the massive windows at the liquid sky all black and twinkling with their light stars. Somewhere, all around him there's a song playing, it's a familiar song, he's heard it before – he thinks. What is he doing here?
And then something catches his eye, a bear in a store window. Not any bear, THE bear, soft and brown, it looks very handsome with a crimson ribbon around its neck. THE bear.
And he remembers his plan.
His drill smashes the glass of the display and immediately the sirens go off, a warning that something bad has happened and something even worse is about to. He drops his patsy off at the scene of the crime, snatches THE bear and runs. He doesn't like running, it takes a lot of effort, but he can do it, it's not good enough just to be strong, he has to be fast too in case someone actually takes his little sister and tries to run. Some of them are very fast, getting faster, so he needs to be able to do the same.
It's not hard to hide behind one of the massive pillars while the bots zoom by seeking out whatever fleshy body might have decided to break a Rapture law. He can hear bullets smash into glass and fire into what he assumes is the body he left.
He doesn't go back to look. Instead he takes his ill-gotten goods away from the messy scene, to somewhere safe. THE bear deserves a place to be dry and not get very smelly and those are in short supply these days. He wishes that he had a box, THE bear should go in a box, something with a ribbon on it like the people that pass him have. It's truly a problem that requires thought, but he spent all that thought on actually getting THE bear and as for what to do with it before The Festival of Lights he's stumped. It doesn't really help that he only has one functioning hand, and a barely functioning brain.
He eventually finds a box that doesn't look like it was full of garbage or about to fall apart, and he puts THE bear in it and gently closes the lid. What if he forgets about THE bear? What if he can't remember where he put the box? He has brains enough to know that he doesn't have brains enough so he stops to think. He can't forget where the box is if he has the box. So he'll just carry it with him.
It's a pretty brilliant idea if he does say so himself.
Despite the fact that he doesn't even know when The Festival of Lights really is. He'll figure it out as he goes along he's sure.
It turns out that The Festival of Lights is the same night when they illuminate the huge tree in the center of Rapture, it glows like the sun when the switch is finally thrown, bright and golden, sparkling with colors that almost hurt his eyes to watch. Even from far away, on the other side of the city, the tree shimmering and swaying with the currents that ice around them.
Not everyone is invited to attend the lighting of the tree. Not everyone can make it to the city center because, for some reason, the public transportation stops working, and since it's the big day, not everyone has to be working - though some still do. The people who live in Apollo square still have to work, the Big Daddies and the Little Sisters still have to go on their rounds. Even though the sounds of music and celebration waft from the public address system, it doesn't reach every corner of Rapture; all men may be created equal, but they don't always stand on equal footing in the city under the sea.
The doors are reopened as the evening wears on, when the crowd starts to sway and stagger back to their places of residence. It's around that time that the public transportation system starts working again, just in time for clean up. Which means he can bring her to see the lights on the tree. He wonders if she cares about the tree all lit up in shining, if they will even be allowed to get in close as he walks with her on his massive brass shoulders. He knows the layout of Rapture better than he knows himself, more thoroughly and completely than anything else in the whole world, including what is in the box under his arm.
Maybe he should put it somewhere, he's been carrying it for a long time.
"Oh look, daddy! Look at how beautiful, it's covered in diamonds!" Doris gasps softly from his shoulder, pointing toward the magnificent tree that goes up and up toward heaven. "I've never seen anything like this before!" Which makes him sort of pleased, that he could reveal something to her that she has never seen before. She is pretty clever, this Doris, she knows all about everything and she is always happy to share her information with him, which is why he is happy to share this with her.
When they get good and close she attempts to shake his shoulder to get his attention, and he turns his bulbous head toward her, lights blinking. "Can we go around it?" She is whispering like it is a secret and he isn't sure why, but he nods his head and begins the long, slow process of moving around the lighted tree. It's a huge thing, he wonders how they got it down here, maybe they made it with magic. That's Doris's idea anyway, as she scampers across the width of his shoulders to sit on the one closest to the tree. She leans back, draping her feather weight self over the top of his head so she can see the very tippy top of the tree while her legs dangle from his shoulder.
She is amazed and he is happy.
When they get back to the place they started she scampers down him, sure footed and as easy as she were climbing stairs. On her feet she looks up at him and smiles before looking at the box he has been carrying. Maybe she can figure out why he has been carrying it, she is clever, more smart than he is, maybe she'll know what to do with it.
So he puts it down on the floor in front of her and she leans in to open it up, putting that big needle thing down in the process, she needs two hands to open it. There is a little gasp from the tiny girl when the flaps are peeled back and she hauls out THE bear. All majestic, that bear, with the fine looking ribbon around its neck, it's almost as big as her. It's eyes sparkle, because it is THE bear, a bear that cannot be beat by any other, perfectly formed and crafted by bear specialists for the little girl who has everything and needs more.
Even in her fever dream, Doris sees that this is one special bear.
"Is this for me? Can I have this? I'll take care of this if you let me have it, I promise. Oh look, look at how nice it is! Isn't it nice?" Doris rubs THE bear up against his hand and he can't feel it but he nods his head as if he can, and nods it again because she can have it. He tries to explain, use that implanted voice full of low song sounds and clicks, to explain, that it's for her, that he wanted to get her something special because she is special to him. It is hard for him to tell if she completely understands, sometimes it seems like she does and other times it's not clear to him. But she pulls THE bear tight to her chest and wraps her death pallor colored arms around it in the biggest hug he has ever seen. She still clings to THE bear as she climbs back up him to his shoulder and puts a kiss to the top of his round head.
He can't feel it, but he knows it's there and that's all he needs as his Festival of Lights present.