Rapture was a paradise. A person could do anything that they dreamed if they had the will and the skill. The best and the brightest that the world had to offer all together in one place, the greatest think tank in history; now it's just a septic tank full of spliced up monsters that'll shoot you as quick as look at you. My name is Marco Mendez, and I came here to be part of utopia! Now every day I have scrounge the streets for a bite to eat and hope to god that no one sees me. The splicers fight amongst themselves enough as it is, but if they see anyone who looks halfway sane they'll rip them to shreds. I guess that's because they're angry at being seen as the creatures they've become, or they think you're hording ADAM from them. God, how did it come to this? I suppose it started the day I met Sander Cohen….
I wouldn't call myself a dancer per say, more like moving model. There weren't many male strip joints topside, but you could find anything in New York (hell of a town). I did some pole work, got down to my unmentionables, but never went for the Full Monty. I have my self-respect after all. I just use my Latin charm and oddly bright green eyes to separate the ladies and gentlemen who came to Club Rojo from their money.
But stripping was never my true love, although it was a fun way to pay the bills. In fact I would have much preferred legitimate modeling, but the advertisements agencies of the 40s only wanted blue-eyed Jonny and blond haired Sally. My true passion was for cartooning. I had several comic strips of my own making. When I wasn't on the stage I was at my desk, but no paper would publish me. My characters didn't live up to the happy-go-lucky ideal that they wanted to print. I wanted things that were real, maybe some dark humor; I refused to tone down my creations for some editor with a stick up his butt and head in the sand.
I had just finished my set at the club when I met Cohen. I was still in the dressing room in my costume (cowboy that night) and I was putting my sketches of my latest idea for a comic in my bag. I guess he knew the owner of the club because normally the public wasn't allowed backstage. But there he was, leaning against the door frame arms crossed giving me the eye.
"Great show tonight. You really have a gift." He was clearly interested in me.
"Err..Thanks." I clearly wasn't interested in him. Don't get me wrong I knew who he was, Sander Cohen was a big name on Broadway, but I wasn't one to put out for some rich guy just to make a quick buck. Once again, I have self-respect.
He looked me up and down, not even trying to be subtle. He spotted my bag and saw the comic I was drawing sticking out of it. His eyebrow went up.
"I see you are talented in more ways than one. May I see your work?" I was going to protest, but he grabbed them before I could answer.
"Humm..Not bad," He looked over it, "Ooo! What a delightful pun!", and gave a pretty hearty laugh when he was done. I was uncomfortable standing there in a thong and cowboy boots while a total stranger look at my art.
"Haaa! Lovely plot twist! Oh my boy, not that I'm complaining, but why on Earth are you taking your clothes off for cash when you're writing work of this quality? I assume that you've more of these gems?"
"Apparently the only people who like it are random men who barge into the dressing rooms of strip clubs. Everyone else thinks that they're too 'unwholesome' for the public eye."
He paused in thought for a moment as if considering something of importance.
"Humm..What if I told you there was a place where your art could be appreciated without the sensor?"
Now he had my attention.
A month later, I was by the sea at dawn holding my bag, watching the sun rise one last time before the bathysphere arrived to take me away. Away to my new home. To my new life. To Rapture.
Present:
Another one bites the dust. Poor thing, she was too spliced up to see it coming. Oh well, better her than me. She should have known better than to try and take down a Big Daddy by herself. Big smelly brutes, it takes at least half a dozen splicers working together to kill one, and its damn hard to find six people here who can work together without killing each other.
Athena's Glory has held up better than most of Rapture. The explosion that cut it off from the rest of Olympus Heights really helped to keep the number of splicers to a minimal. But there are still a few Tin Daddies walking around. They fix holes in the windows when idle, or they just walk around aimlessly until it's time to bring out their Little Sister.
Poor kids, they're always being attacked. From my fortified apartment's window overlooking the square I can see them gather ADAM from corpses. Sickening. I never was religious, but I know that if only for creating those things, Ryan has earned himself a center spot in hell if someone could just send him there. Bastard.
I suppose I should thank him though. If not for Andrew Ryan I would be trapped here, but I know a secret. When Fort Frolic was constructed old Andrew had a secret passage built leading from his apartment right to Eve's Garden. Before the war broke out, Jasmine and I were close friends and she told me all about it. She used it to give Diana the slip whenever she would come home. Now I use it every now and them to gather supplies from Cohen's domain.
Ooop, there goes another one. These people just can't leave that girl alone. And that drill makes such a mess. At least they don't rot very much, ADAM is like a preservative keeping the bodies fresh enough where they don't stink up the joint.
Anyway, I think I'll make a trip to Eve's Garden later. Maybe I'll gather a little information from Hector while I'm there if he's still kicking. Hector is the only splicer I can talk to without having to put a bolt between his eyes soon afterward. I think that the splicers are less aggressive to people they knew, and he and I go way back.
And one more splicer goes squish. Good work Mr. B.
Past:
"I chose the impossible, I chose Rapture!"
I watched the movie play in the bathysphere, and when the screen went down I and the few others with me were in pure awe. There it was, a shimmering Atlantis waiting for me! The sea life swimming around only added to the majesty.
I turned to the man sitting beside me, "Did you ever dream it would be like this?"
"No one but Andrew Ryan could have dreamed of a place like this. This is worth never seeing the stars again. I'm Hector Rodriguez by the way, dancer."
He extended his hand and I shook it. He didn't need to tell me he was a dancer, I could tell by looking at him. His legs and thighs were almost bursting out of his pats with muscle, and his tone chest pulled his vest tight against his shirt.
"I'm Marco, I'm a cartoonist."
"Well Marco the cartoonist, get ready. Because we about to enter Utopia." He gave me a smile just as the sphere began to rise up into the entryway to our new city.
The housing situation in Rapture was an odd one. To determine how nice of a place you got you had to give up all your money that you had on the surface and change it into the currency of Rapture. I suppose it made sense for us to have our own money, it wouldn't do to have U.S. dollars, British Pounds, and French Franks floating about. But did Ryan really have to put his face on it? Anyway, if you spent too much on a nice home you wouldn't have enough to set up your business and vice versa. For me that was sort of a nonissue because I didn't hardly have any cash topside and I wasn't going to be a business owner. Sander had set me up with a job with the Rapture Tribune before I arrived, so the little cash I had could be used to find somewhere decent to reside. And Hec and I decided to be roommates to stretch our budgets, at least until we were each established enough to afford our own places.
With our combined incomes we could afford a nice little place just outside of Arcadia called the Centaur Suites. It was a two bed one bath slice of heaven. We had a great kitchen (not that ether of us could cook), living area complete with television and record player, and a view of Hephaestus that gave the whole place a low warm glow. We would spend hours looking into the ocean listening to the radio and just marvel at how great life was. It was my first home and Hector, my first friend.
Like me, he was handpicked by Cohen to come to Rapture for his talent on stage. He got a job dancing in Sander's musicals and he moonlighted at the Footlight Theater. When I got off from work at the paper I would go and see him perform and afterward we'd go out to the Seahorse for some drinks. It was the good life, and I never wanted it to end. But of course we have to wake up from even the best of dreams.