Why Just Girls?

"I am Andrew Ryan, and I am here to ask you a question.

Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow?

'No,' says the man in Washington. 'It belongs to the poor.'

'No,' says the man in the Vatican. 'It belongs to God.'

'No,' says the man in Moscow. 'It belongs to everyone.'

I rejected those answers.

Instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible.

I chose…

RAPTURE.

The city where the artist would not fear the censor.

Where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality.

Where the great would not be constrained by the small.

And, with the sweat of your brow, Rapture can be your city as well.

-Andrew Ryan

Ah, Rapture. The refuge of the great people who were chewed up and spat out by the world, by the Parasites. The artist, rejected for their material being labeled as 'obscene'. The scientist, made a social pariah because of their 'morally dubious' experiments. The billionaire industrialist, ruined by the worker's unions for their 'unethical' employment. All these people and more flocked to Rapture. For years, the Objectivist utopia would flourish. Business boomed. Art was celebrated and valued. There were numerous advancements and discoveries in the realm of science as well. And among them: ADAM.

The glorious wonder drug that could heal the wounded, and empower the healthy. Line after line of new Plasmids were released. Telekinesis to amuse your friends or get something when you don't feel like getting up, Incinerate for your enemies, or to get the stove going. Winter Blast for a hot-head. Security Bullseye if you wanted something you couldn't afford. All of these became readily available to Rapture's citizenry. For years, ADAM sat in the crown of Rapture as its biggest and brightest jewel. Yet, this shining jewel would prove Rapture's undoing.

From 1958 onward, Rapture steadily declined. And by '59, Rapture had officially hit rock bottom. Corpses sat in pools of blood and urine, littering the city. Buildings were in leaky shambles, in awful disrepair from the Civil War ignited by the genetic arms race between the loyalists of Andrew Ryan and Frank Fontaine's rebel bandits. Even those who wished to remain neutral in the war were forced to ruin themselves with ADAM only to survive.

All those who remained in Rapture during the late 1950's were trapped in the city; penned up in a hellhole of chaos and death. Regardless, many people were indoctrinated by Ryan's anti-surface propaganda in addition to the shutting down of means of transport that might bare Rapture's denizens away. Those lucky 70 were fortunate enough to look at the political instability and growing ADAM use, and flee. Please forgive my course language in the next sentence. As you may know, everything went to absolute shit in Rapture after 1958. But, for now, let's focus on the story that I have created with these great tools provided me by the great people who created the BioShock story.

"Plasmids changed everything. They destroyed our bodies, our minds; we couldn't handle it. Best friends butchering each other,

babies strangled in cribs…

The whole city went to Hell."

-Frank Fontaine

In Rapture, little girls were always idolized. There was little more than hatred for little boys. The working class saw sons only as competition. As a result, baby boys would be abandoned at young ages, mostly at infancy or just after being born. They were the ones strangled in cribs.

I think Atlas said it best. Little Sisters were worth their weight in gold. However, some families wished to give their children a 'better future' without abandoning or killing them. "How?" they would ask. Fontaine would be the one to answer. He answered with his orphanages. "Fontaine's Little Wonders Educational Facility". Poor families who wanted to keep their boys because they saw them as a way to keep the family alive with a job would receive sums of money for their children. The working class was happy to give them up. In the mid 1950's, ADAM was the best thing since sliced bread, and the business sector was all exceedingly eager to mass-produce it.

Children, especially little girls, proved to be excellent hosts for the ADAM slugs. When Andrew Ryan defeated Frank Fontaine and drove him into hiding, Fontaine's businesses were nationalized by the Rapture Council. The orphanages ran by Fontaine were shut down, and orphaned children littered the Rapture. Brigid Tenenbaum would often rescue the abandoned little boys, whenever she could find them. In the streets, hiding out in alleys, in trash cans.

She would bring them with her when she went underground; ihre kleinen jungen. Though the Little Boys could produce an adequate amount of ADAM, they were not chosen as primary gatherers for ADAM by Ryan when he took over the orphanages with Ryan Industries. Ryan did, however believe Tenenbaum when she said that the girls were incapable of producing EVE. The two would decide to use the little boys as EVE factories, as well as for ADAM. The Little Brothers and Sisters would, of course, need protectors. Common sense dictated that to Tenenbaum and Ryan. Non-voluntary candidates for the Protector Program would be pulled from the streets and from among criminals.

Convicts would be offered better food and upgraded lodging within the penal system, only being able to enjoy these fine privileges for a few weeks before being bound, sedated, and carted off to Failsafe Armored Escorts. Subjects for protectors and gatherers would be kidnapped from their cities and homes on the surface by crooked smugglers, which was just another market by which Fontaine turned a profit. Men put out of work with the completion of Rapture's construction or those looking to make a new start for themselves willingly entered the program through the use of well-placed propaganda.

By 1955, creation of Gatherers and Protectors was set in full motion.

The Civil War had barely begun, it had touched very little of the city.

Few little girls and boys were put on the street with their ghoulish fathers to suck the ADAM from corpses at that time. The majority of the Gatherers were kept in the safety of the training facilities for further conditioning.

In the meantime, many of their Protectors would go about on maintenance and repair work for Rapture. Julie Langford commissioned the installation of Gatherer vents in Arcadia, and welcomed the grotesque pairs with open arms. Why did she do this? The Saturnine. Corpses lying around in the forest floor of Arcadia would be awful for business. The cult members were constantly killing one another for the purpose of religious sacrifice, grudges, or simply plasmid-induced madness.

June 3, 1956; Arcadia. (Audio Diary)

Speaker: Julie Langford

"My new acquaintance Dr. Brigid Tenenbaum offered a suggestion to me yesterday. She said that I could fix two of my problems: The Saturnine, and their corpses. Apparently, she put sea slugs into the stomachs of a bunch of children, and they made more ADAM at dectuple capacity! Not only this, but they can recycle - blood - into usable ADAM. The only downside is that they require protection. Fortunately, Tenenbaum considered that as well. I've ordered two pairs of them from Tenenbaum. Those urchins will get me some ADAM, and, if I'm lucky, their ghoulish fathers will bump off some of those wretched pagans while they're at it.

June 5, 1956; Arcadia

Johnny skipped joyfully through a pair of lush, flowery trees. "Come along, Daddy. We'll miss the Angels dancing!" Johnny called in his British accent to his Bouncer Big Daddy. You see, Johnny was a Little Brother. His skin was a sickly grey-green colour, and his eyes glowed bright yellow. Johnny wore a baby blue polo shirt, with a pair of navy-shaded short pinafore shorts. His 'Father' groaned in response, lumbering up to him. The Bouncer offered his flat and gargantuan palm, offering his charge a ride on his back.

The Gatherer accepted, grinning widely as he ran back and sat in the Bouncer's hand. Johnny was lifted up and onto the Bouncer's back, and held on tightly as the Bouncer continued on with remarkable speed for a Big Daddy. Visitors and patrons of Arcadia backed away from the ghoulish pair as they passed, not wishing to incur the wrath of the Protector's drill, or the Gatherer's needle. Speaking of which, the two arrived at the corpse detected by Johnny. The Big Daddy moaned, and set his charge gently on the ground. "Thank you, Daddy."

The boy knelt before the corpse. He stuck the needle of his harvester in the corpse's neck, and pulled the trigger. ADAM-infused blood filled the baby bottle attached to the harvester quickly, prompting Johnny to lift the harvester above his head. "Look, Daddy! ADAM!" Johnny squealed joyfully. The Bouncer patted his charge on the head, moaning softly as the Gatherer stood. Johnny drank all of the ADAM quickly, as though it were the most delicious thing in the world.

To him, it was. The mental conditioning of all Gatherers not only gave them rose-colored glasses through which to see Rapture, but also made them to hallucinate propagandistic posters which reminded them of how to properly execute their job.

A perfect cycle of slavery had been set in motion. The protectors and gatherers were but gears or cogs; pawns in the hands of Rapture's many powerful pieces. Here ends Chapter One.

So, what did you guys think? A lot of work went into this. I'm working on more stories at the moment.

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