James "Jim" O'Toole
The Kashmir's small kitchen was a blizzard of activity. The restaurant had over two-hundred of Rapture's rich-and-famous, its most frequent clientele, in its two-floor facility for its annual New Year's Eve ball. Since Brenda Applebaum, the owner of the Kashmir, had given her restaurant a reputation for throwing the best New Year's Eve party in the city since 1946, her kitchen staff was under a lot of stress to give the snappiest yet highest-caliber service to the Kashmir's highly discriminating customers. This task was not an easy one for a staff of seven, and their increasingly dwindling morale was only shot down further when the waiter burst in with a re-order.
"Friggin' elites!" yelled Barry Hanlon, the kitchen supervisor as he stirred some crab bisque in a big pot. He hurriedly threw the rejected steak away and posted the re-order for one of the other cooks to take care of. "I mean, what did she do, splice her taste buds so she could turn her nose up at any food unless it was made by God Himself?!" The cooks and runners who heard the joke chuckled at it. They were willing to laugh at just about anything now. Hanlon went back to stirring his bisque.
"Dang, the Rapture elite! Why the heck did an upper class evolve, when this city was designed so that we'd all be equal? And by equal, I mean designed so that we would all have an equal chance at becoming captains of industry. Well," he snorted. "We do, but I guess most of us forgot that in any society, somebody's got to scrub the toilets."
"And cook the steaks," shouted a cook.
"And wash the dishes!"
Jim O'Toole, an eighteen year-old working his first job as a dishwasher/odd-job-man for the Kashmir, stood over the tripartite industrial sink scrubbing the grease off a big cooking pot. His gloves and brillo pad were stained black. The hot water in two of his three basins was dark as well. Barry, still stirring, looked over at Jim with a glance of sympathy, knowing that he had started from a position not unlike that back when he was growing up in Chicago.
"Good call, Jim!" he said. "We'll make kitchen staff out of you yet!"
"Yeah, keep it up new guy!" called Carl, the only Negro cook.
"That would be an honor, sir." replied Jim. Jim was quite thankful for his job. Most of the staff in here had either come from Apollo Square or Fontaine's Home for the Poor, and Jim, being not from either of those working class districts, had not expected the kitchen staff to welcome anyone who was not of their own stock. Yet they had welcomed him and were rather friendly with the new guy. Perhaps it was the common stress of living under Brenda's nigh-constant whiny haranguing that bonded them all. He continued scrubbing the pot. To Jim's left, a gigantic stack of plates, cooking trays, beer glasses, and pots was waiting to be washed. Barry noticed it.
"Jim, don't worry about that grease. It's on the outside of the pot, and besides, what these elites don't know won't hurt them. Just put the pot in the sterile rinse and give it to Carl, then get cracking on the rest of that crap."
"No problem." Jim hurried to give the pot to Carl, and then abruptly straightened the paper crew cap he was wearing on his head before hopping back to his sink. Brenda had just entered the kitchen.
"Boys, you need to hurry it up! How many orders are you behind…fifteen? Oh my God! Speed it up already! That's fifteen customers you're cheesing off!" Her chainsmoking New York accent permeated all corners of the kitchen. Jim was surprised some tiles didn't chip off the walls whenever she spoke.
"Mrs. Applebaum, with all due respect," said Barry as he spooned crab bisque into bowls. "We're moving as fast as we can without sacrificing the Kashmir quality your customers expect."
"Well I expect you to be able to cram that same quality into a smaller time window. It's New Year's Eve, for heaven's sake! We've got a reputation to live up to! Oh, and Jim,"
"Yes?"
"Be a dear and go clean out the ashtrays in the gentlemen's club upstairs. They're getting filthy."
"Yes ma'am, I can do that."
Without saying thank you, Brenda's red dress, blond hair, and glittering earrings swooped out of the kitchen and back into the cocktail lounge.
"Geez," snorted Barry. "Nothing like helping us out a little in here."
Before leaving, Jim stared at the pile of dishes he still had waiting for him.
It's only going to get taller anyway, he muttered to himself before grabbing the dustpan and scooper. Not like that's bad. It's just more time on the clock and more money for me anyway.
Jim left the kitchen and could've sworn he'd stepped into a petting zoo. Around him swarmed men, women, and children wearing rabbit, cat, and bird masks they'd bought from the hostess. While usually the Kashmir's New Year's Eve party had some maritime theme like "tropical island" or "King Neptune," this year the Kashmir was holding the first "annual" Rapture Masquerade Ball for its New Year's celebration. Jim thought little of it at the time, but he remembered later that hiding one's face had become a very popular fad recently, especially among those who had been treated with ADAM.
Instead of breathing in smoke from the kitchen, Jim was now breathing in smoke from these patrons. He gave off a million excuse me's and pardon me's as he edged his way through the laughing, chattering crowd. The singer Anna Culpepper had made an appearance earlier in the evening. She had gone since then and the stage was empty save two stacks of speakers and a microphone, but many masked husband-and-wife couples were dancing slowly while masked children, all boys, in tuxedoes tried to chase each other through the smoke-filled choke. Jim made his way up the stairs past the giant modern art painting and up to the Kashmir's main lounge. In the blur of people and smoke, he could barely make out the streamers, bows, and oversized masks strung up everywhere for decoration. The Kashmir must have tuned in to Rapture Radio, because the sound system on the column behind the hostess's desk was churning out Bobby Darin.
"Somewhere beyond the sea, she is there watching for me. If I could fly like birds on high, then straight to her arms, I'd go sailin'."
As Jim made it to the top of the stairs, two little girls dressed in kitten masks darted past him into the smoking lounge.
"Well there's a rare sight," said Jim to himself. One thing people in Rapture didn't see very often anymore were young girls, at least young girls with healthy skin tone and normal eyes. The reach of the Little Sister program was great. Only the richest who could afford to pay were able keep their daughters out of it. The razor-thin middle class in Rapture had a moderate chance, but the great masses of working poor had no hope. Jim remembered that just four months ago when he stepped out of his parents' apartment to go job-hunting he had seen his neighbors' daughter, Masha, playing with sidewalk chalk in the street. The next day as he went out again, he only saw Masha's mother crying hysterically over her daughter's chalk drawing. Jim asked the distraught woman what was the matter. On her knees, she gripped him by his shirt and sobbed that several of Ryan's men had taken Masha last night with the only justification being that she was needed to help save Rapture. Jim knew from propaganda messages that Masha had disappeared into the laboratories of Point Prometheus.
Jim made it to the gentlemen's club, which consisted of two teal lounge chairs, a brown leather couch, and a large cylindrical ashtray near the Kashmir's entrance. Some men were sitting there with cigars in their mouths.
"Excuse me," said Jim. "I just have to clean out the ashtray."
"Sure, no problem," said the man nearest him. This man was the only one in the gentleman's club wearing a rabbit mask. "Don't mind us."
The men continued their conversation as if Jim weren't even there.
"Did you see the new banner they hung up in the Transit Hub? The one that says 'Altruism is the Root of all Wickedness'?"
"Of course I did, my wife and I noted it on the way here. Couldn't agree with it more myself. After all, why should I give what I have worked for to those who haven't? And, even more to the point, why should I be forced to by any government? That's penalizing me for doing my utmost and rewarding them for doing nothing. That's why I came to Rapture. I wouldn't have to deal with any of that."
"My thoughts exactly."
The man with the rabbit mask spoke up next. "Mm, do you remember when we were on the surface and altruism was considered a virtue by so many? The Boy Scouts, the Catholic Church, the Elks Club. They all thought the highest duty in their lives was to ultimately set themselves aside for others. What rubbish, eh?"
"I couldn't have said it better myself. We all remember what Roosevelt did to combat the Great Depression?"
"Oh, don't remind me!"
"He listened to the people," said the man in the rabbit mask. "The broad, teeming mass of people. He heard their cries for relief, he let them ignite the spark of compassion in his heart, and what came out of it? The New Deal. The single worst attempt in American history for the government to steal undue power from the individual, and a failed way to set right the economy, I might add. You know, I bet that if the government had left us alone, businesses would've made all the corrections earlier and the Depression could've been over in '35 or so. But no. Roosevelt forced the wrong corrections down our throats. I had a drill factory. Before the crash I had a good-sized staff, but once the Depression hit I had to lay many off just to stay afloat. Of course my former employees had no income, but at least those who could stay on did and had a way to support their families. Then those who got laid off cried to Roosevelt: put a moratorium on layoffs! So he did. And guess what happened next? My drill factory went out of business. And why is that such a tragedy? Because good men who would've stayed on lost their jobs along with those who would've been laid off anyway. More people lost their jobs than was necessary and more suffering was forced upon their backs because the government tried to help them. I tell you, whenever the government tries to help the people, they always seem to end up hurting them!"
"Gah, the people"said another. "Most dangerous phrase anyone could ever come up with. All throughout history, it's been the people who in essence have knocked civilization back a notch or two. Majority rule, democracy, only puts the power in the hands of a bunch of whiny, easily manipulated cattle who think only about the here-and-now and know nothing about the way the world works. That's why in democracies we see horrible things like the New Deal coming about. If you ask me, the people should never have been given power in the first place. It's the people who were stupid enough to sell their stocks and begin the selling panic that led to the Great Stock Market Crash of 1929. It was the people who exacerbated the Depression they brought down upon their own heads by petitioning the government to help them. And it was the people who led the bloody and disastrous French Revolution, supported the rise of the Bolsheviks in Russia and the Maoists in China, and gave Hitler his throne. If you ask me, the people need a muzzle put on them. Everything these social democrats, these syndicalists, socialists, communists, anybody who speaks well of democracy, says is a load of garbage. It is liberty they should be concerned with. Liberty to work, to speak, to think, to build! Not the yoke of majority rule so many idiots up on the surface so willingly let the social democrats place upon their heads. And so," he said, turning again to the rabbit-masked man, "it was your experience with the New Deal that turned you off to altruism forever?"
"Of course. I've always thought that an individual can complete tasks better than a group. As Mark Twain said, the effectiveness of a committee is directly proportional to its size. Therefore, a committee of one should be the most effective force available in society. But unfortunately Western civilization has been corrupted by the thought that we can all do better as a team. What bull. Everywhere it's been tried, it's failed. Sweden, the Soviet Union, everywhere altruistic socialism was put in place the economy slowed and the people suffered, but they turned a blind eye to it because their precious governments placated them with discounted food, free medical care, free housing, free whatever. Their standard of living was stripped from them, as was their liberty, and their governments fed off of both while enriching themselves. Gentlemen, that is the society of the parasite in action!"
"I tell you, when it comes to the parasite, it all boils down to force. Humans have a fatal love affair with power, and the best way to exercise power is to use force on someone else. It's disgusting."
"And force can be anything related to altruism," continued the rabbit masked-man. "The government taxing the rich for wealth redistribution, the petitioning group pressuring Congress to issue more food stamps, even the charity organization collecting money for the poor. When I was living in Los Angeles I walked into a supermarket around Christmastime and a Salvation Army lady was out front ringing her bell. She saw my attire and asked me for a donation, describing the conditions the poor live in. She was trying to guilt me into giving my money to a bunch of squatters! Guilting, taxing, coaxing, they're all forms of force! And so you know what I did? I told her to let the poor lift themselves up, as they're capable of it. She just told me that selfishness like that would cause God to frown on me send me to hell. Then I told her I have no fear of hell or her god, because neither of them exists."
"Hmph. Selfishness. Why do the parasites have to hate it so much? Selfishness isn't bad. It's the desire to improve oneself, to compete with others to offer improved services. It is incentive! When linked with reason, it is the basis of a working civilization! Rapture was running fine on that until Fontaine came in to screw it up."
"Yeah, but Fontaine is dead. We don't have to worry about him anymore."
Jim worked as the men continued their talk. As he popped the top off the tray and began scooping the ashes and dead butts into the dustpan, he saw a petite blond woman he recognized from pictures as Diane McClintock. She made her was up the stairs from the cocktail lounge/dance floor towards the ladies' room. Jim could've sworn he saw a tear trickle out from her left eye.
