Chapter 18 – Demonstration

"Gentlemen, I'm going to assume you're familiar with our base model, the S10," Rollie said in a crisp and charismatic voice to the delegation from Ryan Security. Not Ryan himself, of course, no, the Lord High King was far too busy. He probably wouldn't know what to do with the turrets anyway. The handful of station chiefs and engineers were much better equipped for the demonstration.

Everyone nodded. S10s were part and parcel of Rapture. One of the turrets was waiting downrange at the testing facility of Stone and Sons, which was where they were gathered that morning. Richard was standing next to Rollie, watching the faces of the latest customers.

"I'm not going to say the S10 isn't a fine piece of machinery, it's a real humdinger," Rollie continued and took a submachine gun out from below the counter and aimed the barrel at the S7 through the small slot of the safety window. He squeezed the trigger and a spray of low caliber rounds bounced off the S10, leaving the casing dented but intact.

"However, it is vulnerable to larger caliber rounds at a close range," Rollie said once the clatter of brass had faded away.

Richard hit the switch on the console that moved the S10 to about six feet from the counter they stood at. He and Rollie had prepared their presentation to seamless perfection. Rollie had always been comfortable laying on the butter. Richard was more of a shadow to him, especially after the war. But lately, well, lately Richard felt like he could start giving the speeches himself.

Rollie set the submachine gun back in its drawer. "You may want to cover your ears now, gentlemen," he warned.

Richard put the bulky ear protectors on, as did Rollie and several of the customers. A few though evidently believed themselves to be some real hard asses and chose not to use ear protection. Richard just shrugged. In Rapture one was free to fuck one's self in any way they saw fit.

Rollie took a 12 gauge shotgun out from the drawer. Richard kept his eyes on the crowd as he had blown up dozens of S10s in the past few months and it was no longer interesting. Despite the ear protection the shotgun blast a foot or so from his head still stung, but not as badly as it did for the men who believed they didn't need it. Richard suppressed a grin as they winced.

"Not too pretty after that, is it?" Rollie set the shotgun down on the counter and took his ear protection off, as did Richard and the other not stupid men. The wreckage of the S10 was still smoldering behind them. Richard flipped another switch and an almost identical looking turret came whizzing out of the recesses of the range.

"This is the S11," Rollie introduced the new turret. "My baby brother here has given the S11 one helluva coat of paint. Richie, would you like to do the honors? Oh, and ears on again."

Richard put his ear protectors on again and took his place. He had oiled and cleaned all the firearms that morning in preparation for the demonstration and the smell of the lubricants caused him to wrinkle his nose slightly. The beauty of the shotgun was that aiming was easy – he didn't have to take much time to be confident that he'd hit his mark.

Richard squeezed the trigger and the deafening explosion was paired with a striking thud as the S11 absorbed the impact without breaking. Instead it sprung to life and started firing back rounds of its own, albeit blank rounds. No live ammo from the turrets in the demonstration area. Richard loaded another cartridge into the shotgun and fired. The S11 didn't miss a beat in it's response of firing rounds.

"This little devil here will take multiple blasts with a shotgun, machine gun, rifle, hell, anything smaller than field artillery, and keep ticking," Rollie proudly announced once they removed their ear protection. "It's got a hundred-round drum inside of it that'll keep any assailant busy long enough for you to come running. And when you get there you can rest assured that it's going to know you're on the same team, which is why I cannot stress enough that you've got to register your entire force with the sonic printing."

Rollie handled the speeches because he was also better at bending the truth. The S11 could handle anywhere between two and five blasts, depending on various factors. Richard supposed that two counted as "multiple" but he'd still rather let Rollie deal with it.

Richard turned back to study the faces of the assembled men. They seemed impressed but Richard derived no joy from it. The S11 was far from perfection – he could fit more rounds into it, develop better armor, and improve the stand-by battery life. As it stood it needed a battery change every four months, but after reading up more on nuclear power Richard wanted to see if he could implement that into the turrets. Telling a client that the battery would likely last longer than they'd live would be a pretty good selling point. But that would be a poor way to phrase it. Best let Rollie do the talking.

After the demonstration Rollie and Richard reported back to their father. Their father was getting old, as he constantly told them, and he wanted them to stand on their own feet in the business so he was attending less and less of their business operations. He motioned for his sons to pour their own whiskeys and then asked them how it went.

Rollie smiled and handed Richard the bottle. "We're going to be richer than we already are, that's how it went. As long as Richie here keeps rolling out new models every year they'll keep buying the upgraded ones. That's a business model and a half, right there."

Richard poured himself two fingers of whiskey. "I've got plans for the next one on my desk." He drained the glass in one go. He was going to sleep with Dorothy that night and figured he needed as much fortification as he could get. "How much money are we going to be making and how soon am I going to get it?"

Their father chuckled at his direct query. "What's eating you? You're already making more than 90% of the people in this tub combined."

"His wife, that's what's eating him," Rollie answered for him.

Richard scowled at his brother's cavalier attitude. Like any sane human being he didn't care to discuss his relationship problems with his parents. "The surgery was expensive," Richard slowly said. "I don't like being strapped for cash down here. It's an unwelcome proposition." Rollie if you don't keep your mouth shut about my divorce I'll have your guts for garters, you utter halfwit.

Rollie seemed to get Richard's intentions and said nothing more about the situation.

His father chuckled again. "Dorothy's wanting more money then, is she? Hasn't got enough shoes and…whatever else it is women like."

"Purses," Rollie supplied. "Broads love purses."

"That they do boy," his father agreed and lit a cigar. "Every time I see your mother she's got a new purse. Well you're going to have to tell Dorothy she's gonna have to make do with what she's got for a while. I'm going into the supply side of automated defense so it's going to at least be until next year that you boys are going to get any bonuses or raises. If you need extra cash I recommend you figure out another way to do it."

"The hell you mean, the 'supply side'?" Rollie asked, suspicious of their father.

Richard was too disappointed with the news to ask any follow ups. I'm going to be stuck in this miserable marriage in this miserable city forever. Sometimes late at night when he couldn't sleep he thought that he really had died in the war and this was some sort of bizarre limbo. Even in the daylight those thoughts were getting harder and harder to banish.

"I mean firearms," their father clarified. "We'd be stupid not to, we've got all the equipment already that we need."

Richard was jolted from his reverie at this. "What?" he exclaimed in unpleasant surprise. "You want us to make guns?"

His father nodded. "It's not much different from what we make now."

Richard was speechless for a moment. He'd always rationalized making turrets to be personably acceptable because they were a defensive measure to keep thieves and rapists and other criminals out of where they weren't supposed to be in the first place. But as he had learned the hard way, guns could be used by very, very evil men to impose their will upon others. Of course he knew that wasn't the only use, but the twisting in his gut that accompanied memories of getting shot himself compelled him to protest.

"Do we really need to do that?" Richard asked with a look of disgust on his face. "We make enough with the turrets, don't we?"

"Well excuse me, Josef Stalin, but I can make whatever in the hell I want to make!" Their father loved to play the oppressed victim at every possible opportunity, and the mere suggestion that perhaps they shouldn't make firearms was more than enough to robe himself in the mantle of the downtrodden.

"Now Pops, you know Richie got shot up, it makes sense that's a bit sensitive about it," Rollie jumped to his brother's defense.

"Sensitive?" scoffed their father. "You got better, didn't you?"

Richard didn't really know what to say to that, so instead he poured himself another glass of whiskey and swallowed it in one go.

"At any rate I'm not forcing you to do it, but I am investing in it with the profits from the Ryan Security contract. So unless you want to sell your stake in the business you're going to have to make do with the cash you've got on hand for now," their father informed them with an air of finality. "Or get money somewhere else. You're both smart, if not a little on the bleeding-heart side," he added with a glance towards Richard.

"Don't let him get to you," Rollie muttered to Richard as they walked down the corridor. "You know how he is."

"Mmm," Richard replied, not too concerned with their father.

The all-encompassing obsession with money in Rapture was wearing away at Richard. It was enough to make a man a communist, but he wouldn't dare say that aloud. He was preoccupied with the fact that while he had enough cash on hand to sustain his current lifestyle he'd be restricted from any large expenditures for nearly a year. Unless I can make money somewhere else. He wanted that divorce so badly he could taste it and it tasted like Lupe's snatch.

"I'm going home early," Richard informed his brother. He hasn't told Dorothy that he was angling to have sex with her that night – he wanted it to appear to be an organic expression of 'love' – but he was hoping that he'd be able to have some time with Lupe before Dorothy got home from her ladies club that afternoon. Burn some good memories into my head before I got to make nice with the goblin.

"Alright, bright and early tomorrow, huh? I want to work on the transistors with you," Rollie called to him.

If Richard slept in Dorothy's bed, which he probably was going to, he realized with a heavy sigh, he was going to be more than ready to jump out of bed at the earliest opportunity. "Sure thing. Seven a.m." Hopefully the several glasses of whiskey he'd already drank would rock him to sleep too, but he wasn't feeling anything yet.

Rollie laughed. "I meant ten, Richie."

Richard bought some flowers on his way home. He racked his brain trying to remember what sort of flowers Dorothy liked. Daisies? Definitely not, too common. Roses? No, that's too easy. Lilies? I liked lilies, what are the odds we like the same thing?. He selected some chrysanthemums, which certainly seemed fancy enough for her tastes.

"I'm sorry, they aren't for you," he practiced in the elevator on the way up. "I promise when I get that divorce I will bring you flowers, well, not every day, that would be ridiculous, but at least once a week."

Oh, I understand, Lupe would assure him. I love lilies, bring me lilies, she would add.

"Hello," he called out when he flung the front door open. "Anyone home?" A smile played on his lips as he expected Lupe to come bounding out of the kitchen at any moment to hug him. He didn't even want any obscenities today, just to sit with her on the sofa and read the newspaper and have a snack until Dorothy came to rain on his parade.

Only the loud ticking of the clock in the hallway answered him.

"Lupe?" Richard called out again after thirty seconds had gone by.

The ticking of the clock only seemed to be louder this time around. He noticed that the hat rack had been knocked over and the potted fern had been kicked aside. Something's not right, he realized with a sinking feeling. He dropped the flowers on the floor and ran to the kitchen.

"Lupe!" Richard yelled out as he threw the door open. It was empty. A bowl on the counter held flour and butter that had been in the process of being cut together – biscuits were one the few things she could make well.

He stopped yelling her name as he frantically searched the rest of the apartment. Once it was evident that she was no longer in the apartment he went to the closet. Calm down, maybe she's just stepped out for something, something so important she wouldn't bother picking up the hat rack or the plant or finishing mixing the biscuits, he tried to reassure himself. Any second now she's going to come through the front door. Everything is fine.

Her purse was in her room, neatly put against the end of her bed, and Richard checked to see if it contained her wallet, which it did, as well as her keys and her monthly metro pass. Her coat was still in the closet, as was her shoes as she was in the habit of wearing soft soles slippers when there wasn't company around.

Richard's first finger of suspicion spun to his wife. But Dorothy was smarter than this. She wouldn't…dispose of Lupe so sloppily. She'd lure her into an alley and shoot her or more likely pay a hitman to do it.

Richard raced down the stairs, eschewing the lazy luxury of the elevator. Several steps outside of the building a newsstand had set up shop several months ago. Richard was familiar enough with the proprietor and asked if he'd seen anything suspicious or noteworthy and he said yes, yes he had. Four or five men in trench coats had forcibly yanked a young lady out of the building. She was kicking up a mighty fuss, yes indeed, hollering for them to let her go and that she didn't do nothing.

That old boss of hers, what's his name, the Dutchman, Richard put together. The letter from the lawyer didn't scare him off as he had hoped. He's come here or sent some goons or both and they dragged her out of her and took her back. I am going to go and beat his ass so hard he'll eat his dinner through a straw. Richard had never felt such rage before, not even towards the anonymous soldier who had nearly killed him. This was personal; a brutal assault on the deepest and most guarded part of his heart.

He got halfway to the metro stop before he realized he had no idea where he was going. Lupe didn't care to talk about it much and he didn't care to pry. The letter! He kept a copy of it in his home office. Richard raced back up the stairs, putting his new legs to the test. To Doctor Ashland's credit the legs worked remarkably well.

Richard uncharacteristically threw files aside haphazardly as he tore through the filing cabinet. He swore loudly until he found the letter in the lower left drawer of his desk. Street M, Block 17, Building 15, Pirithous Court.

I am going to cave his head in.