MAY 7, 1959 — 1:36 PM
The bathysphere slid smoothly, near soundlessly toward its next destination, gliding through the currents as effortlessly as the schools of fish that flitted across its path. The lights of the city shone through the bathysphere's small porthole, casting a deep blue-green glow on its metal-and-plush interior.
The size of the porthole was hardly convenient for sightseeing, but Jack enjoyed the sights anyway. He was always grateful for these private rides on the Metro, and in recent months had even mustered the will to wield his authority and request them specifically for this reason alone. Nearly ten years of isolation had done plenty to erode the citizens of Rapture's sense of wonder; marveling at the city's splendor with one's nose pressed to the glass was considered childish behavior, at least in the circles with which Jack most often associated.
Then again, perhaps that was appropriate. His physical age would certainly qualify him for childish behavior, if nothing else.
Sometimes Jack wondered if his father would treat him any differently if he were actually as old as he appeared. He wondered how different everything else would be, if he'd actually been a natural child of Andrew Ryan rather than something cooked up in a lab. He wondered what else might be missing in the time lost between them.
But there was nothing to be gained in idle wonder, his father had been quick to teach him. Such thoughts could be nothing more than that: just idle wonder.
It was always better to turn his mind to questions that had a definitive answer, he felt, hence his journey to the Ryan Industries compound. Definitive answers were never guaranteed where he was concerned, he had long ago found, but as he had said to his father mere hours earlier, it was always worth a try. There was nothing to be valued in something one didn't have to work for, wasn't there? And that just made his questing all the more valuable, did it not?
He wasn't sure. It was one of those unsure things he couldn't ask his father, which seemed to be an ever-growing list. But he didn't pay it any mind.
No matter how unsure it made him, after all, he could always enjoy the view on the way there.
Tenenbaum's laboratory and office space was found in the large compound of Ryan Industries, a facility entirely separate from the rest of Rapture and entirely closed off to the public. Jack had never counted as merely one of the public, of course, not since his public debut nearly one year prior.
Despite that, Jack found some unexpected difficulty in passing through the security checkpoint. Once he had finally gotten through—of course they recognized him, the officers explained in apologetic tones, it was just that they needed to take some extra precautions today of all days—he noticed there seemed to be more guards present than he could ever recall before. A set of barricades blocked off the laboratory wing, where security officers crossed and milled about with looks of varying concern.
Under normal circumstances, Jack could expect to find Tenenbaum at work in the lab any hour of the day. But he supposed these were hardly normal circumstances.
He'd be better off checking her office, in that case.
Up the lobby stairs, winding around until he found her floor, and then a knock at her door with the hope that she hadn't gone home for the day...
"Come in."
He entered, but ventured no further until the door slid shut behind him. Tenenbaum's office was a modest affair: small, sparsely furnished, dimly lit, and featuring a single porthole window that had no view of the city but rather a vast expanse of craggy seafloor.
(The seafloor was never quite so awe-inspiring to Jack as the many lights and intricate spires of Rapture's glory, but it was still interesting to him in its own way, and this compound was the only place in the entire city where he felt he could safely get a good look at it. Life teemed in the cracks and crevices that surrounded the building, from gently swaying fronds of seaweed to brightly colored starfish and other creatures he didn't know the name of scuttling about, over, and between the algae-covered rocks. The water was too murky and dark to see too far past the outermost boundaries of the compound, but sometimes he could see a mysterious light shining in the distance, far from the direction of the rest of the city.)
It was by this window that Tenenbaum stood, gazing out into the green-blue depths with a cigarette in hand. She still wore a lab coat despite the evident lack of lab work she was doing, and her mouse-brown hair fell in loosely-curled waves about her weary face. When she looked at Jack, it was with the same detached look he had seen her give everyone else in her presence.
"Guten tag, Mr. Ryan."
Jack nodded in reply. "Hello, Dr. Tenenbaum."
He knew better than to attempt to persuade her to call him anything else, as he usually did with the fairer sex. He learned long ago that there was to be no arguing whatsoever where the doctors Tenenbaum and Suchong were concerned. The mere thought of doing so caused a twist in his gut, a pang of primordial fear that echoed back to the murky depths of his earliest memory, depths too great for even the brightest light of his conscious mind to fully penetrate.
Tenenbaum gestured wordlessly for him to take a seat as she took her own behind her desk. He had to pull up a chair from the corner of the room to do so, but did so without conversation or complaint.
"Is there a reason why you need to see me, Mr. Ryan?"
Jack gave her a small shrug in an attempt to seem as casual as possible. "I just paid a visit to my father this morning. I thought perhaps it would be prudent to see you as well, as long as I'm out and about."
One of Tenenbaum's eyebrows rose a nearly imperceptible amount. It was as much of an expression of disbelief as Jack had ever come to expect from her.
"No reason at all?"
"None in particular."
She continued to eye him as she took a long drag off her cigarette, exhaling in white plumes that illuminated the relative dark of the room. His only response was to shift in his seat. Tenenbaum made him nervous, but hardly in the same way that his father made him nervous. Andrew Ryan intimidated him like no one else could, and he missed no opportunity to ensure that things remained that way; Tenenbaum, on the other hand, was nearly impossible for Jack to read or understand. For a woman so integral to his creation, Jack knew almost nothing about her, much less how to get what he wanted from her.
Her line of sight drifted below his before she spoke again. "Were you wearing that when you saw your father?"
It took him a moment to realize what she meant by that: a boutonniere of red carnations pinned to his lapel. "Oh— No, actually, I wasn't." Would his father have disapproved? The thought hadn't even occurred to Jack. Nevertheless— "I stopped by the farmer's market before coming here. The vendors were very insistent upon my buying one."
"Hmm." Jack wasn't sure if the sound was dismissive or contemplative. "Is it real?"
"As a matter of fact, it is." Silk flowers were in abundance, of course. There was little room and hardly enough sunlight in an underwater city to cultivate the real thing, at least not for commercial use. But... "They're selling quite a bit of them now, actually—real flowers, I mean. Something about the season."
"The season?"
"A holiday, really. Mother's Day."
Tenenbaum's eyes met Jack's again. He could only guess that she now saw the true purpose behind his visit.
"Americans," she said, scoffing, and focused on her cigarette again. "Rapture is its own city, and it always has been. But leave it to fool Americans to push their own customs upon the rest of us anyway."
"It's not as though celebrating it is against the rules, though, isn't it? After all, it's not a religious holiday," said Jack, maintaining as casual a tone as he could manage. "If anything, it's a purely capitalist affair. You have to admit, there aren't too many of those."
"I have to admit nothing." She looked at Jack again, this time with a hard look in her eyes. "Why are you so interested in this Mother's Day?"
Jack had expected her to cut to the heart of the matter sooner or later. Nevertheless, he found himself needing to swallow down his nerves before coming out with the truth of it.
"I only thought it might be nice if I could see my own mother for the occasion."
Her eyes narrowed.
"And by that you mean...?"
"My real mother."
The clarification seemed to mollify her, though not by much. She took another puff on her cigarette, her eyes not leaving Jack all the while.
"Your father forbids it. You know this."
"I do know. But I think I should at least have a right to know who she is."
"Your father would disagree."
"I don't care."
"It is his decision to make, not yours."
"Why should it be?"
The hard look was back in her eyes before she answered him.
"You know I cannot defy your father. You should not defy him either, Jack. You should know better than this."
You should know better. Those words stung him, no matter who said them. It stung him to hear her say his own name in such a way. All it did was remind him of the child he truly was.
"Please, Dr. Tenenbaum. I don't even need her name, just—give me a hint, or where she is, or..."
"I cannot."
There was a finality in her words that Jack knew he could not sway. Jack felt a churning in the pit of his stomach. He knew he'd get no further like this.
"Very well." It was all he could do to not heave a sigh as he got to his feet. "I apologize for bothering you, Dr. Tenenbaum. I'll be taking my leave now."
He turned to leave, and had nearly reached the door when...
"Wait."
Jack turned once again, only to see Tenenbaum in what looked like an intense bout of concentration. She stood after a moment, then retrieved something from a drawer in her desk, then made her way to a file cabinet in a corner of the room.
"There was a robbery—I'm sure you noticed, ja?" She unlocked the cabinet with the small key in her hand as she spoke. "Thieves got in through the emergency access tunnels. Made a mess of the place." She looked through the files, pulled one out, then shut and locked the cabinet drawer again before crossing the room to where Jack stood. "It seems they managed to infiltrate my office as well."
She held out the file, a nondescript manila folder, in a plaintive gesture. Jack could hardly believe it. He felt like he could kiss her right there and then.
"Dr. Tenenbaum, thank you—"
"Thank me for nothing," she said curtly. "This document was stolen, remember?"
"Of course," he quickly answered, taking the file and tucking it into his belt, where it would be hidden by his jacket. He very nearly thanked her again, but thought better of it soon enough. "Goodbye, Dr. Tenenbaum."
Tenenbaum only nodded in reply, and went back to her desk as he finally exited her office. Jack felt a remarkably light spring in his step as he made his way back down the stairs and back to the Metro station, despite the terrible weight of the secrets now tucked safely against his side.
MAY 7, 1959 — 7:15 PM
Diane had had quite enough nights of sitting alone by the telephone for one lifetime, thank you very much. Sitting alone in her parlor with nothing but a book and a half-emptied bottle of cheap Rapture-produced chardonnay to keep her company wasn't much better, perhaps, at least not in the grand book of social mores or whatever other cosmic scale there may be. But she certainly found one preferable to the other.
She had learned something from her dalliances with Andrew, something she'd first realized years ago and still remained true to this day: never count on a Ryan to keep any promises to anyone but himself. She felt like a fool to have ever believed the same wouldn't apply to his son. Even so, the both of them had an incredible amount of work ahead of them, and oftentimes it seemed that the younger Ryan had an even greater task before him: to learn the ins and outs of Rapture as well as his father ever did, to become as well-respected among the people as his father ever was, and to keep his nose clean all the while.
But still it stung her to feel forgotten by either of them—by both of them, really. She knew it was selfish. At times, however, times such as this, she didn't really care.
Well, to hell with the both of them!—was what she thought, in that moment at least. Then she heard the doorbell buzzing for her attention.
She was wary of answering it, but couldn't bring herself to ignore it. So it was with a heavy sigh that she got up to answer the door, and it was with a sense of simultaneous relief, disappointment, and expectation that she found Jack Ryan, bouquet in hand, standing at her doorstep.
"Hello, Diane."
She pursed her lips at him, hoping her expression conveyed just how sour she felt in that instant. "You're late, Mr. Ryan. By about twenty-four hours."
"I am?" He looked confused for a moment. Then realization crashed over his face like waves upon the shore. "Oh—Diane, I'm so sorry. You have to understand, I had to change my plans—"
"And you couldn't bother to let me know?" Diane huffed out a laugh. "Try better next time, won't you?"
"Diane, wait—" Jack wedged a foot across the threshold before the door could slam shut on him. "I am sorry, truly, please believe me—look, I brought you flowers."
The bouquet of bright red and white flowers at his side was hard to ignore, even less so when he held it close to her face. Ordinarily she wouldn't have paid it any mind—silk flowers were a dime a dozen in Rapture, after all, and she'd received plenty of them—but the scent gave her pause.
"Are these real?"
"Of course they are."
"Oh..."
Damn her foolish heart.
"Please, Diane, won't you let me come in? Just let me explain."
She looked up at him again, trying her best—but perhaps failing—to look stern. "All right, Mr. Ryan," she said while stepping back. "But just long enough for you to explain yourself."
"Of course." He stepped inside after her, handed her the bouquet, and waited for the door to shut before he spoke again. "It was my father, you see."
"Your father?" She arched an eyebrow; if it weren't for her hands being occupied by the flowers, they would have been at her hips. "What, did he have you working too late to come see me?"
"No... No, nothing like that." There was a slight furrow in his brow and he cast his eyes downward as he spoke, and Diane took notice. He never did that unless he was truly being honest. "I think—I'm fairly certain, at least... He knows. About us, I mean."
Diane's eyes widened. She might have loved the man dearly once, but there was always a small part of her—as surely as there was in any citizen of Rapture—that still feared Andrew Ryan. "He knows?"
"At least he thinks he does. That's why I had to change my schedule: to throw off his suspicions."
"Did it work?"
"I can only hope so."
She looked down at the bouquet, carefully brushing a finger over one of its white flowers. The fan-like petals were cool to the touch, and their scent was delicate, yet earthy; it reminded her of the flower box in her mother's kitchen so many years ago, of the sunlight that poured in through the window and baked the linoleum floor.
"Of course..." Jack took one of her hands in his own. "I'm here now."
Perhaps if Diane was feeling any less heartsick, she might have sent him on his way again. Then again, she sometimes felt she never had any chance against a Ryan's charm.
"Then I guess you're just in time," she said with some slyness as she moved to set the flowers aside. She began to shrug out of her dressing gown as she went, just enough to expose her shoulders, bare but for the straps of her negligee. "I was just about to retire to the bedroom."
Jack wasted no time whatsoever. He came in from behind to kiss her shoulder and the crook of her neck, and he deftly untied the sash at her waist to caress the silk underneath, to cup her breasts and gently massage them in his hands, just as his lips found just the right spot that she liked.
"Oh, Jack..."
Perhaps it was selfish of her all along to expect a Ryan to love her. But moments like this made her selfishness more than worthwhile.