MAY 24, 1959 — 6:34 PM
For all the troubles Rapture had faced under the specter of Fontaine, for its widening class divide and the ever-growing threat of splicer activity, no place in the city had retained its gleaming ritz and golden age glory like the grand neon-lit halls of Fort Frolic.
There was little question that the Fort's continued success had much to do with its blatant and unapologetic worship of the consumerist way, not to mention its appeals to the hedonistic nature of man, both often greater than in any other part of Rapture. Splicers were crawling in every corner of the city, sometimes quite literally, but it was easy to forget that your friends or family or favorite neighbor had gone tits-up over the blue juice when there was a new show to see or a beautiful dress to buy. Fort Frolic had no end of distractions to offer, from slots and tables to shopping arcades galore, from lounges where the liquor flowed freely to bars that catered to a refined clientele, from dance halls seating dozens in a row to clubs where the dancers would gladly take a patron or two to the back room for a private show. And if a little ADAM was needed to take the edge off—just a little, of course, not enough to end up like those junkies in the street—why, that could be found in the Fort just as well.
In the early days, before ADAM made its permanent mark on the city and its people, perhaps this place might have served as an unending well of distractions just as it did now—distractions from the surface world, from the life those first brave souls must have left behind. But it seemed unlikely that the Fort could serve well in this regard, given the arched glass ceilings that provided a constant reminder of their distance from the sun, of the ocean's terrible vastness and weight suspended so precariously above them.
At times, however, those great glass ceilings managed quite the opposite. Strollers and shoppers stopped at their leisure to look upwards with varied sounds and expressions of awe as the shadow of a massive whale drifted past. Children stopped their parents to point and shout look, look! as its bellow swept through the panes and reverberated down to the very ground where they stood.
Jack was among them, standing idly in the atrium and staring up at the beast floating overhead. It was hardly his first whale sighting in Rapture, but it stilled him nevertheless. He wondered what would ever possess such a hulking creature to come so close to this city when it had such a vast expanse of open sea in which to freely roam.
He sometimes wondered what would have ever possessed a man to come to this city when there was such a wide world above the sea to inhabit and explore. Of course, such thoughts were often quickly quashed. His father's answers usually sated whatever doubts he might have had, and the mystery of it all no longer seemed quite so unfathomable when explained in his words.
Usually.
Could his father's beliefs have ever been flawed? The fact that this city stood at all, much less stood in all its glory, seemed to suggest the contrary. One does not build cities if one is guided by doubt—Jack had heard those words long ago, in one of his father's earliest lectures to him, and still they resonated deep in his mind. A Ryan could not afford to be guided by doubt. He could not afford to be guided by doubt.
Yet it was doubt that kept him frozen even now. Perhaps it was doubt that kept him from ascending to the state of man in his father's eyes.
He stared at the entrance to Poseidon Plaza, just one set of stairs and a few short steps away from where he presently stood. The way to Eve's Garden lay beyond its steel door. He had a right to see his own mother, goddamn it. He was certain of that—no doubt had guided him to that decision.
Was he a man, capable of his own power and agency? Or was he a child, stricken with doubt and clouded by insecurity?
He began to take a step towards the entrance. His father's words echoed in his mind...
"You will not go near Eve's Garden again."
He stopped.
Those few words, echoes though they were, were all it took to bring him to a halt. They curled around his feet and bound him like shackles of shadow and air.
But that was absurd. Perhaps his father hadn't wanted Jack to defy his will, but would he want him to be so easily cowed, either? This could not stand. He took a step towards the door.
"I will not have my son seen in the company of dancers and whores."
His heart squeezed in his chest. The thought of going any further made him dizzy, then ill.
Before he knew it, Jack found himself stumbling backwards instead, to one of the benches that ringed the atrium. What a sight he must have been, or so he would have thought if not for the pressing need to clear his head. His father's voice flooded his thoughts, drowned out the sound of all else around him save the thudding beat of the blood in his ears.
"Are you a man, Jack? Or are you merely a child who plays at one?"
He was somewhere caught in between: Ryan's bastard child in the shape of a man, with none of the nerve or wherewithal to forge his own path in life.
Jack lifted his head—he couldn't remember putting it in his hands, pressing the heels of his palms into the sockets of his eyes, but there they were, and it was not without the slightest tremor that he pulled them away—and looked to the Poseidon entrance. His heart thudded.
He yanked his gaze away, to a display case in the middle of the atrium floor. A brightly-lit plasmid flask sat behind the thick, padlocked glass, and beside it sat a pristine syringe vial of EVE on a crushed velvet cushion, both softly aglow in shades of red and blue. SANCTUARY: New from Ryan Industries — Try one today! urged a sign above the case, accompanied by a caricatured face with a wink and a smile.
The sign bore his name—his father's name, perhaps—but it was not for him. It was never for him. For as long as he could remember, Jack had been forbidden from the wonders of ADAM and EVE. He had no need to splice himself into something other, his father had told him. All that he needed to find his worth in life had already been etched into his DNA from the first moment of his creation. To defy that would be to make himself a lesser man.
To defy—was it his defiance in any matter that made him a lesser man, or was it in this matter alone? Would his father finally accept him if he obeyed his word down to the very last letter, or would he instead see him as incapable of his own determination after all?
His head swam. His heart thudded and his head swam and he could hardly think, could hardly even see straight anymore. He needed to leave this place, he decided. He needed to clear his head.
After but a moment of deliberation, he made one other decision: he needed to get himself drunk, and the quicker, the better.
Fortunately, he didn't have to go far to accomplish all three.
The cocktail lounge nestled into the corner of the atrium's lower wing was perhaps the most convenient of all Fort Frolic's distractions, being secluded enough from the hustle and bustle of the atrium itself while still within easy reach of the most popular shops outside Poseidon Plaza. It was also perhaps the only bar to be found in Fort Frolic that retained low traffic into the evening hours; there were many other clubs and bars to be found here, after all, all providing far more entertainment for the discerning taste of Rapture.
It was just the sort of place Jack needed. Or thought he did, anyhow.
He wasn't quite so sure if the scotch on the rocks was precisely what he needed—on the house, of course, the bartender had been quick to tell him with a flashing grin—but still he held hope that it would do the trick. The thud of his heart had already eased, given way to a soft and indefinable warmth in his chest and limbs. The liquor was already at work.
But still, something troubled him.
More troubling was the idea that he couldn't quite put his finger on what it was that troubled him. He didn't dare to point his thoughts toward their earlier tracks lest he fall right into them again, lest he undo all the work it had taken to build himself back to some semblance of ease. He could only trace the barest outlines of it, like hands fumbling at an object through cloth, feeling its shape yet searching in vain for its color, its scent, its taste.
In other words, it wasn't nearly enough. Perhaps that was what troubled him most of all.
Jack almost didn't notice the man who settled into the seat beside him. He didn't notice at all the sidelong glance the man gave him, nor did he hear him order the same drink; he was far too focused on the bottom of his glass for that.
"This stuff might be a little saltier than what they've got on the surface... But it still does the trick, huh?"
Jack wasn't sure what he meant by that. He'd heard many times the complaint of Rapture's liquor being watered down compared to surface goods, though of course he couldn't know the veracity of that himself; perhaps the man was making a joke along those lines.
"Not that I mean any offense, Mr. Ryan."
It didn't occur to Jack until that moment that the man was speaking to him and not the bartender. He lifted his head, getting a good look at him for the first time: dark hair, smile askew, young, perhaps his own age—his apparent age, at least—strong in the face and slight in build. Recognition flickered in the back of his mind, but a flicker was hardly enough for him to recall the man's name or significance.
"None taken." It was as safe a reply as Jack could manage.
"You're a good sport, you know that? Your old man would probably have me in a noose for something like that."
His father wasn't quite that severe, was he? Hardly. Still, Jack felt no urge to defend his good name.
"Probably."
The man chuckled and sipped at his drink. Jack couldn't help but feel an odd sort of camaraderie with him, odd if only because of its rarity. By now he was more than used to the people of Rapture referring to him by name, praising him without provocation, striking up conversations as though they were lifelong friends when in fact Jack had never met them even once in his short life. Sometimes the attention was something for him to bask in, while at others it was wearying; now, though, it wasn't just attention he craved but also company, even if that company was a perfect stranger, as well as the distractions they provided.
"The name's Kyle, by the way. Kyle Fitzpatrick."
The flicker sparked into a flame. Kyle Fitzpatrick: one of Sander Cohen's so-called "disciples." Jack had been warned of the whole lot of them, but he couldn't quite remember why.
"The pianist?"
Fitzpatrick beamed. "That's the one. You've heard me play?"
"No, but..." The flame wavered; Jack had to think quickly to supply an alternate explanation. "I've heard you're quite talented—you're one of Sander Cohen's associates, right?"
The corners of Fitzpatrick's smiling mouth twitched just a hair. "Something like that."
Jack wondered if maybe he had touched a nerve. He didn't know much about Sander Cohen, had only heard snatches of his music and other performances over the radio and PA. His father had always seemed intent on keeping some distance between the two of them; Jack hadn't ever thought to question it.
"You should really hear me play," Fitzpatrick continued. "Sander doesn't have much of an ear for music anymore...unless it's his own, of course."
Jack laughed at that, for little reason other than it felt as though he was supposed to. He had long ago learned to adapt to social situations with ease, but this one in particular was one for which he still had little precedent.
"I think I'd like that."
Idle conversation. He had no reason to think anything more of it than that.
But Fitzpatrick seemed well enough appeased. He laughed and drank again.
"So, if you don't mind my asking..."
Jack's attention had begun to drift away again, back into fumbling at the corners of his mind, but at this he took notice. He wasn't sure just what kind of question this man might ask that he would mind.
"What's a fella like you doing in a place like this, anyhow? You'd think this part of the Fort would be a little dull for Rapture's golden boy."
The epithet made him inwardly flinch; the rest of it just made him stare back at his drink.
"I've got a lot on my mind."
It might not have been the entire truth, but it was as close to the truth as he could safely manage.
"Well, I'm sorry to hear that..." Fitzpatrick leaned in close, as though speaking in conspiratorial tones. "But you know, I hear Fort Frolic is just the place to deal with that sort of thing."
Jack laughed again, though it was half-hearted. He didn't look up from his drink.
Fitzpatrick didn't laugh with him this time. When he spoke again, his voice was lower, softer than before.
"You know, I've got a place around here... Got my own piano, too."
Fitzpatrick's hand was on his thigh, all long fingers and flat palm pressing firm through the fabric of his trousers.
"I could play for you, if you'd like."
Jack could feel that warmth from earlier taking on a more definable shape, settling like a heavy weight in the pit of his belly. He looked up again, up to Fitzpatrick's half-cocked smirk, and nodded before he answered.
"I would like that."