Note: Well, I honestly didn't expect to write this chapter this week. I've kinda had a lot a going on, and it's all depressing and personal, so I won't burden you readers with it. So, I'm trying something new in response to the few requests for longer chapters. Usually, I keep chapters set to one specific bit of story or one location. This time, we're going to see how two of those work out. Also, we're going to get into the outlandishly weird stuff now. And some plot development. Also, if you haven't beaten (or even played) the game, seriously DO NOT READ THIS CHAPTER. It kinda spoils the whole thing. Please review and comment. I do not own Bioshock, Bioshock Infinite, nor any affiliated characters.
Stranger in a Strange Land
Chapter 3
Booker gazed at New York, from the edge of the pier.
The strange man had set the meeting place over the phone. Liberty Island, at noon.
Booker looked down at his watch. It was thirty seconds to.
He looked back up, at the city again.
"Incredible, isn't it?" A voice said behind him.
Startled, Booker spun around. The strange man was there, looking off at the city.
"Y'know," the man said "I've seen some truly incredible things. Things those couple million other yous who don't exist wouldn't believe. But there's something about the view of that city from here. Chicago's nice too, if you can see it from the Pier, but this…"
The man sighed appreciatively. He walked forward and set his hands against the railing. He reached into one of his coat pockets and withdrew a wad of papers. It looked like nothing else Booker had ever seen: slightly blue in color, with some number on a edge that he didn't recognize, and a giant triangle in the middle.
"Shit," the man said to himself. "Money's always trouble when you're crossing over."
He opened the leather pouch on his belt again, drawing a long thin rectangular device. The man tapped around on a piece of glass on top of the device before he pointed it at that the wad of paper. This too projected a beam of light, though this one was green in color. The light stopped and the man slipped the device back into place and rolled the pouch up. "Here. Should cover the ferry costs. Bill 'em as business expenses." The man said, handing Booker the wad. Looking at it, Booker now saw that it was now all dollars. Fives and ones.
"Thanks," Booker began, "But I doubt you brought me up here to show me the skyline and-" The static and vision swept him away again. Hanging in the air by a rotating bunch of hooks strapped to his arm, running down metal lines, firing at various men. The scenery and men changed, but the perspective stayed the same.
Booker snapped back to reality, grasping the railing of the pier as hard as he could.
"So, the process of recollection is still ongoing, I see." The man said.
"What the hell are you talking about?" Booker asked. "I thought you needed my help. Saving existence, or something."
"I do need your help, , but your help would honestly be useless if you don't remember."
"Remember what?" Booker demanded.
"I think you know. Just stop fighting it. Let it happen."
Booker leaned forward, gazing at his reflection in the river.
He was standing over a tin bowl. A small knitted verse hung in a frame above the bowl. "I shall wash thee of thy sins." It read.
He smirked, and thought of all he'd done.
"Good luck with that, pal."
He was in a rocket, hurtling into the clouds.
"Ten thousand feet." A automated voice said. "Fifteen." He was above the clouds, gazing at a city set atop…something. The sun was shining. "Hallelujah."
A man and a woman, twins, they looked like, asking him to flip a coin.
"What's a voxophone?" Booker half asked. The machine in front of him clicked a few times. "What's a voxophone?" he heard his voice come out of the machine.
"Exactly that. A personal record of voice." The salesman said.
"Hey, just so we're clear, I'm not paying for this."
That other version of Anna, looking down at him as he hung onto the top of a bookcase.
"Hi there." He said. She screamed and threw the book she was holding at him. He could just make out the title before it hit him. The Odyssey.
"Then what are you?" Slate, Cornellius Slate, was asking over an intercom. "If you take away all the parts of Booker DeWitt you tried to erase, what's left?"
An enormous mechanical bird-man smashed into the airship he and Anna were riding on.
"Why do you ask 'What?'" the male twin asked.
"When the delicious question is 'When?'" the female twin finished.
He was gazing at the other Anna, aged decades. The ships and city were firing down into New York.
"Say what you will about Comstock. He was a hell of a fortune teller." She said.
Booker lunged at the man, Comstock, as he griped Anna's…Elizabeth's arm.
"She's your daughter, you son of a bitch," Booker was saying as he wrapped his finger's around Comstock's throat. "And you abandoned her!" He slammed the man's head on the edge of birdbath. "Was it worth it? Huh? Did you get what you wanted?! Tell me!"
Elizabeth…Anna, standing in front of the bird, Songbird.
"I need you to protect me. Will you do it? Will you do this for me, just… just this one last thing?" She asked it. Him, he finally decided.
Elizabeth opened a door of a lighthouse surrounded by lighthouses. As he walked through through, Booker saw himself, saw her, saw them, coming through the door of another lighthouse. They were coming through the door of every other lighthouse.
Elizabeth stood in front of him, in the river, after Wounded Knee. Six other versions of her. One on the right came forward and grabbed his arm.
"He's Zachary Comstock." She said.
One of the left came forward and grabbed his arm.
"He's Booker DeWitt." She said.
The Elizabeth he knew came forward.
"I'm both." He said.
They reached out and pushed him beneath the water. He let it flow in, fill his lungs.
Booker almost fell down. The man caught him, hoisting him back up to the railing.
"Easy, easy there. You alright?" The man asked.
"Do I look alright?" Booker asked.
His face felt…wet. Very, very wet.
The man reached out with a rag. Booker took it and wiped it across his face. It came away soaked in blood.
"What was-" Booker began.
"Not here. There's somewhere else we can go, where it's much safer to discuss these kinds of things."
"Why didn't we meet there?"
"Because you needed to remember before I could take you."
They were standing in front a slightly run down bar and tavern, in Brooklyn.
"So, why are we here? What's so damn special about this place?" Booker asked.
"You remember how the world really works, DeWitt?" The man asked.
Booker thought. A million million worlds. There's always a lighthouse. Always a man. The only difference is semantics.
"Yeah. More or less." He admitted.
"Well, then this might be the most significant place in all of existence."
"Why?"
"Somehow, it's everywhere. Every world that is, was, could be, will be, in every time and every city, this bar is here. As it is. A man from one place goes in, a man from another place comes in, and those two men can sit down and have a drink together."
"Sorry, but that doesn't quite make sense."
"Just wait until you see the inside."
The man pushed the doors open, and Booker was assaulted by a dozen different songs, one of which he'd heard before, through a tear and in another world. Men of all kinds sat in booths and at tables. There was a man in a big bulky whit suit dotted with red stripes, with a big helmet on, talking to another man, a black man in a suit who looked fairly important. The man Booker was with scanned the tables, and focused on a group of four men in dark grey uniforms, sitting around a table, talking earnestly.
The man strode up to the four men, and looked pointedly at one of them. There was a symbol on the man's sleeve Booker had never seen before. Some black symbol set against a white circle set against a red square.
"Hans," the man's fake face faded, showing the high-tech mask. "What exactly are you doing here? Because if you're one of the Hans' I think you are, you really shouldn't be waiting about in here."
Hans gave a sad, if content, look.
"Just having one last hurrah, Officer. One last meeting, as friends, before we get to the business." Hans said.
The man clapped Hans on the back.
"Just be sure you aren't late."
They moved on.
"Who was that, exactly?" Booker asked.
"Hans von Schaffte. Give it about forty years or so, and in your world he'll be one of the most despicable human beings who ever lived." The man turned and looked back at the table. "That man though, and a million million like him, they're some of the most selfless, admirable human beings who ever lived. Him, and those other three, give everything they can give. Statuses, good names, lives, love and respect of their families, so a couple hundred thousand people can escape certain death." They waited for a minute, watching Hans and the other three man. "Come on. Let's see if we can't get ourselves a private room. We've got a lot to talk about."
Note: Okay, I guess it wasn't as long as I thought I'd make it, but I felt like there was a fairly good place to end it. At least I got in two locations in one chapter. Normally, I'd have called it at Liberty Island, and left the Bar for the next chapter.
Oh, and as far as I know, Hans von Schaffte is a completely fictional person. (And any correlation to people who have actually existed is purely coincidential.) I figured that if we're dealing with a mythos that has an infinite number of parallel realities, there have to be some World War Two's with more openly, famously kind and self-sacrificing Nazi's than just Schindler. Also, can anyone guess who the man in the bulky white suit is, and who he's talking to? Or guess where Hans' last name came from?