CHAPTER SUMMARY
Frank Fontaine was really hoping ADAM production could be amped up by milking cows for it. Instead, he gets... this.
CONTENT WARNINGS
Child and animal abuse, swearing, sexual abuse, slurs.
From Uprising Part II: Uprising
WHAT THINGS WE HAVE DONE
Fontaine jumped out of the bathysphere grinning. His opponents called it a bastard grin, a cocky smile he usually appropriated just before smashing a business off of the map. A couple of years ago, Ryan would have corrected them: "I find his boyish enthusiasm appealing."
Fontaine just laughed. Let 'em talk. I'll give them action.
Two big mooks strode on either side of him, smoking cigars, armed with pistols. Fontaine was smoking a cigar, too, an unnecessarily big one that stank terribly. As he strode into the center of the skyscraper that bore his name, he stopped in the middle and looked up. Office upon office. And below…
He laughed and blew a smoke ring.
He took the elevator. He made sure to stand in the center, with his two mooks standing on either side of him. They puffed away like a factory. The other occupants of the elevator leaned away, coughed politely into handkerchiefs, and rubbed their eyes; most of them got off on the following floor. When Fontaine finally left, the remaining occupants glared after him. He didn't seem to notice. There was a spring in his step as he sauntered up to his office.
"Hello, Mr. Fontaine," said the secretary. An old woman he'd dredged up from the Fisheries. He would have liked to fulfill his little fantasy of a cute button-nosed girl to be his secretary—someone to fuck in the downtime, on the sly—but loyalty and ability were worth a thousand fucks. So he stuck with Miss Phipps, a spinster who knew how to keep her mouth shut.
"Hey, Granny," he said. "You got the mail already?"
"Yes, sir. I put it on your desk." She said it all in that cold angry voice that said, I'd quit if I could, and then you'd be sorry.
He laughed and winked at her, then passed into his office. I pay you too much to quit, you old bitch, and you know it.
It was the ugliest office in the city. He'd made sure of it. Huge ceiling, big windows gazing down on the city, big fucking portraits of his family in luxury attire (which was half the joke, since they had been stuck in a tenement with four other families and his father only showed up on weekends to beg his mother for drinking money), towering bookcases full of books he never planned to read, and garish taxidermy: a moose head, a swordfish, a huge fucking polar bear. He liked the polar bear. He dressed him up for holidays.
The mooks spread out a little and began a cursory examination of the room, as was their wont. Not that anything would happen. Fontaine had enemies, but they were enemies who only knew how to fight with capital.
Paid to be careful, though, you were always careful, you always covered your tracks.
Fontaine stopped in front of his desk and tapped a few ashes into his crystal ashtray, then took the newspaper from the mail pile and shook it out.
RAID ON FONTAINE FISHERIES, said the headline. THIRTY SMUGGLERS APPREHENDED. Beneath, a big photograph of Captain Sullivan strong-arming a darkly tanned man into a bathysphere.
"Good luck getting them to talk, Captain," he said, and threw the paper on the desk. He looked at the headline for a moment, then up at his walls. There, in several frames, were dozens of news articles he had carefully clipped out and pasted to cardboard. He fit them together like puzzle pieces.
FONTAINE OF FONTAINE FISHERIES: ENTREPRENEUR OF THE YEAR, said one headline, yellowed with age. Beneath, a large paragraph by Andrew Ryan. "Mr. Fontaine has transformed the fishing industry. He has invested in the services of engineers to develop submarines with increased hold capacity and longer fishing times, all while consuming less fuel. He has streamlined his factories, increased his catches, and discovered new ways of luring fish and other sea life into nets and traps to further reduce fuel consumption. In the process, he has lowered costs for consumers, and provided outlets for rising stars in the engineering field. There is no part of Rapture that he has not touched. If anyone embodies the Rapture ideal, it is Frank Fontaine."
Another headline screamed, PLASMIDS MAKE A WAVE. Fontaine, younger and less stocky, stood in front of a glass window with a big grin and his hands on his hips. Behind him, a shoal of herring in a holding tank; beside him, a woman with frizzy hair, cut off by the edge of the photo. All he could see of her was her shoulder and right eye, which stared out at him sharply. Below, the caption: "The impossible is possible! Fontaine Futuristics rewrites genetic code of herring." And below that, in the text, Andrew Ryan: "Fontaine is the future."
Shit, Fontaine had liked that line so much he made it the tagline on his business cards.
Several frames down was the big angry headline, FONTAINE CONNECTED TO SMUGGLING INDUSTRY. Nothing from Andrew Ryan in that one. He had put that one into its own frame. He suspected that Ryan didn't know what to do for a while, because most of the articles on the subject included the line, "Andrew Ryan unavailable for comment."
One article showed Ryan Security infiltrating the wharfs down in the Bounty. There were the headlines about raids and the danger of smugglers and associating with dark-skinned strangers, and then something small about Ryan Security and the Wharfmaster teaming up to stop the smuggling problem. One article read: "Citizens have raised concerns about the autonomy of businesses. Should Ryan Security step into the private affairs of the Neptune's Bounty wharfs? Andrew Ryan of Ryan Industries could not be reached for comment."
Paragraphs of praise exchanged for two words. "No comment," said Ryan of Ryan Industries. "No comment. No comment."
Fontaine chuckled and looked down at his desk, and hesitated.
"Wait," he said. "Why the fuck did I come up here again?"
He paused, then stuck his hand in his pocket and pulled out an envelope. He gave it a cursory glance. The letter had come by special courier earlier that day. One word printed on it, from Dr. Tenenbaum: "Success."
Chuckling, he turned and marched out of the door. His mooks tailed him.
"Did you find the mail?" said Miss Phipps. By the tone of her voice he could tell that she was saying, You didn't notice it again, did you? The fact I organized it? I spent twenty minutes organizing it.
"Nope," he said. "I'll be back. Forgot that I was supposed to go the other direction."
She grunted, and he left without looking back.
He took the elevator down to Floor 11 and stepped out. It was a single room with a single door, locked with the latest gizmo from Minerva's Den. He set his hand on the screen, punched in the code, and then swiped his card. The machine beeped, and the door swung open.
"You guys, stay out here," he said. "I'll be back."
He swaggered into the common room. Three big men in black lounged around it, smoking and carrying shotguns. The secretary there—who was a cute button-nosed thing with bobbed hair and big blue eyes, but too far away to take advantage of properly—waved him through.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Fontaine," she said.
He inclined his head. "Afternoon," he said. "Dr. Tenenbaum in?"
"Yes, sir."
"Good."
He passed through the door into the testing facility.
Sterile, white, silver, clean. Lines of desks on either side, mystery liquids in various vials and flasks, big machines he couldn't remember the names of that purred, the air heavy with the stink of chemicals. Scientists darted around him holding clipboards and boxes of God-knew-what.
"Hey!" Fontaine shouted. "Where's Brigid?"
"I am over here," said a woman frostily.
He glanced around the room. "You playin' hide and seek today, sweetheart?"
Brigid raised her head. She had been staring into a microscope's eyepiece so long that there was a pink circle around her eye. Her hair was frizzy—she must have gone home last night and washed it. That happened what? Once a week?
Fontaine swaggered between a few desks and slipped up beside her. She waited for him, staring at him impassively. She almost never smiled. She wore the same stained cardigan he had seen her in a few days before. There were three cups of coffee sitting beside her on her left, one untouched and cold. On her right were four overflowing ashtrays and the greasy wrapper from a sandwich. Most noticeable was her bared forearm. There was a number tattooed there.
He leaned close to her, dropped one hand onto the small of her back, and tapped the ashes of his cigar off on the floor.
"I got your message," he said. "Success where? With what?"
"If you would to please get your hand off of my backside," she said, "I will tell you."
He raised his hand. The Kraut was so touchy. "Sorry, sorry. Just tryin' to get friendly."
"This is business, not party." She stood tall and turned. "Come with me."
She took him to a little door in the wall and swiped her keycard. When they stepped inside, the back of his neck prickled, and his smile fell a little. The room stank like a farm. God, he hated it. Reminded him of the tenement. When he was a kid, he had left every day just to escape the stench.
"Clean this fucking place, will ya?" he said.
"We cleaned it." Tenenbaum turned to glare at him. "We clean it every day. Twice. We can not have subjects getting sick. Hard enough keeping them alive as it is."
The room was packed with cages and pens. There were rats, mice, guinea pigs, cats, monkeys; pens of pigs, dogs, goats, miniature cattle. There were twenty hundred-gallon aquariums flush against the wall, where baleful black sea slugs covered with bulbous glowing pustules crawled. There were only two narrow corridors between the cages. Tenenbaum led him down the right-hand one.
By all rights, the room should have been noisy. Instead, it was notable for its silence.
The animals were pale and dangerously thin. They leaned against the walls of their cages, or lay on their sides panting. The ones with energy wandered in meaningless circles, jerking spasmodically, foaming at the mouth. Every eye glowed like a little light bulb, yellowish and sick.
"Any luck modifying the slugs?"
Tenenbaum snorted. "No. I grow them larger, they develop sickness, they die. I get them to make more ADAM, they develop two heads and extra organs, they die. I try to make it easy to harvest ADAM without killing slug, they die. I try to inspire reproduction in captivity and… ach, almost impossible. The larvae spend part of life cycle in upper water columns, they require such exact parameters…"
"I didn't come here to hear you bellyache." Fontaine stopped at a pen and leaned over the fence. "What was successful? Tell me that it's the cow."
The cow he was looking at labored to breathe; she leaned against the wall of the pen, her head hung, her legs shook. He had envisioned cows that he could milk ADAM from, like they milked Guernseys.
Tenenbaum shook her head. "It was too hard. Too many processes involved. The cows die after maturity and make only a little ADAM."
"Then which of 'em worked?" Fontaine said. He looked at the rats.
"Why you look at those?" Tenenbaum said sharply. "They go mad and tear each other apart. Especially males. Males and ADAM production not good combination."
"All right, now you're just making me wait. You want apologies for me touching you? Okay, I'm sorry. I'll never touch you again. Show me."
"This way." She gestured to the end of the room, where there was a cage with thick iron bars. She pointed at the corner, and he looked in. He didn't speak for a moment.
"Are you shitting me?" he said.
"No." Tenenbaum rapped the bars with her pen. "Mary. Get up, Mary."
The huddled bundle on the mattress raised its head, blinking. It was a girl, dressed in a stained, wrinkled hospital gown, with tousled hair. There was brownish-red dribble on her chin. Her eyes glowed like lamps.
"Holy God," he said. "I thought you said it didn't work with humans."
"Wrong. Only didn't work with adults. Killed every adult within two days." Tenenbaum leaned against the door. "Something about this little one. Maybe it is because her body is still changing, she produce different amounts of hormones… ach. I will be honest, we do not yet understand. But from what I tell, we feed her a spoon full of ADAM, we induce regurgitation, she spit up ten times amount. We do this by ADAM modification and surgical implantation of ADAM slug, instead of changing embryo into ADAM slug hybrid, like with other animals. Understand?"
"Yeah," he said, slowly. "So you need to try and replicate this experiment?"
"Yeah."
"Shit. Little kids. You know how hard it is to get those?"
"This is not end-all be-all," she said. "New subjects are necessary. I am going to surgically implant ADAM slugs on bigger animals, younger animals, see if we get same result. But this is the one that worked first. Sort of lucky. She was only one we had."
"I'll find some way to get more kids to you, then."
He backed away. The little girl sat up on the mattress. She couldn't be more than eight or so, all skinny stick-limbs and big eyes.
"What's she in for?"
"Stealing food in Farmer's Market," said Dr. Tenenbaum. "I think."
"Miss Tennabaum?" she said, looking at Fontaine. "Why are there bears in the ocean?"
"Not important," said Dr. Tenenbaum. "Come here, Mary. I have ADAM for you."
The little girl rocketed to her feet and sprang to the cage door. Dr. Tenenbaum reached into her pocket and pulled out a small baby bottle full of something red and faintly luminous. She handed it to the girl, who yanked it out of her hand and ran back to her mattress. She jabbed the nipple into her mouth and sucked. The entire time, she stared at Fontaine.
Fontaine scowled.
"And soon we have a gallon of ADAM," said Dr. Tenenbaum. "Will take her about four hours to regurgitate." She straightened and fastened her emotionless eye on Fontaine. "You will come back to see?"
"Nah. I'll take your word for it." Fontaine had backed up across the room. "If I get you more kids, can you up the production?"
"Yes." The doctor stared at him, unblinking, slumping a little, her eyes sharp and hard. It was a horrible picture. The doctor standing across from the cage, where a eight-year-old with glowing eyes sucked at an infant's bottle for the last dregs of ADAM.
I'm going to have fucking nightmares.
"Good." He nodded. "Then, uh… keep up the good work. Keep me updated." A pause. "I'll give you a bonus."
Dr. Tenenbaum shrugged. "Thank you."
As he left Floor 11 and collected his mooks, he couldn't seem to regain the spring in his step. He felt sick. He knew what it was, of course. It was the animal smell of the testing room. Brought him right back down to Earth faster than he could count to three. God, if he never had to go back…
But he had to make sure the Kraut stayed on task. Yeah, she was the best at what she did… but some things, you couldn't leave up to chance.
NOTES
Probably written in 2010 or 2011. There are several elements of this that will go into the future piece, but it will be so heavily edited that I doubt it will look much the same. For one thing, Fontaine is way too happy here. I think if I capture anything about him, it should be a cold darkness—a sheer hatred and suspicion of other people. He should make your stomach drop. You should be grateful that he isn't a real person. There should be this ever-so-subtle hint that he wouldn't feel bad about ripping your trachea out through your ribcage if it earned him $.50.
Two other errors stand out to me here:
1. There are some signs that Andrew Ryan was suspicious of Fontaine from the beginning (audio diary "Watch Fontaine").
2. I mention "the skyscraper that bore his name." This is another error of BioShock 2's: Fontaine Futuristics was located in Point Prometheus. From what I can tell, it wasn't meant to be in an eponymous building of its own. This may be a bit nitpicky, but I thrive on semantics. (Someday, this is how I will die: shot in the face because I noted what might not actually be an error in something completely arbitrary. "Leave me the fuck alone," the person responsible will say, pulling a Glock out of their coat. "Ah," I will say, "the prophecy")
Thus, when I hit this piece again—hopefully post-BioShock: Rapture—I shall most likely include a lot of those alterations.