Spliced: A Story of Rapture

Chapter Two

1955

Lillian was thirty-four, brilliant, and gorgeous. She was a celebrated primatologist topside, recognized mostly for her work with gorillas. Her wealthy family, which had, through careful investment, been largely immune to the Great Depression, ensured that she, as a young woman, would have been able to marry any number of eligible young members of the nouveau riche. Her love, however, was reserved for her work, and when her parents saw how blindingly quick her mind was, even they were forced to agree that to throw it all away to please a rich and lonely man would be like hiding her talents in the ground.

So Lillian had gone off to college, and then to graduate school. She spent time studying in Great Britain and Africa, and her contributions to scientific journals were lauded by her colleagues. Although she was beautiful, with an aristocratic profile and willowy frame, she spurned the advances of every man who came her way, until Roland.

Roland was an ichthyologist who Lillian met while on holiday in South Carolina. He was there studying the marine life of the Southeastern coast, and his passion for his work, along with his own good looks, tempted Lillian frightfully. She lost her virginity to the man that spring, and their wild and cerebral romance led to their abrupt elopement just before Labor Day. Lillian quickly found herself mired in conjugal bliss, and couldn't be happier.

It wasn't long after Lillian and Roland’s elopement that the latter received a unique invitation in the mail. The note said that given the great importance of his oft-cited original research, and because of his great renown in the world of ichthyology, he was cordially invited to become a permanent citizen of the underwater city of Rapture.

At first, both Lillian and Roland were skeptical. Such a grandiose notion had to be a joke. However, the more they investigated and met with involved parties (including the city’s creator, Andrew Ryan) the more they became convinced that not only was Rapture real, but that it was glorious.

So they’d packed up their things, said their goodbyes topside and took the plunge, so to speak. Lillian was, of course, sad about leaving her own research behind, but was willing to do so in the name of adventure, and for her husband’s own career.

Now a couple years had passed and Lillian and Roland, still in Rapture, were thriving. They lived the lives of the elite, attending balls and galas, dining in fancy restaurants and rubbing elbows with other great thinkers, brilliant scientists and pioneers of industry. At night, they danced for hours, and while Lillian missed having an outlet for her intellectual energy, she fed off of the pride her husband exuded regarding his lovely and talented wife. When other men would flirt with her, which happened often, Roland would sweep in like some kind of masked hero and whisk her back to their loft. There, he’d ravish her with wild abandon. His jealousy evinced in him the most boundless lust. It never took long before her stockings were balled up on the floor, her dress pulled down, exposing her breasts, his face was buried in her cleavage, and his cock was buried between her legs.

Lillian loved the attention, too, and despite her attempts to remain lady-like and dispassionate, always ended up succumbing to his charms, often loudly and sweatily. She adored Roland, not just for his sexual prowess but also for his great mind. Although he sometimes seemed to understand fish better than he understood humans, he always seemed to understand her, and that was all she needed.

So she put her career aside, for now, and tried to defer to her husband’s wishes, an exercise that she was happy to undertake if it made her Roland happy. She loved to watch him work in his study, forehead furrowed, hair a mess from hours of running his hands through it absent-mindedly. She would always bid him farewell sweetly when he went out on research missions in the bathysphere, and greet him enthusiastically with dinner, slippers, and sex when he returned.