Revolt

14

I finally found out that we've been here for almost a year now, and all our daughters have been adopted and are being rehabilitated in another wing. But we're not allowed to see them until we've all reached a certain checkpoint in our recovery....

The doctors are afraid that if we're reintroduced too soon that we could all relapse.

I wonder how Clara and Jessica are doing....

....

It's been a year and a half. Everyone has made amazing progress....

Our muscles are reconfiguring to fit our skeletal structures, our skin is mending, our memories are returning, our fears and tempers are subsiding, and we're all making progress towards becoming our own persons again.

I remember my life before Rapture, and during it's heyday- I was a professor of literature, and my students had become world renowned authors, editors, and philosophers. I wrote opinion articles in Rapture's papers, discussing with my readers ideas and achievements and locical reasoning and debating about convention versus technological revolution.

I had been among the first of Rapture's inmates, the first to break the only rule that Andrew Ryan had made, and thus caused him to break this rule as well by imprisoning me- I debated the ethics of the Little Sister Project, still in it's testing phase, and argued that the inventors of Adam had a due responsibility to warn the population of it's addictive nature and gruesome side effects.

Ryan thought I was trying to censor the creators, called me hypocritical, that I had defied the very dream I sought to live out in Rapture.

And when he imprisoned me, he effectively censored my works as well.

Who's the hypocrite now, Ryan?

But....that was before the Civil War....

....

And then, one day, we're all gathered in the hospital cafeteria. We assume it's another progress check-up, where we'll all be handed tests about ourselves and the surface world.

These are usually fun, and a few of the write-in questions are a bit childish, such as what our favorite colors are, what our favorite hospital meal is, or what our favorite game is on game night.

Though, these tests are becoming less frequent.

Today, though, it's not a test. We're told that the hospital is expecting a special visitor, but that they're running a little behind. We're free to entertain ourselves, so I go and get a chess board to play against my favorite nurse.

Some others take to other games, and some take to sparring and wrestling. We're all somewhat jock-ish now, still much more robust and muscular than before we were spliced with Adam. Those results will be permanent, however....

....

"And-"

"Don't say it-!"

"Checkmate."

"Bastard...." my nurse sighs, shaking his head. Then he takes out his cigarettes and lights one, then offers me the box.

I kindly refuse. "Not again, Geoffrey. I'm in no condition to restart any addictions."

He exhales, waving away the smoke for me. "How is it that, when we first met, you were barely able to distinguish me from one of those lunatics you were stuck in Rapture with, and now you've got my every move and tendency pinpointed to a que?" He questioned me in a form that was almost complimenting on my progress.

I tsk. "Anyone that wasn't in a diving suit or wasn't a four foot tall girl with glowing eyes was instead a deformed, genetically enhanced serial killer addicted to a drug that gave you control over the elements- or over gravity. Or a swarm of insects. And they're called 'Splicers,' Geof. Upon waking, how was I supposed to expect a completely- well, mostly- sane human being that had no intentions of hurting me?" I challenge.