Tympans of Temples Held

November 22nd, 1958

Audio Transcript – 'Liar'

[You said I would find you. You said I would never be alone. But they've taken away my only friend. Kyle Fitzpatrick was all I had. I don't think he ever realized that, and now he never will. These madmen have managed to snuff out the one small, bright light still burning in this dark place. And when I close my eyes, I hear that middle C playing over and over again, breaking across the night. There is nothing left for me here. But I stay because I made a promise, and I intend to keep it. I will not wait for you anymore, Booker. And when I have saved those girls, when Rapture is a pitted ruin, buried at the bottom of the sea, and when the first second of eternity has passed, I will close the Doors on you forever.]

I look thinner, Elizabeth thought, watching her reflection ripple in the water fixtures. I look as though the smallest breath of wind will carry me away.

The last few months had been unkind to her. As her popularity continued to grow, Cohen had extended Elizabeth's performance dates, added matinees, wrote more songs. She appeared at every after party and social event, a permanent fixture of Cohen's ego. And when she didn't return their leering smiles and sickening kindness, Cohen took away her books.

He was punishing her... for embarrassing him in front of Ryan. And every time Elizabeth saw Kyle Fitzpatrick slouched over the piano, every time she dreamed –– shards of time and space slicing through her nightmares like splinters of broken glass –– she believed the punishment was working. She was being unstitched, eaten away. Cohen was turning her into something as empty and sad as Rapture itself.

Elizabeth was painfully aware that she could leave Fort Frolic whenever she wanted. The other disciples stayed because they provided more physical favors Cohen didn't seem especially interested in extracting from her. Elizabeth doubted Cohen even liked girls. But she had made a promise to Kyle Fitzpatrick, and even if he couldn't remember what it was, Elizabeth had every intention of keeping her word. So she stayed, and she endured.

Some of the Fort Frolic regulars had inquired about Elizabeth's possible ill health. Cohen, the bastard, had had the audacity to suggest a visit to Dr. Steinman in the medical pavilion. Elizabeth crunched her knuckles; anger at the memory twisted her stomach into knots.

Recently, she sought asylum in Arcadia. Despite being several hundred fathoms below the ocean's surface, Arcadia managed to evoke the feel of an actual forest so much so that Elizabeth could almost convince herself of its reality. Almost. There was a strange stillness beneath the smell of wet earth and moldering, organic things. No animals scurried through the undergrowth. There was no birdsong, no insects. The plants were pollinated using enzyme vectors: special chemical concoctions pumped from the Langford research laboratories at the heart of the district.

Parts of Arcadia gave the impression of catatonia, as though the remaining life had relapsed into a deep sleep, kept alive by artifice and machine and chemical engineering. As Elizabeth walked through the gardens, she felt as though she was walking through a painting: silent, still, beautiful.

She passed a Circus of Values, and bought a cigarette. As she smoked, Elizabeth took a shortcut through the workshops, emerged in the tea garden at the edge of Arcadia. She sat on one of the benches by the brook and watched the water gurgle between the stones. She took a puff of her cigarette; the tar and smoke dissipated under the oxygen scrubbers. The walls demarcating one reality from another seemed diluted. Silhouettes flickered on the walls, like shadows pulled through a pinhole of candlelight. Elizabeth ignored them. She blew a ring of smoke; behind it, the air glistened with mist. She blew another, and the mist changed to toxic gas. She concentrated, and the gas became cherry blossoms floating on the water. Tears shimmered in the peripheries of the garden. All around her, an infinite number of worlds bled into each other, blurring into viscous smears like oil in rainwater.