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The story I want to write is one of survival. Whatever the city, whatever the forces responsible, what began as a paradise has become a hell. A heaven built after the image of one man's dream, whether amongst the clouds or beneath the waves, has become a hell at the hands of humankind.
Rapture was built as the world's one true utopia of free enterprise and free will, beneath the waves and the world. Its citizenry comprised the great who no longer wished to be constrained by the small. And so it was a city of revolutionary science, innovation, enterprise, art and economics. With the discovery of ADAM by Dr. Bridget Tenenbaum, not even the human double-helix would determine a man or woman's choice and potential. Rapture was meant to be a city without prejudice, without poverty, without superstition or pettiness. A place where men and women would not be judged on their appearance, the way they choose to live or who they cannot help but love, but only by the sweat of their brow: their achievements.
But even in a city founded on a dream, someone must be trodden on for others to ascend. Someone always has to mop the floors and clean up after the party's over. Those trodden to the bottom rose up, enraged, and civil war shook Rapture. From New Year's Day 1959, Rapture became a battleground and then a ruin: a corpse. And ADAM itself twisted the minds of many who survived, in turn twisting their minds. They roam the bones of this once-great city now, crawling in its veins, up and down its spine, searching for more of what drove them mad: the ADAM their bodies require.
Columbia began not as a dream but as proof that dreams can come true. Conceived, built and funded by the US Government, Columbia was meant to serve as a moving World's Fair, travelling to far off lands and demonstrating the success of 'the American experiment'. But with the growing influence of Zachary Comstock, Columbia soon stood not for American ideals but for its own: for Comstock's. The man set himself up as a prophet, only to be worshipped like a god, firing upon Chinese civilians in the Boxer Rebellion of 1900, seceding from the Union of States, preaching Columbian exceptionalism, White Christian supremacy, and the ills of the Sodom below. Columbia became a floating ark in the eyes of its populace, seperate and sacred, compared to the rest of sin-bound earthbound humankind.
A haven for the white, the rich, and those willing to follow blindly, but already hellish for people of colour, the Irish, the Eastern-European and the poor, in 1912 Columbia buckled under these internal tensions. As with Rapture, civil war split Columbia into fragments of itself. The downtrodden united in blood and rage under the banner and the name of the Vox Populi, while Comstock's faithful, half-blind with loyalty, fought back as the Founders in the streets and on the skylines of their city. Chaos reigned, smoke poured and fire roared, and looters and fighters alike began to tear Columbia to shreds. | |