Bioshock's page

My mother? Isn't that the first question EVERY shrink asks? Look, Mom left years ago to pursue her career as an evil scientist with a megacorp. Rumor has it she's climbed pretty high up the ranks, and a lot of it had to do with me. See, I'm her pet project. I wasn't born with powers, I was engineered. Dad never wanted me to know, tried to hide it from me for years why Mom left. But I found her lab. An actual secret lab, in my own basement. It was loaded with crazy equipment and a big bookshelf packed with textbooks. It took me a few years before I was actually able to break into her computer, but that's where I found her papers - about me. I found her lab notes too. As hard as the papers were to read, it was the lab notebook that really messed me up. I don't remember how many times she referred to unborn me as 'the subject'. Barf city, right? Hah, I remember, back when I was like six years old, I kept asking my parents if I was adopted, every day for months. I was obsessed, I just couldn't believe they were my real parents. As I got older, I kinda brushed it off, you know? It's just a phase every little kid has for awhile. But maybe it wasn't a phase. Maybe little six year-old me knew something I didn't want to notice. Mom was always a bit cold. Clinical I guess you might say. Not exactly the apron-and-cookies type. More like the labcoat-and-special-homework type. It took me years to find out that other kids' parents weren't making them learn algebra in 4th grade. So maybe, deep down, I always knew there was something weird about my birth. But test tube science experiment baby wasn't really on my radar, know what I'm saying?

So I've got electric eel DNA. That's my big secret. Kinda freaky, right? But, it's not really that weird, compared to all the other stuff it could have been. I mean, this is Halcyon City we're talking about. So I generate bio-electricity. Problem is, the eel DNA didn't take as well as Mom wanted. Thanks, CRISPR. The organs are underdeveloped, so I can't produce any high voltage or anything. You know, sometimes I think that's why she left. Like I'm not good enough for her or something, you know? MAybe she's out there making more test tube babies so she can fix whatever went wrong with me. But that's so whack, 'cause there's nothing wrong with me! Does she even know about my powers? Nothing in her notes ever said anything about these microcurrents. Nothing about how I can surge my nervous system with that tiny bit of electricity that I can make. Nothing about how I can flood my body with adrenaline and lift up a car, or how I can dump an entire gland's worth of dopamine to help kill the pain when I finally come down and my muscles have partially separated from my skeleton. Nothing about how I can stimulate my nerves, and trick my brain into seeing her standing there, into hearing her voice telling me for once that she loves me, trick my skin into feeling what I only imagine a mother's hug is supposed to feel like. Man, that sounds pathetic, doesn't it?

But maybe she knew something after all. See, there's this machine in her lab that analyzes my body, spits out all kinds of stats and biometric data. That's how I discovered my powers in the first place. I first noticed some weird discrepancies in my body's electric resistance, and then I found some unexplained brain activity that couldn't be linked to anything. Turns out my powers had been running in the background for years, healing me a little bit faster and better when I scraped my knee, or when I sprained my wrist, or when I broke my collarbone. But it wasn't until I started getting into self-hypnosis that I found I could control those microcurrents. It was a weird phase, I'll admit. It was the summer I turned thirteen, I had finally gotten into my mom's computer and I was researching all kinds of weird stuff. I found some crazy website where people were talking about training their psychic powers. it was full of text files, amateur how-tos, and scientific articles from bogus journals. Rumor had it one of the mods was an actual superhero. I never did open my third eye or awaken any other psychic powers, and my kundalini is definitely still coiled around the base of my spine, but suck it Peter Betzen, I still got freakin' super powers out of it! But I digress, as they say. I started using my powers, testing their limits, experimenting with the applications. I mean, you would too, right? You find out you have super powers, what's the first thing you do? Take 'em out for a spin!

But every rose has its thorn, or at least that's how the song goes. Turns out, my powers are killing me. Slowly, like really slowly. I'm pretty sure I'm not gonna keel over tomorrow or next week or anything like that. But it's wearing my body out faster than normal. See, those electricity organs, my batteries I call 'em, have been getting a workout, and according to my latest scans, they might even be growing a little bit. But it's not an efficient process. I eat a ton - we're talking eight to ten thousand Calories a day minimum, and that's just a normal day. I know I'm a growing boy, but you can't tell me that's normal! The background microcurrents wer fine, but ever since I started using them actively, my cells have been oxidizing at a quicker pace. Basically, I'm getting old without getting old, you know? I'm still learning to manage my powers, and now that my batteries are getting more use, they sometimes get full for some reason and discharge all at once. I'm still trying to figure out why it happens and control it, because those discharges can be dangerous. Aside from making my body do stuff I don't want it to, they rapidly accelerate my cellular degeneration. On their own, the rate at which my powers damage my cells is mostly offset by the way the microcurrents stimulate my body's natural healing. It would probably catch up to me sometime in my early twenties when I hit adulthood, biologically speaking, but for now it isn't that big of an issue. But these discharges cause permanent damage, and so far I haven't found any way to heal it. Honestly, I'm scared I might end up with cancer or something if it keeps happening.

So that's me. Bioshock. Part human, part eel, part human baggage train. Sometimes I wonder about the proportions, you know? I live at home with Dad, Mom's off somewhere probably managing some freaky government project to engineer killer bacteria that eats toxic waste and turns it into laser beams or something. Dad's in on my secret, natch. I tried to hide it for awhile, but it was pretty pointless. Besides, if I hadn't told him, it would have been a little tough to get him to enroll me here at Halcyon High, right? I'm sure I'm not the weirdest you've seen. Please tell me I'm not the weirdest you've seen. I'm just hear to ace my classes, make some friends, and maybe somehow figure out this whole supoerhero thing, Is that too much to ask? But that's the bell. Thanks for the chat, doc. Write me a hall pass?