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Working title: VorShock.
The simple proximity of finishing Bioshock and then going onto read some of the Vorkosigan saga made me realize two things: Jackson’s Whole is basically a planet-sized Rapture, and even though a crossover would be easy enough to pull off and amazing and fabulous and work to comment on aspects of both canons simultaneously, I don’t have the time right now.
Which didn’t stop me from plotting out what the story would be, if I did. ZiGraves spent several afternoons and evenings listening patiently, suggesting quite a few ideas, and then admitted she doesn’t have the time, either.
Thankfully, it’s easy enough to summarize and pass on the general gist of the thing. Found families, simultaneous questions of responsibility both for one’s actions and the well-being of others, the nature of childhood and maturity. How for all the citations and examples of true wealth being biological, there’s nothing in the Vorkosigan Saga about families whose members aren’t related to each other – families that choose themselves because of shared circumstance and history. To reference another book series, the ‘logical’ family over the ‘biological’ one. In an ideal universe, I’d write this crossover to address that absence. Right now, I’m going to skip that and go for summarizing the story instead.
There’s still Jack, and the Little Sisters, and Tenenbaum and Suchong and Andrew Ryan and Frank Fontaine. Figuring out how to put them into the context of the Vorkosigan saga and make it work wasn’t actually too difficult, thanks to the level of technology it’s got. There’s no Rapture, no ADAM, no plasmids. That said, they don’t necessarily have the same names – since this version of Brigid Tenenbaum is from Cetaganda, she wouldn’t be called ‘Tenenbaum’, but rather a different, more Cetagandan name which also translates to ‘pine tree’ – which is a series of details I don’t want to bother with working out right now. But there’s still plenty of mad science, genetic engineering, hidden plots and backstories.
About twenty-five years before the start of the story, sometime during the last years of the Komarran revolt, Tenenbaum and Suchong, working together on Jackson’s Whole for a House Minor, figured out how to reduce the aging process in children to about one-third of the normal rate. Once the procedure was suitably mastered, their employing House started accepting bids for people that wanted children who did that. It quickly became a Jacksonian status symbol to have one of these children: it declared, publicly and loudly, that whoever had one was secure enough in wealth and power to afford to have a child for thirty years. Moreover, these children also had an increased period of brain flexibility and elasticity, given the extended growing phase, and by the time they’re adults and capable of taking over House business, their parents are ready to retire, leaving little fodder for generational power struggles. They never catch on as a fad, as such, but they persist as that conspicuous status symbol for a very long time.
Tenenbaum and Suchong tested it out on a number of infants – all girls, to minimize the variables, and because baby girls tend to sell better for these things – and of the ones that weren’t commissioned or claimed, some stayed behind in the labs as sort of communal laboratory property. They’ve got names like Carol, Dorothy, Joan. Suchong didn’t like them at first, even though he eventually grudgingly accepts that having five extra lab assistants without personal lives is a big help on long-term projects. He himself is from Earth, and came to the Whole willingly and happily; when Tenenbaum wants to get under his skin, she calls him an Earthling. She’s from Cetaganda, married out of the haut to the ghem as a reward for her particular brilliance in one project or another, only for her assigned husband to quickly up and die in mysterious circumstances, thus landing her with a good deal of money and independence. She swore, in his memory, she would of course continue the work he knew she held so dear. And the best way for her to do that was go to the Whole.
Now, Andrew Ryan is living on Jackson’s Whole – not as the baron of House Ryan, as Mr. Ryan. He’s got enough power behind him that he could incorporate as a House Minor without any fuss or argument, but he prefers to stay Mr. Ryan. Not out of stupidity, but an appreciation for the danger, and the message his title broadcasts to everyone that can listen.
Frank Fontaine is also present, and he’s far more set on incorporating into House Fontaine. He knows Ryan isn’t the one thing stopping him from doing so, and he knows that a long-term, carefully planned set of schemes and operations is the best way to accomplish this. He’s also pretty sure that taking out Ryan and then taking over his holdings, bringing them into his own, won’t hurt at all, nor would the news he’s the one who took out Mr. Ryan.
So, as is true with so many iterations of the Bioshock universe, he commissions Jack for that explicit purpose. That it only took Suchong and Tenenbaum three tries before they perfected everything and got started on Jack is a testament to their skill.
Again, he was created by Tenenbaum and Suchong using some of Ryan’s genetic material. Again, he was force-grown to adulthood within two years of his birth with his aging slowed down and stabilized after that to stop him from becoming geriatric within half a decade – pretty much the opposite of the girls. And again, he has all the weapons and assassin training Fontaine could cram into his brain, along with a good half-dozen commands that still include ‘would you kindly.’ Jack stays a well-kept secret until Fontaine unleashes him on the world – until then, he’s living in the lab, taken care of by the girls, and this is when Suchong finally appreciates having them around. Since they can’t look for outside help in taking care of a baby, and there’s only so much the full-time employees can do, he forgives Tenenbaum from telling the girls about the new project she was working on, and lets the five of them take care of Jack as much as they want. They aren’t going to go out and tell anyone about their baby brother, after all. They’ve got no one to tell.
They’re twenty years old when Jack’s born. By the time he’s six months old, he’s already taller than them, and quickly takes to calling them his little sisters, which takes about a month for them to learn to live with. By contrast, it didn’t take long for Suchong to snap at Jack, ‘would you kindly stop calling me Papa Suchong’. And that was the end of that.
Much of Jack’s early life is spent with Suchong and Tenenbaum, undergoing all the conditioning and training Fontaine decided he needed. When it came to being taken care of, being cared for, pretty much everything else, that he got from the Little Sisters. He’s in their charge until he’s two, at which point Fontaine decided he’d waited long enough and pulled him out of the lab for his own use.
He still has his tattoos - received with Fontaine's whispered command at the first touch of the needle, 'would you kindly stop caring about how much this hurts.' And he felt every second of the pain, and simply didn't care that he did.
He’s also not a virgin, thanks to Fontaine’s rather spectacular birthday present: a fully licensed Betan therapist. Who resigned shortly afterward, having been under the impression the contract, with all its nondisclosure agreements, was for an eager young adult well of age on any world. Fontaine waited until everything was over and done with to let them know it’d been Jack’s first birthday they celebrated – not his first birthday celebration, but a celebration of his first birthday. Just turned one year old. Fontaine had made sure to stick around to watch the look on their face.
Two years later, thanks to a variety of circumstances, Tenenbaum moved to Escobar to work for Mark Vorkosigan, and persuaded Suchong to come join her. Much as he loves the Whole, he admits his work has gotten a little stale, and a change of pace would suit him. The two of them are working with the Durona group on their research into aging treatments, and also to find a way to successfully replicate reptile-style aging in humans – as Suchong describes it, how to stay young and healthy all the way until the end.
A few months after that, Jack breaks into the clinic. He’s quickly captured by security, thrown into a holding cell where the furniture isn’t bolted down but molded right out of the floor and walls, and doesn’t attempt escape or even conversation with anyone.
And about three weeks later, the first of the young girls arrives, asking for Tenenbaum – or Suchong, if she’s not available. Mark was already on his way over from Barrayar to see the would-be burglar who didn’t try to steal anything, and the girl just makes him want to get there faster, and sooner, to talk to her too.
Then a second young girl shows up within a week of the first. Followed by a third, fourth, and fifth, all of them in a little under a month.
From talking to the girls, and Jack, and Suchong and Tenenbaum, Mark becomes the person with the greatest grasp of the entire situation, and pieces it together without much trouble. A year prior to his break-in, Fontaine activated Jack and had him kill Ryan. Very soon after that, Jack killed Fontaine – who’d goaded him, when he found him waiting in his office one night, saying he hadn’t thought Jack had it in him, how he’d commissioned him and thought he knew what he was capable of, and when he smiled at Jack, that was what snapped something in him and had him kill Fontaine without any regrets. From there, he’d done his best to find a way to get to Suchong and Tenenbaum, make them clean the commands out of his head, and maybe look for his little sisters after that was done. Mark has a hard time fully understanding the impact of the commands, of how deep they go, and Jack hates telling anyone – even without knowing the commands, knowing they’re there is already a huge risk – but tries to explain anyway. He tries, and fails, and finally says how when a command-console is turned on, it doesn't have the option to say no, or think about it, or resist, or have an allergic reaction to the on button. It just turns on.
When Tenenbaum and Suchong left the Whole, the girls left the lab as well – correctly guessing they wouldn’t be kept around for whomever came into House employment next. They were old enough, and smart enough, to get to a Station at least one wormhole jump away from the Whole. They stuck together, and hid as best they could; as in the Bioshock games, they hid in the vents, the walls, and did their best to stay out of sight for fear of being caught and separated from each other. None of them had anything to do with Fontaine, but when news of his death came up over the networks, they were pretty sure Jack had something to do with it, and knew him well enough to guess he’d head off to find Tenenbaum and Suchong.
Mark’s aware of the slow-aged children on the Whole, but it was still a bit of a shock to meet them, much less when they’re all about his age with mental ages to match their chronological ones. He’s not quite sure what that means for Jack. He could be the age he looks, he could have been force-grown like body-transplant clones, or he could three or four times Mark’s age, depending on the treatments he might or might not have gotten.
When Jack says he’s four, Mark needs a full moment to process. When Jack says, ‘And a half,’ all Mark can do is repeat that. And realize, slowly, Jack is still at a chronological age where half a year makes a difference. That Jack referred to the girls as his ‘little sisters’ is correct, and inaccurate, and fails to tell the whole story, and speaks volumes about the affection in the relationship.
That night, he thinks about how much he doesn’t want this information leaked anywhere. Any of it. The stable, rapid aging would lead to even worse turnover in the body-clone clinics – the cost of raising one up in two years is about equal to raising a child for thirty, and plenty of people would consider that a fair investment. The sort of command-conditioning wouldn’t be nearly as easy to pull off on a wide scale, but to let that out would be leading people to reverse-engineer it, see how to apply it to adults, prisoners, servants, spouses, children. And as soon as the reunions are over – the scientists and the girls first, and then Jack and his sisters – he has them clean out Jack’s head. He watches, from outside the room. It’s the one time he ever sees the ‘would you kindly’ command used on Jack, although he never hears the words spoken. Tenenbaum had asked Jack’s permission, which he granted; she tells Mark this is the one time he’ll see it, so he’d better watch. And she asks, ‘would you kindly fall asleep.’ Which Jack does, right away. And instant knockout, faster than any drug, he’s literally out like a light.
The girls persuade Mark to let him stay the night, to move Jack into a larger room so they can sleep with him for a while. They’ve been hiding in foster homes, orphanages, religious outposts, all places small children are kept together, to keep themselves as well-hidden as possible. In some ways, the lab is a step up inasmuch as it’s close to the place they were raised, with comfort coming from that. Naturally, there are security cameras. Mark watches some of the footage. What strikes him is how they sit. They're all on the floor at eye level, and the girls are sitting up, leaning in, more secure in their body language and posture. Jack has his arms wrapped around his legs, his left hand very loosely held in his right. And Mark sees exactly the sort of relationship these six people have with each other.
The next morning, the girls ask what they need to do to become responsible for Jack. Mark happily calls the lawyers in – they didn’t ask for ownership, but responsibility, to keep doing what they’d done for so long, but make it official this time. He also happily recruits them for work on Barrayar, the girls with their years of apprenticeship with Suchong and Tenenbaum joining the ongoing butter bug projects, and his brother can always justify another gardener. Who doesn’t take long to recognize Jack’s true working talents, and has him taking care of his own children. Jack is, by habit, very gentle with people smaller than himself, and treats them like adults as best he can, at least barring provisions of intoxicants or piloting powered vehicles.
One of the girls, some time previously, told Mark about playing in the lab with some sort of plastic blocks, and Jack asking what they were doing. When they told him they were playing with blocks, he then asked how he was supposed to do it. He was trained to assess situations and figure out solutions, answers, to look at objects and see tools to achieve his goals, to figure out the correct way to use whatever he’s given. He learns the art of play alongside Miles’ children, next to those actually learning it.
There is a moment, when Mark and Miles are going over what’s been happening in Mark’s life, of mutual bonding over attracting galactic misfits and strays – a moment of each worrying about getting too much like the other that passes quickly. It’s what family does, gets under your skin in the best of ways. Whether you came into it honestly, dishonestly, or otherwise.
Jack and the girls are family, their primary family. He’s their baby brother, and will happily carry them around in his arms if they ask. The six of them reject the people who made them in favor of the people they grew up with, having all worked to raise each other. They don’t share anything except circumstance, and that’s more than enough.
Which didn’t stop me from plotting out what the story would be, if I did. ZiGraves spent several afternoons and evenings listening patiently, suggesting quite a few ideas, and then admitted she doesn’t have the time, either.
Thankfully, it’s easy enough to summarize and pass on the general gist of the thing. Found families, simultaneous questions of responsibility both for one’s actions and the well-being of others, the nature of childhood and maturity. How for all the citations and examples of true wealth being biological, there’s nothing in the Vorkosigan Saga about families whose members aren’t related to each other – families that choose themselves because of shared circumstance and history. To reference another book series, the ‘logical’ family over the ‘biological’ one. In an ideal universe, I’d write this crossover to address that absence. Right now, I’m going to skip that and go for summarizing the story instead.
There’s still Jack, and the Little Sisters, and Tenenbaum and Suchong and Andrew Ryan and Frank Fontaine. Figuring out how to put them into the context of the Vorkosigan saga and make it work wasn’t actually too difficult, thanks to the level of technology it’s got. There’s no Rapture, no ADAM, no plasmids. That said, they don’t necessarily have the same names – since this version of Brigid Tenenbaum is from Cetaganda, she wouldn’t be called ‘Tenenbaum’, but rather a different, more Cetagandan name which also translates to ‘pine tree’ – which is a series of details I don’t want to bother with working out right now. But there’s still plenty of mad science, genetic engineering, hidden plots and backstories.
About twenty-five years before the start of the story, sometime during the last years of the Komarran revolt, Tenenbaum and Suchong, working together on Jackson’s Whole for a House Minor, figured out how to reduce the aging process in children to about one-third of the normal rate. Once the procedure was suitably mastered, their employing House started accepting bids for people that wanted children who did that. It quickly became a Jacksonian status symbol to have one of these children: it declared, publicly and loudly, that whoever had one was secure enough in wealth and power to afford to have a child for thirty years. Moreover, these children also had an increased period of brain flexibility and elasticity, given the extended growing phase, and by the time they’re adults and capable of taking over House business, their parents are ready to retire, leaving little fodder for generational power struggles. They never catch on as a fad, as such, but they persist as that conspicuous status symbol for a very long time.
Tenenbaum and Suchong tested it out on a number of infants – all girls, to minimize the variables, and because baby girls tend to sell better for these things – and of the ones that weren’t commissioned or claimed, some stayed behind in the labs as sort of communal laboratory property. They’ve got names like Carol, Dorothy, Joan. Suchong didn’t like them at first, even though he eventually grudgingly accepts that having five extra lab assistants without personal lives is a big help on long-term projects. He himself is from Earth, and came to the Whole willingly and happily; when Tenenbaum wants to get under his skin, she calls him an Earthling. She’s from Cetaganda, married out of the haut to the ghem as a reward for her particular brilliance in one project or another, only for her assigned husband to quickly up and die in mysterious circumstances, thus landing her with a good deal of money and independence. She swore, in his memory, she would of course continue the work he knew she held so dear. And the best way for her to do that was go to the Whole.
Now, Andrew Ryan is living on Jackson’s Whole – not as the baron of House Ryan, as Mr. Ryan. He’s got enough power behind him that he could incorporate as a House Minor without any fuss or argument, but he prefers to stay Mr. Ryan. Not out of stupidity, but an appreciation for the danger, and the message his title broadcasts to everyone that can listen.
Frank Fontaine is also present, and he’s far more set on incorporating into House Fontaine. He knows Ryan isn’t the one thing stopping him from doing so, and he knows that a long-term, carefully planned set of schemes and operations is the best way to accomplish this. He’s also pretty sure that taking out Ryan and then taking over his holdings, bringing them into his own, won’t hurt at all, nor would the news he’s the one who took out Mr. Ryan.
So, as is true with so many iterations of the Bioshock universe, he commissions Jack for that explicit purpose. That it only took Suchong and Tenenbaum three tries before they perfected everything and got started on Jack is a testament to their skill.
Again, he was created by Tenenbaum and Suchong using some of Ryan’s genetic material. Again, he was force-grown to adulthood within two years of his birth with his aging slowed down and stabilized after that to stop him from becoming geriatric within half a decade – pretty much the opposite of the girls. And again, he has all the weapons and assassin training Fontaine could cram into his brain, along with a good half-dozen commands that still include ‘would you kindly.’ Jack stays a well-kept secret until Fontaine unleashes him on the world – until then, he’s living in the lab, taken care of by the girls, and this is when Suchong finally appreciates having them around. Since they can’t look for outside help in taking care of a baby, and there’s only so much the full-time employees can do, he forgives Tenenbaum from telling the girls about the new project she was working on, and lets the five of them take care of Jack as much as they want. They aren’t going to go out and tell anyone about their baby brother, after all. They’ve got no one to tell.
They’re twenty years old when Jack’s born. By the time he’s six months old, he’s already taller than them, and quickly takes to calling them his little sisters, which takes about a month for them to learn to live with. By contrast, it didn’t take long for Suchong to snap at Jack, ‘would you kindly stop calling me Papa Suchong’. And that was the end of that.
Much of Jack’s early life is spent with Suchong and Tenenbaum, undergoing all the conditioning and training Fontaine decided he needed. When it came to being taken care of, being cared for, pretty much everything else, that he got from the Little Sisters. He’s in their charge until he’s two, at which point Fontaine decided he’d waited long enough and pulled him out of the lab for his own use.
He still has his tattoos - received with Fontaine's whispered command at the first touch of the needle, 'would you kindly stop caring about how much this hurts.' And he felt every second of the pain, and simply didn't care that he did.
He’s also not a virgin, thanks to Fontaine’s rather spectacular birthday present: a fully licensed Betan therapist. Who resigned shortly afterward, having been under the impression the contract, with all its nondisclosure agreements, was for an eager young adult well of age on any world. Fontaine waited until everything was over and done with to let them know it’d been Jack’s first birthday they celebrated – not his first birthday celebration, but a celebration of his first birthday. Just turned one year old. Fontaine had made sure to stick around to watch the look on their face.
Two years later, thanks to a variety of circumstances, Tenenbaum moved to Escobar to work for Mark Vorkosigan, and persuaded Suchong to come join her. Much as he loves the Whole, he admits his work has gotten a little stale, and a change of pace would suit him. The two of them are working with the Durona group on their research into aging treatments, and also to find a way to successfully replicate reptile-style aging in humans – as Suchong describes it, how to stay young and healthy all the way until the end.
A few months after that, Jack breaks into the clinic. He’s quickly captured by security, thrown into a holding cell where the furniture isn’t bolted down but molded right out of the floor and walls, and doesn’t attempt escape or even conversation with anyone.
And about three weeks later, the first of the young girls arrives, asking for Tenenbaum – or Suchong, if she’s not available. Mark was already on his way over from Barrayar to see the would-be burglar who didn’t try to steal anything, and the girl just makes him want to get there faster, and sooner, to talk to her too.
Then a second young girl shows up within a week of the first. Followed by a third, fourth, and fifth, all of them in a little under a month.
From talking to the girls, and Jack, and Suchong and Tenenbaum, Mark becomes the person with the greatest grasp of the entire situation, and pieces it together without much trouble. A year prior to his break-in, Fontaine activated Jack and had him kill Ryan. Very soon after that, Jack killed Fontaine – who’d goaded him, when he found him waiting in his office one night, saying he hadn’t thought Jack had it in him, how he’d commissioned him and thought he knew what he was capable of, and when he smiled at Jack, that was what snapped something in him and had him kill Fontaine without any regrets. From there, he’d done his best to find a way to get to Suchong and Tenenbaum, make them clean the commands out of his head, and maybe look for his little sisters after that was done. Mark has a hard time fully understanding the impact of the commands, of how deep they go, and Jack hates telling anyone – even without knowing the commands, knowing they’re there is already a huge risk – but tries to explain anyway. He tries, and fails, and finally says how when a command-console is turned on, it doesn't have the option to say no, or think about it, or resist, or have an allergic reaction to the on button. It just turns on.
When Tenenbaum and Suchong left the Whole, the girls left the lab as well – correctly guessing they wouldn’t be kept around for whomever came into House employment next. They were old enough, and smart enough, to get to a Station at least one wormhole jump away from the Whole. They stuck together, and hid as best they could; as in the Bioshock games, they hid in the vents, the walls, and did their best to stay out of sight for fear of being caught and separated from each other. None of them had anything to do with Fontaine, but when news of his death came up over the networks, they were pretty sure Jack had something to do with it, and knew him well enough to guess he’d head off to find Tenenbaum and Suchong.
Mark’s aware of the slow-aged children on the Whole, but it was still a bit of a shock to meet them, much less when they’re all about his age with mental ages to match their chronological ones. He’s not quite sure what that means for Jack. He could be the age he looks, he could have been force-grown like body-transplant clones, or he could three or four times Mark’s age, depending on the treatments he might or might not have gotten.
When Jack says he’s four, Mark needs a full moment to process. When Jack says, ‘And a half,’ all Mark can do is repeat that. And realize, slowly, Jack is still at a chronological age where half a year makes a difference. That Jack referred to the girls as his ‘little sisters’ is correct, and inaccurate, and fails to tell the whole story, and speaks volumes about the affection in the relationship.
That night, he thinks about how much he doesn’t want this information leaked anywhere. Any of it. The stable, rapid aging would lead to even worse turnover in the body-clone clinics – the cost of raising one up in two years is about equal to raising a child for thirty, and plenty of people would consider that a fair investment. The sort of command-conditioning wouldn’t be nearly as easy to pull off on a wide scale, but to let that out would be leading people to reverse-engineer it, see how to apply it to adults, prisoners, servants, spouses, children. And as soon as the reunions are over – the scientists and the girls first, and then Jack and his sisters – he has them clean out Jack’s head. He watches, from outside the room. It’s the one time he ever sees the ‘would you kindly’ command used on Jack, although he never hears the words spoken. Tenenbaum had asked Jack’s permission, which he granted; she tells Mark this is the one time he’ll see it, so he’d better watch. And she asks, ‘would you kindly fall asleep.’ Which Jack does, right away. And instant knockout, faster than any drug, he’s literally out like a light.
The girls persuade Mark to let him stay the night, to move Jack into a larger room so they can sleep with him for a while. They’ve been hiding in foster homes, orphanages, religious outposts, all places small children are kept together, to keep themselves as well-hidden as possible. In some ways, the lab is a step up inasmuch as it’s close to the place they were raised, with comfort coming from that. Naturally, there are security cameras. Mark watches some of the footage. What strikes him is how they sit. They're all on the floor at eye level, and the girls are sitting up, leaning in, more secure in their body language and posture. Jack has his arms wrapped around his legs, his left hand very loosely held in his right. And Mark sees exactly the sort of relationship these six people have with each other.
The next morning, the girls ask what they need to do to become responsible for Jack. Mark happily calls the lawyers in – they didn’t ask for ownership, but responsibility, to keep doing what they’d done for so long, but make it official this time. He also happily recruits them for work on Barrayar, the girls with their years of apprenticeship with Suchong and Tenenbaum joining the ongoing butter bug projects, and his brother can always justify another gardener. Who doesn’t take long to recognize Jack’s true working talents, and has him taking care of his own children. Jack is, by habit, very gentle with people smaller than himself, and treats them like adults as best he can, at least barring provisions of intoxicants or piloting powered vehicles.
One of the girls, some time previously, told Mark about playing in the lab with some sort of plastic blocks, and Jack asking what they were doing. When they told him they were playing with blocks, he then asked how he was supposed to do it. He was trained to assess situations and figure out solutions, answers, to look at objects and see tools to achieve his goals, to figure out the correct way to use whatever he’s given. He learns the art of play alongside Miles’ children, next to those actually learning it.
There is a moment, when Mark and Miles are going over what’s been happening in Mark’s life, of mutual bonding over attracting galactic misfits and strays – a moment of each worrying about getting too much like the other that passes quickly. It’s what family does, gets under your skin in the best of ways. Whether you came into it honestly, dishonestly, or otherwise.
Jack and the girls are family, their primary family. He’s their baby brother, and will happily carry them around in his arms if they ask. The six of them reject the people who made them in favor of the people they grew up with, having all worked to raise each other. They don’t share anything except circumstance, and that’s more than enough.