Do not read unless you have completed Bioshock Infinite; total spoilers below.
A Recounting of What Occurred
Rosalind Lutece grows up in the mid to late 1800s and studies Quantum Mechanics. Eventually she is able to use Quantum Mechanics to suspend objects in air. Exactly when the early experiments occur is unknown but she has sufficiently advanced her progress so that in 1893 Zachary Comstock is able to use it build and launch Columbia, the floating city, as part of the World’s Fair in New York City.
Comstock has the resources to build the city because of the backing of the US government. According to one of the recordings there was a revival among congressmen that lead them to support the project. Therefore Columbia was an official US city until Comstock takes it to China in attempt to free US citizens during the Boxer Rebellion during the summer of 1900. Because the U.S. government refused to sanction his actions Comstock declares Columbia a free city (at least this is the official story).
Rosalind Lutece continues her work in Quantum Mechanics and is able to make contact with a parallel dimension. Her counterpart in that dimension is Robert Lutece. After some further work she is able to open a window large enough to pull Robert into her dimension. The effects on him are unsettling and he has to create false memories to keep himself sane (and perhaps even alive). Rosalind begins passing him off as her twin brother.
Comstock maintains a close relationship with Rosalind and is privy to all of her findings. In fact, due to proximately to her machines he becomes sterile (this is probably also the source of the tumors that are killing him during the game). He now has no natural way of getting an heir to run Columbia. But through Lutece’s machine he learns that there is a version of himself in an alternate dimension that has a daughter.
Let’s go back in time in that alternate world. A soldier named Booker DeWitt is a member of the force that was at the Battle (some would say Massacre and it is a more appropriate description) of Wounded Knee. Some undefined time after this he became a Pinkerton Agent and helped quell labor uprisings. He then went out on his own.
In Rosalind Lutece’s dimension, after Wounded Knee Booker DeWitt seeks redemption and comes to be baptized. He receives the baptism and comes up believing he is a new man. So he changed his name to Zachary Comstock and goes on to found Columbia. But in the parallel dimension, Booker cannot see how baptism will cleanse him from his guilt and he refuses it. At some point he gets married and has a child named Anna. Unfortunately, his wife dies during childbirth (he admits this to Elizabeth during the game). He is now a single father, deep in debt, and raising a young child in less than ideal conditions.
Then a man, Robert Lutece, comes to him and offers to wipe away his debt if he will give over his daughter. We don’t know the details but it is easy to imagine that it was pitched to Booker that his daughter would be raised by loving, wealthy parents who would provide for her far better than Booker ever could. As for Booker, he would be able to start clean. Perhaps even remarry and have other children. Booker agrees and eventually gives Anna to Robert.
But he changes his mind. He tracks down Robert, who is with Zachary Comstock waiting for Rosalind to stabilize the window back into their dimension. Booker attempts to take Anna back but is unable to prevent Comstock from taking her through the window. But the window closes just slightly too quickly and Anna loses the end of her right little finger, which remains in Booker’s dimension.
This changes Anna, whom Comstock renames Elizabeth in the same way that he renamed himself. Elizabeth now exists in two dimensions and so she is able to create and open tears in the fabric of reality. These tears may lead to parallel worlds or to different times. Rosalind Lutece says the phenomenon is not explainable, but she surmises that the “universe does not like having its peas mixed with its porridge.”
Elizabeth’s presence, perhaps only after she reaches puberty, open up tears throughout Columbia. Enterprising individuals, particularly the Finks, use these tears to their own advantage. One, a musician, takes songs from the future and releases them. That’s why you hear The Beach Boys, Tears for Fears, and others in 1912. His brother uses information he has gained from the tears (perhaps from a place called Rapture) to create Vigors and fantastical machines, like the motorized Patriots and the Handymen.
Lady Comstock, meanwhile, becomes jealous when Zachary shows up with a baby. She accuses Rosalind Lutece of having an affair with Zachary. Rosalind denies it but at this point will not share with Lady Comstock the baby’s origin. So Lady Comstock remains unconvinced.
Zachary starts to become paranoid. He has went through so much to get Elizabeth and Lady Comstock will not let the issue go. A story is concocted about a miracle seven day pregnancy but Lady Comstock knows it is a lie and despises the child. So Zachary has her killed and frames Daisy Fitzroy, their African-American servant for the crime. Eventually his paranoia grows until, to protect Elizabeth’s secret, he has the Luteces killed as well. He is now free to raise up Elizabeth to take his place, with the intention that one day she will “cleanse” the earth with fire as a compliment to Noah’s flood (he considers Columbia a “new ark”).
But the Luteces are a bigger problem than he could have predicted. They have become so adept a manipulating the quantum universe that death is essentially meaningless. According to at least one theory, time doesn’t really exist; it is merely a perception that we cannot break free from perceiving. But they have learned how to break free of that perception. They decide the only solution is to try to put Elizabeth back where they got her. But is that possible?
When the game starts (1912), Booker is in a boat with the Luteces. Robert is complaining that he has to do all the rowing and Rosiland tells him that it’s his experiment. She doesn’t believe in it and therefore he can do the rowing. Here is part of that exchange.
(He) One goes into an experiment knowing one could fail.
(She) One does not undertake an experiment knowing that one has failed.
The implication here, and later with the coin flip, is that this is not the first time they have tried this. What this is, we learn at the end of the game, is that Booker has been pulled by Robert Lutece from his (Booker’s) dimension into Zachary Comstock’s dimension. This explains why, later, Booker tells Elizabeth he’s never heard of Columbia before. It didn’t exist in his dimension. But, as it was with Robert when Rosalind pulled him through, the experience was traumatic for Booker and he has reconstructed some of his memories to make sense of what has occurred. He has incorporated the original request for Anna (“Bring us the girl and wipe away the debt”) into his search to find Elizabeth and bring her back to New York.
That this is not Booker’s home dimension is foreshadowed by his first encounter with Comstock, who pushes him to realize the truth of who he is. When this happens, Booker’s nose begins to bleed. An effect, we learn later in the game, of those who have changed dimensions and are struggling to rationalize their memories from their dimension with the conflicting reality of their new dimension. The game begins with this quote on the subject from Rosalind Lutece.
“The mind of the subject will desperately struggle to create memories where none exist….” Barriers to Trans-Dimensional Travel, – R. Lutece, 1889
So, part way through the game Elizabeth opens a tear so that they can get to a place where Chen Lin is still alive. Later she opens up another tear to another dimension to “move” some equipment. We find that in that dimension Booker failed to reach Elizabeth and became the leader of the Vox Populi. It is in that dimension that most of the rest of the game is played.
Near the end Elizabeth is recaptured by Comstock. When Booker finds her again it is a much older Elizabeth, who, having been broken by Comstock’s training, is now overseeing the destruction of 1984 New York City. She tells him this cannot be stopped. That the Songbird always finds them and stops Booker from rescuing her (indicating again that this has been tried many times before – the experiment has failed) but she gives Booker a paper to give to the younger version of herself and sends him back in time.
Booker finds the younger Elizabeth and rescues her. Together they confront Comstock, who in turn asks Elizabeth if Booker has told her about his part in her losing her finger. Booker denies any knowledge of what happened, having blocked it out when restructuring his memory during the dimension jumping. So he kills Comstock. At the end of an epic battle, where the Songbird has been fighting on your side, Booker loses the means to control the Songbird and once again he comes to separate them.
But Elizabeth transports them to the one place where the Songbird is powerless; underwater. Specifically to an underwater city named Rapture. She then leads Booker to a bathysphere and takes him to the surface. There is the lighthouse that Jack Ryan entered. They too enter but instead of the inside that Jack found, they find another outside with a “million million” lighthouses.
These represent all the possible Bioshocks. Elizabeth says there are variables and constants.
“There’s always a lighthouse. There’s always a man. There’s always a city. … You, me, Columbia, Songbird. But sometimes, something’s different yet the same.”
Eventually they pass through a door that leads them to Booker’s baptism. He starts to go through with it but can’t, because he didn’t. Booker then becomes the one wanting to go to Paris. But Elizabeth says they have to find Comstock, and when Booker objects that Comstock is dead, Elizabeth tells Booker that Comstock is not.
But when they move forward, Booker is forced to remember Anna and the fact that he gave her up. Confronted with his past Booker again bleeds but Elizabeth leads him onward. So in the dark street Booker once again tries to get Anna back but fails. Now back in his apartment, Robert Lutece comes and offers Booker his chance to get Anna back.
Now understand how he got to where he is, Booker realizes the need to kill Comstock at the beginning. When pushed by the Luteces about how far back to go, Booker, still unware that Comstock is a version of himself, says he’ll smother Comstock in his crib. At the door, Elizabeth asks Booker if he’s sure this is what he wants. He opens the door.
He’s back at the baptism. Only Elizabeth (but not his Elizabeth) says it’s not the same place. Then he realizes, as multiple versions of Elizabeths show up, that he is Zachary Comstock. The Elizabeths then proceed to do what Booker said he would do, smother DeWitt/Comstock by holding him under the water. Then, the deed done, they fade from existence.
After the credits, Booker is back in his apartment. He hears music from a child’s toy. He opens the door to the room with the crib and asks, “Anna, is that you?” But the screen goes dark before we can see whether or not Anna is in the crib.
But, Did It Work?
So the goal of the Luteces experiment, which Rosalind was sure would fail, was to put Anna back in her crib. Obviously, the ending is ambiguous. We could surmise from the music playing that Anna is in the crib, but the fact that we do not see her in the crib leaves room for doubt. Perhaps she is not. Perhaps this is the point that Booker realizes what he has done by giving her up and chases Lutece to Comstock to stop them from leaving. We just don’t know. Not yet. What the promised DLC will hold is a mystery, but it might shed light on this subject.
As for whether or not it could have worked, some have noted that drowning this singular Booker, who is twenty years past the decision point, would not stop the younger man from having that decision point. The key to this, I believe, is Elizabeth telling him that they were not back at the place of his baptism. Well, it looked like his baptism spot, so what was it? It was the decision point in his life and since time doesn’t really exist, the twenty year older man can make the decision for the younger man. All the branches that would lead to Comstock could be cut off.
So, when the Luteces pull Booker through the dimensional hole, the following exchange takes place.
(He) I told you it would work.
(She) We already know it works. The question is will he?
Which I interpret to mean pulling him through was not a problem. She’s done that before. The question is whether this Booker can work as a stand in for all the Booker DeWitts and all the Zachary Comstocks. I would like to believe, based on the vanishing Elizabeths and the music from the crib that the answer is yes. If there was not DLC I would hang my hat on it. But, there is still more to the story so I’ll wait until we know those pieces before I take my hat off.
Postscript: Once you know the story, the selection of “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” as the theme song for the game is genius.
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