YOU - “Promiscuity -- you mean the *cock carousel*.” (Twirl your hand around in the air.) MEASUREHEAD - YOU USE VULGAR HUMOUR TO DISTRACT YOURSELF FROM THE PAIN THAT WOMEN HAVE CAUSED YOU. IMPOTENT RAGE AT THEIR PROMISCUITY WILL NOT HEAL YOU. AND IT *REPELS* WOMEN.

SHIVERS - COME MORNING, I CARRY INDUSTRIAL DUST AND LET IT SETTLE ON TREE LEAVES. I SHAKE THE DUST FROM THOSE LEAVES AND ONTO YOUR COAT.

0.000% of Communism has been built. Evil child-murdering billionaires still rule the world with a shit-eating grin. All he has managed to do is make himself *sad*. He is starting to suspect Kras Mazov *fucked him over* personally with his socio-economic theory.

CUNO - “Fuck does Cuno care?” The boy turns to you. (He doesn't care.)

JEAN VICQUEMARE - You're a *worry-fest*. She's worried about you. I'm worried about you. Even Special Consultant Backpedal is worried about you. Everyone worries -- instead of *working*.

People imagine picking up and finding *something better* is an easy solution. But how is that supposed to work, when all your time and energy goes to staying alive? You have almost nothing to set aside to actually fight your way out.

SHIVERS - Revachol is the capital of the world. Jamrock is the capital of Revachol. Droplets form on your eyelashes. INLAND EMPIRE - It's home.

YOU - Wait, the pale is human made? INSULINDIAN PHASMID - It is a nervous shadow cast into the world by you, eating away at reality. A great, unnatural territory. Its advent coincides with the arrival of the human mind.

Are you... are you part of the *homo-sexual underground*?

YOU - Johnny Law is about to tear it up. Sad-style.

Off we go into the wild pale yonder.

YOU - I've been bad and I want someone to abuse me. NIX GOTTLIEB - Oh, it's you. I know a woman skilled at that sort of thing over in Jamrock... but I wouldn't want to inflict you upon her. Best of luck, detective.

YOU - “The people who built this world intended it to be better for you, but they failed. It is easier to live in their failure with this by your side.” (Tap on the tape recorder.)

SAVOIR FAIRE - But Savvy's got your back. Savvy's going to book you a charter flight with eighty birds of prey on board, to a land where the streets are paved with krugerrands and fixed-income securities. You'll try again, but this time with *money*. You'll win her back.

CONCEPTUALIZATION - Pity. The jackets are meant to complete each other. If a man were standing alone on a street corner with 'PISSF****T' written on his back, it'd just be an individual that has taken a liking to urine. And 'FUCK THE WORLD' all on its own is, frankly, generic.

PAYPHONE - You're not a revolutionary, Harry... You're drunk.

INLAND EMPIRE - There is also a *fourth* thing you've lost. YOU - A... fourth thing? INLAND EMPIRE - More precious than the gun, the badge and the motor carriage *combined*. Lost forever. Into the deepest of seas.

SHIVERS - A grey rain falls on Martinaise. The city soaks in it, cold and dripping. Waves hit the concrete breakers. The homeless huddle by the fires behind the fences. There, among the shacks, is your home. Stay. Have a drink. Forever.

And then you see it. As it strangles and beats your friends to death... the sweetest most courageous people in the world. You see the fear and power in its eyes. Then you *know*. That the bourgeois are not human.

PERCEPTION - A dog barks and a gunshot echoes off the walls of some distant building. A woman's voice... SHIVERS - REVACHOL FOREVER.

Still, there's something inherently violent even about dice rolls. It's like every time you cast a die, something disappears. Some alternative ending, or an entirely different world...

Real darkness has love for a face. The first death is in the heart.

I'm a bad person. I believe I could have done anything.

INSULINDIAN PHASMID - I am at the end of a narrow funnel. Weightless. So light it only feels like *something* to be me. In truth -- perhaps I'm nothing? I certainly do not have a soul. And if I did, it would never ache.

INTERFACING - Not just any pinball machine. This is the pinnacle of pinball. 'Cornelius Gurdi and the Mountain Goats'. It's lit. You can't wait to get your hands on it.

YOU - No one wants to *do* anything with me... no one wants to party with me. KIM KITSURAGI - “Stay with me!” You feel burning hot tears streaming from your eyes. YOU - I don't want to be anymore. It hurts.

Don’t expect any further rewards or handclaps. This is how normal people are all the time.

TRANT HEIDELSTAM - As a police detective, he's like a magnetic reader on the world-tape -- to borrow a known metaphor. Harry's been pushed *flat against it*. Total input.

Are women bourgeois?

JEAN VICQUEMARE - Yes, we can *see* the jacket. Fuck the world. Fuck police duty. Fuck Jean Vicquemare -- that's what it says to me. Fuck me. We've been through this.

VOLITION - No. Not a disaster. Weave this into the story of you. Walk out of its *ruins*. Save those who still can be saved -- *I'm* on your side.

COMPOSURE - Could he be... a member of the *homo-sexual underground*? ELECTROCHEMISTRY - This *sexual* thing seems interesting... Ask around, become involved.

“What, you've never seen a man getting a panic attack before?” (Try to keep breathing.)

ENCYCLOPEDIA - Funk is an aggressive resurgence of *The New* aesthetic of the Revacholian Thirties, but this time originating in Graad. It's brought there by the Iilmaraan diaspora. Funk is more masculine and guitar-oriented than disco. Even more *dangerous*.

UN JOUR JE SERAI DE RETOUR PRÈS DE TOI

YOU - I am a detective. INSULINDIAN PHASMID - So am I. I was born to detect sucrose rewards and semiochemicals. What were you born to detect? YOU - I was born to detect you.

YOU - “Our lives are very different from each other.” JOYCE MESSIER - “No doubt -- but we share the same time and position on the planet's crust. That counts for more than you'd think.”

This is a very, very sad man who has just seen something that's made him forget his sadness.

JEAN VICQUEMARE - He can't be a cop, Harry. He's twelve. And he says 'f****t' every four seconds.

INSULINDIAN PHASMID - And when you fall we will come to raise you up, bud from you, banner-like, blossom from you and carry you apart in a sky funeral. In honour of your passing. (But not me, because I am just a leaf eater.)

YOU - Where the hood, where the hood, where the hood at? SHIVERS - HAVE A BROTHER IN THE CUT. WHERE THE WOOD AT?

Maybe you should *stop* obsessing about your own -- and other people's -- sexuality? Feels like it’s about time to do that. You’ve thought about this for *eight hours*?! Not only should you stop, you should tell Kim you've stopped obsessing about other people's sexuality too.

CUNOESSE - Do it, f****t! SET ME FREE!

JULES PIDIEU - Sergeant Torson here is wondering if you are still in possession of your genitalia. Over. YOU - I left it at his momma's after I fucked her ass all night. Tell him that.

INLAND EMPIRE - Dora. The name feels like a *gift*. A gift that was meant for you -- to make it possible to live.

PERCEPTION (HEARING) - “Flying f****t... winged pig... shit is airborne...” These are the only words the wind coming in from the Insulindian ocean carries to you.

EMPATHY - La responsabilité isn't concerned with trivial questions like *who killed who*. It's about the real issues: the human welfare index, the price of staple goods, the transition to real democracy...

JOYCE MESSIER - It wasn't a *who*, but a *what*. A pandemic of tzaraath, a particularly virulent prion disease, which the authorities in Graad proved unable to contain. Then Mazov came along and overthrew the government.

JEAN VICQUEMARE - “God, I don't know...” He thinks. “Six years ago? She was way before my time.” VOLITION - Six years and you haven't gotten over it, what the hell is wrong with you?

Moralists don't really *have* beliefs. Sometimes they stumble on one, like on a child's toy left on the carpet. The toy must be put away immediately. And the child reprimanded.