Tony: Well Bruce, Walter, how did this lifestyle choice of ours work out for each of you? For me, I question now whether it was all worthwhile. Did I make a difference, did I really change things, or did I just spin my wheels and attract a lot of attention. The problems seem to still be there, just as insurmountable looking down now as there were when I started.
Walter: Nothing ever changes, the broken washing machine of the world jerkily spins into oblivion. Our lives were short and stank of rotten fruit drenched in dog urine. Still, we chose to make our stands in our own way. Of course, the two of you compromised, and undermined your own choice.
Tony: How can you say that? I know the world has problems, but I have to believe that we made things a little better in our own way. Maybe I didn't get to save the world as I set out to do, but at least a few people get to sleep better at night without the fear of men with guns coming for them.
Walter: Do you really believe that? Do you really believe that a few deluded souls sleeping better makes a difference? Stop thinking just about what you did and look at the big picture. The world is still messed up. Nations still go to war and the people get crushed beneath their weight. Those same nations rise and fall wwith the course of history, but still thing remain the same. Its all empty and meaningless.
Tony: Bruce, help me out here. You can't believe this deranged psychopath is right. We struggled to make things better. The world may not be fixed, but its a little better for our having been there.
Bruce: Oh Tony, you never did understand what my fight was about. I never fought to save the world. I fought to save myself. It took a lifetime to admit it, but it was about me all along. I never really managed to admit it to myself in life, but now that I'm dead, I can accept it. It wasn't about the world, or even really about other people. I don't know if the world deserved saving, though I tried to tell myself it did. I don't know if people deserved a second chance, but I tried to give them one, no matter how despicable I found them.
Walter: Come a little further Bruce, you're almost there.
Bruce: I'm not an obsessive deranged psychopath like you Walter. As I said, I may have been doing it all for myself, but I was doing it for a reason. You never had a reason. You were an animal, you never acted, you just moved. You were presented with stimuli and responded accordingly. I may have acted out of a selfish desire to give meaning to my own life, but I chose and I acted.
Walter: That's where your wrong. We're all just animals, some more delusional than others. You both know I was right all along. There was never any meaning to anything; never any purpose. We all just responded to stimuli and acted out based on circumstance. The bells chimed like good little lapdogs, we salivated and came for dinner. When we didn't get dinner enough times, we started to fight. Then, when the bells chimed, we tore the world to shreds. The difference is, I accepted that I was doing so. I didn't try to find false meaning in the world, try to offer hope to the hopeless. I stared into the abyss and let it stare back into me. So of course I never compromised, that was how I'd been conditioned to respond.
Bruce: Wrong, you made moral choices, just as we each did. I may have acted to give meaning to my own pathetic life, selfish I know, but I could have acted differently. I could have allowed the world to disintegrate into flames around me. I could have taken pleasure in watching the world burn. Instead I chose to try and stop the flood. The reasons may have been selfish, but in that selfishness, I realized meaning.
Walter: Really Bruce? Did you really find meaning? Guess what, the world did burn, and you did stand by and watch. There's really nothing to be upset about, you couldn't stop it any more than I could have.
Tony: Walter, admit it, you acted morally. You may have acted in a fashion more extreme than Bruce or I, but you still were never as bad others.
Walter: I broke a mans wrist to make him talk, and learned what he had for breakfast. I killed a man to threatened me long after he was no threat. I stood by and did nothing as people were dying around me.
Tony: You said it yourself, you couldn't stop everything. You did what you could, it may have been on a small scale, but you stopped people worse than you ever were.
Walter: The world still burned, and I along with it. Everyone I killed, everyone I supposedly saved where are they now? There are right here with us, dead. Their world burned and now they too know the truth. This is all there ever was. Nothing. No heaven, no pearly gates. No cycle of reincarnation. No hell fiery or frozen. No seventy two virgins waiting for us. Nothing whatsoever. This isn't the abyss, the world is the abyss. Its just that now we aren't distracted by all the whores and politicians on television.
Bruce: This may be all there is now, but there was something, something worth fighting for in our brief lives. We all were worth fighting for, good or bad. Each and every one of us is an individual, with a meaningful life to lead in a meaningless world. Thats the secret, the world may be meaningless, but we find meaning in our own lives.
Walter: Just your greed talking there Bruce. You always had everything, of course you believe your life was worthwhile. You never good give it up, just as you can't now. Look around you, what has the meaning you found in your life gotten here. You left here arguing with a dog like me. This isn't a waiting area, no one is coming to redeem you and offer you anything else. This is all there is, nothingness. No past, no future, and eternally meaningless present. The joke was on all of us, even me. I thought I chose to act how I did, but I've realized I was wrong. I never acted any more than anyone else.
Bruce: Tony, you started this argument with this psychopath, why won't you say something now?
Tony: Because he's right. I filled my life with things, objects for whatever I wanted. Entertainment, there was an object for that. Saving lives, there was an object for that. While you two argued, I've been thinking. In finding meaning in objects, I became an object. People were just objects. It may have been easier at the time than laughing at the joke, but it was just a delusional method of coping with the meaningless of everything. If all I was was my toys, then there never really was any meaning.
Bruce: But you chose, you designed the machines and used them.
Tony: I was a machine. Input in, motion out. I wasn't a man, a man chooses. I was a computer. A dog as Walter says.
Walter: Well Bruce, hows your selfishness doing for you now? Any great realizations, any grand meanings to provide us with?
Bruce: Live a life worth living. That my only insight. Tony lived a life worth living, even if he doubts himself now. I lived a life worth living, and I don't doubt that.
Walter: Yet here you both are with me. If life was worth living, why would you be here amongst dogs? I tell you why one more time. No meaning, objects in motion. Not men acting, animals responding. Tony found meaning in objects, but objects don't have any meaning. You, you tried to find meaning in yourself. It's a more pesky and annoying delusion, harder to dispel. No reason to do so any longer. No reason for argument, no reason for anything. This is all there ever was. World is a good joke, everyone laughs. World ends, good joke, everyone laughs. Didn't get joke then, get joke now.
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