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Bob Arctor: The pain, so unexpected and undeserved had for some reason cleared away the cobwebs. I realized I didn't hate the cabinet door, I hated my life... My house, my family, my backyard, my power mower. Nothing would ever change; nothing new could ever be expected. It had to end, and it did. now in the dark world where I dwell, ugly things, and surprising things, and

sometimes little wondrous things, spill out in me constantly, and I can count on nothing.

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Fred: [voiceover] What does a scanner see? Into the head? Down into the heart? Does it see into me? Into us? Clearly or darkly? I hope it sees clearly because I can't any longer see into myself. I see only murk. I hope for everyone's sake the scanners do better, because if the scanner sees only darkly the way I do, then I'm cursed and cursed again.

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[last lines]
Fred: I saw death rising from the earth, from the ground itself, in one blue field.
[picks up a blue flower]
Fred: A present for my friends... at Thanksgiving.

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Fred: D... Substance D. "D" is dumbness, and despair, desertion-desertion of you from your friends, your friends from you, everyone from everyone. Isolation and loneliness... and hating and suspecting each other, "D" is finally death. Slow death from the head down. Well... that's it.

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[Freck turns on the radio]
Freck Suicide Narrator: Charles Freck, becoming progressively more and more depressed by what was happening around him, decided, finally, to off himself. There was no problem in the circles where he hung out in putting an end to yourself. You just bought a large quantity of downers and took them with some cheap wine. The planning part had to do

with the artifacts he wanted found on him by later archeologists. He had spent several days deciding, much longer than he had spent deciding to kill himself. He would be found lying on his back, on his bed, with a copy of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead and an unfinished letter to Exxon, protesting the cancellation of his gas credit card. That way, he would indite the system, and achieve something by

his death, over and above what the death itself achieved. At the last moment, he changed his mind on a decisive issue and decided to drink the pills with a connoisseur wine, instead of Ripple or Thunderbird. So he set off on one last drive, over to Tiny's Liquors, which specialized in fine wines, and bought a bottle of 2001 Azalea Springs Merlot, which set him back almost seventy dollars. Back

home again, he uncorked the wine, let it breathe, drank a few glasses of it, tried to think of something meaningful but could not, and then, with a glass of Merlot, gulped down all the pills at once. However, he had been burned. Instead of quietly suffocating, Charles Freck began to hallucinate. The next thing he knew, a creature from between dimensions was standing beside his bed, looking down at

him disapprovingly.
Freck: You gonna read me my sins?
[Creature nods]
Freck: Eh, it's gonna take a hundred thousand hours.
Creature: Your sins will be read to you ceaselessly, in shifts, throughout eternity. The list will never end.
Creature: [starts reading] "The Sins of Freck"

Freck Suicide Narrator: Charles Freck wished he could take back the last half hour of his life.
Creature: [Creature continues to read] "... theft of fingernail clippers..." "... you did knowingly and with malice..." "... punched your baby sister, Evelyn..." "... December, theft of Christmas presents..." "... one billion lies..."
Freck Suicide

Narrator: One thousand years later, they had reached the sixth grade, the year he had discovered masturbation.
Creature: [Creature continues to read] "... November fourteenth, Percodan... Vicodin... Cocaine..."
Freck Suicide Narrator: Charles Freck thought, "At least I got a good wine."

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Barris: Total total total totally total total... total providence.

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Mike: I believe God's M.O. is to transmute evil into good and if He's active here, he's doing that now. Although our eyes can't perceive it. The whole process is hidden beneath the surface of our reality. It will only be revealed later. And even then, the people of the future, our children's children, will never truly know this awful time that we have gone through and the losses

we took. Maybe some footnote in a minor history book, a brief mention with no list of the fallen.

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Luckman: What if they come in through the back door or the bathroom window like that infamous Beatles song?

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Fred: What does a scanner see? Into the head? Into the heart? Does it see into me? Clearly? Or darkly?

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Barris: There's only one thing we can do to thwart the plot of these albino shape-shifting lizard BITCHES!

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Bob Arctor: That fucking Barris, you know how he works. He doesn't kill anybody, but he hangs around until the situation arises where they die. Then he just sits there, he sort of sets them up in the first place while he stays out of it.

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Luckman: You're the only person in the known universe who's never heard of the Heimlich maneuver?
Barris: Alright, I'm gonna give you a little feedback since you seem to be proceeding through life like a cat without whiskers perpetually caught behind the refrigerator. Your life and watching you live it is like a gag-reel of ineffective bodily functions. I

swear to god that a toddler has a better understanding of the intricacies of chew-swallow-digest-don't kill yourself on your TV dinner! And yet you've managed to turn this near death fuckup of yours into a moral referendum on me!
Luckman: You are a monster!
Barris: You are a billy goat!

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Fred: [voiceover] Crazy job they gave me. But if I wasn't doing it, someone else would be. And they might get it wrong. They might set Arctor up, plant drugs on him and collect a reward. Better it be me, despite the disadvantages. Just protecting everyone from Barris is justification in itself. What the hell am I talking about? I must be nuts. I know Bob Arctor. He's a good

person. He's up to nothing. At least nothing too bad. In fact, he works for the Orange County Sheriff's office covertly, which is probably why Barris is after him. But that wouldn't explain why the Orange County Sheriff's office is after him. Something big is definitely going down in this house. This rundown, rubble-filled house with its weed patch yard and cat box that never gets emptied. What a

waste of a truly good house. So much could be done with it. A family and children could live here. It was designed for that. Such a waste. They ought to confiscate it and put it to better use. I'm supposed to act like they aren't here. Assuming there's a "they" at all. It may just be my imagination. Whatever it is that's watching, it's not human, unlike little dark eyed Donna. It doesn't ever

blink. What does a scanner see? Into the head? Down into the heart? Does it see into me, into us? Clearly or darkly? I hope it sees clearly, because I can't any longer see into myself. I see only murk. I hope for everyone's sake the scanners do better. Because if the scanner sees only darkly, the way I do, then I'm cursed and cursed again. I'll only wind up dead this way, knowing very little, and

getting that little fragment wrong too.

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Cop: You have the right to remain silent until
[pause]
Cop: and uh, and anything you say can and will be used against you
[pause]
Cop: when you uh, when
[pause]
Cop: aww fuck this shit!

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Fred: Hey Donna, do you like cats?
Donna: Drippy little things, moving along, about a foot above the ground.
Fred: Above? You mean ON the ground?
Donna: Just dripping, behind furniture. Little spring flowers with blue in them might come up first.
Fred: Yeah...

Donna: What if someone stomps on them and they're all gone?
Fred: It's like you know me. You can read me.

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Medical Deputy #1: You know, Fred, if you keep your sense of humor like you do, you just might make it.
Fred: Make it? Make what? The team? The chick? Make good? Make do? Make out? Make sense? Make money? Make time? Define your terms. The Latin for 'make' is facere, which always reminds me of fuckere, which is Latin for 'to fuck', and I have been getting

jack shit in that department as of late.

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Fred: Whatever it is that's watching... it isn't human.

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Fred: I'm not going to tell you first what I do as undercover officer engaged in tracking down dealers and the source of their illegal drugs in the streets of our cities ad corridors of our schools here in Orange County. I'm going to tell you what I'm afraid of.

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Barris: Gentlemen, you are about to witness for approximately 61 cents of ordinary household materials, the perfect home-made silencer.
Freck: Barris, the neighbors are gonna hear.
Luckman: Nah. They only call in murders in this neighborhood.
Barris: Plus, freckle-deck, it's a SILENCER. They're not gonna hear

anything.
Freck: Well, I'm pretty fucking sure they're illegal.
Barris: In this day and age, the type of society we find ourselves living in, every person of worth needs to have a gun at all times to protect themselves. And we're off, un
[points gun at Freck]
Barris: , deux
[points gun at Luckman]

Barris: , trois?
[points gun to his own head]
Barris: .
[Then points gun in the air and shoots. It goes off loudly]
Freck: That sure is some silencer.
Barris: Yes, uh, what it did was augment the sound rather than dampen it. But I almost have it. I believe I have it in principle anyway.

Luckman: Oh well, the good news is that regardless of what you do next time, it'll be a silencer to us because we're now DEAF!

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Medical Deputy #2: Damage has taken place to the normally dominant left hemisphere, and the right hemisphere is attempting to compensate.
Fred: The two hemisphere in my brain... are competing?
Medical Deputy #2Medical Deputy #1: [in unison] Yes.