[For the first time, Kable is speaking with Simon, his controller in the game]
Kable: What are you, twelve?
Simon: I'm seventeen, thank you.
Kable: This is unbelievable! Why am I not dead yet?
Simon: Because I am a bad-ass motherfucker.
Ken Castle: [seeing Hackman] Look at it. The new face of Slayers. Pure, crystalized horror. Two stories high and bathed in bloody red. He is what they want.
Geek Leader: They love Kable.
Ken Castle: They do now, but when they watch their hero die right in front of their eyeballs so sharp and vivid it feels like you could reach out
and touch the wet flesh, they're going to change their point of view. They'll be seduced by the power of violence; the dominance. It's human nature.
Geek Leader: Kable's made it through 28 battles. Every player in the game has tried to take him out.
Ken Castle: Yeah, Kable's the perfect soldier. He's a tactical killing computer. His only
vulnerability is the nanex itself; the *ping*, the delay between Simon's commands and Kable's ability to execute.
Geek Leader: So why should this one be any different? Who controls him?
Ken Castle: [long pause] No one.
Agent Keith: You know, Simon, you're being held here today suspected in aiding in the escape of a convicted murderer from a maximum-security penitentiary. The charges are beyond serious. Your hard drives have been seized. Forensics is decrypting the contents as we speak. Your internet activity over the last ten years is being scrutinized and catalogued in minute, vivid detail. In
addition, your father's bank accounts have been frozen, pending further investigation. After all, it was essentially his money that funded Mr. Tillman's escape. Now I need you to tell me *everything* that happened leading up to yesterday afternoon. Everybody you talked to, everything you saw, everything you did. And I need you to tell me that right now.
Simon: Yeah, um...
I'm going to need something, too.
Agent Keith: Oh, really? And what might that be?
Simon: Could you guys do a sandwich? Like peanut butter, almond butter, walnut butter, pecan butter, pistachio butter... um, pretty much any kind of, you know, nut butter? With some grape jelly?
[pause]
Agent Keith: Pistachio butter...
They make that?
Simon: It's awesome.
Ken Castle: [while struggling with Kable] I think it... you-fucking-do-it!
Kable: Look at this knife... imagine me sticking it into your gut. Think about it. Make it real!
[Slowly, the knife reverses and Kable stabs Castle in the gut. Castle screams and chokes]
Geek Leader: Oops.
Ken Castle: I'm wired too. I replaced 98% of my own noodle with nano-tissue years ago. But mine's different. It's built to send, to transmit, whereas every other nano-cell that I've put out there, including the ones in your head Kable, are designed to receive. I think it, you do it. We're talking every Slayer, everyone in Society city. I believe your better half would fall under
that category, provided they were within range of my transmitters.
Kable: Very nice, Castle. So you got an army of psychotics and deviants to dance around for you?
Ken Castle: You're thinking small, Kable. But not as small as me.
[dips hands in dust]
Ken Castle: See, nano-cells are real small. A thousand times smaller
than these dust particulates. You inhale it, they go to work: replicating, spreading like a virus, multiplying in exponentials. Six months time, I can have a hundred million people converted. Ditch diggers, porn stars, and presidents. Not one would be the wiser. A hundred million people who buy what I want them to buy, vote how I want them to vote, do pretty much damn well anything I figure they
ought to do. For instance...
[Hackman attacks Kable]
Simon: [flipping through options on his computer] Gay... gay... gay... retardedly gay...
Kable: Kid's gonna get me killed.
Simon: Dude, I'm right here man. I can hear you.
Kable: Listen to me. I don't know who's behind it or why, but I was supposed to die tonight. Lucky for us, I can beat them, but not with you controlling me.
Simon: What the hell are you talking about?
Kable: Turn me loose, kid. You want to win? Turn me loose!
Female News Host #1: On a personal note, that shit was fucked up!
News Co-Host #1: Yeah it was. I literally pissed myself.
Simon: What's the matter with you, Kable? Kill something!