James Lasombra
Yeah, no.
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Arthur Parsons
The empty man is a meditation. A focal point for the targeted manifestation of hidden energies.
James Lasombra
Right, and already you're starting to lose me.
Arthur Parsons
Just as man feeds and is fed by the biosphere, the atmosphere, so it is our thoughts feed and are fed by the noosphere... the sum of all conscious thought, transmission from which can be stimulated through the application of certain vectors, very much like a virus. You can't see it.
James Lasombra
Well, what is... It?
Arthur Parsons
The veil between form and flesh and the means by which it can be pierced and the two allowed to commingle. We're each of us blind in our way. Distractions rob us of focus. Technology robs us of memory. Repetition robs us of comprehension. You know the child's game: if you say your names enough times it becomes gibberish. That holds true for whole concepts, even entire bodies of thought. For example, take Nietzsche's old line: if you stare into an abyss, it also states into you. Right? Well, that has been rendered meaningless through repetition. It's a refrigerator magnet, it's a cliche. It's harmless. But when was the last time you really thought about that? What is an abyss, and if you stare into it, why? What about it calls to you? If it stares into you, it stands to reason something in you must also be calling to it. And that, my friend, is anything but harmless, if you really reflect on it. So the question becomes: if profound meaning can be robbed of something by so simple a task as repetition, which is more fundamental, which is more true - your name, or the gibberish. That... is the empty man.
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[after watching and escaping cult practices]
James Lasombra
What the fuck was that? What the fuck was that?
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Amanda Quail
[to James]
You are our tulpa.
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James Lasombra
[Interrupts Pontifex Receptionist]
Oh, yeah. No, no, I get all that. I grew up in San Francisco.
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Arthur Parsons
Each one of you here today is looking for something. Why else would you be here? We go looking for things we have lost. Yes, well I'm here to tell you there is nothing you have lost, more than that there is no such thing as loss. From our earliest days meeting in the Raj's living rooms, church basements, to this very moment, our message has always remained: "You are complete in yourself." There is no struggle. Struggling has failed; struggling is what wakes you up every day wondering how much more you can acquire, how much more you can use up, how much more space can you take up in the world, when the question we really need to ask ourselves is how much less can you use, how much less space can you occupy? There is no struggle because there are no distinctions. To say that you are wrong or I am right is to divide us; therefore we deny there is such a thing as right or wrong. These are exclusionary constructs designed to foster the illusion of separateness. There is no such thing as disunity. There is only the great binding nothingness of things. At one time we were one. We will all be one again. This message comes to you directly from... the empty man.
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James Lasombra
So, you doing the whole Neal Cassidy thing?
Garrett
I don't know who that is.
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James Lasombra
You're not telling me anything.
Garrett
I am telling you. You're just not listening.
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James Lasombra
Do you have a suspect?
Detective Villiers
By all appearances, it was a suicide.
James Lasombra
People don't... People just don't do that to themselves.
Detective Villiers
My point exactly. You know this town. One, two murders a year. Three if were frisky. Now this? It's communicable. It changes people. Three weeks ago, a mother fed her newborn infant to a pack of stray dogs. She said the baby had been whispering to her. In the kitchen, she wrote "The Empty Man" on the linoleum floor. I've come to the conclusion that there is no solving crimes like these. Sure, we can put that mother in prison, we can even put her in the gas chamber. But that's not solving it. It's inexplicable. It's too big, it's... we can't indict the cosmos.
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[repeated line]
Allison Lasombra
Where were you?
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Amanda Quail
We wanted a tulpa... so we made one.
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