Theme · Book 3, The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook

Staying human

'If we get to the point where we don't help each other anymore, that's when we stop being human.' The book's argument with itself: Carl covers the Meadow Lark signs so no one farms the elderly for experience, is told by twenty percent of a focus group that he is carrying dead weight, and cannot decide whether keeping them alive was a kindness.

Segment appearances

(no segment mentions detected — this entity may appear under a different spelling)

Progression

The floor's argument is with Mordecai's 'You can't save them all.' Carl hears it in his head over the stranded (ch. 15), over Bautista (ch. 18, ch. 21), and answers it with a broadcast, seven hundred hats, six carts and a drive to the end of the line (ch. 15, ch. 25, ch. 27, ch. 28): 'Each and every one' (ch. 24); 'Fuck you, Mordecai' (ch. 24). Against it, what people do to each other — a dagger on a dance floor, PVP coupons, phased bolts, a father who made his daughter a weapon, a psychiatrist who used her patient as bait (ch. 8, ch. 18, ch. 19, ch. 22) — 'Is this what we've become?' (ch. 24) — and what Carl does himself: Gary's hands, a mantaur in pieces (ch. 26, ch. 33). Donut's rebuke about Katia (ch. 14) and Katia's 'They came back for me' (ch. 21) are the small version. The large one is a train whistle and 'how much I needed other people' (ch. 34).