Theme · Book 5, The Butcher's Masquerade
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
Progression
'No matter what', promised in a pub with the water running (ch. 12); 'It's time for you to trust me', Donut deciding about Bea (ch. 18); 'You don't deserve how sad I feel right now', to a hologram (ch. 19); Donut frightened by his anger — 'It's scaring me' (ch. 23); 'That's not what we do here', about abandoning a vampire who saved him (ch. 44); 'That's not who I was. She knew that', over Miriam's ash (ch. 47); 'Trauma […] It's an explosion with your heart at the center' (ch. 49). Against it: a frightened orc killed for two stat points (ch. 25), a man he had started to like killed with his foot (ch. 53), a decision to walk into the Nothing (ch. 73), and, at the end, the mask he tells Donut to keep on until it is safe to take it off (ch. 77).