The Gospel According To Roger

[Luna]

Then you'd really like this.

Can't see.  Billy Idol?   

Patti Smith.

And then the 8' ball mill lube system failed, and the interlock didn't work.

The 6" wide, 8' diameter ring gear has chewed itself to copper filings.  Yeah, that's gonna cost about a week of frantic downtime, and about a quarter million dollars.

But that's how things go in Heck.  Everything works...Kinda.

Holy Hell.

Heck, actually.  Hell is 100 miles North.

And some people get the impression that where I work, shit is always blowing up or otherwise failing catastrophically.

Those people are correct.

This almost makes me happy, that the only thing I can actually cause to explode I my line of work is the skull of another person, if their paycheck is fucked up.  I am not sure that I could resist leveling a city block or more, on a day like today.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Funerals are more than just showing respect to the dead.  They are really for the living...It provides "closure" (I hate that term for very good reasons, but it fits in this case.).  It helps the living acknowledge that the deceased is really gone.  Without the funeral, the deceased merely fades away in memory, like a friend with which you have merely lost contact, but is never really gone.

In short, they go to Tucson.  And once you've gone to Tucson, you've gone so far West, so far up into the mountains, that people forget you.  It's sort of like a reversed version of the river Lethe of legend.  The people that drink from it don't forget; they themselves are forgotten. 

So they come to Tucson, to live with the rest of the dead...A horde of golems come to haunt you all, with phone calls from the afterlife, Facebook updates, etc.  And if those Facebook notes look a little flat, don't hold it against them.  It's not their fault that you haven't accepted their passing.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

This refinery is like modern life:  There's a million things wrong, and nowhere to start.  If I could get one thing nailed down, all the rest would fall into place.  But my crew is so busy trying to keep the whole thing from flying apart, so there's no time to nail one thing down.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Funerals are more than just showing respect to the dead.  They are really for the living...It provides "closure" (I hate that term for very good reasons, but it fits in this case.).  It helps the living acknowledge that the deceased is really gone.  Without the funeral, the deceased merely fades away in memory, like a friend with which you have merely lost contact, but is never really gone.

In short, they go to Tucson.  And once you've gone to Tucson, you've gone so far West, so far up into the mountains, that people forget you.  It's sort of like a reversed version of the river Lethe of legend.  The people that drink from it don't forget; they themselves are forgotten. 

So they come to Tucson, to live with the rest of the dead...A horde of golems come to haunt you all, with phone calls from the afterlife, Facebook updates, etc.  And if those Facebook notes look a little flat, don't hold it against them.  It's not their fault that you haven't accepted their passing.

Evidence of this:  All posts by Tucsonans are invisible.  All phone calls made by Tucsonans go to voice mail.  All letters are returned with "SHUT UP" written across the envelope.  There are no DJs.  It's all vanilla "hip-hop" and bubble gum country music on every radio channel.  Everyone looks the same.  Oh, their FACES may be different, but the EXPRESSION is the same.  It says "Everything is JUST FINE!  I LOVE IT HERE!  I'm NOT crying.  Please excuse my occasional outbursts of screaming, I have a condition."

Yeah, you have a condition.  You're dead.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

So shut up.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I guess that's enough of this shit.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Fucking drones.

[Freeky]

Funerals are more than just showing respect to the dead.  They are really for the living...It provides "closure" (I hate that term for very good reasons, but it fits in this case.).  It helps the living acknowledge that the deceased is really gone.  Without the funeral, the deceased merely fades away in memory, like a friend with which you have merely lost contact, but is never really gone.

In short, they go to Tucson.  And once you've gone to Tucson, you've gone so far West, so far up into the mountains, that people forget you.  It's sort of like a reversed version of the river Lethe of legend.  The people that drink from it don't forget; they themselves are forgotten. 

So they come to Tucson, to live with the rest of the dead...A horde of golems come to haunt you all, with phone calls from the afterlife, Facebook updates, etc.  And if those Facebook notes look a little flat, don't hold it against them.  It's not their fault that you haven't accepted their passing.

The dead remember their living friends, but the living always forget.  The dead have nothing to distract themselves from memories, because there's nothing to do if you can't make your own fun.  The city of the dead is a pensive one, and everything in and about it is designed to keep memories solid and intact, even if the colors have faded. 

The living, though, they always forget.  They always do.

[Juana]

I wonder what happens to the good people who end up in Tucson. The ones who never quite got a funeral or wake or other closure-providing tradition.
Tell me, Roger, do they acquire the Tucson grime? Do they fade and flatten out, too, despite who they were in life?

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I wonder what happens to the good people who end up in Tucson.

This is making a rather large assumption.   

[Freeky]

I wonder what happens to the good people who end up in Tucson.

This is making a rather large assumption.   

They are a rarity, I'll grant you that.

[Juana]

Okay, okay, point taken. But the rare few?

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Okay, okay, point taken. But the rare few?

I don't know.  You come here if you're KINDA bad.  That's why it's "heck".  "Hell" is up North, and is where most bad people go.

Good people probably go to Norway or some shit.

Suicides go to Portland.  Apostates go to California.

[LMNO]

And nobody goes to Dubuque.

[Freeky]

Okay, okay, point taken. But the rare few?

I don't know.  You come here if you're KINDA bad.  That's why it's "heck". 

Who decides on this good/bad system?  I don't want to know, nevermind.

All I know is, yeah, people here are, by and large, stained.  I wouldn't say they're all BAD, mind you, though we have more than our fair share of shitnecks (maybe), but one thing we all are is Marked.  It's hard to describe.

There's this understanding, see.  Everyone here is damaged in some way, or they were brought here by damaged people in one way or another.  Physically, mentally, emotionally, doesn't matter.  Nobody here is whole.  So that's a thing we have in common with each other.  I mean, other than being dead.

Even if we were bad before we died, some people do end up repenting or something, or the good/bad system is so arbitrary and shallow that people who don't really deserve being here end up here anyway, because it seems to me like the best people here are the ones who have the biggest stains.