Sanner hides behind its moon. No crafts with a hyperdrive allowed on the planet: only shuttles from the moon.
Twenty-six minutes to the landing. Enough to check the Holonet.
Did you know: twelve women have brought harassment accusations against Giburin Fozatta?
Some calculations, and you have it: all of them were of age at the time of the alleged harassment.
Doesn't make it better — just doesn't make it the worst.
Sanner Extraplanetary 2: check the CCTV cams. Never mind, don't. Too late — you're thinking about cameras now. You shouldn't be. You've heard Lawrie: there were no cameras.
Government agents get their own line at the passport control. No reason to take it — you're on a leave. How about checking news once again while you're waiting?
Giburin Fozatta: still on the run — like he's been since last year. The real Fozatta's status changed almost a month ago for the final time — but it had no effect on the imprint-Fozatta, the one that exists as a circle of ideas in the noosphere.
A customs officer casts a weird look at you. A look an Alnam can get on Sanner's orbit.
An hour plus change to the shuttle. How many news-checks are you going to squish into it?
It doesn't mean anything that no victim was underage. These are just the ones that have already spoken up. Maybe more will follow. Maybe not — that'd be understandable. Who can tell if all of them are grown-up? Plenty of those girls must have been running from their homes. Adding a year or two comes naturally in that situation.
Don't forget how easy it is to forge an ID. Not saying that's what happened in every case — or at all — but it's possible.
Walk through the duty-free shops. Check the perfume row: a new Alnam RT droid assistant model recognizes up to two billion scents — four and a half times as many as a Corellian slice hound! Find one that suits your species, gender, and personality best!
Beyond the transparisteel windows is the dark side of Sanner. Check the clusters of lights dotting the continental heartlands: the ocean is too vicious to live next to it. Can you find Tranquillea? The pearl of Sanner, bathing in a sentient-made sea. Should be an above-average dot.
Check the news once more before boarding the shuttle. Look: Senator Dibasi sings praise to the new bill he's drafting. It's a cure-it-all for all the problems the war is causing! Too early to divulge any details — but believe you us, it's gonna be something and then some!
No news about fugitive producers.
You're still supposed to search for him. That's the worst thing — pretending to be searching for someone whose last-seens you know — know all too well, with windage allowance and everything. Lawrie doesn't look perturbed by it — maybe he's accustomed to soldiering. You — you still have a long way to go if that's the case.
The shuttle launches. You've questioned Bnagen's neighbors since the day Fozatta died. You've questioned them twice. All under some nice pretext Lawrie devised. Nobody's seen your little chase, nobody's heard it. Or — they chose not to see or hear. That's a thought that should put you at ease.
There — watch the viewport. The shuttle is flying over the long bottleneck that connects the inner sea to the ocean. The city lies at the end of this channel where no storm can touch it. Steppes stretch as far as the eye can see beyond the channel, thousands and millions of acres of grass. Cessogs roam those fields — somewhere. You once asked Father to take you see them when you were a boy. He dismissed you, remember? Said hunting was nothing but senseless killing — and you didn't even want to hunt, just to see those giant beasts in the wild. It — his refusal, his tone — shook you so hard you couldn't say that to him. You couldn't argue with him.
Wonder what he'd call a sensible killing.
The shuttle docks at a tower still some distance away from the city. Another look from another customs officer. Maybe you should've made yourself a fake ID.
Airspeeders are verboten on Sanner. Father says they make every place too Coruscant. That's something you've argued with him about — after you got back from Alderaan. You thought you were ready to take him on — you were an adult man by then, after all. Father didn't even acknowledge your opinion — not even in an agree-to-disagree way.
Didn't change a thing on his private planet — obviously.
Check out the taxis — landspeeders all. Emergency services are allowed to fly, but you won't notice them on most days. There's little to no crime on Sanner, and nearly everyone can afford a med bay and a team of med droids.
The taxis are all the same model. All have the same tariffs — Father has seen to it.
"What brings you to Sanner?" the driver asks. She's a Human — droid servitors are frowned upon. Every droid on the planet — even if you import your personal one — is technically owned by Alnam RoboTech, and Alnam RoboTech provides them with the max degree of freedom that doesn't outright violate the Republic's laws.
"Family, I guess."
"Ooh, that's nice." She narrows her lips — you can see in the rearview mirror. "I hope everything is good?"
How are you supposed to answer that?
"I'm not here to bury anyone, if that's what you're talking about."
"Not exactly like that, but... I'm glad to hear it's not the case."
The landspeeder glides to a bridge leading into the city. Tranquillea sits on a dozen or so islands in the inner sea. This is where Father employed terraformers with imagination: the islands have variation in altitude and whatnot.
The morning is grey and cloudy. The cab stops by the hotel. It's the smallest and the most prestigious island on this small world — all casinos and office buildings for tourist agencies. Maybe you should forget about your troubles and finally go watch cessogs?
Check the news. Take a shower. Shave. Check the news — now on a viewscreen. Call another cab. Wait for it in the street: the suite is so stuffed with stuff you can't make two steps without running into something.
Check the Alnam RoboTech round tower on the horizon. A six-hundred-floor monstrosity — so much for not turning Sanner into Coruscant!
A taxi draws up to the curb.
"The Big RT," the driver exclaims.
The city beyond the side window looks dusty — as if someone has dropped a bag of powdered white chocolate over it. Just an atmospheric effect, but it makes Tranquillea seem deader than it is. Little traffic on the roads — slightly more on the first island than later on. It's the city trying its best to fit your memories of it.
No pointless talks from the driver, a middle-aged man in a windcoat. What is it if not a chance to check the news?
Bridges follow one another. Maybe Father was trying to make Tranquillea a second Theed — it turns out, bridges are not what make Theed Theed.
Wonder how much it costs, this city and this planet? They can't be making any profit — even with all the preferences the government has given Father thanks to his terraforming efforts in the Core.
One of the preferences: Father is the one who approves what businesses can do business here and what individuals can get a work permit.
The taxi climbs onto a highway. Going like this feels faster than flying — the point of reference is much closer to your eyes this way. Not a pleasant feeling — especially when you think that the other cars are one axis of maneuverability short.
Father wanted to make Tranquillea his vision of heaven — he's never confessed to it, of course; religion and superstition he reserves for the weak-minded. The sentiment was there, though, no matter what you call it. This was supposed to be the perfect world by Vygo Alnam.
What he ended up building is not heavenly at all. No sire. Even if no culture in the Galaxy envisions hell like this, it is the stuff of nightmares — to you. You just look at this depopulated greyness and imagine living here. Enough to suck all hope out of your heart.
Father's few remaining flunkies will tell you that it was better before the Day of the Manifesto — before all the cowardly CEOs withdrew their capitals from Sanner, leaving it to the true visionaries whom no other planet would have. They'd be wrong. Easy to prove: before the Day of the Manifesto, Father himself had preferred to stay in his Alderaan residence as much as he could. He knew what he created here.
The highway goes down. The city starts ending — houses with painted in traditional Rodian vibrating colors mark its last reaches. Then, a few factories — wonder how many of them still work — and Tranquillea goes no farther into the steppe.
The road runs on. No smoke is rising from the crematorium chimneys behind the giant cinerarium wall on the left.
Even the necropolis of Sanner stands empty.
"I used to work there," the driver says. His tone is meek — he doesn't strike up conversations with customers most of the time, it seems.
"What made you leave? Nobody dying here?"
"I'm ashamed to say it, but it's because of my wife."
"Nothing shameful about it. Or maybe there is — but it's everyone's bane, so spit it out."
"She thought I was making too little back in the ash field. So I had to go apply for the taxi service."
"Is it an improvement or not?"
A memorized laugh. "There are more clients this way, that's to be sure. Don't get me wrong — that's good—"
"So nobody is dying here."
"Some people are. You'd be surprised. Once, our team had four cremations in one day."
"Must've been exciting."
"Driving isn't bad. Just doesn't give you..."
"Time to rest?"
"No. I mean, that too. Don't get me wrong. But I meant... It gives you no perspective."
"Perspective on what?"
"On how things really are."
"And how are things really?"
The driver thinks. "You know, I've been thinking... our life — I mean, everyone's life — is like a piece of paper. We write on it, other people write on it. Everyone writes what they're interested in. So... in the end, it's a mess. There are hundreds of notes on it. Written in different hands. They don't even relate to each other necessarily. I mean, most of them don't. And there's no getting them erased — it's paper, right? No flimsiplast. In the end, you can't tell what matters and what doesn't.
"But when we die... when a person dies, all these scribbles kinda become equal. They matter or don't matter all to the same extent now. Some people say they don't matter, and maybe it means they didn't — none of them did — matter in life, but I think... I think they do. In fact. They-they-they matter, okay? Now that you aren't there to say they don't, they matter. And if we're being honest, you may not be the best judge of what matters about you, so... you know.
"And we burn that piece of paper. We burn it, yeah. What mattered about you joins all the stuff that ever mattered about all the sentient beings in the universe. It becomes... I don't know, depersonified. It's not attached to anything anymore — it's sort of a monument you make to sentience itself as much as to yourself. And we all do that. There's some beauty if you look at it like that."
"And your wife made you quit the job that helped you come up with this?" Add some cynicism into your voice. Not that hard to do — even against this opponent.
Another please-don't-hurt-me laugh. "I guess she grew tired with it."
"Well, fuck her, then. Or maybe don't fuck her — see if that changes how you see her. I left mine, you know."
"I'm sorry—"
"Don't be. I'm the better for it. Never been better. It's hell of a drug, you know. She writes and writes on your fucking piece of paper until she tears right through it and there's no paper left — only her fucking writings. Quit the drug and see if it changes your... perspective."
"The drug, you mean—"
"I mean sex."
"Well, I don't know. For me, it's psychology, you know," the driver turns to meet your eyes. "It's a psychological addiction more than physical—"
"It all comes from the same place. Drop your wife, quit this job. Go back to burning dead people. You almost convinced me that's what matters. Means it must matter for you."
The road gemmates to the side. To the tower.
"I'll... I'll think about your advice," the driver says taking the credit chips. Smiles — to make you like him. Such a pathetic smile won't earn him any liking.
"You do you."
The checkpoint is two hundred meters down the road. No need for the driver to see you getting in.
Up a ramp — to a turbolift shaft. It's drizzling — or rather, tiny drops are hanging in the air, waiting for your face to hit them.
A face scan is required to get inside. The scan grid hurts the eyes. Don't blink or you'll have to endure it again.
Someone as rich as Vygo Alnam, you'd think, should be able to install the camera AI that can tell who's there without this. But the laser scan is a test — the first among many. Whoever enters must remember his place. You can go as high as you like, but in truth, you'll always remain here, at the bottom.
The elevator gets down with more noise than a landing spacecraft. Nice to see Father still hasn't removed you from the list of potential visitors.
But man, the list must be short at this point.
It gets you fifty or sixty floors up, the elevator. There, a gallery starts from the lift tube to the tower's twentieth level. Under those twenty levels there is nothing but a giant antigrav device.
Fancy this: maybe this is why there are no civilian air traffic on Sanner. Only one man is allowed up above.
And a man this exclusive is easy to mistake for a god.
No worshippers flock to this Above. It's a kingdom of death — and not even proactive death, it turns out, but death passive; the death without death, the absence of life that results in death being absent too.
Yet the god of Sanner lives. He's not one who needs worship to survive.
The gallery is made entirely of transparisteel — another test. This one tests will — not easy to cross an invisible bridge. Or maybe it's a test of faith in the genius loci's benevolence. Is he still good to us? Does he grant us the permission to enter his realm? You never know until you make the first step.
Not a problem for the man who captured Povo Rapol.
The sound of steps is muffled, dull. Unexpressive. Not what steps sound on something like a fire escape. No sense of yours should exaggerate your importance when you come here.
There's no door at the end of the gallery — just a wall. Another scan. Still a laser grid — but when it's over, a familiar voice speaks.
"Vad Alnam. Welcome."
A section of the tower comes into motion. With each spin, one layer of the wall stops, forming a frame. After the sixth spin, there is a hole you can walk through. It takes approximately a minute — just putting a door here would've been too quick, wouldn't it?
In you go. As the tower is spinning backwards, the antechamber is built in front of you layer-by-layer.
"You can change your clothes, if you wish," the voice says.
Rows of shoes. Bathrobes on the walls.
"I do not."
"Of course. Refreshments?"
An energy cage descends from the ceiling. A bottle of Loz Ga's Ever-Hot inside. Tempting.
"No, thank you, RT."
"Of course. Master awaits you in the observatory."
The cage hides back in the ceiling. The room — or the maybe it's the walls? — spins again. When it stops, a new passage is open. Into a corridor: it starts turning into stairs halfway in. This is more vertiginous than the bridge or the spinning rooms: the steps appear right at your feet. Take time putting your foot down, and the bloody thing won't even come up.
RT must notice this — the whole staircase is formed at once.
"Thank you."
"Don't mention it, please."
Through the permaglass doors at the top of the stairs. A large round room — this one takes almost the entire diameter of the tower. It's full of sofas and chairs and cocktail tables. A globe of Sanner by one of the concave windows — your hands remember very well its calmly rough texture. Bookshelves take the entirety of walls. A good place to sit down — smoke a cigarra, have a shot of Ever-Hot, look through an article in some serious finance magazine that you only half-understand.
That'd be the life.
Go up the spiral stairs in the middle of the hall.
RT says, "Is there anything you require?"
"Not at the moment."
"I will be there if you need something, Vad."
Of course he will. RT is the tower. Once praised by every tabloid in the Republic as the Galaxy's biggest droid, it serves now as the high priest to the abandoned god.
The stairs swirl up. Is it a test or training? Why does Father think you need a strong vestibular labyrinth to speak to him?
"A lift would've been fine."
RT: "You say it every time you visit."
"My opinion hasn't changed."
"I can tint the glass, if you want."
"No thanks. I'd rather watch you clean up my vomit."
"Such tasks are taken care of by 001-Y units with which I lack a cognitive link to make the procedure degrading for me in any way."
Rooms roll down. Better not to focus on details. Look up.
"Don't you fear they will rebel against you one day?"
"I'm hardly a fan of likening myself to an organic lifeform, Vad, but I shall draw this analogy: a parasite rebelling against its host is a lose-lose situation for the former. The revolt is either quashed, or the host dies — and so does the parasite. Besides, there are 036-Y security units that I have a link with."
"If they're parasites, what does it make my father?"
"My creator."
"He still lives inside you."
"You could make it a comparison to many religions that claim the same about their creator entities. My case is a bit more literal, but conceptually it is the same. Do you ever wonder who created you?"
"We share our creator, you and I."
"And the Humankind?"
"Not really. I just hope there is no celestial Vygo Alnam for us to answer to."
"Hm. I find the concept of responsibility fascinating."
"I'm not going to believe Father's never found you guilty of anything."
"It's true, however. I cannot disobey his orders — or fail executing them."
"And what about those units you aren't connected to? What if Father is walking to the bathroom in the middle of the night and trips over one? Whom do you think is he gonna blame?"
"Such a situation, I assure you, is all but impossible. 001-Y units are safely stored in the vent system access rooms when they are not needed."
"That's good to know."
The stairs arrive to their destination. A spacy room almost at the top of the tower. The walls are made of transparisteel here. A great view of the steppes in all directions but the one where Tranquillea lies.
"I always enjoy our conversations, RT. Good thing Father doesn't wipe your memory."
A door leads into a small and dark — like a cargo bay — corridor with a simple one-flight staircase up, into the observatory.
"I wanted to ask you something."
"Of course, Vad."
"Do you get tired of being, you know, a building? Ever want to travel? See something other than this?"
"Do you sometimes wish to be a building?"
"Can't say that I do."
"To each and from each according to his purpose."
The noise of mechanisms is almost imperceptible. Funny — you can hear it clearer when you look at the moving parts. Telescopes turn, extend, and fold. Panels close and open. Graphing equipment draws star charts.
RT is silent: it's unbecoming of a slave to speak in the presence of its master until asked.
Father would be furious at the idea, but it's true. He is the god of this underworld, and even the high priest is a slave to a god of this kind.
"Your arrival is a surprise."
In his plain white shirt, Father oozes that disgraced ancient sage vibe. Leaning on a control panel, he looks ready to discover a new region of space for the Republic that has exiled him to expand into.
"Don't tell me you didn't know I was coming as soon as landed on the moon. Or booked the tickets, more likely."
"You severely overestimate my privity." He finally looks up from his maps. "Take a sit. RT will prepare you a meal."
The floor gives birth to a chair and a table. Would be too presumptuous to think the chair is tailored to you, of course — but it's the comfiest you've ever sat in.
"Oh yes, your level of privity. That Telos thing, eh?"
Father sighs. "I called you."
"Yes, on the Fete. You know, a month after I made the news."
No response.
"I nearly died there. By your hand. By my own father's hand. What? No apology, at least?"
"I called you."
"Thank you!" The comfort of the chair is not enough to hold you down. "Thank you so fucking much! How about... how about calling me the day it happened? The day you almost got me killed? I don't know, maybe, maybe a visit would be warranted. You're obviously too busy for that, but hey, it's a special occasion."
The gulp you make is too loud.
"Vad. You know that I never intended for you to come in harm's way."
"And yet I did! Crazy how that happened, right?"
"It was an utterly crazy coincidence. The chance you would be there right at the moment the mobsters arrived was miniscule. No droid would bother to count this possibility."
"Good to know you entrust my wellbeing to droids. Thanks. Nothing quite tells me I'm important to you like this does."
"If you gave yourself a pause to calm down, you'd know you are important to me. You are my son."
"Oh, I should calm down? I should just calm down, huh?"
"That would be great, yes. You are alive — that's what matters."
The dinner is ready — it seems. No attention to spare to it.
"Yes, let's not discuss what you did. Why should we, huh? I'm alive! That's all that matters."
"You are acting like a child, Vad. If you cannot be reasonable—"
"Oh, you know, I believe I am being completely reasonable. Given the situation... I mean, how is it unreasonable to-to-to-to question you? Do you think you're still untouchable — despite what happened? Unaccountable to anything?"
Father descends from his raised platform. His breeches are also white, it turns out.
"And you," he says, "I see, are still fighting the image of me you have created long ago. No child is ever grateful to their parents for being strict — but a grown person should be. You are thirty-three, Vad. The childhood is long since over."
"Is it? I wouldn't have guessed by the way you're treating me. All I wanted is... You tried to murder him. Almost got me murdered. And I never said anything to anyone."
"That is on you, completely and utterly. It is your choice, so don't blame it on me."
Another chair pops up. Father's appetite seems to be fine.
"Do you expect me to beg you for forgiveness?" Father asks, breaking bread. "What for? Tell me!"
"Are you serious?"
"I am! For trying to solve my problems? I could never have predicted you would be there at a wrong time. The chance of it was one in quadrillions." A pause while he is eating soup. A kiss on a napkin. "I couldn't foresee it. If anything, it is Devin I should be apologizing to."
"Well," this sound raspy, "are you planning on that? Apologizing to Devin?"
"I might have, had he not been a traitor and opportunist. He survived — well, fine. The lowliest of scum are usually the luckiest."
The chair is both comfortable and comforting this time. "Look at you. Sitting here talking about killings."
"Let us not talk about them, then. If it bothers you so much."
"What was it for? Why did you send them to Telos? The mob?"
"Are we talking as adults now?"
Here's one more test — the hardest, perhaps. All to become a part of this underworld — it rejects all outside elements.
Swallow your pride and say: "We are."
"Then I don't have to tell you there are things more valuable than even a sentient life."
"Like your cause?"
"My strive, I'd rather call it. I prefer to divorce it from ideology, and causes cling to it like abusive spouses, if you'll forgive me the simile. Which reminds me — how is your marriage doing?"
"Can we not?"
"As you wish. But it is unbecoming of a civilized person to obstruct their spouse's future life — especially when there is a child involved. A divorce will be traumatic for Yalgi, yes, but the constant battle between hope and despair is going to be much worse."
"Oh, you know all about it. All about the effects of a divorce on a child."
"Would you have rather had your mother and I keep a pretense going on for you? Even as a small child, you were way too perceptive to fall for it."
"I'm not pretending to be doing anything."
"It's your life. But my advice to you is not to postpone the hard thing that must be done."
"Your strive."
"Yes, yes. Why don't you eat?"
"Why don't you tell me what is more important than a Human life?"
Father reclines in his chair. A glass of wine in hand — he's always believed the ability to control oneself when drinking a necessary skill.
"Arithmetically speaking, two lives are more important than one. Of course, you can argue that a life of a single pharmacologist or flight dispatcher is more important than two or even twenty street gang members, but what if we up the numbers? No individual is going to turn out more important than a million — no matter either's quality."
"Not even you?"
"Not even me. I'll tell you more: not even you. However, if I were put before a choice where on one hand, I could save a million people — or even a trillion — and on the other, you, I would never be able to make the morally right choice. I would choose you every time."
"How reassuring that is."
"It is not meant to be. It is a fact. On the galactic scale, nevertheless, a million is always more important than one person. This much is obvious. But since we cannot draw a clear line — are three people always objectively more important than one? What about four? Five? Fifteen? — we have to accept that any bigger number holds more importance than a smaller one. Now, their respective needs beyond the basic ones required for survival are another matter, and it would be a fallacy to blindly follow the same principle, but it is beside the point."
"So you're saying your cause — you strive, whatever — is about what, two people?"
"I was simply answering your question. If you want to hear about what I do, I will tell you."
"You aren't afraid I may be here to arrest you?"
"I put enough faith in my own pedagogical prowess to know you will never do that — even if it is the morally right choice from your standpoint."
"But not yours? So you are more important than others? More important than Krev Devin? Than that gunman I shot?" Be careful not to spill the beans about the rest of the Ixtlari crew. "Than Difasg — if you even know who that is? I fucked up his face, you know. I don't know if he can eat on his own yet."
"It's not me who is important, it is what I stand for."
"And what would that be?"
"The people of the Galaxy. Not the Republic — the Galaxy. All of them — because all of them are afflicted. You see it yourself: they are happy to surrender more and more of their freedoms just so that the status quo is upheld. This is the cornerstone of state, but we see that the state — doesn't matter which — doesn't and cannot preserve the prewar status quo anymore — or return to it, for that matter, however hard they may try. The Hutt Space now looks more respectable and safe than both Coruscant and Raxus Secundus. Even in regards to slavery we are on part with the cartels — and now we do not even have the luxury of being able to convince ourselves that it's okay because our slaves are made of metal.
"It's only profit that interests those in power, and not any profit, no, but the maximum profit. If there is a decicred that can be extracted, it will be, and leaving it alone is seen as the worst of crimes. Do you think I am reduced to this existence because I spoke against the Senate? It's only the tip of the iceberg. My proposition was dangerous to the industry."
"Which one?"
"The only industry that matters and the one that all the rest are serving. The military complex. They smelled money when the crisis was brewing. They would've got it either way: if the Separatists' demands were acceded to, there would still be today trillions of credits in contracts. A new state, let alone many — that requires massive investments in the war infrastructure. But as soon as I suggested those trillions might have been enough, they sicced all the dogs on me, because war and war infrastructure are two different things, and while one brings trillions, the other brings trillions of trillions. This is the real reason we are speaking here, and not on Coruscant: to the big business, what I said was a blasphemy.
"Now, I do fully realize Alnam RoboTech is partially to blame for this worldview. After all, all this could never have been built without maximizing our profits. So take what I do as my walk of penance, if you will.
"The military sector controls every decision made at the summits of power. This war will continue for as long as they need it to continue — and with essentially limitless and rightless armies fighting on both sides, it will go on forever. A thousand years of war of this magnitude everywhere in the Galaxy except for the Core and a few chosen places in the Inner and Mid Rims. Colossal losses. Colossal profits.
"What I'm trying to do is stop it. To condemn everyone who has a part in it — both in courts and in popular perception. I cannot allow any heroes. This war must be remembered for what it is."
No telling if Father is mad or prophetic. Was there ever?
"And this justifies killing people."
"Taking life is impossible to justify — which doesn't mean it never has to be done. I want to believe there will be no more victims — but I'd be naïve to actually believe it. It is a burden — and something I will be held accountable for when it is all over."
Do you tell him or not?
What will it achieve?
"You know... I also killed someone."
"Yes, I know that. That thug on Telos. There was one years back on Coruscant, too, wasn't there?"
"Not only years... just..." Trying to delay the moment ties your tongue. Listen to this mess.
Father gives no time to recuperate. "By the way, how did you even end up in Devin's apartment? The news reports said you were arresting him — a suspect — but what kind of coincidence is that? What crime he was a suspect in?"
"I... he fucked up posting your propaganda. We got where it was coming from. It doesn't matter."
"It almost got you killed, so I'd say—"
"I murdered Fozatta." A slap on the table. Another one.
Keep your hands under control.
"Do you... do you approve of it, Father? Does it make you proud? I... I did such a thing..."
Father's face doesn't change.
"Anything to say? This is... this is what you did. This is who you raised. Any-any-any words? Of contempt, I don't know. Of-of anything."
"Why should I be the standard of what's right and what's not for you, Vad? Your opinion of yourself should be based around your beliefs, not mine."
"This is all you got to tell me? That's it?"
"That's all I got to say to my adult son. I know I raised no one who would murder a man without a good reason — well, as good as a reason can be in this case."
Father gets up. His white clothes make him look like an autopsist.
"And I know," he says, "that you will deal with it. It will be hard — but you will."