A Work In Some Parts: First Part

1: Can somebody give me a light?
2: Yeah, hold on.
3: Hey 1, you think I could get a smoke?
1: Lessee..I got eight left. That means everyone could smoke one now, and then smoke one later when the time comes.
4: Don't say that!
1: What? You don't smoke?
4: That "the time will come". We're going to be okay.
3: Why do you think that exactly?
4: Everything always gets better eventually.
1: This is as bad as it's ever been. Did you ever think that it might be the kind of bad that doesn't get better? Just be prepared alright?
2: You know, I'd never even touch a cigarette normally.
3: Yet you're the one with the lighter.
2: I like fire.
1: Hey 4, you okay?
4: Yeah sure, I'm fine.
1: Come on man, I'm sorry. It's just that after all these years of this shit I've realized that at any moment my number could be up. So I'm ready to smoke one last cigarette and then go. Don't take it so hard.
4: I said I was fine.
3: I just wish we had some light.
2: I know! What kind of a household doesn't have any candles?
1: One that doesn't believe it will ever lose power I suppose.
3: 2, why don't we take that lighter of yours and do a little more snooping. We didn't really have a chance before it got dark.
2: Alright, but only a bit, I don't wanna use it all up.
4: Here, I found a newspaper over here. You can use it to make some torches.
3: Sweet, let me find my way over there.
4: There you go.
3: Alright 2, once we get these rolled up I'll carry em, you just give me the word for a new one and I'll light it off yours and you can drop the old one.
2: Fire hazard don't you think?
3: I'll stomp it out too.
2: Okay, you sure you don't want me to carry my own share?
3: Nah, this way you can concentrate on looking for stuff while I assist.
2: Cool, works for me.
1: Where'd you grow up 4?
4: Around the East Coast.
1: The whole thing?
4: My dad worked for an advertising firm so we moved a lot.
1: What kind of ads did your dad make?
4: Mostly print stuff. Although his firm was one of the first to try to market biospheric habitation communities and they ran tv ads for them, he was even in one of 'em.
1: Couldn't have been very profitable, those things didn't go anywhere until the early 80's.
4: Yeah, the firm dissolved not too long after that.
1: Go figure.
3: 4, 1, come in here! You won't believe what we found!

Very Tall Buildings

Jacek: If only we hadn't had to let Annabelle go. She was a looker. Oh, and Maria. You remember her?

Moldeen: Yes, I remember her.

Jacek: Hey, if you had to choose, who would you pick, Annabelle or Maria?

Moldeen: My entire world is literally crumbling around me and you're asking which woman I used to employ I prefer on an aesthetic basis?

Jacek: Yes.

Moldeen: Maria.

Jacek: Oooh, the dark haired type huh?

Moldeen: Yeah, sure.

Jacek: But Annabelle had those beautiful blue eyes.

Moldeen: I prefer green.

Jacek: But Maria's-

Moldeen: Or brown.

Jacek: So you like darker skin more than fair?

Moldeen: Yeah, I guess so. Darker than very pale anyway.

Jacek: I see.

Moldeen: Is this fun for you?

Jacek: Don't you think it's fun?

Moldeen: Not even remotely.

Jacek: Well then why are you doing it?

Moldeen: To humor you. I figure if I die doing something nice I miiiight get into purgatory at least.

Jacek: It doesn't count if you're only doing it for your own selfish desires.

Moldeen: For one, I don't think not going to hell is that selfish, and two I don't think the intent matters. A good deed is a good deed.

Jacek: Well I don't think it's nice if that's the only reason.

Moldeen: Fine.

Jacek: ............Sooo do you like girls that are slutty or like, all wholesome?

Moldeen: Wholesome.

Jacek: Is that some kind of kinky thing or-

Moldeen: It's because I'm wholesome damn it!

Jacek: No offense but what part of essentially becoming the villain of your own twisted plot makes you wholesome?

Moldeen: You obviously wouldn't understand.

Jacek: I like my girls to...know things.

Moldeen: I like my girls to not escape from the building without telling me the access codes to the panic room.

Jacek: Why the hell does your panic room have an access code anyway?

Moldeen: So people wouldn't access it.

Jacek: You mean like you?

Moldeen: Like unauthorized personnel you jackass.

Jacek: You didn't think that disaster might strike unexpectedly?

Moldeen: I didn't expect this disaster, this unexpectedly.

Jacek: Still, not a great contingency plan.

Moldeen: Aren't you suppose to have super speed anyway?

Jacek: You know that's bullshit.

Moldeen: Your death will be ironic to those who didn't know you, because your "super speed" will have availed you nothing in this circumstance. And ironic to those who did know you because you will have seemingly caught up with your reputation.

Jacek: What happened to you being nice?

Moldeen: I was thinking about how I've employed my time this last year and realized it wasn't even a long shot at getting into purgatory.

Jacek: I think I'm fucked. The bible said some pretty specific things about greed.

Moldeen: You? Yeah, you're totally fucked.

Jacek: It didn't feel like defrauding millions of people of billions of dollars at the time, but in retrospect it totally was.

Moldeen: Upper floors are going to collapse any minute now.

Jacek: Yep.

Moldeen: I feel like saying something like "It was good knowing you" but I don't want to die while lying.

Jacek: No problems with dying while being a dick?

Moldeen: None at all.

Jacek: I wish I had known it would come to this.

Moldeen: Really? Me too.

Jacek: I would never have fired Annabelle. I would have given her all of my money if I died.

Moldeen: Oh my god. Please stop talking about Annabelle. Also, I fired her.

Jacek: Oh yeah. I fired Maria. That was dumb too.

Moldeen: Not if you wanted to keep up your scam.

Jacek: I suppose.

Moldeen: My only consolation is that the money it will take to repair all the building damage might be really good for the economy.

Jacek: Like a dead tree feeds the ecosystem.

Moldeen: My mother would be so proud if she knew I had finally aspired to be the human equivalent of rotting vegetation.

Jacek: Yours and mine both pal, yours and mine both.

Moldeen: Don't call me pa-