General Orders No. 9

Narrator:
You are not a witness to the ruin. You are the ruin, to be witnessed.

Narrator:
The interstate does not serve. It possesses.

Narrator:
There is only one thing. Nothing else matters. This is the one true thing. The county's at the center of the state. The town's at the center of the county. The courthouse is at the center of the town. The weather vane is the center of it all.

Narrator:
I haven't loved you with my whole heart. I haven't loved my neighbor as myself. Take this from me, let me be free of it.

Narrator:
We're lost without a map/ But well mis-placed./ Bring us doubt upon doubt;/ Bless us and break us/ With mystery upon mystery./ The Lord loves a broken spirit./ Pray that we are well broken...

Narrator:
At some point we accept that everything, your ideas, your certainty; even what you think is right; they're all deceptions of greater or lesser degree. Whether boiling hot or blowing cold, whether you're a gentleman farmer or a miserable drone; none of it is trustworthy.

Narrator:
The bomb. The banality. The epidemic of the future. All the things that are gonna happen, are gonna happen here. There are no words to describe the city. No words to describe it's weight against you. No words to describe the things witnessed there. There's no way to show it. No way to explain. No way to make sense of it.

Narrator:
In the city my heart was made desolate when I looked into the face of the sun. Wanting to look for some evidence of communion, some sign of belonging; the relation of one's part to the city's whole. But the answer to your question is no. The city is terminus, it's the absence of idea - of order. It's an inability - a condition. The city is not a place - it's a thing. It has none of the marks of a place, but all those of a machine.