Rorschach's Journal: Dog carcass in alley this morning, tire tread on burst stomach. This city is afraid of me. I have seen its true face.
The streets are extended gutters and the gutters are full of blood and when the drains finally scab over, all the vermin will drown.:
The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up about their waists and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout "Save Us!"...:
...and I'll look down, and whisper, "No".:
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Police Detective: I think you take this vigilante stuff too seriously. Since the Keene Act was passed in '77 only the government-sponsored weirdos are active. They don't interfere.
Detective Steve Fine: Screw them. What about Rorschach? Rorschach never retired, even after him and his buddies fell out of grace. Rorschach's still out there somewhere. He's crazier than a snake's armpit and wanted on two counts of Murder One. We got a cozy little homicide here. If he gets involved, we'll be up to our butts in corpses.
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[Rorschach informs the former Nite Owl II of the Comedian's death.]
Dan Dreiberg: Maybe this was a political killing?
Rorschach: Maybe. Or maybe someone's picking off costumed heroes.
Dreiberg: Um. Don't you think that's maybe a little paranoid?
Rorschach: That's what they're saying about me now? That I'm paranoid?
...
Rorschach: Used to come here often, back when we were partners.
Dreiberg: Oh. Uh, yeah... yeah, those were great times, Rorschach. Great times. Whatever happened to them?
Rorschach: [exiting] You quit.
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Happy Harry the Bartender: [scared] Ruh. Ror. Ror. Rorschach! Har Har How are ya doin', fella?
Rorschach: I'm fine, Happy Harry. Yourself?
Happy Harry: Fine! I'm fuh, I'm fine! And I'm, and I'm, and I'm glad you're fine too! And uh, and uh... Oh God. Please don't kill anybody.
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Rorschach's Journal: A Comedian died last night, and nobody cares. Nobody Cares but Me.
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[Dan and The Comedian, in the midst of a riot]
Dan Dreiberg: But the country's disintegrating. What's happened to America? What's happened to the American dream?.
The Comedian: [brandishing shotgun] It came true. You're lookin' at it. Now c'mon... let's really put these jokers through some changes.
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[Veidt and Rorschach discuss potential suspects in the Comedian's murder.]
Adrian Veidt: The Comedian had plenty of other political enemies to choose from, even discounting the Russians. The man was practically a Nazi.
Rorschach: He stood up for his country, Veidt. Never let anyone retire him. Never cashed in on his reputation. Never set up a company selling posters and diet books and toy soldiers based on himself. Never became a prostitute. If that makes him a Nazi, you might as well call me a Nazi, too.
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Doctor Manhattan: A live body and a dead body contain the same number of particles. Structurally, there's no discernible difference. Life and death are unquantifiable abstracts. Why should I be concerned?
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Edgar Jacobi: Heh. Well, you know that kind of cancer that you get better from eventually?
Rorschach: Yes.
Edgar Jacobi: Well, that ain't the kind of cancer I got.
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[Retired crimefighters reminisce about the good old days.]
Laurie Juspeczyk: Hey, you remember that guy? The one who pretended to be a supervillain so he could get beaten up?
Dan Dreiberg: Oh, You mean Captain Carnage. Ha ha ha! He was one for the books.
Laurie: You're telling me! I remember, I caught him coming out of this jeweller's. I didn't know what his racket was. I start hitting him and I think "Jeez! He's breathing funny! Does he have asthma?
Dan: Ha Ha Ha. He tried that with me, only I'd heard about him, so I just walked away. He follows me down the street⦠broad daylight, right? He's saying "PUNISH me!" I'm saying "No! Get lost!"
Laurie: Ha Ha Ha. What ever happened to him?
Dan: Well, he pulled it on Rorschach, and Rorschach dropped him down an elevator shaft.
Laurie: PHAAA HA HA HA! Oh, God, I'm sorry, that isn't funny, Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha!
Dan: Ha Ha Ha! No, I guess it's not...
Laurie:Ahuh. Ahuhuhuh...Jeez, y'know, that felt Good. There don't seem to be that many laughs around these days.
Dan: Well, what do you expect? The Comedian is Dead.
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Captain Metropolis: Please! Don't all leave... Somebody has to do it, don't you see? Somebody has to save the world...
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Comedian: Lissen, you little punks, you better get back in ya rat-holes! I got riot gas, I got rubber bullets... [during 1977 riots preceding passage of the Keene Act.]
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Janey Slater: Some things, once they're busted, they can't ever be fixed.
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[Rorschach has broken into Nite-Owl II's apartment to tell him about Dr. Manhattan's exile.]
Rorschach: By the way, you need a stronger lock. That new one broke after one shove.
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[Laurie examines Dan's Nite Owl II utility belt.]
Laurie: What else have you got in there? Chocolate rations? Boy Scout knife? Army-issue contraceptives?
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Rorschach: [examining an inkblot test] A Pretty Butterfly.
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Big Figure: You're alone in the valley of the shadow, Rorschach, where your past has a long reach, and between you and it there's one crummy lock. Think about it.
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Rorschach: [to his psychiatrist] You keep calling me Walter. I don't like you.
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Dr. Long's Journal: "Later: The Deptuty Warden just called. Apparently, Kovacs was involved in an incident today, just after he'd seen me. It happened during Lunch, in the Canteen...
"The Guards Intervened, dragging Kovacs away to Solitary and the other man to the Prison Hospital. According to the Deputy Warden, his Burns were horrific. Hot cooking fat...I don't like to think about it.
"As they dragged him away, Kovacs spoke to the other inmates. He said 'None of you understand. I'm not locked up in here with you. You're locked up in here with me'.
My earlier optimism was obviously unfounded. He's just getting worse."
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Dr. Long's Journal: You're locked up in here with me, he said. He's right. Absolutely right.
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[A therapy session begins.]
Dr. Malcolm Long: Hello, Rorsach. How are you today?
Rorschach: In prison. Yourself?
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Rorschach: Visited underworld bars and began hurting people. Put fourteen in hospital needlessly. Fifteenth gave me an address. Disused dressmaker's in Brooklyn. [describing an old investigation to prison psychiatrist.]
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Rorschach: [examining the same inkblot test, the second time, and answering honestly] Dog. Dog with head split in half.
Dr. Long: And, uh. What do you think split the Dog's Head. In Half.
Rorschach: I did.
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Rorschach: It was Kovacs who said "Mother" then, muffled under latex. It was Kovacs who closed his eyes. It was Rorschach who opened them again.
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Rorschach: Stood in firelight, sweltering. Bloodstain on chest like map of violent new continent. Felt cleansed. Felt dark planet turn under my feet and knew what cats know that makes them scream like babies in night.
Looked at sky through smoke heavy with human fat and God was not there. The cold, suffocating dark goes on forever and we are alone. Live our lives, lacking anything better to do. Devise reason later. Born from oblivion; bear children, hell-bound as ourselves, go into oblivion. There is nothing else.
Existence is random. Has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long. No meaning save what we choose to impose. This rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not God who kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. Itâs us. Only us. Streets stank of fire. The void breathed hard on my heart, turning its illusions to ice, shattering them. Was reborn then, free to scrawl own design on this morally blank world.
Was Rorschach.
Does that answer your Questions, Doctor?
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Dr. Malcolm Long: I looked at the Rorschach blot. I tried to pretend it looked like a spreading tree, shadows pooled beneath it, but it didnât. It looked more like a dead cat I once found, the fat, glistening grubs writhing blindly, squirming over each other, frantically tunneling away from the light. But even that is avoiding the real horror. The horror is this: In the end, it is simply a picture of empty meaningless blackness. We are alone. There is nothing else.
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[a riot occurs in the prison due to Rorschach's presence]
Prison Inmate: We wanna piece, Big Figure!
Big Figure: Sure. Thank-giving's Early this year, but everyone gets a piece of Turkey. It's just I get to Carve. Now Beat it.
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Big Figure's Henchman Larry: [reaching into the bars of Rorschach's Prison Cell] You lousy little Bastard! I'll tear your goddamned heart out! You're dead, you unnerstand? Dead! We got a jail full of guys out here who hate your guts. What in hell do you got?
Rorschach: [grabbing his arms] Your hands. My Perspective.
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[Big Figure is forced to have Larry killed so he can get into the prison cell]]
Big Figure: We'ere gonna cut through there and then that bastard's gonna find out what the Score is!
Rorschach: One-Nothing. Your Move. Come and Get me.
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Rorschach: [during a prison breakout; all the inmates have fled in the ensuing chaos] Excuse me. Have to visit men's room.
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Rorschach: There. Did what had to be done. Can leave now.
Laurie: Really? Are you sure? We don't want to get too reckless and go diving headfirst into things!
Rorschach: [having just drowned a man in a toilet bowl] Hurm. Good advice. Sure there are many who would agree with you.
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Rorschach: Give me smallest finger on man's hand. I'll produce information. Computer unnecessary.
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Rorschach: Don't worry. Won't insult legendary underworld solidarity by suggesting you surrender name without torture.
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[Nite Owl II admits his fear as he and Rorschach prepare for final confrontation with the mastermind villain.]
Nite Owl: Y'know, this must be how ordinary people feel. This must be how ordinary people feel around us.
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Adrian Veidt: 'Do it?' Dan, I'm not a Republic serial villain. Do you seriously think I'd explain my master-stroke if there remained the slightest chance of you affecting its outcome? I did it thirty-five minutes ago.
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Dr. Manhattan: Yes. Yes, he killed Blake and half New York. Excuse me, Rorschach. I'm informing Laurie ninety seconds ago.
...
Dr. Manhattan: I-I'm sorry. It's these tachyons. They're muddling things up⦠I'd better follow him inside.
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Dr. Manhattan: This world's smartest man means no more to me than does its smartest termite.
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Dr. Manhattan: I am disappointed, Veidt. Very disappointed. Reconstructing myself after the subtraction of my intrinsic field was the first trick I learned.
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Nite-Owl: Rorschach...? Rorschach, wait! Where are you going? This is too big to be hard-assed about! We have to compromise!
Rorschach: No. Not even in the face of Armageddon. Never compromise.
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Adrian Veidt: But you said you'd regained interest in human life.
Doctor Manhattan: Yes, I have. I think perhaps I'll create some.
...
Adrian Veidt: I did the right thing, didn't I? It all worked out in the end.
Dr. Manhattan: 'In the end'? Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends.
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Doctor Manhattan: Thermo-dynamic miracles... events with odds against so astronomical they're effectively impossible, like oxygen spontaneously becoming gold. I long to observe such a thing.
And yet, in each human coupling, a thousand million sperm vie for a single egg. Multiply those odds by countless generations, against the odds of your ancestors being alive; meeting; siring this precise son; that exact daughter... Until your mother loves a man she has every reason to hate, and of that union, of the thousand million children competing for fertilization, it was you, only you, that emerged. To distill so specific a form from that chaos of improbability, like turning air to gold... that is the crowning unlikelihood. The thermo-dynamic miracle.
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Laurie Juspeczyk: But...if me, my birth, if that's a thermodynamic miracle... I mean, you could say that about anybody in the world!.
Dr. Manhattan: Yes. Anybody in the world. ..But the world is so full of people, so crowded with these miracles that they become commonplace and we forget... I forget. We gaze continually at the world and it grows dull in our perceptions. Yet seen from the another's vantage point. As if new, it may still take our breath away. Come...dry your eyes. For you are life, rarer than a quark and unpredictable beyond the dreams of Heisenberg; the clay in which the forces that shape all things leave their fingerprints most clearly.
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Laurie Juspeczyk: Is that what you are? The most powerful thing in the universe and you're just a puppet following a script?
Doctor Manhattan: We're all puppets, Laurie. I'm just a puppet who can see the strings.
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