- Black says the world is probably only as dark as you let it be. White says that's true, but he can't bring himself to believe in a "most excellent world" if he knows it doesn't exist.
- Black says he really does believe in such a world, and taking the non-suicidal commuter train is what you've got to do to get there. You can meet people on the way who've been to dark places and can show you how to get back from them.
- White says that's not going to happen—he just wants to go.
- Black doesn't know what to do. He tells White to try him, to say what he really thinks he understands about the world and what he really wants.
- White says Black doesn't want to hear it, but goes ahead when Black tells him to: White yearns for death and total nothingness. He would never want to see, say, his own mother again, in the afterlife. He wants to be dead in the truest, most non-existent sense.
- White thinks being aware of the futility of it all is the last step evolution brings people to. Everyone should, in his view, be suicidal if they're aware enough.
- Black is incredulous, but White goes on, coldly saying that he doesn't believe in God and finds religion totally ridiculous. And he hates playing the village atheist in these debates. He could only find value in a religion that teaches one to prepare for and accept nothingness.
- White says he wants no part of Black's fellowship of pain if it means enduring a universe of suffering, which only ends in non-existence. If his brother is his salvation, then White wants his brother damned in every shape and form—he sees himself reflected in others, he says, and what he sees is sickening.