The Dio Tapes #2

Day 679, 12:00 Published in Pakistan Pakistan by William Walker

Dio Brando: “I spent a month in Sweden once, in the dark. It’s a hellhole. Covered in raw sewage, police breaking some citizen’s fingers with a hammer, just out of pure fucking meanness. Men die of starvation there all the time. I saw a guy catch a rat with his teeth, ‘cause they had him in handcuffs 24 hours a day for 2 weeks. He couldn’t eat. Seeing someone do that, he was weeping while he crushed it to death in his mouth. Seeing his eyes, his face, it’s madness. He was dead three days later.”

William Walker: “What killed him?”

Dio: “Realization of what he’d turned into.”

William: “How did you become an arms dealer in the first place?”

Dio: “Back in Pakistan we’d deliver guns all over the world, dropping off nations with 200 crates of rifles for the local fighters, so they could knock over some dictator. Mind you, that’s not 200 crates of factory Q5's, these were illicit weapons, confiscated in some raid and then redistributed. No paper work, right? If a crate here or there goes missing, hey, it happens. Military teaches you two things: how to deal with bureaucracy, and how to avoid it. Learning how to avoid it means learning how to deal in arms. You muster out, you apply what you learned. Every gunman I ever met has thought that way. Using illicit weapons in transport were the national militaries.”

William: “Do you ever choose sides in a conflict?”

Dio: “I did it once, it was a bad idea. Cut my profits in half. Never again. You sell to both sides, you can level the fields, stabilize the market, draw out the conflict to make more money. A big sale to one side doesn’t generate repeat business. Both the USA and Russia are using my weapons. Now, they’re in shit. Both sides are stockpiling. Less violence, more spending. It’s perfect."

William: “But it’s anarchy. Hundreds are dead. Thousands are displaced.”

Dio: “If I picked sides, fewer would be displaced, but more would be dead.”

William: “Have you ever refused to sell weapons to anybody?”

Dio: “I’m an immortal God Emperor, I don’t judge. Maybe you would.”

William: “I couldn’t sell arms.”

Dio: “Bullshit, William. You have all the skills to be an arms dealer. Better one than me, even. You’re smart, you’re creative, you’re a salesman. (laughs) You sold me on doing these dumb interviews. Nah, the rest is just paperwork.”

William: “I mean I’ll be unable, psychologically, to sell arms.”

Dio: “I’m talking facts and you’re talking theory. You’re not a good person, William, you’ve just been lucky enough. You’ve never had to be otherwise. When it comes down to it, what a man can do is what a man will do. But believe what you want.”