Johnny: What the fuck is going on? WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?! You know, all my life, I've been careful to stay in my own corner. Looking out for Number One... no complications. Now, suddenly, I'm responsible for the entire fucking world, and everybody and his mother is trying to kill me, if... IF... my head doesn't blow up first.
Jane: Maybe this is not just about you any more.
Johnny: Listen. You listen to me. You see that city over there? THAT'S where I'm supposed to be. Not down here with the dogs, and the garbage, and the fucking last month's newspapers blowing back and forth. I've had it with them, I've had it with you, I've had it with ALL THIS - I want ROOM SERVICE! I want the club sandwich, I want the cold Mexican beer, I want a $10,000-a-night hooker! I want my shirts laundered... like they do... at the Imperial Hotel... in Tokyo.
This is a world which conspires against our natural tendency to take it easy. It forces us to work and slave away at computer terminals and coffee machines. It demands that we be responsible for others when we'd rather just sit back and take in the rays, slathered up in SPF 500 sunblock and a Pina Colada at our fingertips.
The dream of retirement is just a dream. Even when you're retired you have to do something to keep the old joints greased up and in proper working order. You've still got rent to pay, even when you're pushing 75 and you can't find your cane. Social Security is a memory and indentured servitude has been replaced with paying off your credit card debts.
We don't want room service, per se. We want job satisfaction and the ability to rest easy at night, safe and secure in the knowledge that someone isn't going to be dogging our heels in the morning when we wake up. We not only want to enjoy the fruits of our labor, but we want to enjoy the labor as well.
Being a courier of sensitive industrial secrets, enjoying the occasional first-class plane trip or the $300-a-night suite in the Hilton is all well and good, but it never lasts, does it? Someone is always out there, waiting for you to come home with your dough, so that they can get their cut. And they cut, slice, dice and mince their way into your life until you've got nothing left but fond memories and sore fingers.
Take me home to the fields of sage, where a single whiff of the air and the jasmine lifts the troubles of tomorrow away and puts me to rest in a dream-like nirvana. Hold me in my sweat-stained white-collar shirt, my silk tie draped over the chair next to us, while a bubble bath awaits us in the porcelain tub with clawed feet. Put a cool beverage in my hand and lightly kiss my earlobes.
Retire me.
Cuz I'm already tired.
Source for dialogue at the top of this w/u:
Johnny Mnemonic - screenplay
William Gibson
Sony Publishing