Consumption can only turn back on itself
Characters can become the meat chewed up to keep the system running—as in the case of the burnt machinist or the dead teenage girl—or they can become, themselves, producers of even more death, embarking on psychotic road-trip killing sprees or vigilante missions to rid the streets of human filth. Cosseted by imperial wealth, they have no connection to the real labour embodied in their surroundings, and no economic need to engage in or even understand such labour themselves. Consumption can only turn back on itself: hollowed-out like Amy’s stomach, or else apathetically comfortable like the disaffected wealthy loners vulnerable to the recruitment tactics of the new-agers.