before the end

Takeo: But why? You were next in line. To be curator, keeper of all the Garden's mysteries. To throw away everything you knew over a cheap bauble...

Mehta: Everything I knew. Yes. That's exactly why.

Takeo: I don't understand.

Mehta: The search. All my life. This is real, that is fake. This sculpture has value. That one should be left  to rot. I never chose this! Just an idiot's parlor trick, a magic picture viewer that I was born with.

Takeo: Still so selfish.

Mehta: Selfish. So what if I was? No one asked me what I wanted. A life spent in dusty tomes and dead places. And on the other hand, the crystal... with it, I could see everything. Takeo, don't you see? We're going to die, all of us. The world is turning to dust. Let us have some sweetness, before the end.