"Michael. Dear Michael. Of course it's you. Who else could they send, who else could be trusted? I… I know it's a long way, and you're ready to go to work… all I'm saying is, just wait, just… just wait, and please, just hear me out, because this is not an episode, relapse, fuck-up, it's… I'm begging you, Michael. I'm begging you. Try to make believe this is not just madness, because this is not just madness. Two weeks ago, I came out of the building, okay? I'm running across Sixth Avenue, there's a car waiting, I've got exactly thirty-eight minutes to get to the airport, and I'm dictating. There's this panicked associate sprinting along beside me, scribbling in a notepad, and suddenly she starts screaming, and I realize we're standing in the middle of the street, the light's changed, there's this wall of traffic—serious traffic—speeding towards us, and I… I freeze, I can't move, and I'm suddenly consumed with the overwhelming sensation that I'm covered in some sort of film. It's in my hair, my face… it's like a glaze… a coating, and… at first I thought, "Oh my god, I know what this is. This is some sort of amniotic—embryonic—fluid. I'm drenched in afterbirth, I've breached the chrysalis, I've been reborn." But then the traffic, the stampede, the cars, the trucks, the horns, the screaming, and I'm thinking, "No-no-no, reset, this is not rebirth, this is some kind of giddy illusion of renewal that happens in the final moment before death." And then I realize, "No-no-no, this is completely wrong," because I look back at the building, and I had the most stunning moment of clarity. I… I… I realized, Michael, that I had emerged not from the doors of Kenner, Bach, and Ledeen, not through the portals of our vast and powerful law firm, but from the asshole of an organism whose sole function is to excrete the… the… the poison, the ammo, the defoliant necessary for other, larger, more powerful organisms to destroy the miracle of humanity. And that I had been coated in this patina of shit for the best part of my life. The stench of it and the sting of it would, in all likelihood, take the rest of my life to undo. And you know what I did? I took a deep cleansing breath, and I put that notion aside. I tabled it. I said to myself, as clear as this may be, as potent a feeling as this is, as true a thing as I believe I witnessed today, it must wait. It must stand the test of time! And Michael, the time is now."