A few events, perhaps connected:

"Aren't you the least bit afraid of dying?" I ask Susan over plates of shitty Mexican food. We're at Tamarindo, which is where we go when it's after midnight and we want cheap eats in the neighborhood and aren't in the mood to be overly concerned about food poisoning. She says no.

But there is that feeling I get when I think about eternity. Everyone must know this; surely she experiences it too. When I think about Time I feel the needle go in the back of my head. It's cold and it shuts everything else down. The feeling swells until it overwhelms all else, an explosion of fear for the frailty of my consciousness, like an inverted orgasm. It's almost unbearable, and it frequently knocks my legs out from under me. It lasts only seconds but it is unlike anything else I know. When it passes I find myself unafraid... of death, of anything. There is a refractory period, usually a couple days, before I can seriously feel afraid again.

How often do you feel this way? she asks me.

The last time was in the bathroom just before we came here. It sneaks up on me that way. I waits until I'm alone and no one can witness or distract me from the breakdown.

She does not know this sensation.

I tell her that recently I realized it had been a long time since I last wondered at the meaning of things. Not just the purpose of my particular existence, which continues to be somewhat vexing, but the meaning of my species' existence on earth. It's easy to accept that greater minds have failed to deduce an answer, and move on to lesser matters. Maybe it does the human some good to ask the question again from time to time, and indulge the fantasy that an answer might come out of a dream.

Two days later I complete my "Fourth" checkout on the rescue squad. I get my red helmet. I can now, in the phrasing of the rule book, enter structures that are "on fire."

As I walk to the metro to head home, I fell wonderfully, alarmingly alive. I intimately feel the gravity generated by my body's mass, and its tendency to warp the paths of passersby.

"I can enter structures that are, quote, on fire," I tell Susan when I get home.

"I know," she says, an edge of weariness creeping into her voice. "I know, and I'm proud of you but sometimes I don't want to think about it too much."

Then there is the dream. (No one's dream are interesting to others, and messianic dreams are only more irritating.) There is a painful climb to heaven, and then I must descend again to the people I left behind. The world has fallen into murderous chaos. Stone bleeds with arterial gusto as innumerable voices cry out in sorrow. A bush burns and is unconsumed. And I wake up thinking: what is it? What am I supposed to do? All I know is that the hunt is on.