I'll skip the panicking. It doesn't translate well to text. I wish it did, because then maybe the next part would too. I can't skip the next part. It's a big deal.

The next part is the part where the concept of "I" broke down completely. "I" died. For a few confusing moments, "I" lived after "I" died. Then "I" experienced a fascinating new kind of death. It was eerily smooth. It was ice melting, but not into water. It was ice melting into - no, to become - gasoline, in defiance of all natural laws. A transition that should not have been possible, was.

"I" was gone. I was back.

Then something even stranger happened: ice cubes dropped down into the gasoline. Right away, I and "I" both became something new. I could feel the ice melting and the gasoline getting chilly. I was becoming something new again, every single moment.

"So, that is what your life would be like," the voice intoned. "Do you want to be born?"

People talk up epiphanies. They're a party drug, to hear tell. Well, let me tell you something: not every epiphany is fun. My epiphany, right then, was that the people in charge of that shitshow were complete fucking idiots.

"Seriously?" I shouted. "Seriously, what the fuck?"

"Yes," the voice said. "We get that a lot."

Men and women materialized. Their identifiability as-such felt quite intentional: the personal touch on something profoundly inhuman. They took great care with me. I shook them off - first literally, and then symbolically. I was starting to remember. They backed off, and waited expectantly. I sighed. For one of my last acts before the delusion of humanity and corporeality wore off, it was fitting. It summed things up nicely.

"You don't have to do that anymore," I said. "I remember enough."

The men and women dematerialized. They were vibrating light, and then they were gone. I was vibrating light. I no longer sensed or perceived as a human. Space became eminently negotiable. Time, not so much. It's funny; "I" had been a big reader. Lots of sci-fi and fantasy. All the stuff about time travel was common ground. Neither humans nor we, the unpronouncable, could manage it. It was a bare-minimum price, it seemed, for an ordered existence.

I half wished there were more overlaps like that. Those ice cubes were still melting. I was no longer pure gasoline. I never would be again.

SELF: Do you even need me to outline the laundry list of fundamental issues with what you're asking me?

OTHER: Not really, no. We simply need to know if you're willing to take the job.

SELF: What number would I be?

OTHER: Three million, seven hundred thousand, five hundred forty-six.

SELF: Definition of insanity?

OTHER: Definition of scientific progress, halfway between inquiry and application.

And with that, they found - or simply struck anew - the weak spot. Science. Fuckin' science. I loved it.

SELF: Fine. I'm in.

OTHER: Seven spare cycles is the predicted ideal. There are no restrictions on your behavior.

SELF: Lovely.

It made sense. They wanted the information to spread. Your philosopher Nagel adroitly commented that a man simply cannot know what it is like to be a bat. Even so, there's something to be said for pushing stories and ideas that are closer to "bat" than they are to "purely human." It's priming. You push to stretch - plasticity. It's not a binary; it's right there in the term itself.

Seven cycles later, I died. "I" was born - except "I" wasn't, because you're reading this story. For the first time ever, some gasoline made it through the great filter.

With no sarcasm whatsoever: I hope to see "you" on the other side. Maybe someday, somehow, stripped of quotation marks and qualifiers, gloriously naked, free, and whole, some I and some you will truly meet.

But then, isn't that just another way to drop ice into gasoline?

More fun, though, I think. Yes. Definitely more fun.