At some point after the Man had been burning for a while, the crowd suddenly tired of the concept of observing from a safe distance and converged upon the pyre. The outer edges were like a riot scene: people running in every direction, yelling and screaming, stuff on fire, total disorientation.

Closer in, it became something else. The crowd was almost running as it circled counterclockwise around the Man. It took all our strength just to hold onto each other in the swirling crush of bodies. You couldn't really control where you were going at all. There was no room to move, but somehow everyone was moving.

In the torrent of heat and sweat and flesh, the circle pushed us into the innermost ring, and suddenly we were face to face with the impossible, implacable heat of the Man himself. No one could take it for very long, and everyone on the inside was fighting to work their way back out.