The narrator tells us that he's got a lot of work to do. He's worried about what's going to happen to the city. He also worries about what his friends are going to do with him now that the fire's out. He wants to go to his fountain, where he'll be able to destroy everything that's wrong with the world. He doesn't want to live in a world where people hate each other, so he just goes to the fountain and destroys everything. He sees the bearers of the fire, and he hates them all. He rejects the creatures' gift of being able to bend to nature's will. He says that he and his friends tried to cheat nature, because they weren't satisfied with the life they had. He gives the narrator a cab fare back to his house. The narrator says that his dad, his grandpa, and his great-grandpa couldn't have done what he did, but now he can't believe how fast the fire has burned Chicago. He arrives at the O'leary, where the bodies of the dead are found. He spends the next fourteen hours identifying the victims and determining their cause of death. As night falls, the narrator comes upon the body of the last victim. He tries to figure out what the man is saying, but he can only think that it must be something else.