Game Over

I grasp the transmission stick and force it roughly into sixth, the click of this seven-speed gearbox inaudible beneath the banshee guttural growl of a 5.0 liter V10 S85 engine and the shriek of laterally skidding tires across scalding black pavement. With a businesslike frown I punch the accelerator and the car springs forward out of the turn, slingshotting faster down the road, which, at this speed, seems to be lined with a steady blur of pine-green foliage. I grunt beneath the pressure of sheer gravitational force, the bully hand of Newtonian physics pushing me deeper into my leather seat.

Now, a trickle of salty sweat emerges from my forehead as the RPMs again climb -- 5000, 5500, 6000 -- and the throaty, hellish yell of this BMW M6 quickly grows into something more like a hybrid of ten thousand shouting, baseball bat-wielding skinheads and the singular piercing drill of a large industrial turbine.

Faster we propel down El Toro Drive -- the evenly spaced streetlights zipping against us at machine-gun rapidity, the white lane markers on this smoothly-paved suburban parkway melting into a parallel set of lactate streams spewing unabated to my left and right. Likewise, a steady collection of minivans and Cadillacs whip backwards as if they were merely parked in the middle of the road, which they're not.

My friend, the Spaniard, is sitting next to me. He's dressed in a dark Ermenegildo Zegna suit. He seems to be unaffected by all of this. In fact, he calmly opens his leather briefcase, pulls out a polished Glock pistol, presses the firearm against my clammy temple, and, very calmly, he says to me: "I told you to drive fast, son."

As we round the next bend, our 500-horsepower sedan now engulfing entire city blocks every two seconds, I see in the distance a truly spectacular sight: a ramp, perhaps two stories tall, rising from the ground. The ramp seems to be designed to propel cars over the 24 lanes of Interstate 5, where, assuming they make the jump, they'll land smoothly upon a downward-facing embankment.

Finally I kick the transmission into seventh. "Lucky seven," I mutter to myself, as our speed climbs beyond the 200MPH mark. Amazingly, the car is still accelerating, even at this colossal speed. Our velocity is in fact so mesmerizing that we both stare ahead, hypnotized, at the rapidly approaching ramp -- and suddenly the dragon roar of the furiously pumping engine seems to fade into a rumbling purr. Oddly, I also begin to hear the civilized strings of some classical music -- a Vivaldi composition, I believe.

As we arrive at the ramp, now doing well in excess of 230, I emit a girlish squeal as the car rises instantly up the slope, thus leaving our twitching guts somewhere down below our feet. And as we launch into the pure, unadulterated Orange County air, the smoking wheels of this crazy automobile spinning wildly beneath us, I gasp, mouth agape, at the incredulity of this moment. Why did we decide to do this? What twists and turns of our collective lives led us here? Is this, in fact, why I was put on this earth?

We have much time to consider these questions, since, as it turns out, I launched from the ramp with such great velocity that the downward ramp -- the one we were meant to land upon -- speeds behind us, still far below our airborne vehicle. We continue sailing, and from a distance, the M6 must have appeared to be a tiny vector riding a downward trajectory within a vast area of three-dimensional space -- downward, downward, downward -- until its path would inevitably intersect with the cold, unforgiving ground.

The moment of impact: strangely peaceful. As the car comes voraciously hurtling into the pavement, we hear -- and I swear, this is the weirdest thing -- not the violent crunch of collapsing steel, but rather a single, plaintive piano key. It's touching, really. Or at least it would be if my body weren't utterly pulverized in the wreckage.