The offices of Prism Capital were located on the 42nd and 43rd floors of 666 Wall Street. The executive car service that had transported John from the airport to the hotel was waiting for him outside the hotel to drive him to David Huntsman's office the next morning. John entered the lobby of 666 Wall Street and was greeted by a woman named Rose who introduced herself as Mr. Huntsman's executive assistant. She escorted him onto the elevator and when they arrived at the 43rd floor she led him across the trading floor, past dozens of stockbrokers either staring intently at their Bloomberg or baying instructions into their phone. John followed Rose into a quiet hallway at the end of which was a corner office that belonged to David, who was standing with his hands clasped behind his back and looking out of the floor to ceiling windows at the view his office afforded him.

"I own this whole building, my own personal Tower of Babylon," he said without turning around.

"What did you think about what was going on out there?" He asked John when he heard the door close.

Not knowing how he was supposed to answer the question John chose to remain silent and wait for David to continue with whatever point he wanted to make.

"What you saw out there was the most profitable trading floor in the whole world," he said, turning to face John, "Do you know what we are here? We're a superfund for superfunds. Brokerage firms give their money to superfunds to invest for them and they give it to us. Last year we did 35%, the year before that we did 28%, in fact we have never done less than 20%, not even during the great depression, and those numbers that I give you are the 'official' numbers, the real ones are much higher. We ARE Wall Street, that's what you saw out there. Please, take a seat."

David gestured toward a chair and they both sat down, facing each other. In the corner of the room, John noticed a green pig sleeping on a pile of pillows.

"The Raven told me a week ago that it had found someone who could be of immense help to us, since then I've been waiting with great anticipation to meet you."

"How long have you known the Raven?" John asked.

"Oh we go way back; it introduced itself to me after the collapse of the tulip market in Holland, I was one of the few that got out just in time and made a fortune, after that the Raven approached me and said that it thought that I could be useful to it, and today here I am, at the top of the world."

"How is that possible? For that to be the case you would have to be over 300 years old!"

"I am, one of the many perks of being an ally of the Raven."

John needed to take a moment to process what he had just heard. David, who had seen this same reaction countless times before, afforded him the time he needed to collect himself.

"I visited your church's website, it's very impressive what you've been able to do, building up a dedicated worldwide following for a religion that is so far outside the mainstream, and I think that the Raven is right about you being exactly what we need."

"What is it that you want from me?"

"We need someone who can inspire a legion of believers in the Raven like you've done with the Goose, we don't have that right now."

"Why not? The Raven is obviously very powerful, people should naturally be gravitating toward it in the millions."

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"The Raven prefers to maintain a low profile, it doesn't lust after the spotlight the way the Goose does. Tell me, in all of your discoveries, have you ever come across the slightest mention of the Raven?"

"No."

"Now that you know how powerful the Raven is don't you find that strange? Doesn't it make you question what the Goose's motivations are?"

"I've never presumed to know what the Goose's motivations are; I don't know what the Raven's are either, I came here hoping you could help me with that."

"The Raven's goal is very simple: to save the world."

"What does that mean?"

"It means succeeding where every politician and philanthropist has failed and fixing all of the world's problems once and for all."

"But how is that even possible?"

"I know you've only known it for a short amount of time but you should have realized by now that nothing is impossible for the Raven."

"Then what does it need our help for?"

"He needs our help because human nature is a problematic thing. Whatever we are able to achieve needs to be sustainable and in order for that to be the case we need to build a foundation across all elements of our society to support the Raven's efforts."

"If what you are saying is true then it would mean that the Goose is an evil force, and that is not true."

"I'm not saying that the Goose is evil, all I'm saying is that the Raven offers a better way."

"I'll just have to take your word on that."

"I know enough about the Raven that my faith in it is unflappable, yours will be too once you've seen what it can do."

"What role do you play in the Raven's plan?"

"My job is to ensure that we have the financial resources that we need to implement whatever plan the Raven deems necessary to our cause. We've contributed incredibly generously to various political campaigns and causes and that's allowed us to strategically position various individuals in high-level positions at powerful institutions whose job is to carry out the Raven's orders."

"Who are these strategically positioned people?"

"Take the current Secretary of Defense, he is, like me, a longtime ally of the Raven's. He's the one who convinced the president to launch those strikes on Iraq and in the four years since that war began, Reinhold Aviation, of which we own 40%, has received $80 billion worth of orders from the Pentagon, and of course we own major stakes in all of the oil companies so when the oil price spiked those investments proved very lucrative for us."

"If saving the world is the Raven's goal, like you say it is, then shouldn't addressing climate change be one of its top priorities?" John asked.

"Of course it is, saving the world means saving the planet and we have an aggressive plan for doing so."

"Then why have you invested so heavily in oil companies?"

"Are you aware that the last three years have been the best years on record for sales of electric and hybrid vehicles?"

"No, I didn't know that."

"People only start looking at alternatives when what they're used to buying becomes unaffordable for them. We don't care if we end up taking a bath on our fossil fuel investments because we made those investments in the service of a greater good, which is the explosion that you're currently seeing in clean energy."

"And I'm guessing you have significant investments there as well that are proving to be very lucrative."

"Of course, otherwise we wouldn't be doing our due diligence. In 10 years 30% of this country's energy is going to come from renewables, in 25 years we're going to be at net zero emissions and in the process a lot of people are going to make a lot of money, so everyone's going to be happy. That doesn't sound so bad now does it? It's like the saying goes: you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs."

John didn't understand the market but as a scientist he had grave concerns about the threat posed by climate change and had been frustrated for years by the political inaction on the issue. Were his concerns about the Raven entirely assuaged by his conversation with David Huntsman? No, but he left with some understanding of the Raven's mindset. The Raven appeared, to him, to have a deep understanding of human nature and of how to use it to its advantage. John found the methods described by David to be more than a little dubious but John reminded himself that the Raven was looking at things from a perspective that was informed by thousands of years of major events that it had seen with its own eyes, and when he returned home Laura informed him that she had chosen their new house and had received his wonderful surprise of two tickets to Belize.