Chapter 19

"Harley, can you hear me? Can you answer me, Harley? Harley can you hear me?"

Over and over again. "Shut up, I hear you!" I said aloud while screaming it in my head.

"No need to yell any longer, Harley," the voice said. "We've got a good connection now. Full bars."

"Full bars is good," I agreed, my eyes opening. The ceiling stared back at me. I sat up, shaking my head to try and clear it. The shock of what I'd just learned started to come back to me a little, and then the memory of the return of the voice.

"So you're back," I said aloud. "Or is it just while I'm unconscious?"

"No, I'm back," the voice answered. "Really, I was never gone, but some things had to happen before we could have this kind of chat."

"I HAD TO LEARN THAT I'M LIVING A SECOND LIFE IN THE BODY OF MY OWN GREAT GRANDSON?" I said very loudly.

"Yes, and you don't have to be so loud," the voice said calmly. "In fact, you should get used to just thinking your answers to me. We can communicate clearly now, and its really all internal."

"Who are you? What do you want with me? What's this all about?"

"I'm an agent of ... a group of peoples whose goal is the preservation of humanity. You are one of a very few who have what it takes to help us. I have been tasked with preparing you to act in our behalf to further that goal."

"What makes me so special then, and what about Cooper? He was an innocent in all this. Did you kill him so this could happen?"

"Oh no, we didn't kill Cooper," the voice managed to sound offended. "Cooper was quite an interesting young man, but he had a serious flaw, and one that plagued him all through his adolescent and adult life. You should take a closer look at the Harley, Harley. Or should I call you Cooper now?"

I ignored the voice and went grumbling out to the garage where I'd parked the bike. I began giving it a more thorough going over, but I wasn't sure what I would find. I looked under in and around everything, but didn't find anything. Finally, in frustration, I even opened the gas cap and tried peering into the tank. It was too dark to see anything, but just as I was about to give up, my eye caught something. There was a small metal ring, like a gasket around the top of the tank where the cap screwed on. I reached down with a finger and tried to feel for an edge to the gasket and as I ran the finger around it, I bumped into something hanging down from it. I slid a second finger in and was able to grip something. It pulled up easily and I saw it was a braided wire – stainless steel by the looks of it. As I pulled it up the little metal gasket it was attached to came up as well. Along with that came a small stainless steel ball with a screw on cap that was attached to the other end of the braided wire. It was covered with gasoline of course, so I took it over to a workbench nearby and found a shop cloth to wipe it down with. It took a bit of muscle to break the screw cap free, but it opened, and I poured the contents out on the bench.

Pills.

"Crap," I said aloud.

"We would wish it were not so," the voice said in my head. "But it was his addiction, and his shame over it that lead him to take his own life there along the river."

I stood there, silent, stupefied by this knowledge. Some of the odd things about Cooper's choices along the way from Seattle made sense now, in a sadly bitter way.

"His suicide was the key for us though, to giving you the chance to continue on in Cooper's body."

"But why?" I asked, not sure what thing I was asking why about.

"Because we couldn't put your mind in this body with him if he had not died. Because one of your mind's is not enough, as unique as they are. To gain the ability you will need to work for us, you needed the strength of two minds. Three such minds together would have been even better, but – ahh the math needed to understand how unlikely a chance could ever come to make that possible – even I find it hard to appreciate. Needless to say, humanity's end would have come long before such a chance could occur."

"Well you blew it then," I laughed aloud, even though the words had been spoken silently. "There's nobody in here but me. You only got one mind after all."

"No, that's not true, thankfully," the voice chuckled back. "Cooper is in there with you. He's just been hiding. Ashamed and embarrassed, and a little shocked himself lately, having lived your memories of his great grandmother and his grandmother's conception along with you when you relived them."

"Bullshit," I thought, rather loudly.

"No, grandfather, its true," a new voice said in my head. A harder, rougher voice that still reminded me so much of me. I fainted again, or maybe things just wore me out and I slept. For whatever reason, the world went dark on me once again.