"What a delightful question!" exclaimed Garoo, "To ask where I live." laughter from both was joined by a soft mournful howl from Animal in the shadows, which created even more laughter. As the chuckles died away, Garoo explained, "I have a house just South of Los Angeles, actually, and another in Germany, near the Swiss Border." Garoo continued, as Steve looked questioningly, "Oh yes, I have wealth. Some cars, a modest boat, some few toys. All of which is owned by a corporation whose only purpose is to provide me with a way to exist in a modern world, without revealing that I am not quite alive you see, which would be embarrassing and difficult."

Steve looked around the clearing sadly, "I have no where to go, no fancy corporation to let me keep this place. Perhaps if I had been able to pay it off first, I could find a way to keep it, but now. . ."

"Ahhh this is your home I see, " Looking around without seeing any structure in sight, Garoo seemed bemused at the obvious deep feelings Steve had for this place, "I don't suppose you have made any firm arrangements for how your estate is to be settled, life insurance, a Will, anything of that nature?"

"No, I may have some sort of insurance through work, but I have no one as a beneficiary, I assume that the government will basically take it all, and auction it off in the end." Steve said.

As a breeze passed through the forest, trees whispered, groaned, and sighed. Garoo said with enthusiasm, "If the government is involved it may take years before any final outcome occurs, and if it comes to an auction, I am quite certain my corporation can easily outbid anyone else interested, so, you really have nothing to worry about."

Steve narrowed his eyes, and his mind snapped shut as he considered what that would mean, and felt that he had, at last found what scam he was being run into. "So, the boy would have me under his thumb." was the thought, but then, " For what? What did Steve have that this boy wanted?"

Garoo clucked his tongue noisily in the darkness, small shakings of his head denying what Steve was so obviously thinking. "No Steve, if we did this, you would have your own corporate shelter to hide in, and I would sell it back to you, if you could not bid it yourself. You'll see. If you decide to go the corporate route, you'll see that there is no 'scam' involved." Garoo laid back staring at the stars, "Let me tell you about my life, as a tree."

Garoo began weaving a tale, of loneliness, desolate centuries when he would sit and watch the world pass by without stirring. How eventually he became able to inhabit creatures bodies, living again, vicariously as a parasite within them. Time passed and Garoo found himself able to touch, and smell and hear and taste, becoming solid, and as real, as when alive. Even more so, as time and experience allowed, power to crush rock with mere thought, move among the living without fear, by becoming a power that the living feared. None could stand in his way, none could even think of it, as he could control them as puppets if he wished. He laughed with gay abandon when assassins came to him in the night, they stole upon him in slumber they thought, and smote him with club and stone. He lay still in the darkness as they wore themselves to a stupor of exhaustion. When they could strike him no longer, he rose up, and laughed. For some few moons he had laughed, finally after many moons he wound down to mere chuckles occasionally, and some years later, having done nothing at all, but be amused, he was utterly bored. He again, sat still as if stone, an empire crumbled around him, degenerating into wandering tribes, until the temple was a ruin about him. One day, a nut from a tree that no longer exists in the world fell on his arm, and rolled soundlessly into his lap. There in the shelter of his shadow, the nut waited in the loam that had gathered through the centuries. Garoo noted the presence of life and determined to live again, not as a parasite, this time, but to give up entirely his human experience and fully live as the tree that the nut would become. He abandoned his stonelike form, leaving it truly stone, and immersed his entire being within the nut, losing all humanity, in a moment forgetting all that had gone before, and having no conciousness, but that of the tree, contained within the shell of a simple nut.

Who can possibly know how long I lived as that tree? I recall reaching for the sun, feeling thirst and groping deep into the earth, sucking moisture and food from the rock and soil. I remember fighting with the other trees and plants around me for space and sunlight and water and food, my own kind I killed to grow, and survive. I fed upon them, as they rotted around me and leached food into the rocks that I hungrily crushed and devoured. I was a mighty tree, in my prime, I had the height of the forest below me, and no wind or storm could shake my roots from the stone I had gripped in my roots.

Time will never set in a second place seat, however, and as I lived on, the years set upon me, and my limbs could no longer reach up, my heartwood began failing, I became rotten and gangly. The storms now tore my limbs and the sun and rain no longer urged new budding leaves to appear. My form had changed entirely, no longer did the breadth of my branches, with the shade of my leaves protect my roots from the younger trees. They grew up in my leaning shadow, my own children feeding upon my death, until I no longer stood, and my carcass was consumed by the forest around me.

The boy turned to Steve in darkness, with the trees around them whispering nasty rumours and threats, "So, you see, even as I appear to you, as a boy of some 14 years perhaps, I know much more fully what it is to live a full and vibrant life, to age, and fail in the end, and die. My experience with mortal life is completed, my interests now lie in experiencing if possible, the cycle of immortality, if there even is such a thing. As may be, in any case, you need not fear that you have anything to lose that I have any desire of."

Steve recalled the earlier tale that Garoo had painted, of his life with the dying tribe, and his death in the jaws of the crocodile. Inwardly shuddering at the immensity of the situation, and wondering what a 'cycle of immortality' could possibly mean. "Man, I tell ya, I need to go for a putt, this is just too much for me." Steve glanced over at the parking spot where his panhead should be, and was shocked to realize that his chopper could possibly be towed away, by some brutish uncaring tow truck driver, dumped uncerimoniously in some hellish impound yard. Paint scratched, rims bent, rust hungrily devouring iron and steel, like roots crushing stone to feed on deathly rotteness of life.

The trees slapped each other with gleeful laughter in the freshening breeze.

Garoo glared into the darkness, and directed his thought of bright fresh steel, honed to sharpness, keening for solid woodflesh to bite and chew. The trees grew silent after some grumbling, as the wind picked up a tune, promising to be gentle, after the storm, then rushed away into the night. Garoo sat still, and knew that Steve had gone into the night to find his panhead chopper.

"Oh, my fucking god!" thought Steve as he sat on the parking lot asphalt. He had been very precise in knowing where his bike should be, and as a result he sat in exactly that same spot, with his head peering across the tanks, and the seat protruding from his chest, front and rear, various bits and peices, of steel, copper, and plastic tickled him inside. He tried surging upwards and to the right, but found that any attempt to move as a solid living person brought pain, and failure. If he was able to stand, he would be standing with a quarter ton of iron through his body. Then he knew, and with chagrin, he stood alongside the bike.

Now he could handle it correctly, and he grabbed the bars and sat on the seat, feeling the solid steel and iron responding to his touch, just as it had for years before. Steve fumbled in his pocket for the key, and finding it, slipped into the ignition and turned it to the ON position. No lights, the key looked odd, as if it had bent and was melted into the switch. Steve began fuming, of course, the REAL key was in some plastic bag in a hospital somewhere. But did that really matter? When he shook the bars the bike moved, when he bounced on the seat, the seat moved, the springs squeaked. This key should work. Steve felt that his mental exertion should be making him sweat, as he tried several times to make that ghostly key turn that all too solid switch to the ON position. Steve stopped abruptly, thinking about what he was doing. He may be going about this wrong, all wrong. The bike and he had a pattern, a dance of wills so to speak, when it came to a cold start.

Steve deliberately reached down and turned on the fuel petcock, then reached down the side of the carb, and flipped the choke closed, and then opened it one stop, as he tested the air temperature around him. His left knee found the familiar groove in the seat, and hoisting himself up on the bike, his right foot found and flipped out the kick start pedal. Easing down on his right foot, he could feel the pawl catch, and then he dropped his weight full on the kicker pedal, and with a satisfying chug, the motor took a single lung full of air and fuel. Steve rested his weight on the seat once again, allowing the kicker to come back full up, and he repeated the kick down, and was again rewarded with a chug.

Now Steve repeated the kick one last time, now both cylinders were fully charged with air fuel mix, and the front cylinder was ready to fire. He reached down, and turned the key, this was good, he had the lights, and he dropped on the kicker once more, giving it a robust shove as it went down, and the motor chugged, spat, and coughed on the too rich fuel, but Steve was ready, and flipped up the choke lever to three quarters open, as he feathered the throttle down to let the engine heat up without overrunning it.

After a few moments steve let the throttle drop closed, and the bike stood chugging in the dark. Steve let out a whoop, and shook his fist at the sky, laughing again at the world.

As he looked over the parking lot, his laughter died, as he noticed that the gate was locked. Now he would have to turn off the ignition, the key for the gate was on the same ring as his bike key, of course, and no way of getting it off, as he had welded the ring shut some time ago. But then, he thought, "Why would that affect this ring?". He reached down, and tried to just pull the key for the gate loose, and failed. Then just as he was about to give up in frustration he reached back down, and pulled the key out of the ignition. It slid free without a hitch, and he had his key.

Less than a minute later, he snapped the gate lock closed. The industrial area resonated with the muted roar of the old harley passing, and then fading into the normal night sounds of deserted areas.

Steve looked at the intersection, and he wanted to go thataway, onto the freeway, and let the wind shake out his mind, but he had done some thinking soon after the exhilerating first few hundered yards. This bike was not unknown to the local cops, and it was entirely likely that some if not all of them now knew that Steve was supposed to be a corpse, laying on a slab somewhere. With as much noise he had made leaving the shop, someone may have noticed, the police, and others may be waiting at any point to stop whoever had stolen the bike. Steve thought about turning and running quietly back to leave the bike at the shop, but the truth was, he had as much risk going on, as going back. He wanted the bike in his camp, safe from that maniacal tow truck driver that had panicked him into coming for it in the first place. With that he turned and headed thisaway, back roads quietly stealing him into the foothills, where he could hook up with his driveway, and in his camp, with everything he held dear safe again, he could decide what he would do with his future.