Chapter 17: YES! (4)
"How?" she asked, then added, "Come on, please don't make me play twenty questions. Spill it. How?"
"Okay. The short version. While hiking back from Lake Valhalla-"
"Oh, shit!" she gasped, covering her mouth with her hand. "That was yesterday? I totally forgot, what with, well, you know. I'm so sorry. I should have said something. How was it? Did it go like you hoped?"
"It was perfect, better than we had hoped." Then he chuckled darkly, "I almost added, 'I wish she was there to see it.' I think she'd get the humor in me saying that."
"Yeah, she probably would."
They just sat for a second, saying nothing, then she prompted him, "So, you were hiking back, and?"
"Right, I was hiking back and was passing through that section of the trail where you have to basically climb through a rhododendron when, blam! Blackout."
"You passed out?"
"No. I was still conscious. I just didn't have a body. It was like my soul was separated from my body. And, now that I think about it, that might be what actually happened. Anyway, I was in this void of nothingness for a few hours, though at the time I had no way of knowing how much time was passing. Then I got this message in my mind telling me a Genesis Heart had been installed. But before that, it told me my soul was too weak and needed to be strengthened. That might be why I was in the nothingness for so long."