Yes yes yes, they said again. Think about this.

So they wanted him to continue this self-examination as he ran down the hill, staying on the right, the outside, as he went around the blind curves, because people took this road too fast and he had to make sure he was visible to them. They wanted him to think about the difference between his deep observer-self and his conscious mind and the gates Loki had given him and …

Where were his own gates?

Oh such a good question. It was as if they applauded him.

If Loki’s gates talk to me, then why don’t my own gates?

And then he thought—or did Loki’s gates put the thought into his mind?—The reason my gates don’t talk to me is that they are me. For all I know they do talk to me, but I hear them as myself, as …

No no no.

It was like playing hot-and-cold as a child, the cousins all yelling “Warmer, warmer, hot, hot, cold now!” as the child who was It searched blindly for the hidden object.

This memory had come unbidden. Did that mean it came from his own gates?

No no no.

“Then what are my gates doing?” he asked aloud.

And then, as he came to a stop at the bottom of the hill, where a complicated three-way intersection with Furrs Mill Road was too narrow and dangerous for him not to pay attention, he realized: Who has been operating my body as I ran down this hill, thinking all these thoughts?

It wasn’t my observer-self—that was listening to my ponderings. It certainly wasn’t my conscious mind—it was doing the pondering. I have no memory of anything I did, any choices I made coming down the hill, and yet I was making them. I was passed by several cars—now I can remember, vaguely, that they came from behind and ahead, several of them—but they never interrupted my conscious thoughts.

My gates were operating my legs and arms. Keeping me on the road. I had a mindless task to perform—keeping myself alive while running—and I turned it over to someone else while my conscious self and my deeper observer-self were engaged in this inner conversation.

And it all came together. While Loki had been asleep in a tree for a thousand years or so, he had set most of his gates to carrying out a simple but urgent task: watching the world for gatemages. And they had stuck with that task the way his own gates—his outself—had taken care of his running body while his mind was otherwise engaged.

But Loki had freed his captive gates from their old, unceasing assignment, and given them to me. They weren’t watching the world anymore, they were …