The Second Hand Man
June 4th, 1990

I was approached today by one of those Bible-Thumping-Holy-Roller typesin the street. He gave me a pamphlet and asked me the same question that wasprinted as the heading on the flyer.

“Have you been born again?”

The question stopped me in my tracks. “What?”

“Have you been born again? Are you saved?”

The certainty in my voice left him with no doubt when I said, “Oh, yeah!Affirmative to both your queries.”

“Hallelujah! Praise the Lord, my brother.”

“You said it! Amen to that!”

“Isn’t it wonderful to have died and been reborn, my brother?”

“More than you’ll ever know, brother. More than you’ll ever know.”

“But I do! We die when we put away our old way of life and are born againin…”

“You have no idea!”

“Eh?”

“I know what it means to be born again. I mean really, really born again.I know what it means to escape death by dying.”

“Exactly!”

“No! You have no idea!”

“But…”

“Trust me? You have absolutely no idea what it’s really like.”

“Really?”

“Really!”

“Wow! That sounds…profound? You wanna share your experience with us?

“Us?”

“Yeah, our group would love to hear it”

“Uh-huh? Well you tell your group this. Being born again, really beingborn again is pretty tough at first, and it only gets a whole lot easier aftermany years….”

“Exactly! We all know that, brother! It takes guts to…”

“No! You and this…group know nothing! You think you do, but you’remissing the whole point.”

“We are?”

“You betcha! Trust me!”

The poor sod seemed somewhat confused and dejected as I walked off. Iguess I had given him something thoughtful on which to ponder, yet unknowinglyhe had caused me to experience some rather insightful reflections myself; stuffthat I had not seriously considered till now.

There are basically three very important dates in my two lives:

The first being my birthday on May 9th, 1959.

The second being August 17, 2014 – which I have now taken to calling mydeathday.

And the third being my second birthday on November 28th, 1965.

For human life to begin we need a joining of a male seed with a femaleegg. Conception takes place and a new life begins.

So, who are my mother and father now?

Surely the Conciousness Projector is the phallic of my new father?

My consciousness was the seed, and my six-year-old body - the female egg.

Yes, once the mind inside the six-year-old body was impregnated…imprintedwith the new brain pattern, only then was the new Cornelius Crane born.

Born again!!!

So, if I’m born again, and Steve had a large hand in helping it to takeplace, then that must make him…the midwife? That is a charming thought. I hopeI will be able to share it with him one day over a round of drinks as we oftendid and will hopefully do again!

Having a deathday has gotten me considering a number of matters.

I wonder what happened to my corpse, the shell I left behind. How didSteve explain my sudden demise? Was there a funeral for me? Who attended? Was Imissed?

Then again, perhaps all that ceased to exist once I reentered thetimeline at an earlier point – or is it possible that more than one timelinenow exists; some sort of fracturing by our tampering that has caused analternate continuity or timestream to materialize? Is it possible that in one Ihave died and cease to exist, while in the other I yet survive?

For once I am unable to say that, ‘Only Time will tell.’ For what wasonce my first life is now forever lost to me. All that remains of it are thememories that I carry with me through this, although very familiar, new andsecond life.