Chapter 69: Buried Treasures

Nadine returned a few minutes later.

“You know, this is unusually large,” Nadine observed. “I never thought much about its size. Manman said that it was her mother’s and had been handed down from mother to daughter. Four or five generations, I think she told me. I did wonder why she gave me my own after my kanzo, but she said back then that I’d inherit it after she was no longer active. Which happened way too soon, so when I found it in her ounfò, I never considered using it as my own. My own asson is precious, since it was Manman’s presentation to me.”

They examined the artefact and Nadine noticed that the string of beads which was wound around the gourd’s stem was attached tightly to the shell, while the other strings were more loosely wound around the body of the object.

“I think these beads might hide a seam,” she observed. “Maybe it twists off?”

She tried turning the stem, but it didn’t work. But in handling the object, three larger red beads strung together over where she thought the seam might be, seemed to move a little when she pressed on them. That was the key; pressing those beads and twisting the stem, opened the gourd.

“Clever workmanship,” she observed, looking at how the stem part fit into the gourd’s body.

A cloth bag had been stuffed inside, so she carefully removed it and untied its draw string. She emptied the bag onto the table. There was a numbered key on a brass tag which had the name and address of a bank, tightly folded ownership papers for the deposit box, and a two-page contract with a Port-au-Prince law firm.

“I recognize the firm’s name,” Nadine told Tamara. “They were one of the largest, so they still must exist. This is so exciting; let’s see what the contract says. It’s in French.”

She read it. “Very brief. It provides for the law firm to ensure that the bank maintains the deposit box even after its owner stops accessing it and here’s a file number that the law firm says gives access to instructions for the bearer of this contract. Very mysterious.”

“I wonder,” Tamara said thoughtfully. “In my dream, I told you that I recalled that Tamara’s parents had some wealth; perhaps this has to do with that.”

“I don’t know, honey, everything was so frugal for us then.”

“But she sent you to Puerto Rico for university, right? And supported you there.”

“I’m so dense. Of course; I never considered that,” Nadine sighed. “Back then, I was so idealistic and never really thought much about money. But we lived like our neighbors, very frugally.”

“Tamara wanted to fit into the community, Mom. That’s how we lived ourselves, right? Even though I now know that Dad had saved a lot of money from his Marine days.”

“Again, you’re right. Well, this gives us an exciting adventure when we get to Haiti. A bank visit and a law firm visit. Okay then, we have two weeks to plan where to fit in these visits. Let’s see where they can fit into our schedules—which are getting tighter.”

“Sure. Let me go over the parts I need to do. Many are already scheduled, like the visits to the U.S. embassy, the Economy and Finance Ministry, the Commerce and Industry Ministry, and also the Public Works, Transport and Communications Ministry. For that last one, I’m meeting with the head of the National Land Registry Office regarding potential factory site locations and land ownership. That’s a big problem in Haiti, land ownership, and that’s essential to get settled up front. I’m meeting the officials simply to just ‘show the flag,’ so they can see that it’s a Haitian national who’s behind this project. The actual negotiations and legal work will be done by professionals. I want to show my personal commitment.

“Those meetings are for the manufacturing facility itself. I’m planning for several pilot facilities which I suppose can be set up in pole barns, if nowhere else, and will do small manufacturing jobs mainly as technical training centers. This is where we’ll be training the techs and supervisors who’ll staff the big facility when it’s built. I’m figuring that these shops can be set up to make the small G-force turbines that my engineers will design that will be sized to produce 500 kilowatts to be used in small villages.”

“You were meeting with university people too?” Nadine asked.

“Right. That’s the other part of my plan, the education part. I’ve been in touch with the administration at the Universite GOC. They have several locations and my preference is to have them set up the tech training program, since I got my start at their campus at Titanyen, right next to where we lived in Aubry. But their main location is in Port-Au-Prince. I’ll meet with them and confirm my interest, but for the major negotiations and program design, I’ll leave that to the experts in the field.

“We’ll need local legal representation in Haiti too, Mom. I’ve asked my attorney firm for recommendations, but we can also check out the firm that Granmanman used. If they did a good job in following her wishes, they may be the ones to go with.”

“I agree,” Nadine said. “Okay then, let’s go over our meeting schedules and see how to align them so we won’t get too far from each other. Good security.”

“Mom, let me show you two defensive emotion projections you can try. The first one was the very first I did when I was in middle school and the second one builds on that one.”

“Are you sure you want to reveal that? Ah ... maybe I should ask if I’m ready to learn it...”

“Jeez, Mom, you’re one of the most stable people I know. You won’t do bad things with this, I promise. But you need eye contact for it to work. It’s how Granmanman gave Vanessa her heart problem. I’m sure that if she hadn’t been so weakened, she could have made it a full heart attack. But I’d never go that far; besides, it takes enormous concentration and a whopping amount of mental energy.”

“Well, okay then.”

Tamara went on to work with her mother to show her how to project confusion and fear.

“These two emotions can be created by causing the body to overproduce cortisol. I’ve shown you how to mobilize your limbic system to become sensitive to others’ emotions and that’s allowed you to learn how to do some limited projecting of them. What I’ve always thought of as ‘pushing.’ So the limbic system is the key here and I’ll give you the technical background in how it works.

“When you project, or ‘push,’ to another person, using the latent abilities lots of people seem to have—particularly those who are sensitive to spirituality of all kinds—what you’re doing is activating the amygdala, the central switchboard of emotion and memory in the brain. This organ signals the hypothalamus that the body needs to act and that organ then activates the pituitary gland. These three brain structures sit right next to each other. The pituitary gland is the largest neuroendocrine gland in the body; it has several lobes which do different things, mainly secreting its own kinds of hormones and controlling the parts of the nervous system which mobilize the other parts of the endocrine, or hormone, system.

“One of the hormones that the pituitary gland then secretes is ACTH, adrenocorticotropic hormone, and this chemical is carried by the bloodstream to the adrenal glands, which sit atop the kidneys, to alert them. At the same time, the sympathetic nervous system, activated by the pituitary, signals the adrenal glands to begin producing catecholamines, particularly epinephrine, also called adrenaline, and norepinephrine, and these are secreted into the glands’ blood supply. Those hormones prepare the muscles for violent action and they cause an increase in blood pressure and respiration.

“The ACTH produced by the pituitary causes the adrenal cortex to release the stress hormone cortisol, which also causes an increase in blood pressure and mobilizes the body’s stored energy resources, like fatty acids, to give the muscles a boost if fighting or fleeing is needed.

“And I believe that, at least in my own ‘pushing,’ I can freeze the subject to the point where they lose muscle control. I think that there’s a connection between the area of the thalamus and the midbrain area, a region called the periaqueductal gray, or PAG, and the cerebellum. I’ve read that the PAG gets sensory information about threats, while the cerebellum helps coordinate movement. What I read is that there’s a bundle of nerve fibers that connects the PAG to a very specialized part of the cerebellum and activating those nerve fibers will cause a muscle-freezing response when the brain’s central survival networks are activated during threatening situations. And this activation also stimulates the pyramidal tracts in the brainstem, which also causes increased heart rate and blood pressure.”

“My goodness, such a lecture, Tamara. You sure you’re not a neuroscientist too?”

“No, Mom. I just have the need to know how my ability works—to make sense scientifically and not say it’s paranormal or magic. These physiological reasons all make perfect sense and it’s the new brain structures which my enhanced MRI coils have detected that explain how the ‘pushing’ works. I still have to figure out a few things that don’t fit my current theories. How did Granmanman come to me, take me over, and leave her memories? How the heck do I become a translating machine when I need to do it? How does my premonition work? I’ve still got more questions than answers.

“Okay, back to how to do this. What you need to do is to make your mind clearly visualize a frightened, confused state, then focus on the target’s eyes and will them to feel that way. I know you did it with the love and happiness emotions you’ve tried; those are easy ‘cause that’s your nature. This one’s much harder but it’s much easier when you’re faced with a threat, as I’ve learned. I told you all about those times. You can practice on me.”

Reluctantly, Nadine began, and about forty-five minutes later an exhausted Nadine and a completely wasted Tamara called it quits.

“Damn, Manman, you’ve gotten almost too good at doing that!” Tamara panted as the two of them hugged.

“Are you okay now, darling?” Nadine asked. “You look almost as pale as a Caucasian,” and the two giggled.

“Yeah, now that’s awfully pale,” Tamara said, rubbing her face and then stretching her arms and shaking them. “I’m glad I’ve never had to face that kind of emotional attack before; some of it actually hurt! Mostly it was energy-sapping and pushing off the fear response was exhausting. That would be a very effective way of distracting someone who wasn’t prepared for that kind of attack, actually. You’re a good student, Mom. You look like I feel, actually.”

“Yes, you were right about the physical effort it takes, but ... against someone...?”

“Oh, you don’t need to keep going. Less than a minute will definitely stop most people. Maybe only twenty seconds. There’s a way to up the intensity, but you shouldn’t try to use that. It could give a heart attack. Remember that Kovacs guy? From the child slave cartel?””

“Oh yes, That scum...”

“Manman! Such language!”

“I would have used worse but for your sensitive ears ... What about him?”

“That was the same projection I showed you, but he had a congenital heart issue. The burst of cortisol he got from my ‘pushing,’ together with the stress Dad gave him with that choke hold, made part of his heart muscle stop working. Same thing as I just showed you how to do.”

“That’s an uncomfortable power to have, darling,” Nadine demurred.

“Not if you consider the offensive skills lots of people have, Mom. Dad can kill with his hands alone. So can people who know other martial arts, like Kevin or Jeremy. Even little Amelia. Jeez, all you need to do is to have a gun and think of the damage that someone like that causes ... school shootings and lockdown drills, all that crap. A deranged person, motivated by racial hatred or political or religious intolerance, or just someone completely unstable, can cause untold misery. The ability I showed you is mostly only effective defensively. You can see that, right?”

“Yes, I can now. Thanks for reassuring me, darling. Ah, can we finish up? I need to get into my office in ninety minutes for a staff meeting.”

“Sure. Peter’s coming by soon to pick me up. We’re going car shopping today, remember?”

“That’s right. So you’re finally going to do your own driving now.”

“Only when I have to,” Tamara pouted. “I like being chauffeured.”

Nadine snorted.

Tamara had finally given into Peter’s persuasion and agreed to get a driver’s license.

Tamara was getting a car. She was ambivalent about it; it seemed to be a huge responsibility. But she had done just fine in her driving lessons and didn’t lack confidence, but she felt very secure being driven around by other people. She could even get work done during that down time. But she agreed with Peter that having her own car would make her much more independent and less subject to other people’s schedules. It would give her an additional freedom which she didn’t have.

She had decided that she wanted a car in the SUV configuration and wanted one from a U.S. manufacturer. The current Chevrolet’s Electric Utility Vehicle seemed to be a good choice so she had checked with a few engineers at the APL about its specifications and range. The latest model had a number of upgrades from the models of several years earlier and its 70 kWh battery pack and 250 horsepower, all-wheel-drive electric motor gave it an approximate 250-mile range.

One month earlier: April

Emma had heard Tamara talking to one of the engineers about her car plans.

“I say, Tamara, the EEC Energy auto battery division is developing their EV batteries using that Chevy model and a Vauxhall SUV,” Emma said. “We’ve got three Chevys and eight Vauxhalls and they’re driving them all continuously now in destructive testing to run them to battery failure. So far, the battery performance has been brilliant.”

“Tamara, on that spec sheet for the Chevy, what’s the battery there?” one of the engineers asked. “And charging time?”

“Um, it’s 350-volt lithium-ion battery, 70 kWh, and weighs 1,074 pounds. It says it gets 268 miles. About seven hours to full charge when close to empty.”

“Emma, what about your company’s battery?” he asked.

“We’ve developed one that, together with its integrated controller, outputs 350 volts but has way better specs. It’s 210 kWh and only weighs 280 kilos—ah, that’s what? Six hundred pounds?”

“About 615. Damn. What’s the range they get?” he asked.

“The average of all the cars is, erm ... let me think. It’s way greater because of the much lighter battery and greater energy density. About 1100 kilometers, I think I recall.”

“That’s over 680 miles. Jesus. What about charging time?”

“Now that’s where Tamara’s invention really shines,” Emma said, putting her hand on Tamara’s shoulder. “The accumulator doesn’t store power by making a chemical reaction happen; it works basically by just pouring electrons into the device. And there’s no internal heating either, or conversion losses. So to go to a full charge from 20 percent, it only takes about five minutes—the same as filling a tank of petrol.”

The group looked at Emma and then Tamara in awe.

“No shit, that’s a world-changer in cars,” one of the other listeners said.

“There’s another benefit to the new accumulator,” Emma said, smiling. “It has the ability to pick up power from the environment, so the accumulator is always charging using induced power from atmospheric static electricity and power line radiation. Now then, Tamara, if you do decide to get a compatible auto, I’ll get one of those accumulators shipped here and you can have it installed. Do you...”

“Oh, for sure, Emma! Absolutely,” Tamara exclaimed.

So that was arranged. The accumulator would arrive in three weeks, a week prior to Tamara’s Haiti trip.

Back to the present

Tamara and Peter entered the dealership’s showroom. Tamara had made an appointment with the general manager, a Mr Noland. The receptionist showed the couple to his office.

“When you made the appointment, you said that you were in the market for a car,” Noland told them after they greeted each other. “Why didn’t you want to deal with my salespeople?”