Race for the Flash Stone (The Anlon Cully Chronicles Book 2)

by K Patrick Donoghue

  “Beats me. Are you okay?” Anlon asked.

  “Yeah, I think so. I’m exhausted, though.”

  “I’m not surprised; it was exhausting watching you.”

  “I just did what you said: think of the sensations. And, wham, I was so sucked in. I didn’t react like that when Malinyah told me the story.”

  “Sorry, I thought focusing on the sensations would make it easier to reconnect with the memory. I didn’t think it would cause you to relive it,” Anlon said.

  “Oh, you were right. I definitely reconnected,” she said. “How is it possible?”

  “You sure you want to know? It’s kinda geeky.”

  “I can handle it. Hit me with some science.”

  “Okay. Answer me this, how does memory work? How do you think the brain stores memories?”

  “I haven’t had enough tequila to answer that, just tell me,” said Pebbles, pouring another shot.

  Anlon laughed and held out his glass for a refill too. After a sip, he said, “So, the hippocampus is a tiny little organ in the brain. It helps the brain organize memories.”

  “Do tell,” said Pebbles, earnestly interested.

  “Well, during a memorable event,” Anlon explained, “the brain records sights, sounds, thoughts, emotions and other senses associated with the event. But, all those pieces of input are captured and stored in different parts of the brain. Sights are recorded one place, sounds another, and so on.

  “In order to create a full memory, one that includes all the pieces, there has to be some kind of gatekeeper that knows where all the individual pieces were first captured and stored. The gatekeeper not only has to know where they’re stored, it must know how to organize the pieces into a one, all-encompassing memory.

  “The hippocampus is the gatekeeper. Every bit of a memory passes through the hippocampus on its way to be stored, and every time we want to recall something, our brain goes back through the hippocampus to find all the memory’s individual pieces. Essentially, the hippocampus is responsible for both breaking memories apart and putting them back together.”

  Pebbles considered his description and said, “So, by focusing on a single sensation, my hippocampus used that bit to go find the rest of the memory? I thought of the tree and that made me remember the wind and the waves, and then, boom — the whole thing came back. Every little detail. A lot of them I totally forgot until now. Like the butterflies.”

  “Butterflies? There were butterflies? Hmmm…I want to hear all about them. They’re packed with cryptochromes,” Anlon said.

  “Cryptochromes? What the heck are those?”

  “A story for another night; we don’t have enough tequila to go there!” said Anlon. “But, your analogy is right on. One sensory memory leads to another and then the whole thing comes together.

  “In my opinion, it suggests that when you interact with the Sinethal, the electrical signals exchanged back and forth between you and the Stone are essentially conversations between your hippocampus and a hippocampus-like device or component inside the Stone that organizes Malinyah’s memories.

  “You ask Malinyah a question, you don’t just get a flat answer. No, you get the sounds, smells and other sensations associated with the answer. You get how she feels about the answer. What she wants you to feel about the answer. It’s contextual memory. It’s honestly astonishing to consider.”

  Pebbles reflected on the feelings that stirred inside when she recalled Malinyah’s sadness and anger. Anlon was right, once the sensory cues built up, there was no stopping the memory from rushing forth. But it surprised her that she could literally feel Malinyah’s emotions. She said, “I get the whole ‘senses’ thing, but how does the hippocampus include feelings?”

  Anlon raised his glass. “Aha! Ready for another geek-term?”

  She smiled and licked her lips. “Ooh…give it to me.”

  “Amygdala.”

  “Eh-McDonald’s?”

  “Haha. eh-mig-duh-lah. It’s a little organ, about the size of an almond, that sits right next to…?”

  “Our friend hippo?”

  “Exactly,” said Anlon. “Most emotional responses in our brains happen in the amygdala. Not all, but most. Others occur in the hypothalamus. Guess where that sits?”

  “A.C., seriously, stop with all the erotic words. My amygdala’s getting wet.”

  Anlon laughed and then answered his own question. “Also right next to the hippocampus.” He paused for a moment while staring at the stars, and then said, “Now, I’m no neuroscientist, but…if you were designing a brain and you wanted to make sure emotional context was included in memories, wouldn’t you make it just as easy for the hippocampus to store and retrieve emotions as it does with sights, sounds and so on?

  “The amygdala and hypothalamus sit closer to the hippocampus than any other sensory organs in the brain, so it seems logical to assume the hippocampus also interacts with them when storing and retrieving memories.”

  Pebbles considered Anlon’s explanation while she sipped her drink. There was no denying her recall of Malinyah’s tale included vivid emotions. In fact, the emotions eventually overwhelmed all the other senses.

  “So, coming full circle,” said Anlon, “I think the Munuorians ensured important memories like the Munirvo tale are deeply engrained in anyone who experiences the story through a Sinethal. They did this by exchanging bits of sensory and emotional context, cues if you will, that help a person reconstruct the memory from those bits.

  “It’s incredibly imaginative and very sophisticated technology. Way beyond anything we can do today. It shows how advanced the Munuorians really were.”

  “Hold up, though. You asked me a pretty minor detail in the so-called important story,” challenged Pebbles.

  “Right, I know. It may seem like a small detail, but sometimes small details are the most important things in a memory. And a lot of the time, we forget small details, or we recall them selectively. By the way, did you see Cassiopeia again?”

  “Yep, I remembered asking Malinyah where the asteroid came from. She showed me a sky with stars and Munirvo. It was in a very different place in the sky than it is here,” said Pebbles.

  “Interesting. Where on the horizon was it? Can you remember?”

  “Why are you so interested?”

  “Just a hunch. Humor me,” Anlon replied.

  “Um, let me think.” Pebbles pointed at the stars above and said, “Right now, it’s pretty high up. But, in the vision, it was low in the sky. Like, if the horizon was at three o’clock, Cassiopeia was around two o’clock.”

  “Was Munirvo inside or outside the W?”

  “Inside, definitely inside.”

  A smile spread across Anlon’s face.

  “What?” Pebbles asked. “Why are you making that face?”

  CHAPTER 7

  THE PROSPECTOR

  San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina

  August 7

  Niles Drummond ambled into the parlor with Stetson clenched in both hands. Across the room, Klaus Navarro rose to greet the grizzled, bowlegged man while suppressing the urge to laugh. Though Drummond was a respected geologist, he looked more like a cartoon character with his bushy mustache, steel-toed cowboy boots, bolo tie and enormous belt buckle.

  Despite his comical appearance, however, Drummond was an exceptional prospector. His early reputation was built as a North Sea wildcat oil driller. As he gained renown for his ability to locate pockets of Brent Crude beneath mountains of undersea rock, he attracted the attention of the mining industry. After his discovery of new diamond deposits off the Namibian coast and then a new kimberlite vein in the Sakha Jubilee mine, he became a rock star among prospectors.

  As Navarro’s mining enterprise expanded beyond copper, he’d sought Drummond’s assistance on a few excavation projects. Although the Scotsman’s fees were exorbitant, he was discreet and didn’t mind bending the rules on his clients’ behalf — traits that endeared him to Navarro.

  Alo
ng the way, Navarro discovered they shared a taste for pre-Columbian artifacts and this led to a secondary relationship. A relationship where Navarro “acquired” relics of interest to Drummond in return for undefined preferential courtesies. Navarro had lured him to his mountain home for just such a courtesy.

  Decked out in all-black Armani, Navarro sashayed across the room to greet the ruddy Anglo. In his hand he carried a small wooden case. After exchanging pleasantries, Navarro presented Drummond with the case. The visitor’s eyes gleamed as he inspected the Aztec dagger inside. The blade, made of pounded flint, was not especially unique. The handle, however, showed exceptional craftsmanship. Carved into the shape of a jaguar’s head, it was inlaid with a mosaic of gold and jade.

  “There are only two other Aztec blades of similar beauty in the world,” Navarro proclaimed.

  “A fine piece, indeed.” Drummond said. “How did you convince the owner to part with it?”

  “It wasn’t easy, my friend,” said Navarro. A lie. The knife had been in his collection for some years, payment from a Colombian drug lord for his “export” assistance — a side business that netted many of the rare treasures Navarro possessed.

  “Well, you have my attention,” said Drummond. “What’s on your mind this time?”

  If you only knew! Navarro thought.

  Navarro was still irked that Margaret had oversold the “special file” that accompanied the Waterland Map. She claimed her brother Kyle had discovered the encrypted file when searching for the map on Devlin’s stolen laptop. She told Navarro the file contained a key that would help him read the map.

  But all the file contained was a listing of thirty locations. On the list, two locations were marked with an X, Guadeloupe and Martinique. A third location, Dominica, was marked by an asterisk. Next to the asterisk was a set of coordinates. That was it.

  When Navarro had first eyeballed the map, before he even tried to line up the three islands, he could see there were no marked sites grouped so closely together. It hadn’t taken long to realize the implication of the “special file” — Devlin Wilson hadn’t known how to read his own map.

  Without a second point of reference, the map was useless. With his Rivers of Gold stone at his side, Navarro had spent long hours hovering over the map trying to make sense of the confusing topography and nonsensical longitude and latitude markings. When he first plotted the marked sites at their given longitude and latitude, many of the points were far from any land. There was one in the Tasman Sea, another in the Sula Sea, a third in the Andaman Sea and so on. Of the dozen sites marked, only a few were on land. And none of those agreed with any of the sites on Devlin’s itemized list.

  Navarro, a student of ancient mythologies, understood the significance of the “Waterland” reference and so he had turned the map upside down, shifted the meridian and plotted new points. This approach had seemed more promising. More of the points were on land, including a few in South America…a key point in Navarro’s mind. For the Rivers of Gold story was an Olmec legend, and the core of Olmec archaeological sites were situated in southern Mexico. But none of the newly plotted points were located in Mexico, and none were in the Caribbean.

  He had scanned Devlin’s list and found several Central and Latin American locations, but there was no telling if they were anything more than guesses on Devlin’s part, as he suspected Guadeloupe and Martinique turned out to be for Devlin.

  Nevertheless, when his house arrest was finally rescinded in mid-July, Navarro had rushed out to visit Dominica. He was not optimistic about finding any of the Stones; he figured Devlin had plundered whatever cache was hidden there. However, he thought he might learn what the cache site looked like, an important detail given Navarro was unsure of how to identify a site even if he found a way to read the map.

  Using the coordinates on Devlin’s list, he had trekked up the slope of Morne Trois Pitons. Unaware of what to look for once he got there, Navarro searched in vain. Some part of him had hoped for an ancient ruin or some obvious landmark to guide him to the right spot. As he sat on a rock on the volcano’s slope, he realized the folly of a visual search. After all, he was a miner and as such was experienced in seeking buried treasure, treasure with magnetic properties.

  Navarro had returned to Argentina to formulate a new approach, one that relied on his expertise as a miner. The first step he took was to examine the magnetic characteristics of his Rivers of Gold relief in more depth. Although he had owned the Stone for many years, he thought of it only as a piece of art depicting the ancient serpent’s-tooth legend. That view had changed when he learned of the Stone’s magnetic properties from Dobson and Margaret, but he’d only performed a cursory Gauss meter check at that time to confirm the relief’s authenticity.

  This time, he took a more studious approach. He scraped a sliver from the Stone and sent it to one of his mining company labs for analysis. He tested the Stone with a magnetometer in addition to revisiting the Gauss meter readings. He also brought in magnets of varying strength to evaluate the Stone’s reactions. From these efforts, Navarro had discovered three interesting attributes about his prized relief.

  The lab analysis had shown the Stone contained olivine basalt peppered with kimberlite. That, in and of itself, hadn’t surprised Navarro. Diamond deposits are often encased in volcanic rock such as olivine basalt. And the diamonds in those deposits are almost always embedded in “pipes” of kimberlite ore. And olivine basalt, diamond and kimberlite are all magnetic rocks. However, the lab pointed out the sliver’s composition was unusual in one striking respect — the kimberlite was uniformly distributed throughout the basalt.

  Beyond the lab analysis, Navarro found the magnetometer and Gauss readings showed strong and unusual magnetic signatures, something Navarro had neglected to realize when he first tested the Stone’s magnetism. And the last finding, most curious of all, was that the Stone didn’t react with any of the magnets he tried.

  With this additional perspective in mind, Navarro had returned to Dominica with a better sense of what to seek. Along with a magnetometer, he brought a small ground-penetrating radar device. Whether the Stones were cached in a small cavity, such as a time capsule vault, or something more elaborate, the radar would help him narrow his search area if the magnetometer picked up an unusual magnetic signature.

  Navarro had scoured the volcano’s slope around Devlin’s coordinates once again. To his delight, he detected the same signature exhibited by the Rivers of Gold stone. The reading was faint but definitely there. To his dismay, the ground-penetrating radar found no cavity.

  He weighed blasting open the stone face of the volcano at the strongest point of the signal, but ultimately decided against it. The volcano was a popular eco-tourism destination and it teemed with hiking groups. Some were interested in the Boiling Lake, a bubbling brew that formed in one of Morne Trois Pitons’ steam vents. Others were there for the geysers, waterfalls and lakes in the Valley of Desolation at the base of the volcano. Navarro realized an explosive charge would attract the attention of the tourists and their guides, and the smoke and sound would have made him easy to locate. There would have been little time to do a search, and less time to escape before the national park’s caretakers arrived. The last thing Navarro needed was to find himself under arrest again. It was better to take the knowledge he’d gained and reconcentrate on deciphering the map. So, he had returned empty-handed to Argentina to once again examine the map and Devlin’s list.

  Then, one afternoon, he sat at the parlor desk with the map, Devlin’s list and the Rivers of Gold stone. Also on the desk was the Gauss meter and a compass. While Navarro puzzled over the map, he twirled the compass in his hand. Frustrated, he slapped the compass down next to the Stone. His eye caught the compass’ sudden shift.

  Navarro frowned. His desk was situated along the window bank at the far end of the room. He had built the home so he would have an unobstructed view of the Andes, located dead west of the bank of windows. That meant dead north
was somewhere along the wall facing the desk. Yet, the compass wasn’t pointing north. Navarro lifted the compass and aimed the “N” at the opposing wall. The needle followed his movements and settled where it was aimed.

  He placed the compass back down next to the Stone and it immediately shifted to a southwest position. Navarro stared and stared at the needle. And then it hit him. He estimated the needle’s degree difference from dead south and shifted the map an approximate amount while keeping Dominica centered on the map. Once accomplished, he looked for points in Central and South America. There were a few. One in particular drew his interest — an area he knew very well. He quickly compared the site to Devlin’s listing and cursed. “No wonder I missed it. The idiot wrote down the wrong river!”

  Navarro’s eyes twinkled as he relived the discovery. Leaning forward, he offered Drummond a cigar. “I need your help to find some stones.”

  Drummond crunched the cigar in the corner of his mouth. “Huh? Stones, you say?”

  “Yes, there are some stone relics that interest me,” Navarro said. “I need your help to find them.”

  The prospector’s mustache twitched as he replied, “Why me? I’m a driller, not a bone digger.”

  “True. But you know rocks…and magnetism. The pieces I seek have unusual magnetic properties. For a man of your skill, they should be easy to find.”

  Drummond snorted. “You give me too much credit, Klaus.”

  “You use magnets to find diamond pipes, don’t you?”

  “Well, yes. But finding a pipe isn’t easy.”

  “I realize—”

  Drummond interrupted. “And keep in mind, diamond pipes are massive structures, tons and tons of material. If you were after gold, that’s easier to find with magnets, but stone trinkets?”