“Well,” I replied, “there are twelve bumps on the medallion plus one in the center. Why not start with the center one?”
She touched the probe to the center bump and looked at the screen. It indicated a frequency was present, but it didn’t correspond to anything the program recognized.
“Huh,” she said, “I expected it to be one of the life frequencies.”
“It’s in the general range,” I said, “What about one of the other bumps?”
She placed the probe on the bump at the twelve o’clock position, based on where the necklace attached to the medallion. The program immediately registered the frequency as associated with the heart and circulation system.
“Okay,” she said, “now we’re making progress.”
She began moving from bump to bump in a clockwise direction.
“Liver meridian, kidneys, lungs, brain and nervous system, muscles and connective tissue, bowels and elimination, bones and structural system, all of the body systems are there.” She continued around the medallion. “But there are five bumps, each with different frequencies that have no known body system associated with them.” She looked perplexed.
“Maybe they are for systems we don’t know about yet,” I replied.
“Like what?” she asked.
I shrugged my shoulders. “This was a civilization that colonized Mars and was mining minerals on the moon. They might know a little more about the human body than we do.”
She frowned, pursed her lips and stared at the medallion. She was challenged by things she didn’t yet understand. I could relate. I also felt the irresistible urge to dig into and discover hidden things. It was that urge that landed me in prison.
“Some things are better left alone,” I whispered to her.
She flashed an angry look at me. “I don’t think so,” she replied defiantly. “There are no mysteries we cannot understand.”
“Perhaps,” I replied, “but some of those mysteries come with a profoundly high price tag.”
“Like what?” she demanded.
“It’s just a personal observation,” I replied.
She wasn’t buying it.
“Like what?” she repeated. “Tell me.”
I had stepped into a subject I wasn’t prepared to discuss. She looked into my eyes and moved closer to me. I looked away and stepped back a little.
“I’m sorry. I said something I shouldn’t have said. Can we please let this go?”
“No,” she said.
“Look, I really like you,” I said. “I don’t want to spoil this by getting into things from my past. That part of my life is over and I don’t want to bring it up again.”
“I really like you too,” she said. “If we are going to have a relationship, we need to be honest with each other. Good and long-lasting relationships are built on trust, and trust begins with complete honesty.”
I knew she was right. I hadn’t had a real relationship with anyone since high school. I wanted this to work. I just didn’t know if that was even possible. I hung my head, trying to think of what I could say. The silence was crushing me; with my brain frozen and my heart aching, I felt paralyzed. She stepped closer to me and placed her hands on my shoulders.
“It doesn’t have to be today,” she said gently, “but this is standing in the way of what I think will be a wonderful and rewarding relationship for both of us. I feel like you have to release this burden you carry before you can love me or anyone else. Please don’t wait too long. I can bear whatever you have to tell me.”
I paused and looked at the floor. “Okay,” I said, “I promise I will tell you.”
“Okay,” she said. She leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. I could feel my face flushing and looked away. She smiled and turned back to the medallion.
“This is 63,000 years old?” she asked.
“At a minimum,” I replied.
“So what kind of power supply lasts for 63,000 years?”
“At this point, the longest-lasting power supply we have is the Plutonium power supplies in the voyager satellites, and they’re good for only fifty years.”
“John has a Geiger Counter down stairs,” she said as she rushed past me and out the door.
I stood there, trying to calm the inner panic I was feeling and the creeping numbness that threatened my own emotions. I had experienced the darkness and terror of the emotional abyss during my time in prison, and fought against its return from time to time. These bouts with the darkness seemed connected to any feelings of closeness with another person. Okay, not just another person. A woman. That kind of closeness inexorably drew me to it and terrified me at the same time.
Tia came back in, holding an old yellow Civil Defense radiation meter. She clicked the knob to the test position, zeroed the meter and switched over to the most sensitive scale. She held the meter directly on top of the medallion.
“Nothing,” she said. “No radioactivity.”
“So I won’t glow in the dark from wearing it?” I said jokingly.
“No, you won’t,” she replied thoughtfully. “So what is powering it?”
“Didn’t you say that the life frequencies were everywhere?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she replied slowly. “Your point being?”
“What if the medallion isn’t generating these frequencies, but reacting to them?”
“You mean like a tuned receiver rather than a transmitter?” she said.
“Exactly,” I replied.
That look of excitement and intrigue returned to her face. She looked so beautiful in this mood; I wished it could go on forever. She looked absolutely alive, engaged and focused. No wonder I was falling in love with her.
She placed the probe on the heart and circulation bump on the medallion and switched the program over to the energize function, where the computer supplied that particular frequency back into the body to rebalance the inner system. After one second she switched back to the sensing function. The strength of the heart and circulation signal from the medallion was pegged at the top of the screen.
“That’s it!” she shouted. “It’s a resonator. Life itself powers the medallion, and the resonant frequencies balance and empower the body. It’s brilliant.” She was so excited. Just watching her melted the darkness and the fear and brought me back to life.
“Okay,” she said, “let’s try something a little different. Here, put your hand on the round sensor.”
It was a half sphere, plastic mostly, with metallic sensors placed around the curved surface.
“Does it matter which hand?” I asked.
“No, it doesn’t,” she replied.
I placed my right hand on the sensor. She activated the program and in a couple of seconds several charts appeared on the screen.
“Oh, look at this,” she said. “Your kidney meridian is too high. That usually means that you are upset, or literally pissed at someone. I hope it’s not me.”
“No,” I said, “of course not.”
“Then who?”
“Well, my old boss at NASA would fall into that category.” So would General Strom and a few others, I thought, but she really didn’t need to know that just now.
“Uh,huh,” she replied. “How about we try something else?”
She placed the medallion on my chest and moved my hand to support it.
“I’m thinking it was this bump for the kidney system.”
She placed the probe on the bump on the medallion, checked it in comparison to the bump next to it and then back to the original bump.
“Just as I suspected,” she said. “Your kidney meridian is high, so the medallion is compensating for that by resonating and creating a weaker field at that frequency. Your heart meridian is strong so the medallion is resonating with less intensity at the heart frequency.”
She touched the probe to the center bump on the medallion and looked at the field strength on the computer display.