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Chapter 59 - Honors

While dessert was being brought out, Werner commented, “This is the first time this summer that so many of the family has been able to gather. Some of us have traveled widely this summer; as you know, Peter went with Tamara and her folks to England where she was knighted and then most of the youngsters went to California. Peter’s told a lot of us about their England trip and I think most everyone’s heard the details. Am I right?”

Everyone replied with a variation of “yes.”

“So Audrey, what did you think of UCSD?” Werner asked.

“I really liked it, Gramps. They have great facilities and Scripps is awesome. I visited the Marine Biology department too but I think I prefer their oceanic and atmospheric science program. And Eddie found out that UCSD has a cool program for himself, too.”

“Yeah, they have something new there, a cognitive science program,” Eddie said. “From talking with Tamara, I got interested in learning about how the mind works. I wasn’t sure which area was best to major in to learn about the mind—whether it should be AI in computer science, neuroscience, psychology, whatever. Then I found out that UCSD has this cool cognitive science program where you can do all of those things and fit them into your own study program. I liked that idea.”

“Yeah, and he mostly liked it there ‘cause they have an awesome nude beach,” Mike teased and everyone laughed.

“Say, that’s right,” Scott commented. “I’ve been there. I was stationed at San Diego early in my Navy career, when I was with the Pacific Fleet. So you climbed down those cliffs—or did you go in along the shoreline?”

“The cliffs,” Audrey said. “We had a good time; met some nice people, and played volleyball, but got chased off by a thunderstorm in the afternoon.”

“So how was that beach?” Werner asked. “Is it as nice as reports make it out to be?”

“Oh yeah, except for the water. We didn’t go in ‘cause we were warned about real bad rip tides when the surf was up,” Mike said. “We went wading though, and JoAnne made friends with some sting rays.”

He had to explain what happened for everyone’s amusement.

“And there were lots of people surfing—and they have paragliding there too. The views there were just awesome.”

“He means the scenery, not the nudists, I think,” Audrey snickered. “Hey, Peter, tell the folks what you told us about those guys who brought the Avery Program to England. Mom, they’re gonna send the latest version to our school.”

Peter told the group a little about Kevin, Denise, Amelia, and Jeremy, and what they had done to be selected for knighthood.

“And they’re totally awesome people too,” he finished. “We spent quite a while talking and then they came for two days at Cambridge too. They came to the unveiling of Tamara’s and Emma’s energy device. We really hit it off—we have lots in common and they all can fight like demons too... oops, sorry, Tamara... damn, you were right about memory association.”

Claire jumped right on that. “Fighting? What’s that about? What happened that you didn’t tell me?”

“Um... I didn’t want to make you anxious, Mom. I asked Tamara not to talk about that part. Some Russians were trying to kidnap Emma, it looks like. But Tamara, with Kevin, Denise, Amelia, and Jeremy, stopped them.”

“And you too, Peter,” Tamara grinned at him. “According to the British queen, you’re a hero too. You’re going back to London to get your award from the queen, I heard that from Emma yesterday; I was waiting for a good time to announce it.”

“What?” Peter exclaimed. “What do you mean? What award?”

Tamara walked over to a corner of the sitting area and picked up her backpack.

“Oh no, not her magic backpack again,” Peter groaned as Tamara pulled out some papers and brought them over to Claire.

“I figure your mom can read this to everyone,” Tamara said, grinning. “Emma emailed this to me and I printed it; it’s an extract from The London Gazette, the U.K.’s official government publication. Go ahead and read it to us, Claire.”

Claire took the papers and looked them over, shaking her head and chuckling. “My goodness. Okay, here goes. It reads:

CIVILIAN GALLANTRY LIST | LONDON GAZETTE | SUPPLEMENT NO. 11

CENTRAL CHANCERY OF THE ORDERS OF KNIGHTHOOD

St. James’s Palace, London SW1

“It’s dated August 8,” she commented. “It goes on:

THE QUEEN has been graciously pleased to approve the following awards of The Queen’s Gallantry Medal and The Queen’s Commendation for Bravery and for publication in ‘The London Gazette’ of the names of those shown below as having received an expression of Commendation for Bravery.

The Queen’s Gallantry Medal

Sir Jeremy PORTER KBE, civilian
Dame Amelia HADAD DBE, civilian
Denise ROBERTS GBE, civilian
Kevin CORIS GBE, civilian
Peter WINSBERG, civilian

For confronting heavily armed criminals and thwarting an attempted kidnapping.

On 21 June of this year, Jeremy Porter, Amelia Hadad, Denise Roberts, Kevin Coris, and Peter Winsberg, together with many others, were attending a corporate event in Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, when they were accosted by an armed foreign criminal impersonating a security guard, just as a panel lorry carrying five additional heavily armed criminals drove up to them. Dame Amelia Hadad was able to subdue the guard when he attempted to restrain her, while Denise Roberts, Sir Jeremy Porter, Kevin Coris, and Peter Winsberg, at the risk of their lives, rushed the men at the lorry. They all had understood, from previous police reports, that there might be an attempt at kidnapping of a prominent scientist who was also present at the event. While the criminals were being kept at bay by Denise Roberts, Sir Jeremy Porter, Kevin Coris, and Peter Winsberg, Dame Amelia Hadad and others rushed the scientist to safety.

Despite the fact that the five criminals from the lorry possessed and were brandishing automatic assault weapons, Denise Roberts, Sir Jeremy Porter, Kevin Coris, and Peter Winsberg, were able to subdue and incapacitate them, risking their lives to protect the target of the kidnapping attempt.

Sir Jeremy Porter, Dame Amelia Hadad, Denise Roberts, Kevin Coris, and Peter Winsberg were all aware that the criminals were armed, yet were willing to risk their own lives to ensure the safety of the intended kidnapping victim.

“Then there’s some more,” Claire went on, “other people and other decorations, but that’s it about Peter and his new friends. Trial by fire, Peter? That’s a real bonding experience. So tell us what happened—why did you risk yourself like that?”

Peter was looking at Tamara in shock and Tamara had to give his shoulder a little shake.

“Your mom asked you something, Peter,” she prompted.

“Yeah, that did happen. But it was so quick! It was over so fast,” Peter told them. “But Tamara was behind our success, you know—she used one of her magic devices to disarm those jerks. I don’t know why I reacted that way but it was like the four of us—me, Kevin, Jeremy, and Denise—just acted like a trained unit. I never thought that I was in danger, actually. We were able to put them all down so easily, it seemed.”

“Your judo?” Barbara asked.

“Yup. And Kevin knows taekwondo, he’s a high-degree black belt and the other three learned from him or something. Anyway, those four are very close.”

Tamara broke in, “Those Russians had been trying to steal industrial secrets from Emma’s company. Like the citation read, there were six of them and Amelia clobbered one, Then it was five against four and Denise, bless her, actually destroyed two of them. All I did was get them to drop the guns they were waving around.”

“All? Damn, Tamara, that’s a mighty big ‘all,’” Werner said. “Can I ask what kind of magic you pulled off?”

Tamara grinned, “You can ask, but...”

Most everyone in the room chanted, “...if I tell you, then I’d have to kill you!” and everyone burst out laughing.

“I’ll give you a hint,” Tamara teased, “Remember what happened to that drone last year. My gadgets don’t only work on electronics. Speaking of magic, though, Emma sent me a link to a little video from that roll-out she did. Let me pull that up on my phone and you can watch it.”

She passed her phone around and Peter passed his too; he also had it on his phone. Soon everyone had seen it and were laughing.

“Wish I saw that in person,” Scott chuckled and the others agreed. “That was very entertaining, Tamara. Emma’s got good marketing people to come up with that,” he said.

Peter snorted. “Dad, that was all Tamara; she got the idea of doing it after I bought the robe and stuff and she thought of all of that herself.”

Then he had to tell everyone about London’s King’s Cross Station and the Harry Potter setup that the station management had created there.

“I got that Harry Potter stuff thinking that somehow Tamara could use them, but she came up with the whole idea on the fly, right after the stress of the battle with those Russians,” Peter finished.

“So what happened with those Russians?” Claire asked. “What were they trying to do, anyway? Why a kidnapping?”

“So, they had a spy planted in Emma’s company,” Tamara told her. “The guy stole some materials that make up part of the energy-storage unit. But the company has tight controls on the actual manufacturing part so the spy didn’t get everything; just enough to blow himself and more than a dozen others to kingdom come. So apparently the survivors came up with the idea to kidnap Emma, probably to ransom her for the device plans; they had a photo of her from the spy and an imposter guard they planted to alert them when he saw her at the roll-out event. Peter and I noticed that the imposter had a bulge under his arm, like from a shoulder holster, and Emma had just told us that her guards couldn’t be armed. Guns in England are totally illegal; even the cops usually aren’t armed.”

“Amelia’s only five foot three or so,” Peter said. “When the fake guard tried to grab her, she just ruined him with an awesome shoulder throw. Broke his arm and back, we heard afterward. Kevin did a taekwondo kick—I didn’t see it—but it crushed his guy’s throat and shattered his jaw. Jeremy’s guy wound up with most of his rib cage shattered and that bruiser must have weighed 300 pounds. He was a giant. But Denise? Damn, she took on two of them and broke a shoulder, a leg, and two knees, on her jerks.”

“And your own opponent?” Claire prompted.

“Um, did a shoulder throw and helped his head put a nice dent in the side of their van,” Peter told her. “I didn’t want to go round two with my guy; he looked like he had seen some fights before and I had him off balance. Sensei told me, in those situations, you just end the threat.”

“That’s absolutely right, Peter,” Barbara said. “Good for you.”

Claire shook her head. “Peter, I hope you know not to go looking for dangerous situations...”

“Mom, sensei drums that into our heads. Use the skills for defense, he drills us. Um, Tamara, so when am I supposed to go back for that award?” Peter asked her.

“Emma told me that Amelia and Jeremy are getting theirs when they get back to London—that’s in about two weeks. Kevin and Denise are already back in the States, so she thinks you three should go together—according to Sir George, that would be appropriate, the three of you at once; that would allow a single presentation. Sir George told Emma that the queen was enraged when she heard about what had happened and she had personally called the Russian ambassador to the palace to ream him out. Anyway, we’ll need to contact Kevin and Denise and work out when you all can go. Sir George will be getting suggested dates from the palace. Emma said that these awards are mostly done in private presentations, not huge ceremonies.”

“Jeez, I said those four were awesome,” Peter sighed. “Knighthood honors and now heroism awards.”

Tamara grinned at him. “Well, Peter, work on doing something dramatic with your collaborator at Imperial College London and you can get to be a knight too.”

Everyone laughed at Peter’s sputtering attempt to deny that was possible. After a little further discussion about Tamara’s and Peter’s experiences, everyone began leaving the table and started to clean up from the meal. When they were finished, Barbara grabbed Werner’s attention.

“Gramps, Tamara’s got a real estate question,” she told him.

“Really? That’s interesting; Tamara, you’re not house-hunting, are you?”

Tamara laughed. “Nope. Not yet, anyway. With the intelligence service your company seems to have, you’ve probably heard that the quarry next door is on the market.”

“True, we did hear about that. Its resources are about exhausted and the outfit doesn’t want to keep paying the taxes on a non-producing property. Don’t tell me you’re interested in the site?”

“I have a thought—like a shadow of an idea,” Tamara told him. “From my discussions with Kevin, I got a premonition that having a land site handy would be useful and my premonition tells me that I’ll be staying in this area for a long time. How big is that property?”

“Right around 125 acres. The resort is 98 acres, so it’s a bit larger.”

“So the quarry part only takes up about half of the site?” she asked.

“About 60 percent. They weren’t permitted to dig closer to the river. Exactly what were you thinking of using the land for? Something commercial? Any site work would be expensive, in order to make the property suitable to build on.”

“I just have the impression of needing a site for something involving research, possibly in educational psychology, teaching methodology, and applied neuroscience research. It needs to be in a rural setting, away from any background neurological interference that can be found in populated areas, but close enough to those areas to draw the needed expertise. This area would be close to ideal.”

Werner shook his head. “Peter was right; you don’t think small. Okay, several questions. Any timeline?”

“Nope. Nothing firm. Maybe when my doctorate’s done. I have a feeling that Kevin and Denise, Amelia and Jeremy too, they’ll somehow be involved. Others I haven’t yet met will be too.”

“All right. Does your ‘vision’ include how you’d use the site?” he asked.

“The clearest picture is of a kind of school building but with large open areas. Perhaps several low buildings, spread out in a natural setting.”

“Okay, let’s go with the school idea. If we get the property, we could apply for a much lower tax rate. Are you aware that the site has some significant holes to fill?”

Tamara nodded. “Peter and I have seen the area on our hikes in the woods. What’s the best way to fill them? We wouldn’t want to bulldoze the surrounding woods to level the site out.”

“Since you apparently have a few years before you start doing anything there, I’d suggest making the site available for dumping clean fill or hard fill and not charge a dumping fee. That way, builders will have a place to cheaply dispose of rubble and you’d get much of the holes filled fairly cheaply.”

“That’s not trash, is it, Gramps?” Barbara asked. “Ron told us that the county wouldn’t let the site be used as a landfill.”

“Oh, no,” Werner said. “Hard or clean fill has no general garbage in it; not even scrap lumber. It’s typically demolition materials like concrete or brick rubble, broken up. Rocks, unclassified gravel that can’t be used for construction, sand, even clean soil like they get when a basement or pool is dug. The trucks would have to be monitored, though, to prevent anyone from bringing trash in.”

“So when rubble arrives, they’d just dump it in the quarry?” Tamara asked.

“Right. Since you’d not be building on it for a while, it could compact itself mostly naturally, but you’d still need equipment there to do gross compaction or else any voids would make the soil above somewhat unstable. You’d need to have a civil engineer do periodic checks. As I said, reclaiming land like that is expensive, however you proceed. Would you make the purchase as a private individual?”

“That’s the other thing, Werner,” Tamara said. “My tax attorney has been urging me to set up a kind of foundation as a tax shelter. A 501-something he called it. The income from my patent royalties and licenses is growing huge and the trust can’t shelter most of it now, he says. So when I set up the foundation, I can have it buy the property. I spoke to Kevin; his dad set one up years ago for charitable work and he told me how that kind of foundation can do all kinds of good things.”

“Yes, that’s a 501(c)(3) organization and named after the section of the IRS code that covers their taxation,” Werner told her. “That’s a charitable foundation and has very favorable tax rates but also strict rules about what they can use their money for. As an example, no political expenses are allowed like the direct support of a candidate for office. Are you moving ahead with getting such a foundation set up?”

“Yep, he’s got the paperwork almost ready to file. He said that I need to have a board of directors appointed; he’s setting it up using some attorneys from his firm as temporary directors but I need to identify people as officers and directors. I was thinking of asking you and Greta...”

“Okay, stop,” Werner said, smiling. “I’m sure your attorney knows his stuff, but setting up a foundation or corporation board is a complicated business. Let me help you with that, okay? And I’ll look into the quarry site and see what they’re asking. If the purchase is by a charitable foundation, I may be able to swing a good deal.”

“Wow, thanks a lot, Werner,” Tamara said and Peter and Barbara echoed their thanks.

Greta had joined the little group as Werner finished talking and he told her about Tamara’s request. Then as Werner walked away with Barbara and Terence, Greta asked Peter if he had experienced any unusual spiritual encounters during their trips.

“Actually I think I did, Grams,” he answered. “Tamara said it sounded to her like Ogorin gave me a push right when the Russians showed up. He definitely was with me when those Russians pulled those guns. I also had a strong premonition of danger all that morning and Tamara said that was Ogorin too.”

Tamara smiled at him. “Remember the language demo, honey?”

“Oh! Right, Tamara was telling our four new friends a little about the lwa and she showed how ... um... it was...”

“Papa Legba, honey.”

“Right, how Papa Legba knew all the languages and they tried speaking Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and Filipino and Tamara could translate it—and I heard Papa Legba speaking the translations in my head too. That was crazy.”

“I think that the lwa have adopted Peter too, Greta. And Denise and Amelia both could sense the lwa that seem to accompany me these days, and they sensed that Peter has some companions too.”

“Yes, dear; that’s why I asked,” Greta said. “I can sense that Peter now has his own small entourage. So you mentioned, ah, Denise and Amelia, was it?”

Peter nodded.

“Do you know their heritage? I’m curious because of their unusual sensitivity.”

Tamara smiled at her. “Great minds and all that, Greta. I did ask them. Kevin told me that his teacher, a Korean grand master—I even remember the Korean word, sahyun—taught his students a very ancient form of meditation. Kevin told me that the meditation exercises he was taught predated even Confucianism and Buddhism.”

“Oh my,” Greta exclaimed, “this is starting to make sense. Korean shamanism, called Mugyo, is indeed ancient and has many parallels to Vodou and the beliefs of my own Nordic ancestors. You said the other boy, Jeremy, I think it was, learned from Kevin?”

“Yep. He also studied in Korea under Kevin’s taekwondo sahyun.”

“Do you know anything about Denise’s background, then?” Greta asked.

“Sure. Kevin taught her, but it gets better. Get this; she’s part Native American, actually. A quarter? Her dad’s mother was a member of the Eastern Cherokee nation and her family has a legend that her grandmother’s grandfather was a tribal medicine man.”

“That leaves Amelia then,” Greta commented.

“Her ancestry was tougher to characterize,” Tamara said. “Her dad’s parents are Muslim, but they grew up in England and she told me she doesn’t know much about their ancestral background, except that the family is originally from Jordan when it was a British mandate. Her mom’s Muslim, from Indonesia, and that part of the family is extremely conservative.”

“That’s interesting as well, Tamara. There’s a long tradition of animistic beliefs in Indonesia, its shamans are called dukuns and they practiced healing rites. When Islam came to the region, those animistic beliefs became combined with Islamic mysticism. Possibly Amelia’s ancestry includes shamanistic practitioners.”

“That could be, Greta. But my sense is that they all are quite empathic; Denise is a powerhouse of both empathy and charisma and the others aren’t far behind. My MRI studies from last spring seem to show that people with a high degree of empathy have certain structures in their brains which have a greater activity than people having lesser empathy. Those structures and their linking pathways have never been noticed before. My own research goals are to find a physiological basis for those traits and my hypothesis is that the answer is in the electrical structure of the human nervous system.”

“Could it be that a shamanistic ancestry might predispose a person to having greater activity in such structures?” Greta asked.

“Jeez, that’s right,” Tamara said. “Mom said you were scary smart. Sure, that’s totally possible and I need to let my collaborators know about considering possible genetic links in the level of activity of those structures.”

“Tamara, on another topic, was it safe to let your new friends know about your ability?” Greta asked.

“I’m really sure that they won’t deliberately tell anyone about me; besides, I gave them a little mental speed-bump so they won’t inadvertently slip and say something, like my boyfriend did earlier,” she said with a smile at Peter.

“I’m sorry, Tamara,” Peter said humbly. “I was...”

“It’s not a problem, sweetie; it happens and that ‘secret’ really wasn’t meant to be a secret anyway.”

“But it means that I still could slip about your ability,” Peter retorted.

“Oh, so you don’t recall our conversation when I first told you about my ability. I said that the lwa told me that I could trust you and that they had done something to be sure you couldn’t accidently reveal anything.”

“Oh, yeah, sure, I remember that. But you never finished explaining how that worked.”

“‘Cause I didn’t know. I worked out how to do something like it and used it on Kevin and his group but I still don’t know what the lwa did with you. The very fact that they could influence you like that is awesome, though, and that my attempt to activate part of your limbic system shows that you are most likely attuned to the lwa, so that they were able to influence your thoughts. Like the premonition sense you’ve developed, for example.”

“Yeah, and since you ‘powered me up’ like that, I noticed that I can really control how other people’s emotions affect me.”

“Oh my goodness, you can do that now?” Greta exclaimed.

Peter grinned, nodding. “Yeah. I still can sense the emotion but I can choose how much I want to let into me.”

“Goddess, that’s wonderful,” she gushed. “Tamara, can you do anything like that to me for my own sensitivity?”

Tamara looked at Greta carefully, then said, “I learned to activate a small part of the limbic system but it affects different people differently. It also needs a catalyst—um, that’s not the proper term—the activation needs a facilitator to work. It’s not a catalyst ‘cause the other person gets changed too. And it appears to require an opposite-gender facilitator, it seems to take two people who share a strong emotional tie.”

Greta looked crestfallen. “Werner, although he worships me, doesn’t care for my spiritual skills somehow. I suppose I could persuade him, especially after I tell him about Peter’s new skill. Did you ‘power up’ anyone else besides Peter?”

“Just Mom with Dad’s help. And a woman whose husband had an experience in Vietnam as a soldier and he was affected like Peter but never could pull out. Extreme dissociation. She, together with her husband, was the second couple after I worked with Peter. I tied the soldier’s emotions to reality and gave his wife some tools to reinforce the healing. But I made sure that they weren’t dependent on each other, long term. Each person reacted differently, though, like the effect on Mom and Dad was pretty different, but related.”

“Goddess, Tamara, do you know what this could do for psychiatry? A revolution!” Greta exclaimed.

“And I’d be dead,” Tamara joked. “Doing that activation with Mom and Dad took a huge mental effort. I don’t even have a clue about how to train others to do that.”

“Still...”

“Sure, Greta. That shows important stuff about the mind and emotions. And all signaling interactions with the nervous system are mediated biochemically, so if there are target receptors involved, which is virtually certain, then possibly drugs could be designed. But I can’t change the medical world all by myself. I do let those I’m collaborating with know about what I find.”

“The academic grapevine is humming about how those collaborations are revolutionizing many medical fields, dear. So your work is already having an impact.”

“I’m so glad.”

They spoke for a bit longer and then other family members interrupted and, since the sun was setting, they all trooped over to the community campfire.

While they were walking there, Tamara remarked to Peter, “Somehow that sense of foreboding that I had before we had that Russian affair is back—or maybe it never really was totally gone. I hope I’m not being paranoid, but it feels like I’m being watched.”

Peter looked at her. “Strange you mention that. I’ve had this undefined feeling and that must be what I feel too. We’ll need to keep alert—but you’re always alert, aren’t you?”

“Yep. Dad drilled me on self-protection while I was growing up and he said the best way to get out of bad situations was to anticipate problems, avoid them where possible, and keep bad situations from getting worse.”

“So I need to stay alert too.”

“You got it.”

~~~~

In the morning after breakfast, most of the group went to the sports field to participate in or to watch the volleyball clinic. Terence showed a lot of improvement overall, but his passing still needed a lot of work. Barbara and Tamara were in their usual fine shape and Peter was a consistent and reliable player but not at his sister’s level. There was one new person there this year who was outstanding and everyone wanted to know who this superb player was.

It turned out that Dawn Simpson was the new assistant women’s volleyball coach at the University of Maryland. She had been on an athletic scholarship at Stanford University and during her junior and senior years on the team, the Cardinal had won the NCAA women’s volleyball title. She had stayed on at Stanford for graduate school for a master’s in sports administration and then had been hired by Maryland. When she agreed to join the Arundel resort women’s team, there was a great celebration.

Dawn pulled Barbara and Tamara aside after the games they had played.

“You two guys are just top-notch,” she told them. “Barbara, you look older than a college kid; Tamara, maybe a junior or senior. Either of you play in college?”

They told her they hadn’t; that they were both in graduate school, and then mentioned the “B” team that they played on at the Superbowl the previous year.

“You’re both seriously talented,” Dawn told them, “and you play really well together. You each anticipate what the other is going to do. I’ve only seen that in very experienced players. Tamara, very few players I’ve seen have your skills at the net; you have an awesome kill percentage and even with my experience, I’d find it difficult to defend you. I hope you can come to the Superbowl. But we’d have to enter as an ‘A’ level team this year. I’m ‘A,’ actually ‘AA,’ obviously. I heard you guys were a ‘BB’ level and Robin’s also ‘BB.’ The others are ‘B’ and ‘C.’ But both of you are better than ‘BB’; I’d say you both are at the ‘A’ level. Can we get you and the other gals together after lunch and run through a few offenses and rotations?”

They agreed and that afternoon, Dawn put them through a grueling session, together with some members of the men’s team. They all agreed to meet the following weekend for another practice session.

Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore: end of August

Back at school on Monday, Peter found an email from Kevin. Kevin had been contacted by the U.K. embassy to the U.S. about the heroism award, so Peter arranged a phone call for that evening. And Tamara dove back into her many projects.

The most important one was, of course, her doctoral research. This was her project on the monopole force discovery and included the link between the coil force and the electron charge tunneling hypothesis that she had advanced. Reviews of her paper on that topic were mixed but Emma assured her that that kind of reaction was to be expected. The mathematics, of course, were irrefutable; it was the interpretation of the meaning of the mathematics that was giving fits to the most conservative factions of the physics community, but in general, the work she described in her paper was being lauded as significant and important.

What was needed now was for her to work out the mathematical basis for the coil force. The group in Emma’s lab at the APL had been doing extensive tests on different configurations of the “super-coil” Tamara had designed, and they were using target objects with different magnetic properties to characterize the forces produced by the coil assembly. This gave Tamara reams of data to analyze and to try to fit into the prevailing physical theories.

Tamara had been working on an idea to try to improve the quality of the data; much of it didn’t have the resolution she felt was needed for many measurements, particularly in the timing of when the coil-activating current was applied to when the target object began to move. She also wanted to experiment with scaling up the coil assembly to determine if the effect was scalable at dimensions greater than her “super-coil” design. This would have implications for possible commercial uses of the coil force.

Terence was working in the lab and Tamara went to talk to him.

“Hey, I need a camera that can capture images very quickly—possibly at a picosecond time resolution. I think that your detector could work for that if it’s fitted with some visual light optics and with my MRI detector’s data system, we should...”

“Hold y’horses, Tamara,” Terence interrupted her. “No sense in reinventin’ the wheel. ‘Sides, doin’ that would take lotsa time and money, anyways. Ah heard about this ultra-speed camera; uses a laser to capture images very quickly. Wait a sec, let me look it up... okay, here. It’s called compressed ultrafast spectral photography and the camera was developed a few years ago. The camera’s speed’s 70 trillion frames per second...”

“Say that again? Trillion?”

Terence nodded. “Yeah, way faster than my detector could acquire images. Hey, the group that developed this is at Caltech. Y’all know some people there from when you went?”

“Sure; but I only saw some people in physics. Maybe they can refer me. Hey, thanks for thinking of that. I need to make a call.”

Tamara called her physics contact at Caltech, Dr Sean Pomeroy, and learned that the “camera” that Terence told her about was actually a complicated optical apparatus which took up most of a room, but Tamara knew that she didn’t really need its mind-boggling speed either.

Pomeroy told her who to call in their Electrical Engineering Department.

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