Since they were in earshot of two young men who were following one of the hiking trails, Journey lowered her voice. “I make my living with herbs and oils, so I can’t talk. But isn’t the belief in the power of crystals sort of…you know, out there?”
“One of the greatest minds of any time, Nikola Tesla, purported that crystals were alive.” Lou shrugged. “And as for them being ‘out there’, that could be said of many of the most recent discoveries. If you’ve ever been a fan of Star Trek, you’ll know that the show predicted tablet computers, tractor beams, flip communicators, replicators, cloaking devices, voice interface computers like Siri, transparent aluminum, Bluetooth headsets via Uhura, portable memory from floppy disks to USB sticks, GPS, automatic doors, big screen displays, real-time universal translators, teleconferencing, and diagnostic beds – to name a few.” Lou seemed to stop naming things only because she was out of breath.
Journey’s mouth was open. “No, I did not know that. Never been a fan of the space shows.” She looked a bit embarrassed at Lou’s disappointed expression.
“What about the escalator?” Reno asked. “Which, for your information, I will only believe exists when I see it for myself.”
Lou giggled and pointed her finger at Reno. “Actually, a man named Reno, James Reno, invented the escalator, or as he called it ‘moving stairs’, in 1892. So, when we get you home, you can travel to New York to a place called Coney Island and see one of the first ones for yourself.”
He shared a look with Journey. “I don’t want to wait that long. Journey may take me to see one when we go on our first date.”
Journey blushed at the thought as Lou snapped her fingers. “All right. The hikers are gone. Back to business. You two can plan your rendezvous later.”
As they encouraged their horses to move faster, Lou spoke up again, “As I was saying earlier, certain places are considered to be energy hotspots. Science is seriously investigating this possibility. It’s being hypothesized that these areas could produce a hyper-dimensional gateway or a portal, because they have electromagnetic properties. The hold-up, however, is that we don’t know how the portals open. There has been some conjecture that these areas could be found near large deposits of minerals with piezoelectric properties.”
“A pea-zo-what?” Reno asked as they came to the head of the canyon.
“Simple.” Lou smiled as she drew her horse alongside Reno’s. “Piezoelectric is the ability of crystals like granite or quartz to generate an electric charge. The crystals can generate that charge when mechanical stress is applied to them. Journey, the watch Myra gave you runs on a crystal quartz. So, do other things you might not think of – like radios, microprocessors, sonar, ultrasound, computer chips, and electric guitars – to name a few things. A simple way to think about it is if you give a crystal a little squeeze it can produce energy to make things run.”
“Well, I hate to interrupt, but here we are. This is the entrance to the canyon.” Reno pointed to the narrow passageway framed by high, sheer cliffs – all made of the same pink granite.
“Okay.” Lou nodded and raised her eyebrows in anticipation. “Let’s go.”
As they gave the horses their head to move single-file through the canyon, Lou continued to make her point, “In 2012, NASA announced that famed physicist, John Sculler, of the University of Iowa had found hard evidence of portals that were created by the interaction between the magnetism of the Earth and the magnetism of the Sun.”
Reno groaned at this point. “You lost me a long time ago. I’ve been able to keep up to a point, but I don’t even know what NASA means.”
Journey supplied this info. “NASA is the organization that put men on the moon.”
“Right.” Lou chimed in. “The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is a group of scientists and engineers whose main objective is advancing our knowledge and experience in space travel.”
“In my case, there could be no interaction between the earth and the sun, because the sun wasn’t shining when this happened. It was dark.” Reno kept his eyes on the space at the end of the canyon, willing it to open so these two women could see for themselves what he’d seen that night.
“I don’t think the time of day makes a difference. Let me ponder that idea.” Lou didn’t seem discouraged, she just kept thinking aloud. “Returning to my point about Dr. Sculler in 2012, he found evidence of markers that he called x-points at the spot where the portals opened and shut. NASA was able to send up robotic spacecraft to study those particular regions for clues.”
“You mean the portals were out in space?” Reno asked, having trouble connecting this discussion to anything he’d experience.
“That right,” Lou told him. Seeing he wanted to ask something else, she encouraged him. “Go ahead. What else are you thinking?”
“Well, have they ever seen anything go through those portals they discovered?”
Lou sighed. “So far, only electrons have passed through.” She elaborated whether he was curious or not. “And FYI, an electron is a sub-particle of an atom, which is the smallest component of any element. Tiny. Very tiny.”
Reno glanced at Journey, who knew exactly what he wanted to know. “FYI stands for ‘for your information’.
He nodded and went on, “When I read the articles that Journey put on her kindle for me about the bombs we dropped on those Japanese cities, they were called atom bombs. Tiny, yes, but very powerful.”
“Correct. I’m impressed.” Lou looked at him with approval. “I just thought of another point that might answer your question about whether the sun needs to be shining for a portal to open –
