The Clock Flower Read online

  But now, with everything changed and each going her separate way, Dara didn’t feel as confident as she usually did. It was a feeling she was unfamiliar with, she definitely didn’t like it, and she wasn’t sure what to do about it. So with feet firmly planted and her eyebrow cocked, she continued to frown at the back of the seat in front of her as a long-ago memory surfaced of a little girl and her mother sitting on the back wooden stoop of their rusted-out trailer watching it rain, the rising ditch water lapping at her bare feet. Remember, you will always be my pretty girl.

  Chapter Five

  It just didn’t make any sense. Always before, Jennifer first felt the painful heaviness, like a rock in her chest; and that was connected to the beat, or cadence, as she called it. Then the black and white images would start to appear—blurred at first, gradually getting clearer, and then defined with color—just before she heard the musical notes. It had always been that way. As a wild child, it was how she coped with the difficult events in her life and how she arrived at the solutions to the problems she faced. It was what made Jennifer a genius.

  When Carolina first showed the FIGs her special project—the small wooden box she was given on her eighteenth birthday that contained the strange letter and the gypsy parik-til—Jennifer had felt the heavy stone. The pain and blurred black and white images that turned to brilliant color eventually resulted in her musical composition, The Gypsy Cadence, which she performed at Carnegie Hall just before graduating from Wood Rose.

  The same thing happened when Dara went looking for her mother and disappeared in that horrible damp, smelly place beneath Grand Central Terminal. She had felt the pain from the rock and the cadence beating through her entire body; then the black and white images appeared—like charcoal drawings. It was her vision of the blood-red streak splashed across a wall of brown and black and the circle of bright yellow that led them to the old abandoned train car where Dara’s mother had been living with three homeless men. And it was from that vision that Jenifer heard the notes for her next musical composition: a fugue in B flat minor. She called it The Wish Rider.

  Jennifer had been carrying the massive rock inside her for as long as she could remember. Even before her parents were killed in that terrible automobile accident. It was something she had been born with. She wasn’t sure why it happened or what it meant; only, like before whenever a new musical composition began to stir in her mind, she first felt the rock and she would see the black and white images—like charcoal drawings. Over time they would gradually change to color; and along with the color would come a beat—the cadence; first softly, then pronounced, loud, and vibrating. It was then that she knew she needed to capture its musical essence. This was when she wrote the notes on eight-stave musical paper as she heard them in her mind. It was this music and the beautiful paintings that resulted from it that first brought international attention to her at a very young age, for her genius was evident even then.

  The notes and everything leading up to them were always the answer to a problem, or they revealed something she was searching for. In The Gypsy Cadence it had been deciphering Carolina’s special letter and finding her mother. The Wish Rider had been the answer to finding Dara’s mother and the explanation of why her mother had abandoned her in a candy store when she was only seven years old.

  The pain, the black and white drawings, the colorful images finally turning into the notes of some beautiful musical composition: it was always the same, and she couldn’t explain it—no one could. Certainly not all of the doctors her parents had taken her to see when she was a little girl. It didn’t matter though, because that was what made Jennifer special. It was what made her a genius.

  But now, sitting next to Dara and Mackenzie on the plane, it was all backwards. The musical composition presented itself already complete, and each note being played by each instrument was exploding in her mind all at once so that she was unable to think of anything else. She flipped her long blond ponytail and ripped another sheet of eight-stave paper off her pad revealing a clean sheet which she began to fill up with notes as quickly as she could.

  Considering the number and unusual variety of instruments—perhaps Asian, she thought—most of them wooden and even from another time, this was like a symphony, yet somehow different. She didn’t know yet what the completed composition would sound like or what the end result would be. That wouldn’t come until she had written the last note.

  Frantically, she wrote the notes—dissonant and harsh—into the treble and bass clefs as she heard them played by the plucked and struck stringed instruments, woodwinds, and the percussion. The deep vibrations of a bass drum, followed by the delicate tinkle of a bell; then the resounding clash of a guan—an unusual double-reed instrument—filled her mind.

  Oddly enough, weaving its leitmotif thread through the harsh chords was also the faint lyrical melody of a two-stringed instrument that she had only heard once before: the banhu. Developed from the ancient se, it was a traditional vertically-held bowed string instrument used primarily in northern China. Jennifer had accompanied her parents to China when she was only four years old, and it was there in an ancient temple that she first heard the banhu. Just as it did all those years ago, even now it spoke to her, bringing her to tears. Jennifer captured every note, every rest, every chord, every measure as the music continued to build layer upon layer in her mind and on the paper printed with musical lines and measures.

  Mackenzie stopped manipulating the numbers on her computer and looked over at Jennifer. Something was wrong. She moved slightly closer to Dara as a new fear revealed itself and started to consume her. Dara had also noticed Jennifer filling page after page of blank eight-stave paper with musical notes. She knew not to interrupt her; Jennifer was lost in her own world of images and musical sounds that she had no control over. She and Mackenzie would wait until Jennifer returned to them from that world only she could hear and see. She would then be able to tell them what she was feeling. At least, she always had before.

  A flight attendant pushing a beverage cart stopped in the aisle where the FIGs were seated. “Would you like something to drink?” She smiled and efficiently filled three plastic glasses with ice. “Juice, water, tea, or soft drink?” she offered.

  Startled, Jennifer looked up from her paper and glanced around wild-eyed, her body tense and fists clenched ready for battle, panicked at having forgotten where she was. Dara and Mackenzie both reached for her, to touch and reassure her, to calm her. It was their way of protecting her. Dara answered for the three of them. “We would like orange juice.” The attendant filled the three glasses and handed them to Mackenzie and Dara. Jennifer stared at the glass of juice being offered to her and as the notes only she could hear gradually became fainter, she took it from the attendant. “We are on schedule and should arrive at LaGuardia in about an hour,” the friendly attendant said and then moved on down the aisle to the next occupied seats.

  The moment had passed. The notes were once again muted behind the rock, the black and white drawings, and a shimmering veil of silence. Jennifer gathered up the stack of loose papers and carefully put them into a portfolio in her shoulder bag. She would wait, knowing the music would reveal itself again for her to capture on eight-stave paper.

  She shifted slightly in her seat. The rock was still there, but the pain wasn’t as intense. She reached into her shoulder bag and pulled out a pamphlet she had received from Juilliard where she would be attending.

  Juilliard’s renowned Music Division is the largest and most diverse of the School’s three divisions, with some 600 students from more than 40 countries. Its distinguished faculty includes internationally renowned soloists, chamber, and orchestral musicians, as well as leading pedagogues and scholars.

  Because of her talent, Jennifer would be able to participate in as many of the different areas as she liked. She wasn’t sure yet what she would do. She had already been invited back to Carnegie Hall to perform The Wish Rider so there would be the rehearsals to at
tend. And now with this new composition forming in her mind, maybe she would pursue her studies in musical composition. Some of the world’s greatest musicians and composers would be able to work with her.

  She felt Mackenzie and Dara watching her. “I’m OK,” she told them. She sipped her orange juice and smiled at her two best friends. But from somewhere beneath the pain of the rock, the images, and the cadence, she heard the soft mournful notes of the banhu playing with its two strings of twisted silk.

  Chapter Six

  “And so, I will expect your decisions by the end of the week. The sign-up sheet will be posted outside my office.” Professor Watt had been droning on for almost an hour, talking about the five special research projects his students could sign up for, all having to do with wireless brain stimulation. Mackenzie, one of thirty students in the class, read over the list of projects the professor had handed out:

  Pain Relief Frequencies

  Full Chakra Healing

  Connect to Earth Rhythm

  Nerve Regeneration Treatment

  Hemi-Synthesis|Hemispheric Synchronization IQ Increase Brainwave Tool

  Disappointed there was nothing on the list that really appealed to her, she sighed and stuffed the list into her book bag. She wished Carolina was there to advise her, but at least she could talk to her on the phone about it. She gathered up her books and looked at her class schedule to see where she was supposed to go next.

  Since arriving on the MIT campus with its 168 acres and student population of over 24,000, Mackenzie had been on a whirlwind schedule. Orientation alone would have been enough to founder even the most stalwart student already familiar with the layout of the campus and proximity of the buildings. For someone who had just graduated from Wood Rose Orphanage and Academy for Young Women, built on just a few acres of land with an enrollment of less than fifty, however, it was mind-numbing and a bit frightening.

  If it hadn’t been for the fact that she was a Female of Intellectual Genius, she would have been totally lost. Using her genius, however, and calculating distances, directions, planetary positions and moon phases, moss growth on the trunks of trees, shadow lengths, bird chatter, caterpillar hair length, and other things — that made sense only to Mackenzie — into a Gaussian elimination system of equations, she had learned after the first day that many of her classes were housed in the northeast corner of the campus in several buildings identified with a number that was sometimes preceded by a letter giving the direction. Those classes supported research in such areas as biology, brain and cognitive sciences, genomics, biotechnology, and cancer research. The various math departments were in another grouping of buildings nearby. Thankfully, many of the buildings were connected above ground by something called the Infinite Corridor, which was the primary passageway through campus, as well as through an extensive network of underground tunnels, providing protection from the harsh Cambridge winter weather.

  As an undergraduate with a focus on advanced math and science, she would be required to complete a core curriculum called the General Institute Requirements or GIRs: physics, calculus, chemistry, and biology. There was also a laboratory requirement, which she could satisfy with a class in her course major—whatever that was, because she hadn’t really decided yet. Finally, she would be required to complete a swimming test and also take four quarters of physical education classes. It was the swimming test that worried her the most, though. She had never learned to swim, and the idea of having to wear a bathing suit in front of everyone was horrifying to her—being overweight and also there was that ugly birthmark on her shoulder.

  W18 was the next class on her schedule—engineering—building 18, west. She stuffed her schedule into her book bag and tried to visualize in her mind where building number 18 west was located.

  “Ms. Yarborough? A word, please.”

  Mackenzie had never been called Ms. Yarborough before coming to MIT. Now, however, it seemed as though everyone called her that—at least the professors did. Professor Watt peered at her over his wire-rimmed glasses and waited until the two students who had remained behind to talk finally left.

  “What do you think of the list of research projects?”

  Mackenzie’s honest opinion was that the research involving sound waves to heal physical ailments was too New Age and hadn’t advanced beyond an updated version of a snake oil remedy. Most of the research she had read regarding brain entrainment was wasted on cutesy things like dream interpretation and growing strong fingernails. Actually curing a disease or healing a broken bone using musical or verbal meditations and music with embedded binaural beats simply had not been accomplished and certainly not proven. The list of so-called research projects was lame at best. The last thing she wanted to do, however, was to insult her professor the first week of class. “I think you have offered some interesting choices,” the word “some” sounding like “thumb.” She hoped her disappointment wasn’t too obvious or her lisp too evident.

  “Come now, Ms. Yarborough. Surely you have more of an opinion than that!”

  He wasn’t going to let her off so easily. She immediately thought of Dara and Jennifer and what they would do. Jennifer would probably make an obscene gesture and just stomp out of the classroom without answering. Dara would never be intimidated; after cussing in some unknown language, she would answer. Drawing courage from that thought, Mackenzie raised her five-foot four-inch slightly overweight frame to full height, fluffed her short brown hair, and looked Professor Watt in the eye. “In the realm of healing techniques, sound work has been used for thousands of years—for example, overtone chanting from Central Asia. Yet, only now is it breaking the barrier of modern neuroscience. Things like high-intensity focused ultrasound generates tissue-killing levels of heat using narrowly targeted spots of ultrasonic waves, and the technique is being employed to treat brain tumors, tremors, uterine fibroids, breast and bone tumors, and many other conditions. In 2008, the journal Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine published a review of twenty studies of brain-wave entrainment and patient outcomes. The conclusion was that brain-wave entrainment is an effective tool to use on cognitive functioning deficits, stress, pain, headaches, and premenstrual syndrome. This is a good start, but only a start. Many more studies need to be made, but there is enough evidence to show the potential of brain-wave entrainment.

  “Unfortunately, much research, along with the funding, in this area is being misdirected toward commercialism and therefore wasted on trendy products that can be produced, marketed and sold. The list of projects you offer seems to fall into this category. Things like ‘sleep music’—sounds of nature such as rain, and crystal bowls that falsely guarantee to heal everything from constipation to cancer—are now on the market. As a result, any real benefits that can be derived from using sound frequency to not only boost human health but take it to another level of actually curing diseases have been lost, or, at the very least, pushed aside until another new trend takes its place. Perhaps then the research will be focused on what is important—actually promoting good health.”

  Professor Watt pushed his glasses up on his nose and stared into the dark brown eyes of the young woman standing before him. So the rumors were true. She, indeed, was a genius who had come to them from a small orphanage that was also a school located in Raleigh, North Carolina. He had resented being told by MIT’s president that this student would receive special treatment and had questioned it. After all, he was tenured and he was head of the Department of Biotechnology; his opinion should matter. Her unorthodox acceptance into MIT without any application was totally beyond the pale, not to mention being completely contradictory to the fixed and unyielding rules on which MIT had been founded. As far as he was concerned, all of the students were there on equal footing. But the president had been right when he said that this student was different and MIT would be fortunate to have her on campus. Professor Watt, as head of the department, would continue to be Ms. Yarborough’s adviser—if she needed any advice—but there was
a higher calling for her there at MIT. It was a calling that came from the highest office in the land.

  Worried that she might have said too much and was now in jeopardy of getting thrown out of MIT before barely getting started, Mackenzie started to apologize. But as she struggled to get the words out of her mouth, the professor handed her a large sealed manila envelope. She immediately recognized the patriotic red, white, and blue shield supported by the eagle with its outstretched wings. It was the Great Seal of the United States affixed to the front. Along with her name, the words “TOP SECRET – Special Access Program” were printed in black beneath the seal. “I have been instructed to give you this. Read the information contained here when you are alone,” he told her, “and don’t discuss it with anyone. I won’t have the privilege of teaching you in my class, but, I will continue to be your faculty adviser; so come to me if you have any problems or questions. And rest assured, I will be closely following your achievements while you are here at MIT.”

  Confused at what had just taken place, Mackenzie simply said “Thank you,” and left. “How very odd!” she muttered as she hurried along the mile-long tract that skirted the Cambridge side of the Charles River toward her next class. On the way she sent a short text message to Dara, Jennifer, and Carolina telling them briefly what had happened. “I’ll explain more once I’ve read what’s in the envelope,” she said. Professor Watt had told her not to discuss the matter with anyone, but Carolina, Dara, and Jennifer weren’t just “anyone.”