The Investment

Blanca couldn’t focus. It was late on Friday, and the Nevada weather was perfect. All she could think about was the pool. Rubbing her aching neck, she almost removed her headset early, but her manager was near, so she took one last call.

After the call, Blanca fled her cubicle for the bus. On the ride home, she fell asleep and dreamed she was on a boat. A dolphin popped up and pushed her to shore where her grandmother was standing. She jumped out and her grandmother handed her a black notebook. Blanca opened it and a bright light poured forth, waking her up.

Startled, Blanca looked around, relieved it was just a dream. The bumpy ride brought her back to reality as the bus arrived at her stop. She stepped into the late day sun missing Mim.

When she got to her apartment courtyard, she hesitated at the pool and kneeled down to touch the water, recalling her dream. As she did, something caught her eye. It was an old man wearing a hat at a table. He was shabbily dressed but had a distinguished air about him.

At that moment, her phone rang. Blanca answered. “Hello? Can you give me a few more days to pay?” Her face darkened. “Okay,” she said, ending the call with clenched jaws forcing back tears.

She looked up to see the old man approaching her. “Miss?” he asked, tipping his hat. “May I have a few words?”

Clearing her throat, Blanca said, “I have a dollar.” She reached into her bag.

“Oh no, please,” he said in a thick Italian accent. “I have a financial proposition.” Sensing her hesitation, he continued. “My name is Dr. Sylvestri Gallo. I came from Italy to investigate Area 51 and Mayan healing.”

Chills ran through her body upon hearing these words, but she wanted to laugh at this weird little man talking to her about aliens. “No thank you, Dr. Gallo.”

“Please call me Syl,” he interjected. “If I could have just a few words, I will explain everything. We can sit here in the open.” He removed his hat revealing silver, thinning hair and a wrinkled brow.

“Syl, I can’t help you,” she said as she adjusted her purse on her shoulder, walking backwards toward her apartment.

“Miss, I know this is strange, but I will pay you just to listen because of a unique gift I believe you inherited from your grandmother.”

She stopped. Blanca’s childhood had been filled with Mim’s mystical stories of their Mayan heritage. His words triggered inside her a mixture of grief and confusion since Mim had died just a month before. Fighting back tears again, she asked, “What do you know about my grandmother?”

“If you sit with me, I will explain everything. I am old and this is a soul calling that I want to complete before I die.” He smiled, deepening the wrinkles around his droopy brown eyes.

With her interest piqued, she sighed and sat at the table. “I can listen for a few minutes. I need to get home.”

Syl pulled a chair out, the scraping noise loud in the apartment courtyard. The moon was replacing the fading sun as the two strangers sat in silence. Syl placed his hat on the table and pulled a black notebook like the one from her dream out of his bag. How odd, she thought.

“I am the child of Albert Einstein and a Russian spy named Margarita Konenkova.” He gripped the notebook with both hands. “In 1940, Margarita and Dr. Einstein had an affair in Princeton while her husband traveled for work. This is well-known, but her diary has more details,” he said, lifting up the book.

Blanca reached out. “May I?” He handed it to her, and she thumbed through the pages of Russian handwriting.

“When Margarita got pregnant, she was older, so she told people she wasn’t well and went to stay with her sister in Italy to hide the pregnancy. After my birth, my aunt and uncle raised me. Then, in 1980, I learned that Margarita was my birth mother, and that she was dying and wanted me to come to Russia. I went and she gave me this diary and her will.”

Trying to nudge him along, Blanca asked, “Your project is about the diary?”

“I am here because of what she wrote. Her spy work was to help Russia become a leading world power through their nuclear program. She went to the States to meet Einstein and get information out of him about the Manhattan Project. Pregnancy was not part of the plan, so she kept me a secret. I was confused and angry and refused to read her diary, but then I got cancer.”

“I’m sorry, Syl,” Blanca offered.

He waved his hand. “It’s in remission. The ticking clock of my mortality was loud, though, so I read the diary.”

“And that led you here?”

“Yes,” he said with a pointed finger and passionate voice. “Margarita did terrible things, including having Dr. Einstein killed because of a secret he wanted to share with the world that could compromise Russia’s position as a world power.” He shifted in his seat.

“While at Area 51 conducting research, Einstein discovered an alien text written in an old Mayan dialect. He said it contained math codes that could trigger a quantum level energy system that would replace all current systems thus eliminating hierarchical dependencies. No one believed him because of the Mayan mystical part, but Margarita believed in Einstein. Her fear was that an energy shift of this magnitude would make Russia powerless since there would be no need for its oil reserves or nuclear advancements. She had him killed to protect her country.”

This is crazy, Blanca thought, but she couldn’t help but recall Mim’s Mayan fairytales involving aliens. “Where is the part that involves an assistant, Syl?”

“A female Mayan healer must initiate the codes. If you meet me tomorrow to learn more, I will pay you $20,000 whether you go through with it or not.”

Blanca inhaled sharply. “Why me? And, how do you know my grandmother?” She grabbed her chair to steady herself.

“I came to town a few months ago. You walked up to me thinking me a vagrant and gave me a dollar with the Lord’s Prayer written in Mayan K’iche’ wrapped around it. The synchronicity was compelling, so I investigated you. I know your grandmother was a Mayan healer, that your mother has cancer, that you work at a call center and that you need money.”

He had gone too far. “I can’t help you.” Offended at the invasion of privacy, she pushed her chair back to stand, making the scraping sound reverberate through the courtyard again.

With a strong Italian fervor, Syl pronounced, “If this works, no one will ever lack basic life necessities. Sickness and poverty will be eliminated.” The thought of this reality brought Blanca to tears finally. Images of her sick mother, the dream on the bus and Mim flooded into her mind at once. She slowly sat back down with her face in her hands and shoulders heaving.

Handing her a tissue, Syl urged, “Miss, please, I had to investigate the person that would help. Meet me at 10 a.m. tomorrow, and if you don’t want to do it, you can still keep the money.” He held out a piece of paper. Still crying, she took it from him.

The next morning, Blanca researched Syl’s story to confirm some things. She decided that she just couldn’t refuse the money. Grabbing her mother’s keys to the car, she got on the road. When she arrived at the meeting spot, Syl was gassing up. Blanca parked and grabbed her purse.

“Buongiorno, Miss,” Syl said, with obvious relief on his face as he put the pump away. “Are you ready? I can drive. It’s sixty miles to the base of the mountain. You can read the diary translation on the way. If you don’t want to do this once you have all the information, I will bring you back and give you the money.”

She held her breath, quietly said a quick prayer to Mim and got in the car. On the way, Syl held up a manila envelope. “This is the money,” he said. “I want you to trust that this is real.” She read while he drove. Once there, Syl got out with a flashlight and Blanca followed him through desert brush. As they walked in the bright sun, her body buzzed with electricity, and she felt her grandmother’s presence. Soon, they reached a circular space surrounded by rocks marked with ancient images.

“The instructions say to sit in the center of the circle and read the Mayan words, which should take you to the space under the lake at Area 51. An energy will pull you into a ‘space between this world and the next’, as it is written, so you may need a flashlight in case you find yourself in the dark.”

Her heart raced as she went back and forth in her mind about what to do. She felt the pull of the buzzing and knew she had to try. Sweating profusely, she put her long, dark hair into a ponytail, grabbed the flashlight, and said, “If I don’t come back, will you please give my mother the money? She cannot work.”

“I will make sure your mother is cared for if you don’t return, but please return.”

Blanca sat, centered herself and read the Mayan words aloud. The buzzing grew stronger and she slowly fell into trance. She felt an ethereal hand touch hers and everything went black. It was a brief moment before she found herself in a tunnel, seated just as she was at the foot of the mountain. Using the flashlight, she read the translation telling her to head toward the light.

The buzzing was stronger in this space, weaving itself through her blood and bones. Blanca giggled and felt an indescribable feeling of joy. Time and space seemed to stand still. The air seemed to breathe her. A light at the end of the path beckoned her forward toward a small alcove with a multi-colored, almost biological, pulsating set of lights embedded in the rock. The diary called it a light-based computer system.

She stared at the strange lights, and the sounds that emanated from them penetrated her soul. What would happen if she did this? Would chaos ensue? She knew she had to do the thing that Margarita would not. With a deep inhale, Blanca typed the Mayan symbols into the pulsing light “keyboard.” It wasn’t rock she felt when she did this, but a firm, vibrating gel-like substance. As she typed the last symbol, everything went dark again.

Blanca woke up in her bed to the sound of her mother singing, a sound she hadn’t heard in months. With her heart beating hard in her chest she grabbed her purse. The envelope and the flashlight were there, but the diary was gone. Inside the envelope was a bank card from a strange bank with a note from Syl that read, “Your investment paid off.”

Blanca headed for the bank and noticed the changes immediately. The sun was brighter and the air stroked her skin, giving her chill bumps. The colors all around seemed to sparkle with life. As she drove, she felt the buzzing again, and it tickled her brain.

She walked into the bank and a teller smiled warmly. He spoke first without moving his lips. “Good morning, Ms. Tamay. Welcome to One World Bank. Here is the statement and withdrawal you came for.”

“Uh, thank you,” she replied. Mind-reading and telepathy? She looked at the statement. The amount rendered her speechless. She wondered whether she was dead or the shift had really happened as Einstein predicted.

Shaking, Blanca sent a thought to Syl. “I returned.”

He responded, “You never left.”