The settings for the work we'd been doing required more effort in keying in the location than the time as most of our ventures would take place in a forty-eight hour window. After examining the various dials and switches on Quinn's machines, I had a fairly clear idea of each; I could turn it on and increase and decrease the settings. However, I knew nothing of the effect of anything I might do. I thought I might be able to fix the time setting by trial and error but I was at a loss establishing a location. I only knew settings somehow incorporated GPS numbers. I turned on the equipment, though without Howie hooked up to it, there was no absolutely no point in doing so. While the hum of the machines broke up the silence of the room, I was making zero progress.
Feeling I'd have better luck searching for notes, I began to rummage through Quinn's files, hoping to find some sort of basic directions. It surprised me to find he'd carted more of his research to California than I'd expected. Most of his writings were gibberish to me; Sanskrit or Mayan glyphs came to mind. Date listings proved none of the entries were current. All pertained to the earlier tests Howie and Quinn had undertaken together while Betsy and I were still in New York.
In an old fashioned Mead black marble composition book, secured with a rubber band, I found what I believed to be a summary of all those settings. The pure volume of the number of tests surprised me. According to his notes, far more experiments were conducted than were ever discussed with us. Perhaps most were unsuccessful but the settings were never the less still recorded.
While the GPS figures listed were in the standard sequence of latitude and longitude, Quinn seemed to take these figures and assign a numeric equivalent of his own. I figured his number related to settings on his equipment. My understanding was limited to knowing zero degrees latitude began at the equator and increased to ninety degrees at the poles. Longitude moved east and west from the prime meridian. Most of Quinn's numbers carried out four decimal points, such as "44.9064" but others extended as high as six places.
I spotted familiar references to our earliest sojourns in West Virginia and knowing the time and location Howie visited there at least gave me a starting point. I recognized other locations Quinn and Howie admitted to visiting as well; New York and Washington, D.C., but all were treks back into history. No documentation to current day activity was listed. I needed to take Howie back to the shopping mall to follow Grasso!