The Invention of Everything Else

by Samantha Hunt

  "What happened when you turned it on?"

  "It was alive," she says. "What is it?"

  "I can't say. It's not ready yet."

  "But you can tell me. I won't say anything."

  "No. I'm afraid I can't."

  "Why not?"

  "Too dangerous."

  "Dangerous?"

  "Yes."

  "Hmm." She snaps her lips together as if looking for a way around the danger. She turns to face me, drawing her knees close to her up underneath the full skirt of her uniform. A few strands of her dark hair stick to her lips, pulling taut lines across her face. She doesn't seem to notice. "But I already know. Don't I?"

  "Well, if you already know, then I don't have to tell you. Now. You rest there until you are feeling better."

  She looks a bit confused. She doesn't say anything but sits figuring, reordering.

  "I don't understand," she says.

  "Yes. I know," I say, taking advantage of her muddled thoughts. I pop up from my knees to my feet. I must have been cutting of the blood supply to my legs, because as I stand I feel a bit woozy. While she sits recovering on the floor I make my way over to the window and lift one leg up onto the sill. Something is not right, a stiffening vein of concrete in my leg. I ignore it and lift the other leg. The birds need my attention. I had a new patient arrive last night, another broken wing smuggled in to me underneath the topcoat of a busboy. With my body halfway out the window, halfway in, something changes; the stiffening gives way, rushing straight to the very center of me.

  "Oh, dear."

  Yes, I am certain of it. I freeze. There it is. A distinct pain centered in my torso, in my shoulders. It would seem to be my heart. Perhaps I caught something. I shouldn't have touched the girl.

  A pigeon, seeing me take up my windowsill position, lands beside me and so I soldier on, ducking my head out the glass. "Hooeehoo." I make a desperate attempt to call her, my bird, but the breath is rotten, weak.

  "Oh, dear, yes." There it is again, a fluttering behind my rib cage and a terrific pain. A fluttering? I look down at my chest. Is she there, beating her wings behind my sternum? The thirty-three stories below rush up to meet me. I'm not well. She's not here and I can't quite breathe. "Louisa." It doesn't have much air behind it. I'm wishing I were no longer out on the window ledge, so with some difficulty I slide my legs back inside the room, onto the floor. I lean back against the bed. "Louisa?" She is turned away from me. I reach my hands up to my chest. It's hard to get air. Something has changed, I think. Yes. My goodness. I'm ill. "I'm going to require your help."

  "Do you need a doctor?" she asks, having come around some.

  "A doctor? No. I need you to help me get over to Bryant Park.

  There's someone I have to meet there. A bird." I haven't seen my bird for days, since the New Year. It's no wonder that I don't feel well.

  "A bird? Right now, sir?"

  "Yes. I'm afraid right now. Are you all right?" It takes a bit of effort to stand, but once there I feel something steadying me.

  "Sir?" she says. "Yes." Her hair is a tousled, if striking, mess of black curls and waves.

  "Please."

  "It is no trouble at—"

  "I'm in a small bind" I explain without waiting for her to finish. "And you also love pigeons. Don't you? Yes. I thought perhaps you could help me."

  "I do keep pigeons, but not wild ones like yours."

  My breath is stilted. "What's the difference?"

  "Nothing. Life expectancy. Wild birds don't live very long." Louisa stands up and begins to straighten the avalanche of papers she spilled from my desk.

  Her words add to my panic. "I won't require any expertise, only assistance. For years I have fed the pigeons in Bryant Park. I don't know what would happen to them if I were to miss a day."

  "I see," she says. "You just need me to feed the birds."

  "If it were only that easy. The problem is that I have to go also and I'm feeling a trace of weakness. If I could trouble you to accompany me to the park, I would be happy to pay you for your time."

  "Accompany you?"

  "Yes."

  I wait. What seems, at first, to be worry on her face dissolves into glad conspiracy. "I would be happy to. And you haven't got to pay me anything." She tucks a few strands of her hair behind one ear. "Where is your coat?" she asks.

  And so, in this manner, slowly, slowly, we set off for the park. My heart, while still feeling a bit like an outsider to my body, is at least happy to be en route to the bird that it loves.

  Louisa carries the bag of peanuts and seed in one hand. She holds her other arm steady, a crutch of sorts for me to lean on. Though I'm loath to stand so close, I don't seem to have a choice. My footsteps are shaky.

  "Mr. Tesla," she says confidingly, "you don't look well. Are you sure you should be going out? Perhaps you'd like to lie down?"

  "I'm feeling stronger by the minute." And there is some truth to that.

  Our progress is slow, as if our oppositions are working against us. Short and tall. Old and young. Man and woman. The cold air feels like misery in my lungs. But we are on our way.

  Ingeniously she's draped herself in a long red cloak with a deep, loose hood, like that of a monk. "From the lost and found," she tells me. A disguise for slipping out of the New Yorker while still on duty.

  Out on the street the cold air revives me some. Its freshness is a pleasant shock. I am catching my breath when the girl begins to speak.

  "What happened next?" she asks me once we've crossed Eighth Avenue.

  I haven't any notion what she is talking about. "Pardon?"

  "After Katharine and Robert."

  I exhale quite loudly. In all of New York City, I wonder where this girl came from. I look at Louisa in her red cloak for one moment. "You mean in my life?"

  "Yes."

  "Quite a few things," I say, realizing that this is how she plans to extract her payment, in stories. It is bitter cold out, but the air in my lungs stirs what is stagnant. Trying to be economical with my breath, I begin. "At that time, there was a battle going on."

  "The war?"

  "No, dear. A battle between AC and DC electricity. A battle over money, really. It might be difficult to believe this now, but Edison—you know who Thomas Edison was?"

  "Of course." She looks straight ahead.

  I have insulted her. It has been a long time since I stood so close to another human. I've forgotten the way their emotions leak out of them, muddying the air with sorrow, anger, joy. "He was backing DC power. He didn't believe that any of his inventions would work with AC."

  "Who was behind AC?"

  I clear my throat. "George Westinghouse and myself. I invented it. He bought it from me."

  She smiles and tightens her grip on me. "So who won?" she asks very quickly.

  "Who do you think?" I lift my chin, a statue staring up at the buildings.

  She stops walking, pausing at a corner for the light to change. I am glad for the break. I take a deep breath. She looks at me. I try to stand even taller while she gives me a solid once-over, up and down, as if I were a horse she might place a bet on. "Edison?" she guesses.

  How funny it is to grow old. I release my pose, smiling slightly, but don't say anything. The light turns in our favor.

  She guesses again, quietly this time. "You?"

  "I know it might be hard to believe."

  We walk in silence for a bit. She could look at the worn collar of my coat and know I didn't win.

  "I mean AC won. I didn't. It works better."

  Our shoes click on the sidewalk as if it were an ice-covered pond. The small heels of Louisa's pumps make a gentle snap against the cement.

  Some days I forget how completely I have been forgotten.

  I take a firmer grip on her arm. "Westinghouse and I beat out Edison for the bid to electrify the Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The World's Fair. This was in 1893. The year America moved out of the dark ages. Very few people had electricity befo
re the fair, but twenty-five million people came to Chicago and saw the White City—many of them traveling by train for the first times in their lives. Before that they'd known only darkness. There was nothing dark about the fair. Two hundred stark white buildings, colonnades, domes, towers, palaces, and all of it illuminated by AC electricity."

  I take a moment to catch my breath. The sky is gathering gray. Again I listen to our footsteps. "President Cleveland threw the switch on opening day, one switch for ninety-six thousand six hundred and twenty light bulbs. It didn't matter that the buildings were made out of plaster of Paris and hemp. Didn't matter in the least that none of it would last. Charles Ferris's first magic wheel and—"

  "Really?"

  "Yes, the first Ferris wheel. The first zipper, soda, sewing machine, bicycles." I stop speaking to catch some breath, but she won't have it.

  "What else?"

  "Oh, some silly things. A knight built from prunes, a map of the United States made entirely out of cheese, and another, a Canadian cheddar, weighing eleven tons. And some magnificent things." I make my list slowly as if ticking off the fair's wonders on my fingers. "There was a Hawaiian volcano set to erupt on schedule. A moving sidewalk. Pocahontas's necklace. German oompah bands. Viennese sausages, Turkish mosques. Taffy. Food from every country. A monkey boy. Eight greenhouses. A thirty-five-foot tower of California oranges, a full-scale ocean liner. And I had built one hundred and twenty-seven dynamos to power the fair, all the machines and exhibits, even Edison's tower of light bulbs, which proved to run on AC just fine."

  "Shows him" she says.

  "Yes," I agree as we cross Herald Square.

  She uses one arm and a shoulder to block me from the leftover holiday crowds still milling in the city. I am relieved to be in her capable hands. I tilt my neck up and watch as the buildings grow in height while we approach the city's center, the thickening forest of skyscrapers.

  When we're safely across Seventh Avenue, I continue. "Each one of them, all twenty-five million, wanted electricity in their own homes when the fair was over, so George and I got to work. We harnessed Niagara Falls," I tell her, pursing my lips together because that is another history, one I haven't got the breath for. "End of story," I say. "More or less, America electrified."

  Some old stories still interest me. Some, this one, feel arthritic, a version of a story that has been told so many times it's been dulled by all the greasy hands that touched it. The wind catches Louisa's cape and blows it out behind her. I stop walking to see what the wind can do. There is a story that interests me.

  She watches me for a moment and then pulls at my arm. Our walk continues.

  I take one deep breath. "After Niagara, I needed more room than New York could offer. I needed to be away from people. New York seemed, I suppose, too dangerous, too enticing. You see—" For a moment I think to explain what transpired between me and the Johnsons, how I almost lost my heart. But I stop myself. I bite my tongue. What did transpire between me and the Johnsons? It would be nearly impossible to piece such subtle emotions back together again, the mysteries of friendship, the veins of heartache.

  "And so in 1899 I left for a new laboratory. Colorado Springs, Colorado."

  "Colorado," she confirms. "I've never been."

  "Well, it's lovely if a bit muddy. My very first day there I stepped from my carriage and fell immediately into a rut deep enough to lose a small child in. I sank at a frightening pace, and when I tried to rescue myself I found that the clay of Colorado had taken a firm hold of my right shoe. With a great belch from the boulevard, I pulled forward, leaving my oxfords behind, entering the Hotel Alta Vista without the benefit of footwear. I mean to tell you, it was perfect.

  "I'd secured a prairie for my use and the first thing I did was build a barn with a retractable roof. It was due east of the Deaf and Blind School, a location that seemed somehow appropriate."

  "What were you working on there?" she asks.

  The question makes me smile. I take a few steps without answering. "Lightning."

  "Lightning?" She has some surprise in her voice. "I wasn't aware that it needed to be invented."

  "Well, do you know anyone else who has made lightning?"

  "No."

  "I didn't think so."

  "Except Mother Nature," she quickly adds.

  "Yes, well, besides her."

  "Tell me."

  We pass through a covey of seven or eight nuns; their black habits, their simple winter coats give them away. "It was as if an invisible cavalry broke loose," I tell her. "The Earth trembled. I felt it shake. I called out to Czito, my assistant, 'I'm ready! Close the switch!' And he did. And the sphere of copper that extended high above my laboratory roof collected the charge Czito sent it until the overflow caught the attention of the Earth's ionosphere. Imagine it, Louisa. A bolt of absolutely beautiful lightning shot skyward from the lab and continued to stream, cutting magnificent angles of light."

  "Sounds dangerous."

  "It was. Horribly," I assure her. "I had taken the precaution of adding six inches of cork to the soles of my shoes and so I was able to safely watch the bolt, but my hair got swept up by so much electricity. It stood straight on end. My skin puckered. The bolt arced across the sky. I raised my hands up. The lightning swooned and I along with it until, just as suddenly as it had started, it stopped. I was furious. 'No! No! Czito! No!' I yelled as I had never yelled at poor Czito before. 'I told you, keep the switch closed!' And towering in my cork heels I swatted the poor fellow away from the mechanism." I turn to look at Louisa. "It was only then that I noticed. The switch was still closed."

  "What had happened?"

  "The telephone began to ring immediately. I answered. 'What in God's name are you doing up there?' Yes, they were angry. 'We've got dynamos on fire down here and the entire city's been plunged into total darkness.' My, did they carry on. You see, it was the power company on the line."

  "Aha. So the other day at the hotel was not the first time you've thrown hundreds of people into a blackout."

  "Oh, heavens, no. Certainly not."

  "You had made lightning?"

  "Yes. And I thought if I could make lightning, perhaps I could control the weather, help the farmers."

  "That's very clever of you."

  "Clever but incorrect. Lightning does not trigger rain. It's a bit more complicated than that."

  "Ah," she says. "But still, you made lightning. You are the only person I know who's ever done that."

  The memory of the bolt, so close to me, gives me a bit of strength. I continue talking. "It was soon after that that I began having communications with Mars, and here is where my trouble began."

  "Mars?" She spits the word, laughing, as if the planet had caught in her throat.

  "Decidedly."

  We reach Sixth Avenue. From here it is only eight short blocks up to the park.

  "Mars?"

  "At first I thought I'd like to talk to Paris, but Paris seemed so dull when compared with Mars. I'd already been to Paris. So every night I aimed my transmitter up to the sky. The nights were so still in Colorado. No interference. I'd send messages up to the red planet."

  "What did you say to them?"

  I can tell by the tone of her voice that her belief is slipping some. Everyone draws the line at Mars, everyone except me. "I sent them a pattern that I imagined would be recognizable as such, recognizable as communication, even to a Martian. I'd broadcast the pattern all night long and then curl up with my receiver, waiting for a reply. They were wonderful nights, Louisa, clear and cold. I was in a dream, and so when an answer came back, I can't say that I was at all surprised."

  "An answer?"

  "Yes."

  "You spoke with the Martians?"

  "Communicated. I could hardly call simple, repeated patterns 'speaking.'"

  "You communicated with Mars?"

  "Yes," I tell her, and though she smiles, I do not. The memory has its tarnish.

  "What did the Martian
s say?"

  "It wasn't that sort of communication. It was more understated."

  "Understated," she repeats.

  "Yes. Delicate. Hard to understand."

  "Oh, I see," she says.

  I look down to the sidewalk. My hands and ears are now really feeling the cold. The headlines read TESLA GONE TOO FAR AND INVENTOR CONVERSES WITH THE MARTIANS? The headline's question mark bore down on me. Once considered a dashing bachelor, a genius, I quickly became a question mark, a running joke, a mad scientist in the press. I should have known that understated communication with an alien planet was too delicate a concept for the media to comprehend.

  "One must be careful what one hears," I warn her.

  "But how can one help what one hears?" she asks.

  "I suppose you can't. I only mean be careful what you tell people you hear. Very little charity is shown toward people who hear things that others don't."

  Louisa stops walking suddenly. She leans in closer, catching my arm tighter. I am forced to straighten up some, back and away from her. "Mr. Tesla," she says very slowly. Her breath is on my cheek. "I heard something."

  "What?"

  "A woman speaking," she says, whispering as if it were a confession. Louisa's eyes are wide open, drawing a field of white below her pupils. We stare.

  "The device?" I ask.

  She nods yes.

  I lift a hand to my chin, something to help me think clearly. "Who was it?"

  "I was going to ask you that," she says.

  "Well, what did she say to you?"

  "It was something absurd, like those small phrases you bring back from your dreams, the ones that never make any sense. I can't remember."

  I'm not sure what to say, and so I begin walking again. "A woman?"

  "Yes," she says. "But perhaps it was just someone out in the hallway."

  "Perhaps," I agree, though I can see her studying my reaction. I smile so that she knows exactly what I think of her woman-in-the-hall theory.

  "Why did you leave Colorado?"

  "What has that got to do with it?"

  She sighs. "It's just a theory I have about the voice I heard."

  "Who?"

  "First tell me why you left."