by Sesh Heri
“Very well,” Tesla said. “I will keep you informed. Good bye.”
“Good bye,” Vannevar Bush said.
Tesla hung up and immediately called George Scherff, and said to him, “Meet me at the 40th Street lab in an hour. We have much work ahead of us.”
In less than an hour Scherff stood with Tesla before the big circuit board in the 40th Street laboratory.
Tesla said, “We must bring fifty years of work to its conclusion in two weeks. It is now December 27th, 1942. We have until January 10th, 1943 to complete the system. Let’s begin.”
Over the next several days, Scherff and Tesla worked intensively with the astronomical gravimeter, a spherical configuration composed of a great number of dielectric pendulums, making test runs measuring various masses including the Sun, Moon, and planets of the Solar System. At intervals during the work, Scherff noticed that Tesla would totter on his feet, and then would turn abruptly and sit down in a chair. As he sat, Tesla would hold his hand to his heart and close his eyes.
On January 1st, 1943 Tesla called Scherff and told him to continue to work at the 40th Street laboratory without him. Tesla told Scherff that he was feeling very tired. On the morning of January 2nd, Tesla called Scherff again, and asked him to come to his apartment at the New Yorker Hotel to pick up some notes that Tesla had made. Scherff arrived shortly and sat and spoke with Tesla for an hour.
On the evening of January 2nd, Nikola Tesla slept fitfully in his bed. In the early morning hours of January 3rd, Tesla arose, threw on his bathrobe, and wandered into his living room. There, he slumped into his armchair and fell back into a doze.
When he awoke again, he opened his eyes to a dim, amber light. In the midst of the light, Tesla could see a figure sitting across from him in the other armchair; it was a man smoking a cigar. Tesla blinked and the man came into focus: It was Tesla’s old friend, Samuel Langhorne Clemens— “Mark Twain.”
“Mark!” Tesla exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”
“Too early for you?” Clemens asked.
“No,” Tesla said. “Not at all. I was just about to get up. How— how did you get in?”
“Door was open,” Clemens said, “and I came through it.”
“You don’t look well,” Tesla said.
“Money worries,” Clemens said. “I’m just about finished. The creditors are at my door now, wolves at the door, and I’m their little lamb.”
“Tell me about it,” Tesla said. “Perhaps I can help.”
Clemens blew a smoke ring, and then began a long narrative of betrayal and thievery, an autobiography of grief beginning when he was five, moving up through adolescence, adulthood, and finally old age. Always Clemens was the victim in the story, a simple innocent preyed upon by the wily and wicked. Tesla listened to the tales of human depravity, deception, and malice, all the while wondering how such things could have transpired in the same world in which he had lived. Tesla knew that he, too, had been cheated at certain points in his life, but the life that Clemens painted in vivid word pictures was one of constant calamity, an unending atmosphere of despair. Somewhere in this long, smoke-filled narrative, despite every effort of his will, Tesla drifted back off to sleep. When he awoke, it was daylight. The chair where Samuel Clemens had sat was now empty. Tesla thought that Clemens must have left hours ago— left without giving him a chance to lend assistance.
Tesla immediately went to the telephone and called Western Union.
“This is Nikola Tesla at the New Yorker. I want Kerrigan to come over here immediately!”
“He’s on his way,” a voice said at the other end.
Fifteen minutes later, Kerrigan arrived with a knock at the door.
“I have a letter I want delivered,” Tesla said. “I will have to prepare it. While I do so, I would like you to feed the pigeons.”
“Yes, sir,” Kerrigan replied.
Tesla went to his bedroom. Kerrigan went over to the shelf with the cages, found a bag of birdseed, and began distributing it to the birds behind the bars. In a few minutes, Tesla emerged with an envelope in his hand.
“Here,” Tesla said, handing Kerrigan the envelope. “Deliver this immediately!”
“Yes, sir,” Kerrigan said.
“Go, knock on the door at the address on the envelope,” Tesla said, “and tell them you want to speak personally to the man to whom this envelope is addressed. You will give the envelope to him. To him and no other. Do you understand?”
“To him and no other,” Kerrigan said.
“Very well,” Tesla said, “on your way with all speed.”
Tesla opened the door and Kerrigan went through it.
Tesla then closed the door, went to his armchair, and sat down. In a minute he was fast asleep.
Tesla suddenly awoke to the sound of knocking at the door. He rose, went to the door, and opened it.
Kerrigan stood in the hall, holding the envelope that Tesla had given to him earlier.
“What is it?” Tesla asked with irritation.
“I couldn’t deliver it, sir,” Kerrigan said.
“Why not?” Tesla demanded.
“Because,” Kerrigan said slowly, “the man this is addressed to is dead. Uhm— Mark Twain— he’s dead.”
“Impossible!” Tesla exclaimed. “Mark Twain is not dead! This is not like you, Kerrigan. Step inside.”
Kerrigan obeyed and closed the door. He watched Tesla move across the room. Tesla stopped in front of his cage of pigeons and looked in through the bars at the gray and white birds.
“Did you feed them?” Tesla asked.
“Yes, sir.”
Tesla turned around.
“Now let’s have it. Why haven’t you delivered the envelope?”
“I did exactly as you said, sir.”
“Are you sure you went to the correct address?”
“Yes, sir. 35 South Fifth Avenue. Only it’s not South Fifth Avenue anymore. They changed it to West Broadway. And the people there told me that Mr. Samuel Clemens was Mark Twain, the man who wrote Tom Sawyer.”
“That is correct.”
“And they said he was dead.”
“Nonsense. They always say he is dead. Haven’t you ever heard the famous Mark Twain saying, ‘The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.’”
Kerrigan shook his head.
“Go back,” Tesla said. “Go back and deliver the envelope. Mark Twain is alive. He was here last night and sat in that chair for an hour. He is in financial difficulties and it is imperative that he receives my envelope.”
Tesla opened the door and waved Kerrigan out. Kerrigan went through the door, but stopped in the outer hall, confused and helpless.
“Go back, Kerrigan. Mark Twain has never let me down. And I shall never let him down.”
With that, Tesla slammed the door.
Kerrigan stood in the hallway a moment longer, trying to decide what to do. He knew it was pointless to try to deliver the envelope again. But how would he deal with Tesla? Then it occurred to Kerrigan that his supervisor would know what to do.
Back at his Western Union office, Kerrigan stood watching as his supervisor opened Tesla’s envelope, unwrapped a blank sheet of paper, and took out twenty-five one dollar bills.
The supervisor said, “This wouldn’t help Mark Twain pay for his cigars, even if he were alive. Tesla’s lost his marbles.”
After Tesla hallucinated Mark Twain another five days passed, days of mental confusion and chest pains. Each time Tesla achieved mental lucidity, a pain would strike him, and he would be forced to sit down until it ceased. With the cessation of pain, however, came the mental confusion again.
On the morning of January 4th, Tesla found himself looking into a window of Macy’s on 34th Street. He did not know how he got there, what he was doing, or where he was going. Then he felt in his pocket a bag of birdseed and remembered that he was on his way to feed the pigeons on the steps of the library before going to see his assistant, George Scherff.
Among the crowd, Tesla was only a tall, gaunt old man, dressed in a dark gray suit, the best fashion of an earlier generation. The crowd on the sidewalk flowed past Tesla in both directions, an alternating current of human energy. The people in the crowd passed with no awareness that the source of the energy upon which they depended for their daily existence now moved among them like an unlighted beacon.
Tesla reached the library and stopped in front of its steps. Pigeons clustered about his feet. He brought out a bag of birdseed and began scattering it. Gray and white wings fluttered.
“No need to crowd, my friends,” Tesla said. “Enough for all.”
Tesla’s view of the birds sharpened its focus. Suddenly, his lucidity returned. No! The birdseed was meant for this afternoon! He was scheduled to meet George Scherff at ten o’clock. It was now ten minutes to ten.
Tesla threw out the remainder of the seed and hurried to see Scherff, who was waiting across 40th Street in Tesla’s office twenty stories overhead.
When Tesla entered his office, Scherff was already at work, adjusting a bank of vacuum tubes on the big circuit board.
Scherff said, “The Navy liaison officer called. He wants to know when we’ll have the switching system available.”
Tesla said, “I will not be held to a deadline when men’s lives are at stake. The system must operate safely, and— ”
Tesla could not open his mouth. A knife of jagged pain ripped from his throat to his chest to his right armpit to the tip of his right finger. A chill shot up his spine. Tesla’s knees gave out, and he collapsed into a chair. Scherff lunged forward. Tesla held up his hand, holding Scherff back.
“Not a word!” Tesla gasped.
“I must call you a doctor— an ambulance!”
“No. No doctor. No ambulance. That is final.”
Scherff stood looking at Tesla, saying nothing. Tesla sat, marshalling his strength. After a long moment, Tesla stood up and said, “I am going home.”
He walked to the door and opened it.
Scherff said, “I’ll finish up here.”
“You are finished here, Mr. Scherff,” Tesla said. “Both of us are. Close the office for me.”
“But what about the Navy?” Scherff asked.
“They are no longer my concern.”
“Mr. Tesla…?”
“Conflict, Mr. Scherff, conflict. Without it nothing can stand, nothing can manifest. And what comes of the manifestation? More conflict, Mr. Scherff, more conflict. More conflict on and on and on. For so long I did not understand. For so long I engaged myself in the conflict. But now I understand. Only now. And now I am free.”
Tesla swayed slightly in the doorway. Scherff stood with his hand over his mouth, his eyes wide.
Then Tesla said quietly, “Close the office and take that vacation of which you have long dreamed. As for myself, I am going home. Goodbye, Mr. Scherff,” and he turned and went out through the door, closing it behind him.
On the morning of January 5th, Alice Monaghan knocked at Tesla’s door and said, “Mr. Tesla! It’s maid service.”
Tesla called weakly from inside, “Come in.”
Alice inserted her key and opened the door. Tesla was sprawled in his armchair. He was wearing only his pajamas, with a blanket thrown over his knees.
“Mr. Tesla!” Alice said. “Are you all right?”
“I have a slight cold, that is all. You do not need to clean today.”
“Shall I call for the doctor?”
“No. I have no need of doctors. Only quiet and rest. Put the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on the door as you go out.”
Tesla gave Alice the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign that he had been clutching in his hand.
“But are you sure— ”
“My dear lady, let us not argue. Now go.”
Alice turned reluctantly and went out, closing the door of Tesla’s apartment behind her. She hung the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on the doorknob, and then pushed her cleaning cart on down the hallway.
The ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign hung on Tesla’s door for the next two days.
On January 6th, Tesla heard a faint knock at his door. He rose from bed slowly, made his way unsteadily to the other room, fumbled with the doorknob, and opened the door. No one was there. He looked up and down the outside hall. It was empty. He was about to close the door when he saw something lying on the floor in front of his doorway. It was a book bound in red leather. He bent over slowly, picked it up, looked up and down the hall again, and finally closed the door.
Tesla slumped into a chair and opened the book. It was a thin volume, only thirteen pages long. He began to read. On page four his eyes became heavy, but he made a great effort to focus on the page of the book and stay awake. He kept reading, and finally finished page thirteen.
“The spirit comes forth from the day, and the letter passes away,” Tesla said, and drifted off to sleep.
Tesla awoke in the chair. The red book was gone. He looked about the room. The book was nowhere in sight. His door was still locked from inside.
Tesla nodded. He understood. He had no questions.
On the evening of January 7th, a massive electrical storm formed over New Jersey. It pushed eastward and, by nine o’clock, approached Manhattan.
Before the path of the oncoming storm, the island of Manhattan lay sprawled, an eight-mile long granite mass, a natural electrical body charged within a few volts of its full capacity. As the electrical storm passed over the Hudson at 10:25 pm, those last few deficit volts were flowing into the island’s granite bedrock; they were flowing from the shuffling feet of pedestrians and from the sparks of subway wheels; they were flowing from the relentless pressure of continental drift and the tide-friction of Manhattan’s two rivers; they were flowing from the ground wires of electrical machines and from the bedposts of the city’s sleepers. The electricity flowed into the island’s granite bedrock volt by volt— the electricity of life— and death.
At that moment, Nikola Tesla, laying in a coma, awoke, his eyelids fluttering.
He looked at the ceiling, and whispered, “Draw back the bolt, Babi! Open the door!” Then his eyelids fluttered again, and closed.
Nikola Tesla stopped breathing. A faint electrical impulse shot out from his heart as it contracted for the last time. The electrical impulse traveled through his bed to the floor of his apartment, then downward 33 stories through the steel skeleton of the Hotel New Yorker and into the granite bedrock of Manhattan. From 7th Avenue it sped eastward under 34th Street to the Empire State Building where it joined millions of other electrical impulses that were gathering in a crowd to rush up the steel skeleton of the great building. Tesla’s electrical impulse rushed forward, twisting its way up through steel beams and pipes, then broke through to the outside granite walls, rushed over the observatory deck and to the building’s pinnacle— the radio tower.
The storm clouds were directly overhead. Manhattan had reached its electrical capacity.
The electrical impulse of Nikola Tesla exploded with a bone-shuddering crack and boom from the tip of the Empire State Building’s radio tower. In an instant, the millions of other electrical impulses below were drawn along with Tesla’s, forging themselves into a blazing white sword of lightning poised upward at the gray-black clouds. Tesla’s impulse was the point of the sword. The point pierced the veil of clouds and thrust home to eternity.
EPILOGUE
“Poor fool! With all my scribal lore
I stand no wiser than I was before.”
—Faust, Goethe
Gabriel Kron sat at the table of the Majestic Seven laboratory, his eyes wide with amazement. He had just finished reading the f
ull text aloud that had been generated by the computer’s time code— the Oracle.
“I have it!” Gabriel Kron exclaimed. “I’m sure of it! The identity of the mysterious mathematician who helped Tesla and Houdini create this incredible time code!”
“Who?” Vannevar Bush asked. “Who was it?”
“The bird,” Gabriel Kron whispered.
“The bird!” Gabriel Kron shouted.
“The bird?” Vannevar Bush asked.
“Tesla’s bird!” Gabriel Kron said. “The pigeon— the white pigeon with gray-tipped wings— the being from the Pleiades— Electra herself! It was the pigeon being directed by the Neniu!”
“You believe that the Neniu helped Tesla invent the time code?” Vannevar Bush asked. “Why? Why would they do that?”
“That,” Gabriel Kron replied, “I can’t say. But it seems to me that the Neniu were probably looking over Tesla’s shoulder throughout his whole career. Maybe they gave him a few clues with his invention of alternating current. Maybe the Neniu wanted to accelerate the pace of the development of Earth’s technology.”
“But why?” Vannevar Bush asked insistently.
“If I knew that,” Gabriel Kron said, “I wouldn’t be here. I’d be king of the world.”
“So can we trust this document?” Vannevar Bush asked. “Is it history or a mere mathematical concoction— fiction created by a machine following an equation?”
“Again,” Kron shrugged, “if I knew that…. All I can say is that this text is damned intriguing. It’s too right where it could be wrong. Does it jibe with what you knew happened to Tesla?”
“Those parts of Tesla’s life of which I have direct knowledge are described in this text with pin-point accuracy,” Vannevar Bush said.
“Well,” Gabriel Kron said, “there you have it!”
“If this document is pure history,” John Von Neumann said, “or even substantial history, for that matter, it means that with the Oracle Code we have an extremely powerful tool.”