Pointing as he talked Tesla explained the fail-safe better.
“Call it a self destruction measure, if you will. With the majority of the coal burning the heat level will rise and the pressure will build to 1500 P.S.I, causing a small steam explosion.”
“The proof will burn with the body.”
“Precisely.”
The chime of a grandfather clock rang out above the humming of the generators, the time for explanations was over.
“It is time,” Tesla nodded thrice. “Care to join me?”
“Me?” Twain stood back. “Join you in your retribution?”
“Come with me, bear further witness to my genius.”
Tesla’s hands shook as he spoke, was it excitement, or something more that made him tremble, Twain was unsure.
“I don’t know.”
“The magic show is far from over. This exciting tale still has a few more surprises.”
“I think I have seen enough. It grows late and I should take my leave.”
“Your loss.”
February 13, 1895 – Menlo Park, New Jersey
Standing across the street from Thomas Edison’s Laboratory, Nikola Tesla lined up his eleven Automatons. A golden glow in the back of the main building served as enough proof that the man called the “Wizard of Menlo Park” was home. It had been months since he last gazed upon Edison’s compound, its mere sight, nestled lovingly in the arms of this loving community made Tesla bare his teeth with anger.
After carefully placing fresh coal in each of the backpack steam engines, he donned his control helmet.
“Never believed me...” he mumbled out load just before flipping the final switch on his portable generator. “It ends here!”
One by one the Automatons marched across the dark road from the shadows where they stood. Twitching from head to toe, Tesla relayed a mental command to the first two Automatons to reach his rival’s door. Armed with lumberjack axes, the door stood little chance at holding Edison’s enemies at bay, but a simple wooden door was not the extent of this inventor’s defenses. Having growing concerns of retaliation from the likes of jealous “sub-intelligent inventors”, as Edison would call them, he designed a home alarm and security system.
As the first automaton entered the laboratory’s vestibule he started to shake. Tesla panicked as his controls of the machine-man began to breakdown. Before he could figure what was wrong the second automaton entered the building and began shuddering like an ailing man.
Feeling a light upward pull on his back pack, Tesla deciphered the mystery a moment too late. As his eyes shifted up, the two shaking Automatons rose from the ground as if picked from the floor by the very hand of God.
“0,282,28...7-gah!” Tesla grunted with mounting frustration. “Magnets!”
Tesla commanded his Automatons to rush through the vestibule and past the ceiling mounted magnets. Fast thinking had prevented any others from being captured or disabled.
“Who’s there? Who dares to invade my private laboratory?”
That voice, it was that very tone that mocked him time and again. Enraged his chest began to tighten, Tesla would need a release before he could concentrate enough to complete his task. Turning back towards to vestibule he gazed once more to the ceiling where two of his Automatons hung lifelessly. Twitching his head to the left in a series of six sharp movements Tesla counted.
“...ten. Now!”
The two trapped Automatons engaged the self destruct switches, overheating their steam engines. Tesla knew the explosion would be loud, but he needed to fully witness the destruction in order to feel his frustration wash away.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
Protected behind the large arching doorway, Tesla laughed. Edison’s magnets had been destroyed.
“You will never capture another one of my inventions, wizard!”
With his attention back on the main floor Tesla sent his soldiers in two by two, until only three remain behind as his own personal guard. Swinging their axes like drunken men, the Automatons destroyed everything in their paths as they searched through Edison’s laboratory. While one pair destroyed the work benches, the others waited. When the glimmer of light sparkling off a shelf full of glass jars caught his eyes Tesla moved the next pair in. Using their axes like baseball bats the Automatons shattered the glass, spreading across the floor a carpet of nuts, bolts, powders, acidic chemicals and other dangerous elements.
Moving in another pair of Automatons, Tesla directed them to the back of the room.
“Tesla! Is that you Nick? I knew you would come seeking retribution one day. I prepared for the possibility in fact. The only err in my judgment was that you would be man enough to come alone.”
With Edison’s last word spoken the dozen light bulbs that hung the ceiling on rods suddenly amped up, flashing to a blinding intensity. His eyes burning, Tesla covered his face and knelt down to the ground behind his three guards.
Springing up from a trap door in the floor at the back of the room, Thomas Edison and his assistant Clarence Dally countered the attack.
“Be courageous and show these ignoramuses what the United States Navy taught you, lad!”
“Right-o!”
Dashing forward Clarence drove his knuckles hard into the nearest automaton, sending him toppling over an undamaged table. Still unable to see as black and yellow spots pulsated, filling his vision, Tesla’s soldiers were abandoned and defenseless. Swiping the axe from the first fallen Automaton, Clarence lobbed the head cleanly off the second.
“Something is wrong here,” Edison proclaimed as he further sized up the battlefield that was once his work space. “These men, they...”
“They’re dead sir,” Clarence finished his boss’s statement when he saw that no blood was leaked from the wounds of the man he beheaded.
“Tesla, you devious bastard!” Edison whispered to himself. “Do you not know the goldmine you have just supplied me the map to? What you have done here, it’s nothing short of God’s work, but you waste it. You have always been that fool!”
Luckily for Tesla he did not hear his archenemy’s boasts. He had already fallen back, retreating to a safe spot while his eyes readjusted.
“Destroy all but one Clarence, we can reverse engineer this technology and find a more profitable use for it.”
“Sir.”
With axe in hand, Clarence did his bosses will. He had seen gore before, smelled the flesh of dying men on the battlefield, yet chopping the limbs of these metal-braced men brought him no sense of accomplishment.
“I understand the saying now,” Clarence yelled over his shoulder to Edison. “The one, how does it go, like shooting fish in a barrel?”
“No sport, hmm?” Edison replied as he examined the antenna that rose up from the odd shaped war helmet that was still connected to one of the decapitated Automatons.
“Indeed.”
After repositioning himself so he could see the enemy again, although with blurry eyes, Tesla responded defiantly to the boundless mockery before him.
“I will give you sport, dear Clarence.”
With a jerk of his arm he made the Automaton nearest Edison’s assistant lash out. Slouched over and motionless just a moment before, its sudden attack was a complete surprise, as Clarence thought the monstrosity was fully disabled.
The strike of cold dead knuckles against his cheek spun him around and into a toppled chair, where he fell to the ground head first. The impact of his skull on the hard wood floor rattled his brain into a state of unconsciousness.
“Clarence!”
Rising up from the floor where he knelt Edison took count of the Automatons. There were only four remaining undamaged. The one that hit Clarence shuffled slowly forward, its head hung down as if its skull had broken off its spine. It was an eerie sight, yet gave Edison’s mind a new set of fascinating questions. Three more stood across the laboratory floor, still as statues, blocking the smoldering entryway.
Hoisting the axe Clarenc
e just dropped Edison waited for his opponent to swing first. The inventor may not have been a physical man, but he knew he had to defend himself, or he would end up like the Automatons; deceased. Dodging the attack was easy as the mechanical cadaver swung wildly down to the floor. When his opportunity to counterattack presented itself he used his axe not to cut, but to swat the helmet off the corpse’s head.
Edison’s hypothesis was true, the helmet was the source of Tesla’s control.
“It seems you have beaten me to the punch on this one, Nick,” his words fell silent as the sight of his enemy stole them away.
When Tesla stepped into view, finally revealing himself as the mastermind of this attack, Edison had to laugh. His old assistant was dressed in rags like his automaton soldiers, the loose wires to his control helmet draped behind him like a squid’s tentacles. A more ridiculous sight Edison could not recall.
“You require a lot of power to run that I suppose, perhaps you should have waited until the technology was more mobile?”
“Shut your mouth!”
“Stop this foolishness, Nick! We should not be fighting when we could be developing this amazing discovery of yours. There are millions to be made here, or are you too blinded by revenge to see it?”
“Join you, so what, so you could rob me again?”
“Oh Nicky, he who patents first—.”
“Patent this!”
The last three standing Automatons charged across the laboratory at Edison. Weaponless, Tesla would command the group to rend his enemy limb from limb with their bare hands.
“Now, Clarence!”
Too focused on Edison to realize his assistant was awake and moving Tesla did not see the man had wound up a large phonograph, and attached a set of electrical cables to it. Upon Edison’s command Clarence attach a final cable giving it one giant spark of power.
Edison covered his ears a moment before the photograph trumpeted with an explosion of sound that could be felt in the form of a vibration across the room.
As the target of the blast Tesla felt as if his ear drums were going to burst. His ears rang and hissed likes snakes until all he heard was a muffled huffing. Dropping hard to his knees he scrambled to remove his helmet, not realizing what he was doing. The moment the enhanced Pickelhaube left his head, his Automatons were no longer a threat and Edison well-knew this.
“Out-smarted again!”
“Bested by the better man, I’d say.” Edison’s assistant added.
“Thank you, Clarence.”
As the two crossed the debris cluttered laboratory Tesla rubbed his palms against his ears. Nothing, no sound at all. Tesla panicked, was he deaf, had this man not only stolen his money but his hearing too.
“What say you, Clarence, should he pay for his crimes in jail or in hell?”
“You don’t mean?”
“Why we have every provocation. He breaks into my home, ruins my equipment and attacks me and those under my employ. The authorities would no less than shake my hand in appreciation of doing their job for them.”
“Perhaps I should?”
“What do you think, old chum?” Edison poised the question to Tesla.
Gazing up at the two Tesla could not perceive sound; but the void where his hearing once sat was a new unbridled rage. Rising to his feet he screamed out words he himself could not distinguish and by the startled looks on Edison and Clarence’s faces, he was making no sense. Shoving outward with both his arms be pushed the pair back several feet.
“I always told you, Nicky, to invent; you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.”
Of those words spoken, Tesla heard only a soft echo of the last.
“That will be the last time you refer to my inventions has junk!”
Tesla wore a metallic back pack like his Automatons, but his held a different purpose. Made of lead, the box housed a miniaturized version of Edison’s own fluoroscope. Improved by a dozen of Tesla’s theories, he had turned the machine into a weapon. With his right hand he unhooked the barrel of the weapon which attached to the backpack via a long curling hose. While aiming the tube-like rifle he positioned his red tinted glass goggles over his eyes.
“What is this, another one of your lame parlor tricks?”
He heard every word this time.
“To put it in simple terms it is an X-Ray emitting blaster.”
Turning a tiny value with his thumb fired the weapon. Enveloped in an unnatural black light the two men howled with fright. Stumbling back Edison felt sickly ablaze in his core. The burning ushered in a wrenching pain unlike he had ever experienced; it felt like he was going to pop.
“On the patent I will label this, The Death Ray Gun. You see, that burning you feel is my ray gun destroying you at a molecular level.”
“You cannot change the past...” Edison began to speak, before he crumbled to the ground like half full sack of grain. “You cannot.”
“Not the past Edison, the future.”
April 13, 2010 - Tesla, New Jersey
“BREAKING NEWS OUT OF TESLA, NEW JERSEY. A fire-resistant vault was found buried deep under the rubble of an old abandoned manufacturing plant, which was demolished yesterday. The future site of a commercial development, the LeFrak Organization has had growing interest in re-purposing this area for two years. For months their efforts were slowed while LeFraks’s lawyers were forced to run a gauntlet of hurdles placed before them by the New Jersey Historical Society and the URHS, today was to mark the first day of a project to be completed by 2014.”
Reporting across the street from the broken remains of the old textile mill, the crimson haired field correspondent Janet Jones of NJ12 continued to announce the findings during a live broadcast.
“This building, often argued by preservations as a secret laboratory of the enigmatic inventor Nikola Tesla, may have finally coughed out the truth of its existence in its dying breath.”
Turning her shoulders to the side, Janet presented the camera with her best side as she pointed back at the demolition site.
“So far all we know is that the contents of the large vault were preserved well. A mass of papers and some old machinery were found. One fireman I spoke to suggested that the contents could be dated back a hundred or so years, but the site managers have been told not to touch or photograph anything until the NJHS experts arrive and confirm the findings.”
As Janet volleyed questions and answers back to the news anchorman a flash of unnatural light enveloped the scene. Temporarily blinded, those who stood about were stunned until one man let loose with a fearful howl.
Janet turned quickly, dropping her microphone as she rubbed her eyes clear of the pulsating spots that filled them. From the center of the demolition site there were increasing screams. Something bad had just happened, and Janet knew it must be newsworthy. Snatching up her microphone from the pavement she then latched her hand on the cameraman’s arm, tugging him past the police’s do not cross line.
“Let’s go, Jimmy!”
Although her heels were not meant for the uneven terrain of broken stone rubble, she moved lithely across the demolition site towards a deep hole in the ground where the most police, firemen and construction workers were gathered.
“Put it down!” one police man yelled, his sidearm brandished and pointed at a construction worker who held what looked like a child’s super-soaker rife, yet built with components such as glass tubes and steel.
“I didn’t mean to! I-I had no clue!”
The man babbled and shook as he stumbled in a small pivoting circle.
“Drop it!” another policeman ordered.
“Wait Jimmy, do you see that?”
Janet asked her cameraman after pointing her arm into frame at something on the ground not far from the feet of the construction worker. As he zoomed the video camera in he discovered exactly what she was pointing at; the blackened arm of a burnt corpse with thin white vapors still rising from it. Obscured by debris, very little was visible from this angle
so Janet suggested moving around to the other side. Jimmy did not move. After swallowing the truth his eyes feed him, the cameraman spotted an old leather bound book several inches from the char-coaled hand. Increasing the digital zoom of his camera, past its recommended settings, the hand written words on the book’s cover came into sharp focus; Mark Twain 1894-1895.
A pair of gunshots rang out, causing the cameraman to jerk the video camera upward towards the action.
“My God!” Janet screamed as she watched the man the police shot fall face first to the ground. “What the hell is going on here?”
Special thanks to the following works by:
1. Mark Twain - written on the flyleaf of Clemens's copy of A. S. Evans's Our Sister Republic
2. Mark Twain - in Eruption
3. Thomas Edison
SIDE EFFECTS
by
Cynthia Ray
Stella sat on the exam table at the Holistic Health and Wellness Center in her stiff paper gown and watched the assistant prepare an injection. Stella’s heart beat faster and she prayed. “Please, please, please let it work.”
Due to her crippling arthritis, she used a walker to get around. When she woke in the morning, she could barely move. She had to uncurl her hands, fingers, legs, and hips slowly, one by one to get them moving, and each joint, each muscle screamed in protest. Stella had tried a variety of conventional medications, physical therapy and over the counter remedies, but the disease progressed unchecked, devouring every bone in her body.
A week after her 24th birthday, she’d woken up with aching hands. She’d been studying music at the university, and played the piano. Over the next two years the pain increased and the ability to move her joints decreased until her hands looked and felt like claws, and she couldn’t turn a doorknob, much less play her beloved piano. Her bright dreams of playing music professionally became aching memories.
Now, at 32 years, her life had narrowed to the four walls of her home, her books, her methodical routines and Pete. To leave the house involved special help in and out of the car, the use of the walker or wheelchair and the pitying stares. She considered suicide; only her husband’s dedication saved her from that fate.
Anthology of Ichor III: Gears of Damnation Page 2