In the Matter of Nikola Tesla

by Anthony Flacco

  Edison stood surrounded by several extremely agreeable staff members. Everyone kept a keen watch on the Boss while the famous man quietly studied Nikola’s letter of recommendation.

  “All right then, Mr. Tesla,” Edison finally intoned while still reading, “Charles Batchelor is an admired colleague in the Paris office, so I suppose I should respect his good words about you.” He glanced up to his four staff members. “Listen to this part, fellas: ‘Mr. Edison, I only know two great men. You are one, and I believe that Nikola Tesla is the other.’”

  Edison turned to the highly agreeable staff members and made a comically exaggerated look of being overwhelmed, then turned back and addressed Nikola directly. “I am also inclined to be impressed by your accomplishments in Paris; they prove you have talent—I can always use men of talent. But as to this ‘bonus’ owed to you by those French fellas, well… my companies overseas are locally owned.”

  He tossed a glance at his men. They sneered in anticipation.

  “Locally owned?” Nikola repeated the word with a blank face.

  Edison turned and muttered, “His English is good.” But he kept his eyes on Nikola, like a man talking out loud at a play.

  The yes-men chortled, overlapping each other’s replies. “That it is.” said the first one. “Almost American,” said the second. “He talks like a professor,” remarked the third.

  The fourth had done his homework: “I took a look at his resume; he speaks eight languages. He’s college educated. Basic physics, electrical theory—” He caught the flash of a warning glance from Edison and barely paused before he added, “Foreign schools.”

  Edison smiled at Nikola with the same mixture of kindness and pity that a grandmother might show a backward offspring. “Local operations pay their own way,” he patiently explained. “You see? The Edison Company owes you that money, all right. But only back in France! I’m afraid you have been victimized by that notorious French humor.” Edison and the yes-men watched intently for Nikola’s reaction.

  The best Nikola had for them was a small laugh. “It is unfortunate that they cannot know how well their joke worked. My wallet was stolen on the trip here. I arrived with four cents in my pocket.”

  There was a brief pause… then Edison and his men exploded into laughter. Nikola was too confused by this to do anything but wait for something else to happen.

  “See that, fellas?” Edison finally crowed. “He might be a college man, but he’ll be coming up the hard way here, just like the rest of us!”

  He turned back to Nikola. “I’ll hire you. The Paris office tells me you’re full of ideas for improving my generators. Well, they’re failing all over the city. You figure out how to stop that, and I’ll turn your five thousand francs into fifty thousand dollars. You hear me? Fifty thousand dollars! And meanwhile, you’ll make my basic wage.” He couldn’t hold back any longer. “And I know you’ll take it!”

  Edison and his men burst into laughter again, harder than ever. Finally, Edison gestured for one of them to take Nikola away, saying, “You go along with this fella here, he’ll get you all signed up.”

  Nikola cooperated and started to go, but as he reached the door Edison called out to him. “And Mr. Tesla?” He grinned good-naturedly. “In commerce, in industry—everybody steals. Only an educated idiot opens up a negotiation by revealing that he doesn’t have a leg to stand on.”

  Nikola waited for another moment, as if unsure that Edison had finished his point. Finally he looked down at his legs, then back to Edison. He smiled. “Mr. Edison, my legs are fine.”

  Groans and laughter erupted from all the other men. But after a moment, Nikola held up his hand for silence in a manner so self-assured that they all obeyed him before they had time to question why they should.

  “However, I must point out that this was not a negotiation. Surely you are much too wise not to hire me, and I am too great an admirer to walk away. And as for the money, the Paris office may have it as a parting gift from me—I have reason to believe everything will work out.” He gave a short, polite bow, turned around and left.

  Edison stared after him for a long moment. He forgot that anyone else was in the room. Even though he could see plain as day that he had just met someone truly unique, someone whose mind he ought to cultivate, he could also see that this Tesla fellow was an overeducated foreigner. Another heavy flash of anger went through him. That was enough nonsense. It was time to turn his attention to something productive.

  Edison dismissed his yes-men with a wave of his hand, then made a determined effort to resume his study of light bulb filaments. There would be a proper occasion for dealing with this new foreigner in good time.

  Show him how things are done.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Later That Night

  New York

  Late afternoon was already giving way to evening by the time Nikola completed the Edison Company’s hiring and orientation process. He was rewarded with a short-term hotel voucher and a small advance on his humble salary.

  It was more than enough to send him ecstatically on his way. After his first twenty-four hours in this new land, arriving too broke to pay for a meal, he already had a foothold with a job and a bed and even some pocket money. Excitement gripped him so hard that he was barely more than a block away from the company’s Manhattan location before he had to stop and tightly clench all of his muscles, just to avoid being overwhelmed by elation-generated imagery.

  He hesitated there on the sidewalk. Every part of his undernourished body still ached with fatigue. He wondered if he should return to his hotel and soak up one more good night of rest. After all, he was to report the next morning at seven. While he thought it over, he slowly turned in a full circle, counting off the compass points and taking in the sights all around him. By the time he came back around to face north, his hesitation was gone. His state of wonder had become a power source that moved him in the opposite direction of his hotel and stretched his long-legged stride. Soon his muscles warmed up and his wind came deep and even. It felt wonderful to push himself after nearly two weeks with very little exercise. The hard world began to grind by under his feet.

  Most of the buildings he passed were around five stories high, as with European cities. Even though they were constructed of the same types of brick and granite as their prototypes in Europe, each of these buildings looked like it had been built within the last few years. He found the subtle difference between the original European buildings and their stylistic American copies as distracting as an odd smell. These new buildings were made of bricks formed well within his lifetime. Their granite slabs had been cut and shaped within the same years. Overall, the appearance of universal newness gave him the odd notion that he was walking around on the set of an elaborate opera.

  Nikola took a misstep off a curb to avoid a rushing buggy; the resulting flash of pain shot through his ankle and traveled all the way up his body. When it passed through his head, it struck off a glowing moment of extra light. This shared architectural style between the European cities of his past and this New York City were at once the same and different, like two harmonic waves of electrical energy. In the complimentary world of architectural style, the walls and windows of Europe’s original constructions rode down the lines of time on different waves than their American progeny, no matter how identical they might be in form. There was a permanent phase-shift between their energies.

  It occurred to him that the reason he noticed the contrast might be that he was also stranded in a phase-shift between his past and his present. An involuntary shiver rattled his shoulders. He clenched his muscles and kept on walking until the gathering darkness thickened enough to blur the details of the hard world at last.

  The rhythm of his stride worked a hypnotic effect. He was able to risk switching the task over to his automaton, so he split off the tiniest possible slice of his awareness and put it in charge of operating his body, walking it in a consistent direc
tion and avoiding obstacles.

  He employed a long-distance stare that was useful in preventing people from trying to engage him in conversation. It deflected them as well as the cow-catcher on a train’s engine. It was much too soon after his arrival to begin taking the social risks of trying to determine what the slower ones were talking about, then managing to concentrate on their plodding thoughts, and then coming up with responses that avoided making them feel stupid.

  He imagined a tiny version of himself residing inside his skull and looking out from the eyes as if through large picture windows. This miniature version of himself sat comfortably on a tiny rocking chair and let his thoughts fly free of the hard world. The kilometers rolled by, or as his splinter of awareness reminded itself, twenty blocks to a mile, northbound in Manhattan, or one point six zero nine kilometers. He automatically kept count of his steps in groups of three, keeping a running total that felt as important to him as anything else in his mind, even if he had no explanation for it.

  Soon night was fully settled in with a new moon overhead. The view out the picture windows of his eyes dimmed to a world of shadows. With the exception of a few passing carriage lamps and some occasional dim window light, the only illumination came from gas street lamps. At every corner, double sets of glowing glass spheres hung from cast-iron poles standing nearly five meters high—fifteen feet, here. Each pair of lamps cast down gentle splashes of amber that didn’t actually light the way so much as offer glowing patches to use as reference points. He navigated the darkness by connecting them and randomly moved deeper into the city.

  When he eventually checked in with himself long enough to notice a street sign, he was near the great Central Park at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and 59th Street, both wide boulevards. It was an area of fabulous private residences and churches with towering steeples. The well-cobbled streets could allow as many as six horse-drawn buggies to pass side by side. There was little of the congestion that marked transportation in Paris or Prague, although there was traffic even at that late hour. He unintentionally calculated the flow rate to average out at five and one-third carriages for each city block. The wide streets easily swallowed the rolling buggies. They created the impression that these grand avenues were constructed for mightier vehicles of far greater size.

  Central Park rolled out far to the north. For years, he had read of it in books, studied it on maps. Now he felt a rush of excitement at the thought of taking long walks there during heavy rain storms. It would be a magical place to continue his long habit of easing stress with physical activity. Several different pathways into the park were visible from his corner. He felt a rush of thankfulness for the park’s semi-wilderness, graciously left intact by the original city planners.

  The exertion had cleared his head enough for him to realize it was getting late. Even if he didn’t bother to eat dinner, he still needed to a few hours of rest before morning. He was already fairly certain that most of the problems with these American Edison generators were matters of tuning and balance, and he could usually do such work sleepwalking, but he wanted to arrive looking refreshed and ready for any challenge.

  He turned south and began the return trip downtown, then tightened the focus on his concentration until his awareness of the hard world began to slip away again. He relaxed back into the automaton state and settled into the little chair behind his eyes for the long walk to his hotel.

  Free again, he narrowed his concentration down to a point so fine that he became like an engraver working a design into steel. The design itself was Nikola’s resolve to fulfill this opportunity to its utmost, do everything that Mr. Edison asked of him, and then look for ways to go beyond that. He burned the design into his will. Nikola would allow the legendary man no doubts about his potential. With an ally such as Thomas Edison, what wonders might be achieved within Nikola’s lifetime? No doubt Mr. Edison had the power to utterly transform the life of a worthy assistant, to raise him to the realm of acknowledged scientific discoverers. Together they could ease humanity’s burden of hardscrabble struggle and pointlessly heavy labor.

  The heat of the moment intensified until Nikola’s usual concerns over his father’s interpretation of his gifts faded away. If he could accomplish such things using the vision that had somehow come into his life, there would never be better proof his inspiration was genuine.

  Feelings of pure elation began to fill him like helium gas. There was no end to the great changes a mentor like Edison could render in Nikola’s life. All Nikola needed was the chance to show him what he could do for the great Thomas Alva Edison.

  He was back in his hotel before ten o’clock that evening, already eager for daylight. He knew there would be no sleep for him yet; he still had all of the day’s suppressed imagery to release. Soon the things would explode through him on their own.

  It was a rare luxury to relax into the present moment and appreciate his sense of gratitude over the personal circumstances. It was clear that every moment of his past and all of his extensive education had combined to propel him to this place.

  At last his life was transforming from a single note to a fully voiced chord. Sleep could wait. Now more than ever, he could not bear the thought of missing anything.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The Following Day

  Menlo Park, New Jersey

  Thomas Edison began his day early at the Menlo Park compound by making sure his foremen were off to a running start and that it was safe to leave them to their own devices for the rest of their shift. Then he called up a couple of his company wagons to carry his most trusted project managers to the ferry across to New York. He and the boys used the travel time to conduct a series of huddled meetings to make an efficient trip of three hours between the Menlo Park compound and his Manhattan lab.

  There was plenty to occupy them. He huddled with one project manager after another, riding herd over accomplished scientists and technicians. It took solid brass cow balls for Edison to step up to every last one of them and go belly to belly over the best way get things done. He could always spot the gleam in their eyes, that flash of condescension while they gazed up at their farm-sized taskmaster. He could practically read their thoughts. They were so certain their brains were superior to his, and didn’t their massive educations prove it? Edison’s authority over them reflected nothing more than his money and political clout, did it not?

  And so it was magic, no-tricks-and-no-foolin’ pure magic to witness the uncertain flicker in their superior gaze at the precise moment that their self-opinions once again ran into the hard fact that Thomas Alva Edison was already a man of world renown back when they were still stuck in their fancy schools. Every one of his fancy-schooled workers swung their lunch buckets to and from the office every day, hacking away for a salary like everyone else except the fortunate few who controlled them all: people such as Mother Edison’s oversized, hard-of-hearing, semi-educated farm boy. It would be inconceivable to him not to love a country where such things could happen.

  He arrived back at his South Fifth Street lab in the mid-afternoon. The first thing that caught his attention was the sight of that overbold new fellow. The fresh one. Nikola Tesla it was, already up to his elbows in dismantled parts on the lab’s main power dynamo.

  Edison was surprised by his own reaction to the sight. Everything was just as he had ordered the night before, so why was he so tight in the shoulders? It made sense for the new fellow to start his repairs; the plan was to make sure Edison’s lab could keep churning out work while the other generators around the city were gradually taken out of service and repaired.

  Still that rationale brought Edison no relief; his stomach tightened at the sight of the Tesla fellow. Half the company workers were grouped around him while he delivered an impromptu lecture on “harmonic balance among the energy waves.” Edison’s stomach tightened harder; pain solidified in his middle while he stood for a quiet moment and strained to hear. It angered him to see a group
of employees standing around on shop time, even though he realized they couldn’t do much else while the main power source was shut down. They sure as hell didn’t have to stare at the new man like he was delivering the Sermon on the Mount.

  But he also realized this was his own doing; Tesla was merely following instructions. Edison had unwittingly set the man up to spend his first day on the job being observed by everybody else at the lab, playing the role of conquering hero.

  So he had called that one wrong, that’s all there was to it. He wondered if he was slowing down. His innards tightened when he first met the Tesla fellow, but he allowed his other distractions to deflect his attention. He had neglected “the wisdom of the body,” as the first Mrs. Edison used to say. She usually got such things right.

  How did he become so lax? Why, he was still three years away from his fortieth birthday—much too young to rest on his laurels. If he needed any reminder of that, all he had to do was look at this Tesla fellow, nearly ten years his junior with a vastly superior education. Equal to any of Edison’s top men, maybe better.

  In other words, precisely the type of man who could stand to gain by trying to steal Edison’s thunder and beat “the Wizard of Menlo Park” at his game. Well, such things might all be in the nature of life, but he was not about to tolerate any of that nonsense, not for many years yet. There was too much left to do, first an entire country and then an entire world to be spread with Edison’s electric light and power system.