In the Matter of Nikola Tesla

by Anthony Flacco

  The moment was so unexpected that Edison could only stand wide-eyed with indignation while he disappeared.

  Incredible! Edison could hardly believe his luck. The gullible fool was actually gone! And it cost him not one nickel in bonus money! He drew a deep breath and walked over to the easel, then took a close look at Tesla’s schematic of the supposed “alternating current motor.” He ran his gaze over the diagrams for a few seconds, then his eyes lost focus.

  Arrogant bastard!

  He snatched the schematic off the easel, crushed it into a ball, and tossed it into the nearest trash bucket. Right spot for the thing—the night cleanup crew could deposit it out back in the building’s large incinerator. And since the crew was already arriving, he was free to walk straight out the door and head for his Manhattan overnight apartment without even pausing to lock up.

  The short walk helped to get him started on calming down. He knew that as soon as he arrived at the apartment, he would use the private telephone that he had installed right inside of the kitchen to place a call and inform Mrs. Edison of his plans, then hang up the device and dip into his valued supply of Mother Edison’s bromo recipe. Even when his stomach troubles were at their worst, the bromo always straightened him out quick enough. She usually got such things right.

  * * *

  The early creep of sunrise was already on before Nikola could feel anything more than a tormented mix of rage and humiliation. After walking throughout the rest of the night stuck in his automaton mode, he found himself standing outside the New York Stock Exchange Building while he returned to the here and now.

  When he glanced around at the surrounding downtown buildings, stone block constructions three to five stories tall with facades of either fine red brick or silvery New England granite, the one eyesore on the overall image was mounted on every rooftop. Crossed wooden beams supported dozens of wires running in every direction: guide wires, telephone wires, telegraph wires and electrical power lines, all mounted and strung according to the needs of the moment. There was obviously no real source of oversight or control. The vaunted financial royalty depicted by Wall Street’s first-rate architecture wore a twisted crown of hot wire.

  To Nikola’s eyes it was plain that some of the lines had negligible insulation where they contacted the poles, inviting short circuits and major fires. Even in this district, the crown jewel of America’s foremost city, every rooftop was tangled with the reckless trappings of an emerging society’s inability to understand how the electro-magnetic force must be handled. It gave some weight to Edison’s desire to keep high-frequency power away from the general public.

  But the situation before him was a complete mystery. He could see one aspect of his calling right there in front of his eyes: educating the general public on the safe handling of electricity. Even the low voltages of the direct current were enough to start fires on wooden roofs. It was apparent, then, that part of his mission was to organize these chaotic technologies into an effective and sanely delivered power supply.

  It was an achievable dream, wildly ambitious in a time and place where wild ambition ruled. In this new society, burgeoning with massive land holdings and abundant natural resources, it was assuredly an achievable dream, except that he had just quit the employ of Thomas Alva Edison, who at age thirty-eight, only nine years older than Nikola, was already world famous as an inventor and a major presence in the American business environment. Nikola Tesla, the unknown immigrant who worked for the Wizard of Menlo Park, had just openly sneered at the great man’s scientific value, derided his honesty, and chided him for lacking personal honor.

  What have you done to yourself? It was not really his father’s voice screaming inside him, no matter how much it seemed to be; he knew that. The knowledge did nothing to stop the words from slashing at him.

  What have you done to our family name? His father was dead; the snarled accusations were nothing more than stray bits of his own thoughts, but he still felt the old belly fire beginning to heat up inside of him.

  What have you done to your future?

  Leave me alone!

  If you want to be “alone” why don’t you get rid of the demon inside of you?

  There is no demon in my life!

  Oh? Is she merely a “daydream” then? A daydream who conveys information to you that you have no way of knowing on your own?

  Nikola began to jog, traveling at a brisk pace, but he could not leave the torment behind.

  Since the visions she brings to you are clearly real, leading to inventions you can demonstrate, you know she is real. Whatever she is, you must admit that, yes?

  Yes. I think she is. She must be.

  Then the inventions she reveals to you are nothing more than bait. They are her way of getting in and taking control of you. See how determined your demon is?

  Stop it! She does not control me! Stop it!

  You stop it, Nikola… You stop it.

  He blindly ran on, hungry for relief through physical exertion. He kept going until he came to the East River. Within a few minutes he had slipped between a couple of warehouse buildings to reach the riverbank. He pulled off all of his clothing except for his thin black trousers, then he waded in and swam halfway across the wide expanse of water before turning around and coming back.

  On the shore, an older man hollered at him not to swim in that area, but Nikola pretended not to hear and kept going. He pulled hard against the current, using his long arms to reach as far as possible into each stroke and pushing himself to the brink of exhaustion. It was as if the body’s fatigue could burn away his inner torment. It almost worked; when he finally staggered back onto shore he was so tired that his sense of anxiety eased a bit.

  Whatever crime he committed by swimming in that spot was apparently not serious enough for the man to wait around; Nikola was left undisturbed once he got back. He dressed still soaking wet, letting the fabric towel up the water.

  Then he turned from the river and jogged away at a pace he could keep up all the way back to his hotel. An added plus was that his speed prevented passers-by from hurling questions or taunts at the tall, thin young man trotting past them in wet street clothes.

  Twenty minutes later, he padded into the hotel lobby. His clothes were still damp from the swim/run but at least they were no longer dripping; nobody paid any particular attention to him when he slipped through and quietly climbed the stairs. As soon as he stepped inside his room, he closed the door and then turned around to lean his forehead against it. A sigh of relief escaped him over the knowledge that he was finally safe at home again, alone.

  “At least you admit I’m real.”

  The sound of her voice stabbed into the back of his neck. He gasped and spun around—there she was, and she appeared to be made of solid flesh.

  In that first moment, before anything else happened and before he could manage a sound, Nikola recalled that he had been saving up a long list of questions for her about where she had been and why she ignored him, along with demands for proof that he could trust her. His full intention was to refuse to deal with Karina at all until she satisfied his need to know more about her.

  He forgot about all of that.

  “I know you are no demon,” he whispered. “But I have to fear that you may be… some malady of my mind.”

  “Ah! So I am madness that inspires,” she teased. “Or am I only a creation of madness itself?” She reached out to him, almost-but-not-quite touching him, and gently guided him toward a worn sofa near the window.

  “I am not sure of anything,” he replied, “except that I don’t want you to go.”

  She guided him into position on the sofa until he was lying on his back and facing the window. “All of your visions,” she whispered to him in a lover’s private whisper, “the spinning magnetic fields, and their power to control the flow of energy—all these things spring from only one note on the energy scale, Nikola. A single note. There is an entire range of en
ergies above and below that note.”

  “Surely such a thing is more than anyone’s mind could grasp or even withstand.”

  She smiled, closed her eyes for a moment, and then right in front of Nikola’s dumbfounded stare, Karina began to quickly age. Within seconds she completely converted her image into a wizened old version of herself. He could still recognize her, but this version appeared to be a hundred years old. The sight itself was enough of a shock; he felt no desire to hear the rasping remains of young Karina’s musical, playful voice. A bolt of shame immediately nailed him for feeling that way, but he was still thankful that she did not attempt to say anything to him. Instead she merely looked into his eyes, smiled, and extended her thin hand to him.

  He surprised himself by recoiling in panic, so that he only felt the briefest brush of her fingertips across his arm before he was out of reach. The touch was so slight that it was already over when he felt it.

  It was still enough. He gasped in shock when his senses traveled up out of his body on the sound of rushing air and he saw himself change to a translucent state, as she did. It made no difference to him that this could not be happening; in the next moment he clearly felt all the sensations of sailing out the open window and rising up into the night. Powerful vertigo whirled inside of him.

  A bolt of lightning fanned the black sky, and an avalanche of thunder splintered out of the silver-blue flash. The sounds changed in rapid-fire with every twist of the bolt. He did not mean to scream at the top of his lungs when a second giant lightning flash pulsed with the impact, but something not of his own will tore the sound out of him while every crook and twist of the lightning bolt threw off an array of pitched sounds and prism-like sprays of color. The colors quickly overwhelmed his visual field.

  In the next instant, everything disappeared into blackness. His inert body jolted with two or three full-body spasms, then he lay still for a long moment. His eyes snapped open and he struggled to regain his inner balance. As soon as he could manage it, he leaped to his feet and staggered to the window. He immediately threw back the shutters, gasping, and then leaned outside just as another lightning flash split the sky.

  This time the impact was so hard that his eyeballs felt like they could explode from the visions. With that single flash he immediately grasped what she meant by “the single note of energy” giving way to the many notes, the endless tones above and below it. He was so filled with delight that he stretched his arms out into the darkness as if he could pull the whole sky into his embrace while he bellowed with joy.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The Following Evening

  New Amsterdam Hotel

  New York

  The darkening sky was heavy outside the posh dining room of the New Amsterdam Hotel. Thunder continued to roll through the air with another full downpour only a breeze away. Inside, cast-iron potbelly heaters baked the air dry for the comfort of a full complement of customers, mostly small groups of stylish diners. They moved through their evening from within the formidable constraints of Victorian manners and the physical restrictions of evening attire. Certain dispensation was enjoyed by men who used tobacco: fat cigars, ivory pipes, rolled cigarettes for the dandies. The bright colors of the gilded decor were muted to half-tones by a pall of blue smoke. Females were left to delicately sniff for strands of breathable atmosphere, using whatever strength remained to them with their midsections compressed in whale-bone slats and cotton strapping.

  Nikola sat alone near the rear of the dining room, although he had instructed the confused waiter to set his table for two. The chair across from him was slightly pushed back; he gazed with a self-conscious smile toward the space over the empty chair. He pretended to cough, covering his mouth with both hands, then murmured, “It’s a pleasure to have a dinner companion for a change.”

  From behind Nikola’s eyes, the sight of Karina seated across from him was a plain as day.

  “Mr. Tesla!” a confident-sounding woman’s voice sliced through the room’s thick haze, coming somewhere from the direction of the entrance. He was momentarily startled when he turned to see a gussied-up dowager of a certain age moving directly toward him.

  “Mr. Tesla, I’m so glad to see you here! I’m Corinne Watters.” She paused for a response, got none, then added, “My late husband was one of the city’s leading architects.”

  Nikola stood and kissed her hand in the courtly style he had learned in Strasbourg. She gasped in pleasant surprise and flashed him a blushing smile while he greeted her saying, “I am pleased to meet you, Mrs. Watters. What may I do for you?”

  Watters leaned in close and spoke in confidential tones. “Actually, it’s the other way around, Mr. Tesla. Do you, ah, have a moment?”

  “Certainly,” Nikola replied, already puzzled by her behavior.

  “Good!” She pulled out Karina’s chair and plopped into it before a horrified Nikola could object.

  He blanched and quickly sat in his own chair, trying to discretely glance around the table.

  Watters continued, “I am blessed with many friends, Mr. Tesla, and let me simply say that I have been told of your recent treatment by that Mr. Edison.”

  “What, already?”

  “Oh, quite confidential, I assure you. Nevertheless, you are a young man with a reputation of being on his way up. People describe you as being a bit strange but brilliant.” She gave him a warm smile and looked him up and down.

  To Nikola, the movement of her head caused the patterns in her hair to dance like grass in a windstorm. The reflections from her pearl necklace writhed in opalescent flashes of color that tasted sticky sweet on his tongue and made him feel dizzy.

  She smiled into his eyes. “You don’t seem particularly strange to me.”

  “…Thank you.” It was the best he could do. Nothing in his past had equipped him with sufficient social graces to steer through a conversation with a woman of apparent American royalty. Tension grabbed him; every word he spoke only increased his risk of making some sort of verbal gaffe—perhaps even causing her to think he regarded her as stupid. Now more than ever, he was desperate not to repeat the tidal wave of ill will that he managed to generate among the other telephone workers back in Budapest or among his fellow students in school. The sight of an entire group of human beings converting into demonic versions of themselves and staring straight at him was nothing he cared to repeat.

  So far, it appeared that he was still on Mrs. Watters good side; she leaned closer and added, “Not everyone in America is under the spell of Thomas Edison, dear boy.” Then she raised her voice and spoke for the benefit of the rest of the room. “I’ll hold a party for you, Mr. Tesla! We’ll call it your Independence Party! Ha-Ha!”

  She looked at him and somehow managed to whisper while barely moving her lips, “I also have three daughters of marriageable age. Well, four really. Lovely girls.”

  “Ahhh.” He turned away ever so slightly, clenched every muscle in his body hardly more than a twitch, then took a quick breath and turned back to her. “Mrs. Watters, I would be delighted to visit your home. I should tell you, however, that shortly after attaining the age of majority, I realized it was necessary for me to remain unmarried.”

  She stared, trying to grasp what he was telling her. “…Surely you like women?”

  He laughed out loud. “Yes! Yes indeed! That is not the issue at all.”

  “Fine. It’s settled then! At any rate, you will also have a chance to meet several other young men whose fortunes are also emerging. Just as yours surely will.”

  “I can see that you possess a most generous heart, Mrs. Watters. But I have so little time to spare for a social life.” Nikola’s eyes popped open for an instant focused at a point behind Mrs. Watters. He quickly tore his gaze away and made himself stare down at the table, fighting a smile of relief.

  “Mr. Tesla,” Corinne Watters continued, “would you kindly tell me how you can have ‘no time’ as you say, when we both kn
ow you are now unemployed?”

  “Oh! ‘Unemployed,’ meaning no job!” He laughed again. He lowered his voice and cheerfully confided to her. “That only leaves more to be done!”

  At that, Watters indignantly rose from her seat. “Really sir—ambition or not—I must know how a vital young man gets along without those things a good woman can add to his days.” She flashed a coquettish smile and lowered her voice. “And to his nights?”

  Nikola made a gesture of surrender. “Madam, I suppose I must confess at this point… there is already someone in my life.” He paused, then added, “One might say it is she who inspires me.”

  “Well,” Mrs. Watters sniffed, “if that is the case, you ought to show her off once in awhile. My goodness, at least be seen with her! I hardly appreciate making a fool of myself.”

  “Please, madam, you have done nothing of the kind! And I would be very happy to be seen with her. But she is—” he exhaled in exasperation. “She is completely baffling! She tells me I am the one who draws us together, but it seems to me that she only appears whenever she sees fit!”

  “Ha! There’s an idea! I like the sound of her.” With that, Corinne Watters turned and walked away, calling back over her shoulder loudly enough for everyone to hear, “Friday night, eight o’clock, Mr. Tesla! At my home! Ask anyone for directions!” And then she was gone.

  Nikola sat unmoving trying to decipher what just happened. Answers did not come. At least the sense of nausea caused by the reflections on her pearls was subsiding. But within moments, any of the diners who happened to be watching him would have been puzzled to see his eyes slowly track over to a spot near the empty chair and then follow the motion of an invisible someone sitting down in it.

  He nearly snickered out loud and barely managed to stifle it. But the humor he managed to restrain only continued to expand inside him. At first he was determined to uphold his decorum and did well enough until he dared to glance across the table again—a surprised laugh barked out of him. He made a show of clearing his throat and covered his mouth with a fresh napkin.