In the Matter of Nikola Tesla

by Anthony Flacco

  He accepted frequent requests for speeches at society’s top parties for the elite, where he described worlds few people comprehended, made predictions no one believed, and then nearly caused heart attacks with practical demonstrations involving leaping arcs of electrical discharge. He remotely activated lights and gas-filled tubes that lit up in his hand without being wired to any sort of power. The deeply religious observers and the secretly superstitious were often seen fleeing in distress before he finished, not because they were stupid or immune to inspiration, but because it all seemed so out of place at this time and on this planet. Many of them felt as if his inventions must surely be in this world by mistake, intended for some darker place.

  Sometimes while Nikola stood at his demonstration table and watched upset audience members bolt for the door, he felt that he loved those people most of all. In another situation, the fleeing ones might come across as brilliant—after all, the first rats to desert the ship have the best chance to survive if it goes down. And so he thought while he watched them flee, how can you not love them? In another version of reality, they would be leaving just ahead of certain disaster, perhaps saving their lives.

  When Nikola was too busy in his invisible mental workshop to attend a scheduled promotional appearance or an investor’s demonstration, the automaton handled speeches well enough that his public presentations became status events. Fame and fortune mounted.

  The early 1890s moved ahead so smoothly that he was able to leave just about everything up to the automaton while he rocked in the tiny chair, chewing on the question of the energy of visible sunlight and the energy of an electrical generator and the energy of a growing tree being essentially the same thing, with related practical applications. Despite his hours at the lab, he spent most of his time toiling in the one place where he could never invite someone else to watch him work.

  * * *

  New York Society got most of its news from the daily papers and the rest of it from the yeasty fizz of party gossip. As in any era, only a tiny slice of society paid attention to the scientific journals of the day.

  But the people with the all money and power did. Thus everybody who mattered among the hard world’s movers and shakers heard about it when Nikola Tesla’s Manhattan laboratory was awarded a stunning contract from the Westinghouse Electric Company. He was to design and build an entire alternating current lighting system for the Columbian Exposition at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. This was a guaranteed bully pulpit for promoting alternating current and getting the public used to the best methods for handling its dangers. The prestigious breakthrough also brought massive new economic forces into the “War of the Currents,” as the papers called the struggle between Edison and Tesla.

  Nikola gave no thought to Thomas Edison’s dismay while interest mounted in the Serbian inventor throughout the public sector—-whether or not they comprehended anything he said. The brilliant Serbian preacher’s son lacked the passion of his father’s faith, but the lessons were not lost on him during the many years of watching Reverend Tesla keep the congregation’s rapt attention while gently rattling their pockets.

  What Nikola offered in his public demonstrations was better than magic and more personal than a stage show, because he had things of far greater value than fancy scientific words and brilliant displays of logic. He had toys. He had wonderful toys. These toys went far beyond tricks of prestidigitation. They flashed and crackled and zapped the air with showers of sparks that seemed to spew from nowhere. They radiated the same kind of power that could drive entire cities.

  The amount of laboratory space consumed by prototypes of innovation was nearly equaled by space consumed with useless show devices. They were built specifically to dazzle visiting congregations and help them understand they were staring into a glimpse of the future.

  The practical magic of the demonstrations staggered witnesses: a room made bright by a hundred different light sources while no fireplace, no candles, and no lanterns burned anywhere. For the first time in their lives, speechless visitors were confronted with glowing tubes of colored light. Some of the tubes were twisted into fantastic geometric shapes. The lights shone with such intensity that it hurt to look at them. This astounded people who had never had to turn their eyes away from the brightness of anything but the sun.

  Nikola found that his need for sleep was down to a mere two hours a night with no ill effect. He sometimes worked for two days straight with no rest at all.

  Now, with his parents gone and his sisters married off and absorbed into their own new families, Nikola’s own limited lifespan confronted him with the question of how to invest his remaining years. His challenge was to keep moving toward the visions Karina always brought without being swallowed into the irrelevance of permanent reverie, whose potential grip on him was as real as the hard world.

  * * *

  The Columbian Exposition of the Chicago World’s Fair emerged as a gigantic, glittering testimony to the power of the Tesla-Westinghouse electrical systems. Nikola felt the public adoration shine onto him like infrared rays. Their heat passed through his skin and muscles and warmed the very marrow of his bones. Since he could not alter the number of hours in a day, the demands of his increased work schedule forced him to keep on deploying his automaton to handle public appearance duties while he visualized his laboratory, mentally entered it, and spent his time busily content.

  His working trance was long and deep. The Exposition glittered all around him while he walked the grounds engrossed in a thought experiment that was soaking up much of his head time. The challenge was to visualize a clear and provable way of testing nature to determine if gravity is generated by mass itself, or whether gravity might instead be formed by pre-existing pockets of electro-magnetic attraction, into which planetary or stellar mass eventually accumulates? In that case, a star or a planet would not generate gravity on their own; they would simply be there because that is where the attractive force holds them. If that were the case, then the physical matter itself could disappear and the gravitational force would remain.

  Either way, he reasoned, since gravity is a fundamental force, there must also be a correct frequency capable of resonating with the gravity waves and canceling them out.

  That would create levitation.

  And if so, with further adjustment, could such artificial frequencies be increased to overcompensate for gravity’s force? This would create thrust. The thrust could then be channeled in any direction and allow rapid travel to any point on the planet, or anywhere in the reaches of outer space.

  * * *

  It was late in the evening on his last night in Chicago when he took a final solitary stroll around the Exposition grounds. His mental wrestling match with the nature of gravitation consumed him so completely that the dazzling lighted spectacle had little effect; it had already existed in his mind for years.

  He was still wrapped in his reverie when he passed by Thomas Edison and a gaggle of newspaper reporters while he toured the grounds.

  One of them spotted Nikola and called out to him—was this alternating current thing of his going to be an affront to Mr. Thomas Edison’s worldwide reputation? The hardened reporters grinned at the effrontery of the question.

  Nikola didn’t hear them and never saw Edison’s face turn red while he passed by without acknowledging any of them. The solitary inventor kept walking, unaware.

  Such was the power of Nikola Tesla’s aura in that place and on that night, nobody chased after him. None of the reporters called out to him a second time. They just let him continue on.

  And so he remained ignorant of the pall that fell over the reporters when they coughed, shuffled their feet, or cleared their throats. Then they turned to Edison to see how the Wizard of Menlo Park was taking this snub from the man of the hour.

  They got nothing for their trouble. Not even the pointless insult of a public snubbing was enough to cause Thomas Alva Edison to forget the importance of a man’s
need to maintain dignity. Edison was nothing if not someone who could bide his time. When you grow up having to sit without fidgeting at every single meal while daddy or mamma offers prayers that can easily go on until the food gets cold as proof of spiritual sincerity, you learn the power of patience.

  * * *

  It took nearly a year for Edison’s carefully restrained outrage to find the appropriate outlet. When the moment arrived, he would have sworn it actually made him feel ten years younger and twenty pounds lighter. Filled with its power, he stormed, or rather walked briskly, into J.P. Morgan’s office and threw down, or rather set down, a copy of the July 22, 1894 edition of The World. He then bellowed to Morgan, or rather spoke energetically, while Morgan appeared consumed with the task of eating a large bowl of thick soup.

  Morgan crunched bits of baguette between his fingers to sprinkle over the surface of the soup. His actions strongly implied there was a great deal more to the business of eating soup than most people understood.

  After another few moments of being ignored, Edison cleared his throat and pointed to the magazine. “That is the Sunday edition! Read that part, the part I circled, there. It’s just the one paragraph.” He waited for a moment and got no reaction, so he bent over the magazine and read the paragraph aloud himself.

  “‘Even before the great generators which are now being built at Niagara Falls have been completed, Dr. Tesla has assured this reporter that anyone in good health may expect to live long enough to see the entire country powered by alternating current.’ The entire country!” Edison added, then paused and stepped back for dramatic effect. He wanted a good look when Morgan replied, so he focused on watching the man’s lips just to make sure he got everything.

  Morgan glanced up at him and nodded in a way that told Edison nothing, then returned to his soup-eating project and crushed another hunk of baguette with his fists. He sprinkled it over his soup in careful circular motions. Edison watched the ritual, suspecting that it was some sort of a Continental thing, and decided to ignore it and keep the topic on the matter at hand.

  “Do you see now?” Edison implored. “Do you see now what happens when you let a godless lunatic who talks to rain clouds actually gain some measure of influence in the world?”

  Morgan glanced up again. “What happens? Hm, what happens…” He stroked his chin and pretended to ponder, “Let’s see: he figures out a way to get power off of Niagara falls, without doing anything to destroy the beauty of the place. A million light bulbs go on, many sold by you, profiting you. Right?”

  “People are not—” Edison shouted. He stopped himself, cleared his throat and continued in respectful tone. “People are not qualified to handle this power. Not the general public. You watch, Mr. Morgan, you mark my words when I tell you people will die from this alternating current! It’s too strong! People will accidentally make contact with those wires in more ways than we can imagine, and every one of those ways will be deadly!”

  Morgan spoke with his mouth full, without looking up. “Can’t direct current kill people?”

  Edison paused, took a breath… “No. Sir. Not at the levels my devices use. You touch it and you get a little buzz that couldn’t kill anybody!”

  Morgan took a little breath of impatience. Fatigue was setting in. When he spoke it was in a murmur, almost as if he was fresh out of energy to converse. “Using your nice safe sort of power, we have to put up a generating station every mile or so, yes? So that it would require three thousand of them to reach from coast to coast on a single wire?”

  Edison’s heart sank. The butler would be escorting him out momentarily, at Morgan’s command. There was no choice left but to play his trump card. It risked blowing the volatile man’s temper so completely that Edison’s relationship with him could go through the ceiling, but now the move was unavoidable.

  “The last part of the article, Mr. Morgan, I did not circle it, but— but— perhaps you should read it!”

  Morgan did not move.

  Edison continued. “Perhaps you should read it most of all for your own interests!” He pointed to the section, waited, got no response. So he continued it himself, “Tesla is already preparing the public for the idea of doing away with transmission line systems as his next phase. No power lines. You hear me? No power lines! ‘Unnecessary,’” he calls them.

  Edison leaned closer and lowered his voice. “He is referring to hundreds of miles of copper lines that you have already invested in, lines that you are going to control when electricity reaches the whole country. But now Tesla says the world should not be made ugly by stringing electrical wires all over the place. Power should be wireless. And why not? What should he care if he introduces the world to the future?”

  Edison knew that if his last ditch effort was to work at all, he had to be bold enough to press the blade home. “He won’t be the one left stuck with how many millions of dollars worth of copper wire and the labor to string it, miles and miles and miles of it, all over the country.”

  Edison turned away and spoke his last sentence without looking at Morgan, then twisted the shaft a second time. “He won’t be the one history laughs at.”

  Edison wanted to jump and scream, dance and shout. Look! Look at the man’s face! Oh, that one did it, all right. Shrug that one off, my friend! Laugh about losing your fortune!”

  And because Thomas Alva Edison was nothing if not a practical man, he spoke not another word. He also made certain his own expression did not flicker while shock and anger and outrage traded places on J. Pierpont Morgan’s well-fed face, reddening that boozy bulb of a nose. Edison had correctly gambled that Morgan would not direct his rage at him; the financier seemed to recognize that Edison was only speaking the truth. The farm-boy inventor had landed a solid punch. He was surprised that it could feel so good to strike an old man—it was a fine feeling. Edison would have had no moral qualms with the idea of boot-kicking the fool down a long flight of stairs.

  So shrug that one off, Mr. Morgan, he thought to himself. Yes sir, imagine a country covered with countless miles of copper wire, a scattered fortune in copper wire: “Morgan’s Folly.”

  And then have that manservant of yours bring you more soup.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  1895

  Hotel Restaurant

  Manhattan

  “Mr. Tesla?” Nikola looked up from his restaurant table to see a tall man with thick gray hair and a salted walrus moustache.

  “Well,” the man added, “you look like the drawings they print of you in the papers.” He spoke with the voice of a lifelong American. Nikola was still trying to place the regional accent when the man leaned in close and imitated a conspiratorial tone.

  “Your letter mentioned that you dine here every night…”

  “I beg your pard—” but then Nikola felt the hard world fall back onto him like a thick book landing on a bare floor. He jumped to his feet, beaming. “Oh! Samuel Clemens! You are Samuel Clemens, yes?” He laughed with delight. “Mark Twain!”

  “Whenever necessary.” Twain touched the empty chair across from Nikola and asked, “May I?” He was already pulling the chair out by the time Nikola replied.

  “Yes! Please! Of course, I am honored!” Caught up in enthusiasm, Nikola began counting off book titles on his fingertips: “Tom Sawyer— Huckleberry Finn— Why, the name alone: ‘Huckleberry.’ Brilliant! Who would think of such a thing? And A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, sir, the truth with which you satirize the concept of royalty is—”

  “But!” Twain interrupted, holding up his hand. He inhaled deeply and then went on, “I have also read about your work, sir.” Twain took a moment to light a fresh cigar. “And I was intrigued to hear of an esteemed man of science such as yourself who dares to confess that he is also a reader of popular novels.”

  “Oh! Well, yes,” Nikola enthused. He leaned closer and pleasantly confided, “sometimes it’s the only thing I can do to avoid thinking.”r />
  “…Ah.”

  Nikola happily went on, “When my mother died last year, the voyage home was so hard. It was the fine stories in your books that kept my spirits up while we were at sea.”

  Twain slapped his thigh in delight. “There! That’s more like it! I came here trusting that you would be a fine conversationalist and already you show promise! As for the distraction factor of the books themselves, I can only say that I wish it worked on me. But come, my place isn’t far from here.” He glanced around with mock disapproval. “I’ll wager my Cognac is better than theirs.”

  Twain stood and gestured toward the door with his cigar, smiling. “And of course I am eager for more admiration. Feel free to wax eloquent regarding the fine stories in my books, that sort of thing, whatever you like.”

  Twain politely ignored it when Nikola stood up wearing an undignified smile of delight. Instead the famed writer took Nikola’s arm and walked him toward the door. “Use your imagination with the compliments. An inventive fellow like yourself? You’ll do fine.”

  * * *

  On the front steps of Twain’s Manhattan townhouse, he and Nikola each sat on comfortable padded rocking chairs. Nikola was especially interested in the way the chair fit him, and Twain stared intently into the sky. Each one held a glass and both men had long since lost track of time. A nearly-drained decanter of cognac sat on a small table between them.

  * * *

  At Nikola’s South Fifth Street laboratory, the front door splintered with a loud crash. Two dark-clothed men in heavy boots ran inside the darkened building.

  * * *

  “All right, then,” Nikola said to Twain, “what about the moment you first became aware of your destiny as a writer?”