In the Matter of Nikola Tesla

by Anthony Flacco

  “Any chance he’s just deluding himself?”

  “Why ask me? Hell, you just spent months working with him out there in Colorado. He says he can do it; what do you say?”

  “I think just the fact that he’s trying to do it is enough to make him a very dangerous person. I also observed that he managed to pull off everything he attempted to do while we were out there. I mean all of it.”

  “There you have it. Are we finished now?”

  “Almost, Mr. Morgan. So it’s understood that you will give him the money and keep him under control until we notify you otherwise. Then you will cut off the funding while we see to it that the press discredits him.”

  “You know, a lot of people consider him to be some kind of people’s hero. Have your bosses thought about what they’re going to do if the public gets wind of this?”

  “How would that happen? We’re the only ones who know, and I’m sure not going to tell him. Are you going to tell him?”

  “Don’t be absurd,” Morgan growled, lighting another cigar even though he had one burning in the ashtray.

  The man laughed again, clearly enjoying his work. “Good enough, then.” He turned to go. “Better be on my way now. I have to report to the lab bright and early. You know, start helping him spend your money.”

  Morgan made no reply to that. His face spoke volumes about the rage felt by a man with no experience at taking orders.

  The visitor opened the door and stepped out. “I’ll be in touch,” he called over his shoulder.

  “Imagine my relief,” Morgan muttered under his breath. A moment after the man disappeared, Morgan’s butler opened the door and pushed a wheeled cart into the room, loaded with the usual one-man feast.

  All Morgan had to do was glare at him. The butler turned the cart around and pushed it back out the door.

  * * *

  The following July, Nikola published a magazine article entitled “The Problem of Increasing Human Energy.” It was not a treatise on healthy living, rather a series of predictions based upon his own experiments and visualizations regarding the potentially sweeping changes for the better that he planned to bring to the world with his fundamental new source of energy.

  When the magazine hit the newsstands early one summer morning, copies were snapped up by various interested parties who knew better than to dismiss predictions made by a man with Nikola Tesla’s history.

  At his Manhattan lab, it was one of those rare mornings when Nikola stayed home to rest after another three-day work marathon. This one was spent designing the facilities for the Wardenclyffe installation on the land that he had just purchased with Morgan’s funds. George Scherff stood in the center of the lab reading aloud from the article while the other workers gathered around him and listened.

  “The Worldwide Power System plant can be in operation in nine months. It will produce up to ten million horse power, and among the possibilities it can create will be—”

  Thomas Edison also read the article in his own lab to several of his men, speaking with a grim face and a flat voice, “—interconnection of all telegraph exchanges in the world, interconnection of all phone exchanges all over the world, establishment of instant worldwide communication for private and government use, each one completely individualized to be non-interferable—”

  J.P. Morgan read to himself from a comfortable seat in his private dining car, but the shock of the words rang through him as if he shouted them, “—interconnection of all the stock tickers on the planet, a world system of musical distribution, universally tuned clocks that are inexpensive and completely accurate—”

  The G-man who work undercover for Nikola Tesla paced back and forth in an unmarked government office, reading aloud to the people who actually owned his loyalty. “—facsimile transmission of typed or handwritten documents, a universal marine service allowing all ships to be guided without a compass, anywhere in the world, and instant reproduction anywhere on the planet of photographs and all kinds of drawings or official records.”

  The man paused and cast a loaded look at his superiors.

  J. Pierpont Morgan dropped the article on the table in front of him and stroked his chin with worry.

  Thomas Edison wadded up the article and threw it at the wall.

  George Scherff finished reading the article to the other workers and turned to look at them with his face full of worry. “What will the world say—what will it do to a man such as this?”

  Either no one heard the question or nobody wanted to venture a guess.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Two Years Later

  New York

  After two years worth of work, the site that Morgan’s money allowed Nikola to buy was now home to a newly completed brick building specially constructed to house the new Wardenclyffe World Power System. In size and shape, the structure resembled a large single-story home. All similarity ended there.

  Behind the building, towering over a hundred feet into the air, was a wooden framework that looked something like a giant windmill. At the top, instead of wind turbine blades, the tower was capped by a half-dome steel cage another twenty-five feet in height. Both the cage and the “windmill” structure were designed to be clad in a stainless steel shell that would complete the broadcasting antenna for the Wardenclyffe World Power System, serving up a colossal standing wave of electricity that would invisibly surround the entire planet in vibration between the surface of the earth and the stratosphere. It would thus provide the basic power for the world’s power users to tap into with the accompanying antenna devices. Since the devices were made to resonate with the standing energy rather than pulling power out of it, they would not detract by tapping in. Any number of users could draw power at the same time without diminishing the basic charge.

  The inside of the building was still empty at that point. It lacked the specially designed generators and transformers that Nikola had ordered from George Westinghouse.

  But strangely, Westinghouse’s company was demanding payment before they would agree to ship them. J.P. Morgan’s seed money of $150,000 was already spent on the land, the building, and the tower structure. Nothing more could be done until another round of financing was in place.

  * * *

  A week later, early in the morning, Nikola and Scherff stood in the Manhattan office of J.P. Morgan, waiting for him to acknowledge them. Morgan, however, stood with his back to the men. He simply stared out the window and down toward the street. His back was still to them when he pulled a piece of newsprint from his pocket and unfolded it.

  Then his voice boomed out, “Imagine my surprise, Mr. Tesla, when I opened the New York Times yesterday and saw this article wired from Wardenclyffe: Eccentric genius Nikola Tesla,” he looked up and added, “who spent his time in Colorado and at Wardenclyffe on my funding, is reported to lie next to open windows during thunder storms and converse with the lightning bolts!”

  Morgan gestured to his butler for a fresh cigar, then paused long enough to properly light it before he continued. “In the name of Holy Christ, man, what goes on in your mind?”

  Nikola looked at Scherff in consternation, but Scherff could only shake his head, mystified. “Mr. Morgan,” Nikola began, “I gave no interviews in Colorado or at Wardenclyffe.”

  “Yes. It seems you were also careless enough to allow a spy into your ranks at experiments that I paid for and that I ordered you to keep secret!”

  “I did keep it secret… What spy?”

  Morgan only sneered and glanced over at George Scherff. Scherff gasped in shock and immediately protested, “I never! I never, Mr. Tesla! Not a word! I would never say a word about—”

  That was as far as he got. Morgan gestured to his butler, who immediately took Scherff under the arm and firmly escorted him from the room.

  “What are you—?” Scherff shouted in alarm. “Let go of me! Mr. Tesla, you know that I’m no spy! I would never do that to you!”

 
; But by that point the butler had Scherff through the door. He pulled it closed after them. Nikola stood stunned and speechless.

  Morgan stepped whisper-close and leaned toward him. “You have embarrassed me, Mr. Tesla.”

  “I— Sir— I have done nothing but what I promised to do, and proven that electrical power can be sent using very little energy and no wires and that it can be used by anyone, anywhere!”

  “So you say.”

  “You have just removed my witness from the room, sir! He can testify that I succeeded in transmitting power wirelessly, at a distance of 26 miles! Not just messages, Mr. Morgan, not merely information, but wireless electrical power. All that is left for me to do is to use the Wardenclyffe system to find the precise frequencies needed to transmit small amounts of power, which the earth itself will magnify to huge levels at almost no cost!”

  “And who authorized you to tamper with the public’s energy cost?”

  “Tamper? Sir, this power can provide universal access to unlimited energy anywhere in the world!”

  “Exactly.” Morgan calmly took another puff of his excellent cigar. “People don’t need to be that free. What are they going to do with themselves?”

  “Improve their lot, of course!”

  “At whose expense? Let me tell you, I am deeply concerned about your attempts to throw our American economy out of balance!”

  “Sir, the entire world’s economy is badly out of balance already! I have brought you a gift for you to pass on to people everywhere!”

  “And you have done so with no thought for the effect on existing governments! Industries!”

  “Governments and industries adapt! It is the people who need this!”

  “Mr. Tesla, the long and the short of it is, as your sponsor—and as the controller of fifty-one percent of your patent rights on this technology—I intend to hold those patents in my company vault, and continue to finance conventional power sources.”

  “Sir. Please, sir. Why are you doing this? We are talking about supplying electrical power to every person on earth, for practically no cost!”

  “No, you are,” Morgan quietly replied. “Which is why I am withdrawing all further funding at this point.”

  “No! No, Mr. Morgan, I—”

  “Why don’t you do some more work like your hydro-electric plant at Niagara Falls? That’s the kind of thing we can put a meter on. That’s good business.” He smiled and blew another puff. “Unlike the very bad business of you letting Westinghouse talk you out of your royalties on your patents.”

  “…That was done in secret.”

  “…Apparently not.”

  “I told no one about that!”

  “Your royalty was one dollar per horsepower. Since there is currently about twelve million horsepower being produced in this country on technology that you invented, why, that’s twelve million dollars of your own money that you gave away.”

  Morgan looked at Nikola with revulsion and added, “And that, no doubt, would have been more than enough for you to fund this ‘worldwide power scheme’ yourself. As for me, I do not feel disposed to make any further advances.”

  Nikola staggered backward as if he had taken a blow to the gut.

  “However,” Morgan added with a generous smile, “I’m sure that you can continue patenting little inventions on your own. Right? Make enough money to keep a small lab open?” He blew a large puff of smoke followed by a perfect smoke ring.

  Nikola turned and stumbled out of the room.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Immediately Following

  Manhattan

  The moment Nikola emerged from Morgan’s office building, George Scherff came running up, full of quaking denials that he had ever betrayed his benefactor. Nikola allowed Scherff to take his arm and walk away with him. He looked at Scherff with such open trust that Scherff burst into tears in his gratitude to see that Nikola did not believe Morgan’s story against him.

  The two men walked a long distance through the city, moving slowly and barely talking at all, while they each reeled under the day’s events. Around noon, they reached the park behind the New York City Public Library and moved toward an empty bench, with George still supporting Nikola’s arm as if he were a man many years older. Ground-pecking pigeons formed a living puddle that parted around their feet. As soon as they sat down, the flock washed back in all around them, hoping for bits of food.

  Nikola patted George’s hand, then wordlessly gestured to indicate that he should leave him there. George’s reluctance to go was clear while he rose and walked away, honoring Nikola’s request to be left alone to wrestle with his agony and his unanswered questions. However he could not disguise the worry on his face.

  Nikola remained alone on the bench, gazing around at the rustling trees like a man waiting for someone to arrive from an unknown direction. Mid-afternoon arrived and Nikola still sat on the bench.

  Sunset came and went and the park lamps switched on for the night. They were modified versions of the same arc lamps he invented for the town of Rahway years before. Passers-by moved through the pools of light with no idea that they were so close to the man responsible for them. Nikola still sat quietly alone on the bench, still waiting.

  Darkness fell and Nikola remained in the same spot, but by that time his shoulders were slumped and his head was down.

  When dawn began to break he was still on the bench, just waking up after sleeping there for hours. He climbed off of the bench and rose to his feet, stiff from the comfortless night.

  When he walked around to the front of the library and emerged on the street, he passed a newsboy hawking the fresh morning paper. He bought a copy. There was no need to open it; he saw the article right at the bottom of page one: “STOCK MARKET GIANT J.P. MORGAN WITHDRAWS ALL FUNDING FROM INVENTOR NIKOLA TESLA.” The lead paragraph made Morgan’s reasoning clear in a single stark phrase. “…the man’s renowned genius has decayed.”

  The entire business world would hear of this. He dropped the paper into a street corner wastebasket, feeling so full of heartbreak and shame that he let the automaton handle the job of taking the long walk back to his hotel. The rest of him drifted up into the tiny rocking chair and concentrated on the task of reaching out to Karina.

  It did no good to passively wait for her, so he now reached out with all of his energy, sending a silent call so clear and strong that he knew she had to hear him if she was there. No matter what she was or wherever she resided during the long stretches between her visits, she had to sense this plea. She had to come to him, now. She had to.

  Time passed… Time passed… Time passed…

  He had long since given up fearing that his father’s morbid interpretation of her presence could be true, and it did nothing to stop the cold blade of dread from pushing into his chest. Whether she was a demon from Hell or not, the awful message was too clear to ignore. She had deserted him.

  In the same fashion that the foolhardy world had judged him unworthy of support, she had abandoned him, abandoned his struggle to carry out his life mission, abandoned humanity’s dire need to be lifted out of squalor by the fruits of his most meaningful discovery. The cruelty of men with the Robber Baron mentality was hard enough to bear, and the frustration of trying to bring his vision into the hard world was costly enough to his spirit. But the heaviest blow came with the realization that Karina had filled him with sweeping solutions to the world’s poverty and then left him to carry the answers in neglected silence.

  Do not do this! the plea went out from him like the soundless beam from a lighthouse. Whatever your purpose in my life, do not leave me like this. If you will not help me, at least give me some understanding of why this had to happen.

  The automaton got Nikola safely back home, but every face he passed was that of a stranger; Karina remained unseen.

  With every step he took, the anger and bitterness coursing through his blood were converted to sheer outrage. There
was nothing he could do but allow the mortifying truth to flow through him; she was, in some terrible way, a part of the nightmare. His muse, his Karina, might not be the Satanic demon his father had labeled her, but she might just as well be. No matter how anyone defined her, she had served as a cruel beacon urging him down this primrose path to failure. She had left him to the open ridicule of the world whose collective burden he had made his own. As a result, he did not merely fail to achieve his goal, he even misfired in using his spectacular abilities to secure his own lot in life.

  The bright morning air was clean and clear, but he had no sense of the new day. He felt suffocated by the smell of death. By the time he reached the door to his rooms, his shaking hand could barely fit the key to the lock.

  The man who appeared to work for Nikola but who was actually with the federal government heard the key hit the lock. He spun away from the pile of papers he had just finished pulling out of Nikola’s tall safe, but it was too late to get them back in place. It had taken him most of the night to pick the safe’s lock, constantly checking over his shoulder for any sign that Nikola might come home. Once morning arrived he had decided that the inventor must be on another marathon work session, so he slowed to make a more thorough search. It was a calculated risk that he was not prepared to lose; before he could secure a hiding place, the door opened and Nikola stepped inside.

  The intruder was in Nikola’s direct line of sight. Both men froze in place. Several seconds passed.

  The man was well trained in physical combat and carried a small revolver under his coat, so he decided to wait to see what Nikola’s reaction would be before he took action. He felt prepared for anything that might happen—except for what came next.

  Nikola made no objection to seeing him there. He did nothing to question the man’s invasion of his privacy and did not mention having his safe opened or his papers rifled. He merely turned away, calmly removed his coat, stepped to a nearby closet, and placed it on a coat hanger.