In the Matter of Nikola Tesla

by Anthony Flacco

  “Stop it! It is you who have avoided me! I have called to you endlessly! Looked for you everywhere! Is this some new cruelty that you—”

  She stopped him cold with a stroke of his cheek. He immediately saw the energy shower grow huge—the “plants” filled the air around him. He fell to his knees and reached out to her with trembling hands.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Years Later

  Manhattan

  Old Thomas Edison sat on a rocking chair alone on his front porch. He clutched a large copper ear-horn with one arm while he lifted a tall glass of iced tea with the other. It was just at that moment when one of the new generation of Yes-Men came hurrying up the steps, fellow name of Tilton or Milton. The young man waved a magazine.

  “Mr. Edison!” he cried in excitement, appearing delighted to bring good news. “This is the new Tesla interview! He says—”

  “What’s that?” Edison picked up the big copper horn and held it to his ear.

  The fresh-faced Yes-Man leaned forward and hollered directly into the ear horn. “Nikola Tesla, sir! It’s as if he wants to destroy any reputation he has left! Listen to this: ‘The struggle toward sex equality will end with females superior to males. Once free of the bonds of domesticity, they will not willingly take it up again. Society will form centers for the care of children, much like that of the bee.’”

  “The what?”

  “The bee, sir! If the man wasn’t finished before, he surely is now! The boys at the lab are saying—”

  Edison raised his hand to silence the young man. He lowered the ear-horn, a most effective signal. “I appreciate your enthusiasm, young man. But I am done battling with that fellow. My family is secure, my place in history is secure. Whatever response Nikola Tesla deserves from the world—as far as I’m concerned, he can have it.”

  He raised his glass of tea to the disappointed sycophant and took a long sip, staring at some faraway point his visitor could not see.

  * * *

  By time that the winter of 1933 rolled around, old age had a firm grip on Nikola and his fortunes had plunged. He found himself reduced to shuffling down the sidewalk in a worn out suit. This time he carried his belongings in two dilapidated suitcases, having been evicted for nonpayment from his room at the Hotel Pennsylvania.

  In that grim moment, he did not see the corpulent hotel manager at first. The man came hurrying up behind him, hardly able to catch up to the much older man. Finally he called out, “Monsieur Tesla! Wait! Wait!”

  Nikola turned around just as the manager reached him, panting hard.

  “Sir!” The Manager began with an obsequious smile. “Just after you left, an envelope arrived from the estate of the late John Jacob Astor! They have been trying to locate you—although I must say that after all these years it does not seem that they were trying very hard—but his will ordered the estate to look after you if you needed help. The bequest, it will be enough to completely pay your back bill, plus a year in advance! I’ll get your bags!”

  The manager dutifully picked up Nikola’s suitcases. Nikola stared in confusion and happy disbelief, then began following the manager back toward the hotel. The man prattled on, “You also have a five hundred dollar credit in the dining room, Monsieur! I did not realize you had such influential friends! Why did you not contact them yourself? They only just discovered that you are in need of assistance.”

  Nikola managed a stunned reply. “I… do not know what to say.” He decided to try making light of it. “Tell me, by any chance did the trustees mention paying for a new laboratory?”

  The manager sniffed, clearly offended. “Certainly not, Monsieur! As you are well aware, we have one at the end of the hall on every floor!”

  Nikola said nothing and kept walking, so the manager added, “We are so sorry about having to be strict regarding outstanding bills. Monsieur, but they keep raising our power bill and we must pass on those costs. Well. No matter. All taken care of now! However, refresh my memory if you would. What was it that Monsieur used to do?”

  * * *

  Nikola soon moved on to occupy a small double room in the Hotel New Yorker, farther away from the downtown area. He was living there when he appeared at the offices of Collier’s Magazine in 1937 for a rare personal interview with writer John J. O’Neill. O’Neill was well aware of Nikola’s accomplishments and his impact on all of modern society, having spoken informally with the inventor off and on for a number of years. He also knew enough of Nikola’s personal situation to be appalled by the man’s poverty.

  O’Neill planned the article as an unabashed piece of praise for a man he knew to be deserving of a far higher place in the world than an anonymous hotel room and a laboratory in his imagination. The writer’s agenda for the interview was simply to ask the aging genius to tell what he had been doing to employ his mental powers in recent years. O’Neill figured that if he could just get Tesla to open up about his life, there would be nothing more to do than let him expound while he took notes.

  Within the first half hour after they started, writer’s cramp was setting in and O’Neill struggled to keep track of the inventor’s flying thoughts.

  “—so you see: a magnetic field intersects between the physical world and the unseen realm by causing iron to move, just as consciousness intersects between the spirit and the body, allowing us to move! I’ve spoken extensively about this.”

  “Mr. Tesla!” O’Neill blurted out. He took a breath. “We are not a scientific journal, you know. Really, how can the public be expected to understand a concept like that? How are they even going to understand this Universal Power System you propose?”

  “They don’t have to. They can still enjoy the benefits of it, and it will work anyway.”

  “Of course they have to understand it, Mr. Tesla! They are my reading public.”

  “How many of them drive an automobile without understanding how it works?” He paused for an answer, but O’Neill looked like he was done for the moment, so he went on. “Thus, properly controlled magnetic fields can deliver conscious thought to any point in the physical realm! Not messages, I am stressing to you, but thought!

  At that point O’Neill held up his hand to stop him. He rubbed his eyes for a moment before he spoke. “Mr. Tesla…” He sighed, then went on. “I take it that you are talking about mind-reading?”

  “Why yes! Of course!”

  “Uh-huh. With people connected up to machines?”

  Nikola laughed at that. “Connected up.” He stared into space for a second, picturing it, then laughed a second time. A moment later he gazed all around the room and whatever he saw made him laugh louder, completely thrilled.

  He stopped himself and threw a guilty glance at O’Neill, then squinted in concentration for a second or two and cleared his throat before he went on. “More like using the telephone, really. The rest of the time, of course one’s thoughts would remain private.”

  “And you have no qualms about the impact of such a thing? Or doubts that you can actually build it?”

  Nikola smiled at that. “Sir, I have never failed to build a working model of every invention I had the funding to construct.” He leaned in closer. “Never.”

  “But such an invention, in the hands of the wrong people…”

  “Yes! The wrong people! Precisely! Which is why I cannot use government funding! But with a silent partner,” He finished in a whisper, “We would only be within a few months of manufacturing every single component.”

  “Mr. Tesla, please! Sir. Please.” He dropped his pen with a sigh and rubbed his eyes again. “I can’t print any of this.”

  “But why?”

  “Because it sounds… I know your work has lighted our entire country. I know much of the benefit was stolen from you. But sir, I have to wonder if years of public ridicule haven’t scarred you more than you realize.”

  This time it was O’Neill who leaned in close to speak. “Tell me, surely you must h
ave some source of joy in your life?”

  “But of course! My muse!” Nikola laughed. “She last appeared to me in the form of a white dove.” Beaming, Nikola spoke for the next half hour, revealing the details of his strange relationship with Karina.

  When he was finally done, he ended by saying, “And so you see, Mr. O’Neill, she has always been my best secret.”

  O’Neill sat without comment for a moment, then slowly shook his head. “And a secret she shall remain, Mr. Tesla.” He closed the cover of the notebook. “In fact, out of respect for you, sir, I will print nothing of what you have told me today.”

  “But Mr. O’Neill, the world has such great need of—”

  “Please, Mr. Tesla!” O’Neill extended his hand in farewell, signaling an end to the occasion. “That’s all, then.”

  Nikola just looked at him, seeming not to comprehend. O’Neill extended his hand farther. “Good day.”

  Nikola finally rose, shaken. He bowed slightly to acknowledge the handshake, then turned to leave.

  Minutes later Nikola was walking the streets and still replaying the scene, wondering how he might have edited his remarks while still being able to communicate what he was trying to say. The riddle held his concentration so well that he absent-mindedly stepped into the path of a barreling New York City taxicab.

  The blow felt like he was struck with a giant hammer. He landed on his back in the middle of the cobblestone street. He was still struggling to sit up after the driver pulled to a stop and hurried over. “Hey! Hey, Grandpa! You alive? You all right or what?”

  Nikola managed a sitting position, which measurably cheered the driver.

  “Yeah, there you go! There you go. So you in any pain, or anything like that there?”

  Nikola’s voice was nearly a whisper; the driver had to strain to hear him over the background noise. “How will I get to the park to feed the birds?”

  “To do what? Hey look, is there anything I can do for you here?”

  “Please,” Nikola murmured to him. “Take a bag of seed to the park.”

  “The park. What is this with the park?”

  “If you see a white dove there…”

  “Oh! A white dove. In the park!” He grinned and called out to the world in general, “He wants me to go feed the birds!”

  Nikola allowed the driver to pull him to his feet. He rose carefully until he managed to stand. “Thank you. You’re right, I should do it myself. Never mind. I can still do it.” With that, Nikola shuffled away.

  The driver yelled out to the few remaining bystanders who hadn’t already lost interest, “It’s all right, no problem! He’s gonna go feed the birds himself.”

  * * *

  When Nikola’s health remained frail after the taxi accident, a small cadre of supporters persuaded the new Yugoslav government regime to award him a modest lifetime pension to their most accomplished native son. His homeland granted the relief despite the fact that Nikola had long since taken on American citizenship, because no individual or group in his adopted country considered it necessary to provide him with any help at all. His unbelievable proclamations had eroded all support from the worldwide scientific community, American government agencies, or even the private industries that ran on his inventions.

  The small monthly stipend assured his essential survival costs: the price of his pair of rooms at the Hotel New Yorker and for the crackers and warm milk upon which he had come to subsist. Luxuries were his writing and sketching supplies and a daily bagful of bird seed. On days when he was too weak to walk to the park, he lay piles of it on his window sill and spoke to the birds as if they were friends when they came to feed. A few became so familiar he gave them names.

  From time to time, special occasions arose when he was invited to be an honored guest at scientific awards dinners, eastern European state dinners, and the odd private dinner party hosted by social luminaries who still sought to acquire some additional reflected light from his remaining reputation. It was usually Nikola’s automaton that attended, while most of him sat in the tiny rocking chair behind the picture window eyes.

  The twilight lasted for six years.

  Chapter Forty

  January 7, 1943

  New York City

  By the time the new year began, the United States had entered its second long year of the great global conflict that was already being called World War II. This effectively forced the renaming of the war that was formerly called “the war to end all wars” to the far more ominous “World War I.”

  Within that climate, Nikola Tesla wrote to the U.S. Army and Navy and offered to provide the plans for energy beams that could destroy ships at sea and drop airplanes from the sky. For reasons never explained, his offer was rejected. However his work became a topic of keen interest within certain government agencies whose purview included national security and defense. No small amount of paranoia went to work in questioning the true motives of anyone who could do the things Nikola Tesla claimed to be capable of doing. Where did such a man’s loyalties lie?

  * * *

  Darkness was falling amid freezing temperatures on the night of January 7 while George Scherff’s son, George Jr., made his way along the streets from the subway stop to the Hotel New Yorker. Razor sharp wind made an unpleasant ordeal of every moment outdoors, but he was responding to a written summons. The old inventor himself had sent the note, and so there was a duty to attend even though the message was addressed to his father.

  The old inventor did not realize his longtime assistant was battling with health concerns. The only reason George Jr. was present when the note arrived was that he was on an emergency furlough to help his father arrange his things. Still the elder Scherff sent his son to answer Nikola’s call.

  George Jr. hurried through the freezing gusts hating the way his childish feelings of intimidation were flooding back to him. He especially disliked having to spend his short time on stateside furlough with a visit to the man who had given him so much grief during his teenage years.

  George Jr. had always loved the mystery of his father’s workplace and shared his father’s admiration for Tesla’s genius, but he had no talent for the science being done there. “Curious George,” Tesla had teased him, chiding the boy’s fascination with every piece of equipment in the laboratory and his clumsiness in handling them. Whenever he came to visit his father and poke around the lab, his only contribution to the work was to bump into things and risk destroying delicate apparatus or getting himself electrocuted.

  “Curious George” had sounded like a pet name at first. Eventually he came to take it for the scold that it was. He was glad that none of his mates on the ship ever heard it; he would have carried the damned title for life. Now, against the evening’s cruel wind, all he really wanted to do was turn around and head back to his father’s place and finish with the grim business of his emergency shore leave.

  But he was carrying a personal note from the great Nikola Tesla. He had read it by the light of the system that Tesla invented, and his ailing father wanted him to go. That was enough to carry him all the way to the Hotel New Yorker.

  He arrived at old Nikola’s small double room, numbered 3327 and 3328 at the L-shaped end of the hallway, and heard a feeble “come in” in response to his knock. He tried the knob and found the door already unlocked. Inside, the old wizard sat next to a large window, which was wide open in spite of the bitter cold. Tesla appeared far more feeble than George remembered him; he had shrunken into himself.

  Nikola stared in surprise for a moment, then his eyes registered understanding and he smiled. “Curious George,” he said. But the old man’s tone was one of fond respect. George noticed this time the nickname had no sting.

  “Good evening, sir. It’s good to see you again. My father sent me with his regrets that he’s too ill to attend to you. He hopes to come in a few days. They only granted me emergency shore leave to get him taken care of at the hospital and handl
e some of his affairs. But he wanted me to see you.

  “Your father is a fine man. I am sorry to learn he is ailing.”

  “Thank you. He didn’t want you to have to wait.”

  “I would never intrude upon you this way if it were not a matter of supreme importance.”

  “Never a doubt about that, sir.” George nodded and waited for Nikola to continue. The old discoverer sat holding an unmarked leather portfolio, but although his grasp was tight, his attention was focused on the open window. Finally, he rose with a disappointed sigh and shuffled over to sit on the bed. Only then did he turn his full attention to his visitor.

  Nikola cleared his throat and extended the thick leather portfolio toward George Jr. with both hands. It appeared difficult for him to lift its weight.

  George Jr. took it while Nikola explained, “Mr. Scherff, this file holds detailed notes for the Universal Power System. I understand that my critics consider free electrical energy to be impossible, but this is only because so many of them think I am talking about sending electricity through the ground itself. Shooting sparks through dirt! Or just blasting the power through the air like lighting. Ha!”

  His face formed a sly grin. “But the actual method is to create a standing wave of invisible energy between the planet and the stratosphere: a hollow ball of energy surrounding the entire planet, with its poles on either side of the Earth and with the Earth itself as the center core! That’s why the energy can be tapped anywhere, by anybody!”

  When George glanced inside the big leather folder he saw that it was stuffed with pages and pages of schematic illustrations, each one covered with liner notes. George felt his jaw drop. “Sir, I’ve heard my father talk about this, but I thought it was just a pipe dream.”

  “It is nothing of the kind,” Nikola replied. “It is only a problem of politics. This current war we are in with these Nazi forces reminds us what human beings can become. So the question is, what to do with this power? I have done everything I could to keep my discoveries from falling into malevolent hands.” He shook his head. “Recently I gave different portions of my plans for a directed energy beam weapon to the American government along with Canada, Britain, and Russia. I told them since mankind is not conscious enough for any one government to have such power, they will only be able to develop it by working together—”