Tesla's Signal (2 page)

Mother pulled him into her arms. “Oh, thank God, Nikola! You almost got killed―”

No,
the child thought,
I was almost alive!
 

Nikola's father fixed him with a piercing frown. “How did you know where the lightning would strike, boy?”

“I could just feel it,” Niko said. Had he done something wrong? “Couldn't you feel it too?”

“Saints have mercy.” Father made the sign of the Cross. “Does the boy have a demon in him?”

***

A throng of boisterous students passed by beneath the window. Niko tried to blot out the sounds by calling up visions in his head.

He had always seen the flashes of light, waking and sleeping. Other times, more elaborate visions came: fields of stars, vast flaming spirals, glowing filaments that spanned the universe.

As a boy, he noticed that currents of energy streamed from his fingers and surrounded every object. Mother's copper pot practically glowed with the hidden power. Especially when he stirred it with an iron spoon. “Look, Mama! It's full of spinning fire!”

“By the saints, you have an overactive imagination. Give me back my spoon!”

He turned to his father, who had had some education. Perhaps he'd understand? “Can't you see the currents? They're in everything. Rocks—the trees—my little Mačak.” He picked up the black kitten and stroked its fur, producing a shower of sparks.

“What in God's name are you talking about, boy?”

The child struggled for words. “It's like water flowing, but it's not wet.” Frustrated, he tried a different metaphor. “It feels bright...it tickles in my head, my hands. Where does it come from? Is it from that Other Place?”

“Which Other Place? Do you mean Heaven? Or Hell?” Father's eyes darted toward the crucifix on the wall.

“No...it is right next to
this
place.” Niko's arms spread to indicate the whole world. “There's a
whole lot
of other places.”

Father and Mother exchanged glances. “There's a new doctor in town,” Father murmured. “A specialist in diseases of the brain. Should we take the boy?”

Niko clamped his lips shut, and resolved never to speak another word about the things he saw.

He tried to control his runaway brain with ruthless self-discipline. Every morning at dawn he plunged into an icy river and swam across. He ran until he nearly passed out. At school he memorized entire books and did complex math problems in his head.

But with all of his efforts, Niko could never completely stop the
visions and flashes of light. He could only divert them. So, Niko channeled his visions into creating imaginary realms. He spoke with the ancient Serbian heroes, built castles, designed mighty siege engines and saw their gears turning.

Eventually he outgrew fairy tales and took on a greater challenge:
invention.
I will build a flying machine...a great light in the heavens to vanquish the night! Yes, I will harness the power of a mighty waterfall to perform the brute labor of mankind...
 

At college he devoured books and lectures like a starving man. “Why must you always work twice as hard as everyone else?” his friend Anton said. “You need to get out and live a little.”

“I must succeed at engineering, Anton. Or Father will be right!”

“What do you mean?”

“He thought I belonged in the clergy. Because of my 'otherworldly' nature!”

So Niko learned everything his professors could teach about Faraday's Law, Maxwell's Equations and Ohm's Law.
Electric current is the movement of charged particles through a conducting medium.
 

But none of them could explain why Niko himself seemed to be the most conductive medium of all. As if the forces of Nature flowed through his fingers. Where he had once visualized castles, he now imagined machines to weave the current. “Is it possible,” he asked Herr Professor, “to harness the full electrical power of the lightning bolt?”

“That's impossible.” The Professor laughed. “Such power cannot be controlled by Man. You're dreaming, son.”

Dreaming?
That was the worst thing the Professor could have said. “I'll prove it's possible,” Niko resolved, “if it's the last thing I do!”

And indeed, now it seemed that the challenge might drive him to madness or death.

***

“Come on, Niko, this is absurd,” Anton scolded him. “What you need is some exercise and fresh air.”

“Go away. You're a tormentor from Hades!”

“And you're a lunatic. Pull yourself together or I'm having you sent to the asylum.” Merciless Anton pulled on Niko's arm, sat him up and placed a mirror before him. “For starters, you need a shave.”

A stranger looked out from the mirror—a slim-faced youth with a small mustache, high cheekbones, deep-set gray eyes beneath dark brows. His wavy black hair, parted in the center, swept back from the high forehead...'where there is plenty of room for great thoughts', as one of his professors had said. How could anyone know the strangeness behind that handsome exterior?

“Here's a razor. Comb.” Anton placed them in Niko's hands. “Come on, how are you going to charm the ladies? And―what about your challengers at the Black Peacock? Hadn't you better go and defend your crown?”

“I've given up gaming,” Niko managed to say.

“What? But you were the king of the billiard table! You could always calculate the perfect angle...”

“Not anymore. Bigger challenges.” What could appeal to his fiery nature more than
electricity:
the very power of the gods. Much more exciting than mere
gambling!
 

Anton made a rude noise. “Your challenge today, Herr Tesla, is to get yourself out of this stinking room.”

With much prodding, Niko forced himself to move his legs and stand up.
My body is the engine. My mind is the driver!
Still every sense remained agonizingly sharp, but now his will took firm control. With Anton's help, he made it down the stairs. They navigated through the tormenting city blocks and reached the refuge of the city park.

Anton took his arm and they walked along the garden paths, through the mazes of hedges and flower beds. “See? Isn't this better?” Smiling, he turned to look at a group of young ladies strolling by with their parasols. “The scenery is exceptionally fine today.”

Niko did not hear. As they walked, he lost track of his surroundings. Perhaps it was the lack of food: he seemed to be floating in a void. The park had faded into a landscape of bright, glowing streamers...like a forest of sun-rays. The air felt dense, almost like water, only more sparkling and filled with current.

People gathered around, but their bodies seemed no more than swirls of current. They seemed to be surrounded by a huge transparent bubble, which floated in a sea of clouds. He glimpsed streamers of gold and purple; lattices of blue...vast distances beyond his comprehension.

Within this airy enclosure, the beings kept their places with a graceful wave of wings. Their shape appeared to constantly change. A feathered edge, a flame, a suggestion of a prism. They had no faces, yet he sensed their moods: they noticed him and their gazes focused upon him like intense beams of light through his whole being.  

Then, as light is passed through a prism and transformed to color, these rays became voices which spoke in his mind. He heard them as faint chimes, as if crystals could speak.

The apparitions spoke to each other.

 

A tremor of awe gripped Niko. Could this be a memory of his childhood imagination, come back to haunt him?
Or have I died, and gone to a heavenly spirit realm?
The beings seemed equally exalted to see him. Their joyful exclamations resonated all through his soul. He reached out and his fingers brushed against one of the Wing People. The tingling sensation coursed though his body.

he tried to say.

Niko tried to orient himself. This place appeared to have no land...just clouds of hot gases. Another world, like Venus or Jupiter?

Niko realized.

 

At first Niko perceived the names as abstractions, but as the communication became clearer, his brain somehow translated them into sound.

Alu told him,

 

With his fierce will, Niko collected his thoughts. This was no fevered delirium...his illness must be the effect of his body and mind learning to focus, like a blurry pair of microscope lenses...adjusting his senses until he could perceive these Winged ones.

 

said the being.

 

Frequency...333,
Niko repeated to himself.
Like the telegraph messages: electrical pulses converted into words.
He must not forget any of this dream...or whatever it was.

said Alu.

 

He tried to speak with his thoughts, as the Aon did.
.
That's what's making me sick.>

Alu didn't have a mouth, but Niko felt as if the wing-being was smiling. <
Our kind, the Aon, know much about waves, energy and matter. It would take many turns to teach you everything. Listen, my bright friend...>
 

Alu slowly morphed into a flame, emanating a powerful aura of kindness.

 

Niko tried to answer, but the energy seemed to be leaching from him. He felt himself sinking down...he reached out, but the visions began to fade.

Alu called.

Niko called in desperation.

 

But he could no longer see the shapes of the Aon. He gasped; opened his eyes. His friend Anton's concerned face came into focus.

“Nikola? Are you all right? You fell into a swoon!”

Niko blinked, finding himself lying on the ground. “What...”

“You were talking to yourself.” Anton looked worried indeed. “Something about a frequency. We'd better get you to a hospital.”

Niko brushed his hand across his face. In God's name, what had happened to him? A hallucination? A true visitation with otherworldly beings? “
Hospital?
Why―I feel tremendous! Better than normal...every cell in my brain has been awakened!”

He sprang to his feet and beheld the glory of the sinking sun. It glowed copper red, like a brilliant coil of wire, spinning around a celestial magnet. His vision came back to him: the Aon, vortexes of electrical currents.

His imagination blazed up. The same hypersensitivity that caused his illness, had stimulated his mind to make the connections. The sun became a celestial dynamo, generating a rotating magnetic field...he saw the currents, like an endless braid, forming a stream of power. The vision was so real he could feel the heat coming off the machine—so intense he felt sure it would pick him up and whirl him through the air
.
 

“Bože moi,”
Niko cried. “I understand—I know how to do it!”

“How to do what?” Anton squinted at him.

“How to generate the alternating currents—how to harness the lightning power!”

He caught his perplexed friend up in a hug and whirled him around. “Anton, my dear friend, I've solved the problem! Look at my motor here,” he said, picking up a stick and drawing in the sand. “Now watch me reverse it! See? We can produce alternating currents in three phases...” his hands moved at high speed, tracing a series of elegant diagrams. “We'll put them out of step with each other, to create a rotating magnetic field: a kind of electrical whirlwind, creating power to turn the world!”