Wonder of the Worlds

by Sesh Heri

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  “Mr. Clemens!” the nurse said, turning to look at me. “You should not be up, not in your condition!” “No,” I said, “I should not be up! But I am up! I cannot get tended to in this here hospital so I must tend to myself!” I struck a match and lit the cigar I had put in my mouth. “Smoking those awful things is not tending to yourself!”

  “These are not awful things, madam. They are the staff of life, at least for me. Now, I’m going back to my bedroom to smoke. You stay here and con- tinue with your literary career. Remember, not to dangle participles, if you can help not to, and don’t use no double negatives.” I went to my bedroom, closed the door, and got back in bed with my cigar. This was more like it! I sat up in bed with a cloud of smoke hovering over me and drifted into a reverie of sorts. Then I heard voices in the other room. “He is being very disagreeable today,” I heard the nurse say. “That means he is getting better.”

  That was Fred Hall’s voice. The door opened and Fred Hall and James Paige came through it with grave looks that suddenly brightened when they saw me. “Mr. Clemens!” Hall cried out. “You look so—so—so much better! Doesn’t he, Mr. Paige?” “Yes,” Paige said. “Why, yesterday, you looked so—so—so much worse! Didn’t he, Mr. Hall?” “Yes, indeed,” Hall said. “Today you look alive.”

  “Frankly, Mr. Clemens,” Paige said, “you looked so leathery and wrinkled! You looked like you had been living out of doors on nothing but strong whis- key for the last fifty years! Your eyes were so red—and you didn’t even seem to recognize us! ”Yes,” I said, “I’ve been out of my head for several days. Deliriously sick! Fever will do that. But I feel much better now. Now, Paige, does your con- science trouble you for the way you have treated me with all your delays?” “Delays?” Paige asked. “I could almost forgive you for that word. Mr. Clemens, I must confess, it broke my heart when you left me and the machine to fight along the best way we could. But now, all is right. Yes, all is right, and our fight continues—unabated!” Hall, Paige, and I talked awhile longer. They had managed to make another demonstration of the typesetting machine, but as yet had received no firm commitments from any of the potential investors. But the interest was still there, and several of the men who had seen the machine operate were now only considering just how much of an investment they wished to make.

  Paige set on the edge of my bed, describing in detail how he planned to produce ten thousand machines in rapid succession. Then he began to tell me how he was negotiating with the New York investors to amend our contract

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  with them so as to produce some ready cash for the machine. He was mak- ing them the offer of accepting no stock and instead asking for half a million dollars in cash. He was not sure if he could get that, but he promised that if they offered less, he would take the cash and send me half of it. Then Paige informed me that all the European patents on the machine had been settled, and that he was going to put me in for a handsome royalty on every Euro- pean machine that would be sold over there. Paige said this in a magnani- mous tone, but, later, after he left, I recalled that my contract with the Con- necticut Company already gave me those rights. Paige made some very large and indefinite gilt-edged promises, so cloudy and formless that I could not make out what or how or if there were any substance or meaning to any of them. There I lay in that bed, having sunk more than one hundred thousand dollars into the machine, and I still could not see my way clear to getting any definite return from it. The more Paige talked, the more my head got muddled. He was the smoothest talker I ever heard, and, when he got up to leave, we parted immensely good friends. Hall left with Paige, and I called for the nurse to bring me a pen and some writing paper. I scribbled a note to my sister-in-law Susan Crane explaining to her my delay in Chicago. It had been my original plan to spend only two or three days in Chicago, and then go to see her in Elmira, but my “sick spell” had interfered with all of that. I now wrote her that I did not want anybody to know that I was sick, for I feared that the very winds might blow the tale around the world to Livy.

  I finished my letter to Susy Crane and then called the nurse in to give it to a bellman to put in the mail. With that chore accomplished, I lay back to rest for just a little while. Then there was a knock at my door. I said, “Come in!”

  It was Orion. He had not been back to see me all week, thank God! Other- wise, Livy would certainly have received from him a frightening letter! As it was, I was able to steer Orion away from knowing anything about my “serious illness.” I admitted to only having a slight cold. It was not strange for Orion to see me in bed, for he knew I did some of my best writing and thinking while luxuriating on my back. Since I had seen him last, Orion had taken up and abandoned several schemes. His idea of being a correspondent for the World’s Fair had long been discarded and forgotten, and I made no mention of it. Orion was now planning on returning home and taking up the raising of chickens. I gave him my blessing, and he went away fired with zeal for his chicken ranch plan. I knew when he reached home he would have forgotten the chickens and be off pursuing another grand scheme. I lit another cigar and sat contemplating all that had happened to us aboard Tesla’s airship. Then I got to pondering the conundrum presented to us by the naval captain when we came back. What had happened to the last week? We

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  had completely lost it and would never find it again—not in all eternity!

  Tesla has given a great deal of thought to our missing week and has con- cluded that it was the result of the explosion of the Master Crystal. As our airship moved rapidly away from the explosion, a part of our motion was caused by the explosion itself. Being pushed along from behind like that, it threw our electrical resonance out of whack with the surrounding ether and this caused the atoms composing our bodies and the airship to slow down their rate of vibrations. What seemed like mere seconds to us was a week of time here on earth and in the surrounding universe. Tesla says this was all the result of an increase of etheric pressure from the exploding Master Crystal and it caused what Tesla has described as a wrinkle in space and time. Tesla has named this freak of science and nature “The Rip Van Winkle Wrinkle” in honor of our friend, Joseph Jefferson. The scientist Lorentz was informed of what had happened to us on board the airship and has tried to explain it by claiming that the space around our airship was f lattened. I did not feel flattened then or now. I cannot hold with Lorentz, although a lot of people are trying to accommodate him lately, most notably a patent clerk in Europe by the name of Einstein. Tesla has looked at Einstein’s ideas and has pronounced the young patent clerk to be the “new Ptolemy.” In the Ptolemaic theory, epicycles were brought in to explain all the discrepancies. Whenever a planet seemed to move in a direction that the theory could not explain, it was said to be going through an “epicycle”; the planet had decided to take a holiday and go on a little orbit all its own. Now Tesla says Einstein’s theory is similar to Ptolemy’s, but with this exception: while Ptolemy introduced his epicycles only here and there when a holiday arose, Einstein’s theory is all epicycle; it takes so many exceptions to Newtonian laws that just about every day is a holiday, and so no real work can get done, at least not beyond the speed of light. Now, on moral grounds I approve and commend Einstein’s theory, for I always have felt and believed that work is sin, and I have always tried not to sin. But intellectually, and from practical experience, I cannot stand on the side of Einstein. Yes, his intentions are noble, his expres- sions are elegant and refined; the elimination of work from the universe is no small goal, and is worthy of our consideration. It is a goal I have attempted to achieve many times myself. So far, I have only eliminated my own work, but who knows what more patient thought may accomplish? No, I must reject Einstein. It is sad, it is tragic, but such is the way of the world.

  As I lay there in my bed at the Great Northern smoking my cigar I did not yet have a firm grasp on all these ideas. I only knew that we had lost a week, and it troubled me. Losing a week is not like losing your p
ocketbook. The latter you might find again, but the former you will not, at least not without the assistance of a time machine. And who do you know that has a time machine? Tesla? Yes, come to think of it, perhaps Tesla.

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  I snuffed out the stub of my cigar in the ashtray next to my bed. I was feeling a little tired and thought that I would take a short nap. I lay back and fell into a light doze. When I awoke again, the whole night had passed and it was the next morning!

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The Superintendent of Dreams

  It’s a curious thing, that the more you hear about a grand and big and bully thing or person, the more it kind of dreamies out, as you may say, and gets to be a big and dim wavery figger made out of moonshine and nothing solid to it. It’s just so with George Washington, and the same with the pyramids.

  — Huck, Tom Sawyer Abroad

  We had started out on our quest for the Master Crystal as unrelated individuals and had become knit into a group, a unit, perhaps even a family of sorts. And now circumstances were forcing us to break apart again, and to pretend that some of us were strangers to the others. Those of us who had known each other before the “incident” would continue knowing each other. But those of us who had become acquainted on board the airship would have to deny that acquaintance and even take pains to avoid associating with each other in the future. We had all said quick goodbyes to each other at our meeting with Cleveland and Lamont. Lillie West and George Ade went off together to return to their jobs on the Chicago papers. Houdini went back to the theatrical board- ing house where he had been staying to search for Joe Hyman, his replacement partner for his magic act. I went back to my hotel room, and Tesla and Kolman Czito remained with Cleveland and Lamont for many more hours of talks. Since Lillie West and George Ade knew each other before our “incident,” they would go on as they had before, but they could not write about Houdini or speak to him. And Houdini had to pretend that he didn’t know them or me and that we had never met at all. Since Houdini had once been a messenger

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  for Tesla, he was allowed to publicly contact Tesla, if circumstances required it. And I had to pretend that I didn’t know Houdini either, or George Ade, or Lillie West. It was a dreary pretense, for these people had become my friends, and I knew I would miss them, and I have. Fortunately, since I had known Tesla for several years, my friendship with him continued. And, through Tesla, I was told about how the lives of our other crew mates were progressing, for Tesla did not only continue to be in contact with Houdini, but he remained secretly in contact with George Ade and Lillie West as well. Later, some of my friends became acquainted with Lillie West and George Ade and so I managed to hear fragments of News about the two of them. W.D. Howells, in particular, admired Ade’s writing and urged me to read the work of this new author whom he had discovered. I never told Howells that I had already read Ade’s Artie and Pink Marsh in the Chicago Record installments before they had been published as novels. I had been subscribing to the Record and the Daily News specifically for the purpose of keeping up on Lillie and Ade. If this story were a work of fiction, along here I would contrive a marriage for Lillie West and George Ade. But since this is my attempt to tell the truth— the truth with a small t—I must report that Lillie West and George Ade never married. Why, I do not know, nor does anyone else know as far as I can find out. Perhaps, in the end, they were too much alike. Both of them were driven, ambitious people. And in a marriage there can be only one boss, and usually, if it is to be a happy marriage, the boss is the wife. George Ade probably was not the kind of man to be put in harness. To this day he has never married, although his name has been linked with a number of ladies, several of them actresses. What I do know is that George Ade and Lillie West have remained friends through all these years.

  Lillie never got the big story about the airship that she had gone after, but she got something else that was much bigger than a Newspaper story: she and Ade came to work for Tesla in some secret capacity. I’m not sure exactly what this work involved, but I know it had something to do with the Martians. John T. McCutcheon and Houdini were involved with this as well. Each of them had some kind of specific task assigned to them by Tesla. Some of this work was connected with what has come to be known in certain Washington circles as “The San Francisco Incident of 1896.” This was where an airship was sighted f lying over San Francisco. It was later seen over the city of Sacramento, and f lew directly over the dome of the state capitol as it passed low over that city. This time, so many people saw the airship f lying through the skies that the story could not be kept out of the California Newspapers. The Call, my old San Francisco paper, carried a front page story about the airship complete with illustrations, as did the Bee in Sacramento. Tesla has told me that this was a newly built Martian airship and that he and

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  Kolman Czito destroyed it with a portable electric ray cannon somewhere in the vicinity of Pyramid Lake, Nevada.

  After the Martian airship incidents of 1896-97, the astronomers Asaph Hall and Percival Lowell kept watching the skies for signs of the Martians, but, as far as they could tell, the Martians had not returned. However, there were signs that the Martians were still among us, and Tesla and the President believed that they were coming here in yet another anti-gravity airship. When George Ade came to New York, Tesla gave him an assignment over in the Philippines and the surrounding islands. I believe that was around 1900. Tesla told me that when Ade left New York Harbor, he was carrying with him three cases of weapons and machinery that Tesla had designed. McCutcheon had already been sent over there to the Philippines during the Spanish-Ameri- can War under the authority of the Treasury Department. I believe Ade and McCutcheon were also trying to find out if the Martians had re-activated some ancient tunnels over there. Also McCutcheon was involved in finding the source of counterfeit money being printed by the Martians. At this writing I believe that George Ade, “Amy Leslie,” John T. McCutcheon, and Houdini are still involved with Tesla in this work. Tesla has told me that Houdini did some particularly important work for him over in Europe after the assassination of President McKinley.

  Lillie West came to be known so widely by her pen name “Amy Leslie” that she finally dropped “Lillie” and had even her closest friends to call her “Amy.” In the mid-1890s “Amy Leslie” would come to New York to see Tesla, usually staying with her married sister, Mrs. O’Brien on West 25th Street. It was dur- ing one of those visits that she became acquainted with Stephen Crane, author of The Red Badge of Courage. She eventually had a bitter parting with Crane, who left for Florida owing her $800.00. She had to sue him in court to get about $500.00 of this money back, and, of course, this sad tale made its way to all the papers. Crane’s friends claimed that “Amy” was “mentally unbalanced,” had the delusion that Crane had promised to marry her, and when he left her behind in New York to go to Florida, she sued him for the money out of spite. Even W.D. Howells, who knew Crane and admired his work, was taken in by this version of events for a time. However, from Tesla I received another version of the story which I believed to be much closer to the truth. It went like this: Crane had misrepre- sented his intentions to “Amy,” speaking of marriage even as he was involved with other women, some of them with very bad reputations. “Amy” believed Crane as he represented himself to be, and in the course of their romance revealed to him the work she was doing for Tesla, as well as what had hap- pened to all of us back there in Chicago and on Mars in 1893. When some of Crane’s royalties were slower in coming in than his spending was going out,

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  “Amy” loaned him $800.00 with the understanding that it would be paid back very shortly as soon as his latest royalties came in. But instead of the royalties coming in, something else happened. A woman Crane had been spending time with was arrested on a charge of prostitution. Crane went to court and testified that the woman was with him the night of her arrest and so could not have been guilty of the char
ge. The magistrate was so impressed with Crane’s literary renown that he credited Crane’s testimony and released the woman. But that was not the end of it. A departmental hearing followed. The arresting detective’s attorney, the detective’s superiors, and Crane’s own Newspaper colleagues all denounced Crane. Well, here was an awkward situation, and anyone else would have had their ship sunk. But Crane was sailing high on his newfound literary reputation, and, taking the tide at its flood, he used that reputation to sail right on out of New York and down to Florida. Now, do you think “Amy” who had just loaned Crane $800.00 might be a little upset by all these developments? Who in all this was the “mentally unbalanced” party— ”Amy Leslie” or Stephen Crane? I will only add here that “Amy Leslie’s” suit was settled out of court. In 1898, Crane returned to New York and repaid the rest of the loan.

  In 1901, “Amy Leslie” finally re-married. Her husband was not a famous author or a captain of industry, but an unknown young man from Texas by the name of Frank Buck. At the time Buck married “Amy Leslie” he was a bellboy at the hotel where “Amy” lived in Chicago. The last I heard, they are still happily married; Frank Buck works for Sol Bloom in his theatrical enterprises and “Amy Leslie”—Lillie West—continues her work as drama critic for the Chi- cago Daily News. I hear that “Amy,” Buck, Ade, and McCutcheon all still re- main friends. All of us who made that voyage to Mars aboard Tesla’s airship have kept our story a fairly strict secret. But no matter how hard one may try, something of the truth always eventually comes out. There were several “information leaks.” The source of some of these leaks could be traced to specific individu- als; the source of others will probably never be known. One leak came from Lillie West. She had told Stephen Crane about what had happened to us, and, later in England, Crane told H.G. Wells, and this gave Wells the idea for his story “War of the Worlds.” George Ade kept his secrets well, but even he was tempted to put his experiences with all of us into his writing. However, he wrote in such a veiled and cryptic way that most people never realized what he was writing about. Ade’s revelation came in the form of three short stories. These stories were quite unlike his usual writing, which was invariably realistic in tone, setting, characters, and plot. These three stories were burlesques of the “Incident of ’93.” Each was written as a story for children, and each told about the “Incident of ‘93” from the viewpoint of one of us who was involved with it.