Wonder of the Worlds

by Sesh Heri

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  “Did you create yourself, Mr. Tesla? Did you create yourself? No, it is we of the Order who prepared the ground, tilled the soil, and planted the seed. And the seed called out to the ether for your soul, and your soul was compelled to answer the call, for the call was your destiny. Yes, you have worked; for the seed puts forth its shoots, and it branches, and buds, and blooms, and bears fruit. And we of the Order have pronounced that fruit good—until now. Mr. Tesla, do you believe your birth was an accident—a mere chance collision of mindless particles in a dead universe? Or could there be a plan and purpose in your coming to this world? We of the Order are the Keepers of Human Des- tiny. To us has been granted the power over Life and Death and Knowledge. Who determines the course of human events? The average man who gropes weakly in the darkness of his own ignorance for his food and shelter? No, such average men look to their leaders to guide their way. Most men here in America take vain pride in their ability to choose their leaders. But in reality their leaders are chosen for them. A few believe that the great financial powers choose the ones who shall be presidents and kings. But who determines which ones shall wield the golden scepter of Money? We do, Mr. Tesla. It is we of the Order of the Flaming Sword who place men such as J.P. Morgan upon the Money Throne. And it is through them that we create the presidents and kings, the philosophers and artists, the generals and, yes, the inventors. Have you climbed to the top of the Statue of Liberty? You have. And you have noticed that through the windows cut in her crown that you can look out upon—what? You look out upon nothing, Mr. Tesla, or as close to nothing as one can get in New York Harbor—the dreary rooftops of Brooklyn. Have you ever wondered why the Statue faces Brooklyn and not southward to the mouth of the harbor—southward as it should if it is to function as a symbol of welcome as it has been claimed to do? You have wondered. And you know. You know it has been positioned so that the central axis of its body and face lies at a right angle to a line of compression stress that passes north to south through the land upon which its foundations are set. And you know why the builders oriented the statue this way. But you have not considered the surrounding landscape: to the north, the so-called ‘Cleopatra’s Needle’ in Central Park, and, to the west in New Jersey, Edison’s laboratory, and, a little further to the north, the birthplace of Grover Cleveland, the United States president who dedicated the Statue of Liberty. I ask you, Mr. Tesla, to study these three sites upon the landscape and search out their relationship to the Statue of Liberty. Study the shapes of the land masses and the surrounding bodies of water. You will find these three sites all lie on lines of land stress which converge upon the Statue of Liberty. When you study these things out, you will begin to see the work of the Order of the Flaming Sword. It is we who planned the Industrial Age and brought it magically to fruition with the talisman of the Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World—the great goddess of knowledge, life, and

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  literacy known in all ages by different names: Persephone, Semiramis, Shekinah, Sufkhit-Abut. And you, Mr. Tesla, have been an important part of our work; you have been essential to the Industrial Age. It was through you that we would introduce the system of alternating electrical current transmission—the one system that would allow the universal parceling and distribution of electri- cal power. Oh yes, there are many who say that if you hadn’t invented AC, someone else soon would have. Not in a thousand years, not in ten thousand years would such a system have been developed, unless some extraordinary individual came forth to illuminate the dark world. And from whence comes such extraordinary individuals? From we of the Order, the viticulturists of human destiny. But now, Mr. Tesla, now you have taken upon yourself further developments. You are seeking to develop electrical systems in which power can be distributed but in which it cannot be metered or parceled—electrical systems that operate not upon the limited material resources of this planet, but which draw their power directly from the ether. This we cannot allow. In this you have overstepped your bounds. In this you will be stopped.” “I will fight you,” Tesla said. “I will fight you as I fought the Martian King.”

  “Kel of Khahera?” the man in the silk hat asked, smiling in amusement. “He was a petty tyrant which we created. Yes, you fought him, as we knew you would. And you prevailed, as we knew you would. Kel’s methods were clumsy and overt. Ours are neither. Think twice, Mr. Tesla, think thrice. Think long and hard before you decide to oppose us. We cannot be vanquished. But we can allow negotiations. It is possible that we may allow you to continue your work on etheric energies—on our terms. We may allow you to continue your developments in secret to ultimately serve our purposes, but we cannot allow the commercialization of the ether. There, the Order draws its Flaming Sword and commands: ‘No further shalt thou go!’” “I will fight you,” Tesla said. “I will fight you, I will fight you.”

  “Of course you will fight us, Mr. Tesla. There can be no other way. Don’t you recall what I told you in Paris? Without conf lict nothing can manifest, nothing can stand? Without conf lict, what would come of our relationship? Conf lict is the bond which holds us together. You shall remain in conf lict with us, just as all your predecessors did: Hept-Supht of Atlantis, Parmenides of Greece, Galileo of Italy, Sir Isaac Newton of England, and you, Mr. Tesla, you of the world, you whom we have created, a wonder of both Earth and Mars— a wonder of the worlds!” Tesla had noticed that all the while as the man in the silk hat had been speaking, a faint, grayish-white nimbus of light had emanated from his person. That light now seemed to be coming from a point on the man’s head, directly above the man’s eyebrows in the center of his forehead. The rays of grayish light began to turn in a circle very slowly, and then gather speed to turn rapidly clockwise, and then reverse and spin counterclockwise. Back and forth

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  the light spun, as if a ghostly Fourth of July fireworks were pinned to the forehead of the man in the silk hat. The rays of the pinwheel extended out- ward and penetrated Tesla’s forehead and entered through Tesla’s skull and into his brain, and Tesla could feel the pinwheel of light passing through to his inner ear like a rotating gravitational field upsetting his balance.

  “I know, Mr. Tesla. You have questions. Questions you will not ask—ques- tions that I cannot now fully answer. But I have something that can lead you to the answers you now need to know.” The man in the silk hat once again brought out a book. At first glance Tesla thought it was a Bible, for it was bound in black leather. But it was not a Bible. “The black book,” the man in the silk hat said. “Take it. Go ahead, Mr. Tesla, it has been prepared just for you.” Tesla took the book, but did not open it. “Yes,” the man in the silk hat said, “you will read it later. You will read it. And you will then understand all that you face. You have read the green book. You know its contents. You know it deals with what has been. The black book deals with what will be—the next two centuries of this world—the coming age of blackening, of Nigredo, the Black Crow which announces the coming of Rain— as in the days of Noah. But this time it shall rain fire. Three wars shall be fought—three wars so great that they shall engulf the world in fire and blood and death, and then shall come the Great Horror: the powers of the heavens shall be shaken. What shall be your part in all this, Mr. Tesla? That is a ques- tion you must decide. Someday you will know the truth to that question, and when you do, you will receive the final book—the red book, the book of fulfillment. But that day is far off for you now. Take the black book and read it. And when we of the Order take the black book away from you, you will know that you are safe and that the following day you can come out of hiding.”

  Tesla looked down at the black book. The moment he did, the spinning, crawling sensation inside his head ceased. He looked back up to the man in the silk hat, and the grayish rays of light still spun around the man and reached into Tesla’s head making him dizzy. “I will fight you with everything I have in me,” Tesla said.

  “I cannot ask anything more of you than that,” the man in the
silk hat said. “Fight us as you would fight a dream, a nightmare; for we are your dreams and your nightmares; we are your loftiest ideals and your basest sins; we are your good and we are your evil. We of the Order of the Flaming Sword are the makers of destinies, Mr. Tesla, the makers of worlds without end! Are you beginning to glimpse the truth now? Are you beginning to understand? Life itself is only a dream—a vision of Mind. All is dream—all the people you have ever known—all men and women and children everywhere, those who have lived before you, those who live now, those yet unborn. All is a dream, God, man, the world, the sun and moon and the wilderness of planets and stars—a

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  dream, all a dream. Nothing exists but you! And you are not you—you have no body, no blood, no bones, you are not material atoms, but a thought! What you call your ‘self’ is but a mask through which your real self peers. I myself have no existence. I am just another mask through which you gaze. I—and everyone you have ever known—we are all masks, personalities and places, moments called ‘time.’ All masks, all dreams of your imagination!”

  The spinning arms of white light surrounding the man in the silk hat had become a funnel of light. Tesla now witnessed a thing that almost defies de- scription and belief: the man in the silk hat began to change shape, and began to turn into someone else. He became the midwife who had assisted the doctor at Tesla’s birth. The midwife then shifted in shape to become the doctor that had delivered Tesla. The doctor shifted his shape to then become Tesla’s mother, and then, in succession, his father, his brother, his sister. Tesla’s sister then proceeded to transform into other people, each transformation occurring at an increasingly rapid rate so that the people appearing before him could be seen only in elusive flashes. Tesla realized that he was seeing every single person he had ever encountered in his life and in the exact order in which he had encountered them. Before him flashed the faces of Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, Kolman Czito, Grover Cleveland—and, yes, even me! Everyone Tesla had ever met or seen in the world during his whole life now f lashed before him. And as all these people f lashed by, Tesla heard the voice of the man in the silk hat saying: “Already I am passing away, to be replaced with more masks! More veils! More darkened glass!”

  Then the f lashing, which had become almost unbearable, ceased and Tesla was confronted with an exact double of himself sitting in the carriage where a moment before the man in the silk hat had been sitting. Then an even more curious, almost indescribable experience came upon Tesla: he was, at the same instant, looking out of both his own pair of eyes and the eyes of his double! No, not just looking out—Tesla was his own double, existing in two places at the same time—and he was looking back and forth simultaneously at himself as he occupied these two different places. Tesla heard the voice of the man in the silk hat speak again: “In this f lashing, illusory moment, while slumbering Mind wakes ever so slightly, remember! Remember! Who am I? I am you! And you are me! And all is one! One Thought! One Existence! One Dream! Dream other dreams—and better!” Suddenly Tesla found himself standing alone at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge. The man in the silk hat and his carriage had instantly disappeared. Tesla looked down and saw that he was still holding the black book that the man in the silk hat had given him. He looked around. A few people approached, but paid no attention to him; they behaved as if he had been standing there all

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  along. Tesla looked up and down the street. There was no sign anywhere of the man in the silk hat or the carriage in which they had been riding, but Tesla could see the plume of smoke from his ruined laboratory still rising up above the rooftops of lower Manhattan. Then from out of nowhere Tesla heard the voice of the man in the silk hat saying:

  “A city afire. Thus begins the age of the blackening. This moment is both fact and prophetic symbol. When lower Manhattan burns again in this way, it shall be changed as in the twinkling of an eye, and then shall the age of blackening begin its final culmination.” Tesla turned and looked at the Brooklyn Bridge; only a few people were crossing it on foot. He felt as if he were suspended in a crossroads of time, as if he existed simultaneously in the past, present, and future. He felt at once as if the Brooklyn Bridge had not yet been built, that it stood before him now, and that it continued to exist in a future time when its steel cables were rusted with age. He could see only two or three people up ahead on the bridge, but at the same time he felt as if a great crowd of people were passing by him, trying to escape from lower Manhattan; he could feel these people, but not see them.

  Tesla looked up to the sky and saw the plume of smoke drifting high overhead, an ominous gray smoke, the dragon breath of calamity and chaos. Tesla walked forward on to the bridge, with the black book in his hand, and left the city and the smoke behind.

  I had sat there at the table in the back of that little restaurant listening to Tesla. He had finished speaking and just sat there, not so much waiting for my reply, but just thinking to himself about what he had just said. It seemed that it was hard for him to absorb it all and he had been the one who had just described it as he had experienced it. “Who do you think the man in the silk hat is?” I asked. “Is he an angel or a devil or just a devil of a mesmerist?”

  “I don’t know,” Tesla said. “I don’t know what he is. I can’t believe he is what he says he is—and yet… I don’t know. Who do you think he is?” “Maybe he’s Satan, himself,” I said. “Or maybe he is what he said he is. Maybe this world is nothing but a big dream. I’ve often wondered if it is. Maybe we’re all living in some kind of big dream factory, and the man in the silk hat is its superintendent.” Tesla nodded, and then shook his head, disbelieving. I asked, “Did you read that book he gave you?” “I did,” Tesla said. “It was a book of horrors.” “Can I see it?” “The book disappeared this morning.” “Does that mean that tomorrow you’ll be safe?”

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  “That is what the man in the silk hat claimed.” “Do you believe what he said about that—that now you’ll be safe?” “It is not a question of believing, but of now doing what I must. Tomorrow I meet with J.P. Morgan’s representative.” “Why?” “I shall ask Mr. Morgan to finance my new laboratory.” “And will you be working along the same lines as you had before the fire?” “I will.” “Are you going to tell Morgan that?”

  “Eventually. Not immediately. Until then I will continue my experiments with the ether in secret. But someday I will give free energy to the world, and on that day all war will come to an end, for no nation will ever be more powerful than another—for the reason that no man will ever be more powerful than another.” “You’re playing a dangerous game.” “It is the only game worth playing.” “Yes, well, I’m not worried about you. I think you’re going to take care of yourself—man in the silk hat or not. I just wish I could say the same for myself.” “I heard about the bankruptcy.” “Henry Rogers of Standard Oil is helping me out. You know Rogers, don’t you?” “Yes.”

  “He’s a pirate, but he admits he’s a pirate. That’s what I like about him. You think I’ve sold my soul to the devil?”

  Tesla said nothing for a moment, and then said, “Mark, we all fight the devil each in our own way, as best we can.” “How are you fixed for money?” I asked.

  “I spent just about everything I had on me two days ago,” Tesla replied. “I now only have a few pennies in my pocket, and it is all that I have in the world. My finances are exactly the same as when I first came to this country.” I took out my pocketbook, opened it, and counted out all the money I had. It amounted to twenty-five dollars, all in one dollar bank notes. “Here,” I said, “Take all of it.” “I can’t take it,” Tesla said. “Yes, you can,” I said. “I’ll show you how.”

  I brought out an envelope I had in my coat pocket, put the money in it and handed the fat envelope to Tesla. “Go on,” I said, “take it. There’s more where that came from. For both of us.”

  Tesla smiled faintly, took the envelope, and said, “Thank you. I’ll repay you.” “I k
now you’ll be able to. But if you don’t, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you get yourself a decent meal.”

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  “I will,” Tesla said. “But not at this restaurant. It has very bad food, but don’t tell the proprietor I said so.” We both laughed, and I said, “Well, it must be bad if a starving man won’t eat it.” We got up and went out of the restaurant. Tesla nodded to me, and said, “Take care, Mark,” and then he turned, pulled the hood of his “slicker” over his head, and walked north up Broadway. I watched Tesla walk away in the drizzling rain for a moment, and then I turned and went south down Broadway toward the Standard Oil Building.

  I no longer wondered what I would say to Henry Rogers. I would say nothing, at least nothing about Tesla. I did not know what Tesla planned to do, but I felt that somehow he would fight through and survive. But would he win? That I could not answer, that I still cannot answer. If he was any other man, I would say he hasn’t a chance. But Tesla? Who can say what he may yet do? I cannot. To this day I cannot say with certainty whether Tesla has surrendered or not. Perhaps someday Tesla will know who the man in the silk hat is, per- haps someday I will know, perhaps someday you who read this will know. The Standard Oil Building loomed ahead of me. I quickened my pace and thought about all that had happened to Tesla and me. I thought about Chicago and the World’s Fair, about Tesla’s airship and his crystal of infinite power and its theft by the Martians; I thought about Lillie West and George Ade and Houdini who came to pry into our secrets but who finally risked their lives to save our own; I thought about the people rushing by on the sidewalk in front of me—and all the people in New York—and all the people in the world—and on Mars—and on all the worlds that existed everywhere to the farthest, deep- est, infinite reaches of space and time. Were we all One as the man in the silk hat had claimed? I did not know that either. I only knew that I had to go on and keep my secrets and play the hand I had been dealt, for nobody I knew save Tesla and a few others would ever believe me if I tried to tell them the truth of what I had witnessed and experienced. Do you who are reading this in your time now believe my story—my small t version of the truth? So, you see, I knew beyond any doubt as I walked toward the Standard Oil Building and went up to its doors that nobody in my time would believe a single incident of my story—a single sentence—a single word— Nobody.