by Sesh Heri
Nikola Tesla, himself, had acted immediately. Instead of fleeing his apartment, he coolly turned to a large metal box sitting on the floor next to his bird cages. A carpet edge hid the fact that the metal box was bolted and welded to a steel I-beam under the floor. The box’s lid appeared to be secured with a padlock, but this was only for show. Tesla took out a rectangular piece of metal, held it in the palm of his hand and pointed it at the metal box. A series of high-pitched beeps sounded from the piece of metal in Tesla’s hand, and the lid of the box sprung open automatically. Inside the box lay a gun-like electrical device with its accompanying tripod telescoped and folded into place. This was Tesla’s latest model of a portable Death Ray, the last he had built before he had terminated his communications with Majestic Seven. No one knew he possessed this device, although he had told several people who had come to his apartment that the large metal box contained something that could destroy an airplane in the sky. No one to whom he had told this believed him. Nor did he expect that they would, or he would not have told them. Tesla enjoyed the irony of making fantastic public statements that strained credulity, knowing all the while that what he was claiming was precisely true.
As Tesla stood looking down at his Death Ray, the thought occurred to him that he should call George Ade one, last time. He picked up his security telephone and dialed the number to Ade’s secret radio-telephone that he carried with him at all times.
An operator came on the line: “This number is no longer in service.”
“Thank you, miss,” Tesla said, and hung up.
Changed the number and did not tell me, Tesla thought. Of course I’m out. They think I’m old. Of no use. Of no value. And what have they done? Let Martians land in New Jersey! Why, the whole Majestic Seven Space Force must’ve been destroyed! And without airships, Earth is helpless. I tried to tell them that it was a mistake to rely on airships alone as a form of defense!
Tesla’s thoughts along these lines suddenly stopped. He was looking at the Death Ray. Tesla realized that he was alone. It was as if Majestic Seven no longer existed. This aloneness was an old feeling, but when had he felt this way before, he asked himself.
1893.
It was in April of 1893 that the Martians stole Tesla’s Master Crystal, a generator of tremendous electrical energy.
I was alone then, too, Tesla thought— but then retracted the thought: No, there were the others who helped me— Kolman Czito, Mark Twain, Houdini, Amy Leslie— and George Ade. Now Mr. Czito is sick and old before his time, why, he is just barely 81! Mark Twain is long dead— Houdini long dead— Amy Leslie far away in Chicago, retired— and George Ade— my old friend George Ade who has changed his telephone number without telling me! No, I was not alone in 1893, but now I am. Now I am completely alone and I must do all I can by myself to stop the Martians before they destroy us all!
Tesla reached down and began assembling the Death Ray. First, a long silver tube segmented by eight ridges along its circumference. One end of the tube terminated in a copper electrode. The tube snapped into a larger housing made of steel. This housing contained the hand-grip and trigger as well as a port at the bottom for mounting it to the tripod. Tesla assembled the tube and its housing and then took out the folded tripod and slipped it under his arm. In his right hand Tesla gripped the Death Ray gun. He went out of his apartment, carrying the Death Ray gun and tripod, locking the door behind him.
The corridor outside his apartment door was empty, but it no longer mattered to Tesla whether or not anyone might seem him with his strange device. Now he had to act. He rushed forward to the stairs giving access to the rooftop, got to the stairs and went up them. As quickly as could, he mounted the stairs, breathing heavily all the while and muttering to himself: “They are here! They are here! Finally they are here!”
Tesla burst through the access door to the rooftop of the Hotel New Yorker. His glance swept the night sky.
“Mars attacks!” Tesla said.
He placed his Death Ray gun on the rooftop surface and began unfolding the tripod. He got the tripod set up and then proceeded to screw the gun butt of the Death Ray to the top of the tripod. Having done this, Tesla pivoted the Death Ray up to the southwestern night sky in the direction of Grovers Mill. He waited.
They will launch their assault on New York from this direction, Tesla thought.
The sound of sirens rose up from the streets below.
They’re evacuating New York now, Tesla thought. But I will stay and fight it out…to the last.
Tesla waited.
It was very cold up there on the rooftop of the Hotel New Yorker.
Tesla kept waiting, aiming his Death Ray at the southwestern night sky.
At CBS Studios, just as it seemed the Martians were winning, they collapsed— victims to inevitable biology. The hall outside the sound studio was now filled with policemen ready to arrest anybody for something. The news was out: the nation had gone nuts, and the loonies in the sound room were guilty of committing the wholesale brain-poisoning. The question was: How to get into the sound room? The door was still locked and no one outside would admit to having a key. The police would have riot control and issue charges: resisting arrest, inciting to riot, interfering with an investigation, and— other things, when they could think of them. They would arrest everybody at CBS, if they had to.
In the sound room, Orson Welles was reading a prepared statement:
“This is Orson Welles, ladies and gentlemen, out of character to assure you that War of the Worlds has no further significance than as the holiday offering it was intended to be. The Mercury Theatre’s own radio version of dressing up in a sheet and jumping out of a bush and saying Boo! Starting now, we couldn’t soap all your windows and steal all your garden gates, by tomorrow night…so we did the next best thing. We annihilated the world before your very ears, and utterly destroyed CBS. You will be relieved, I hope, to learn that we didn’t mean it, and that both institutions are still open for business. So good-bye everybody, and remember, please, for the next day or so, the terrible lesson you learned tonight. That grinning, glowing, globular invader of your living room is an inhabitant of the pumpkin patch, and if your doorbell rings and nobody’s there, that was no Martian…it’s Halloween.”
Welles then turned and looked through the window at the crowd of angry policemen and newsmen with flashbulb cameras.
“Everybody!” Welles ordered. “Back door!”
The cast beat a hasty retreat from the mob of police.
“Can they arrest us?” Houseman asked.
“Yes,” Welles said, “for jaywalking, if we’re so foolish. Otherwise, we’re safe. We are protected.”
“By what?” Houseman asked.
“By our American First Amendment,” Welles said, “and an inscrutable, invisible, unseen— hand!”
“By the looks of the policemen,” Houseman said, “we’ll need all of that.”
Welles and the cast made their way to the Mercury Theatre to begin their scheduled all-night rehearsal of Danton’s Death. After a number of hours of rehearsing, one of the cast, who had taken a break, returned to the Mercury Theatre and told Welles:
“We’re up on the big lighted bulletin board in Times Square.”
“We?” Welles asked.
“The show,” the actor said, “The radio show. Come see.”
Welles and several others left the theatre immediately and walked to the southeast corner of Broadway and Forty-Second Street. They stopped there and looked up at the glowing electric words shifting around the Times building above their heads. The lights formed the letters of the rushing sentence: “ORSON WELLES CAUSES PANIC.” The words kept rushing by, as if infected by the same hysterical flight that had gripped thousands across the nation.
“Well,” a familiar voice to Welles said in the darkness, “you did it.”
Orson Welles turned around to see the wide brim of a gray fedora tilt upward out of the shadows. The electric glow of the rushing words overhea
d fell upon the face now coming into view under the hat brim.
It was George Ade.
“I did it,” Welles said. “We did it,” he added, raising the palm of his hand to his fellow players who still looked up at the rushing, glowing words above their heads.
“Quite a lesson,” Ade said.
“Yes,” Welles said. “And how did our students fare, professor? What grade would you give them?”
“A failing one, I’m afraid,” Ade said. “The only reason the whole nation didn’t panic is that most people heard the beginning of your show and knew that it was just a show.”
“But the late-comers?” Welles asked.
“As far as our monitors can tell,”Ade said, “all the ones who panicked tuned in late. We consider them a test for all those who didn’t tune in late. I’m afraid the results of your show are quite disturbing. You know, over forty-five years ago Amy Leslie wanted to tell the whole world about the Martians. I tried to talk her out of the notion. And now…now I had to talk you into the notion.”
“And all this,” Welles said, waving his hand up to the glowing words, “is this what you expected?”
“Yep,” Ade said. “I could’ve told them that this would happen. But they wouldn’t listen to me. I’m just a messenger.”
“So what now?” Welles asked.
“We go on,” Ade said. “We go on just like nothing ever happened. And let’s hope that it never really does.”
Welles looked back up at the shifting electric bulletin carrying his name. When he glanced back down again, George Ade had already disappeared somewhere in the shadows of Broadway.
Up on the rooftop of the Hotel New Yorker, Nikola Tesla still kept his lonely vigil, standing behind his Death Ray, waiting for the Martians.
When the sun broke across the eastern horizon, Tesla realized that somehow the Martian attack had been arrested in its earliest stages. He decided it was safe to go down to his apartment and attempt to make contact with the outside world. He removed the Death Ray from its tripod, folded the tripod under his arm, and descended the stairs to his apartment.
When he reached the door of his room, Tesla saw his morning paper lying on the floor. It was a copy of the New York Daily News, and Tesla’s glance thundered down upon its headline:
“FAKE RADIO ‘WAR’ STIRS TERROR THROUGH U.S.”
Tesla’s legs gave out. He sank to the floor, and his Death Ray and its folded tripod dropped there beside him. He picked up the newspaper and rapidly read the article.
Deception.
Deception.
I have been the fool of a…deception.
I have been a foolish…old man.
CHAPTER SIX
From Point A to Point A
“There was a young lady named Bright,
Whose speed was far faster than light;
She set out one day
In a relative way,
And returned home the previous night.”
— Arthur Henry Reginald Buller
Glowing like a great, white moon suspended upon a horizon of brilliant blue, the Perisphere of the 1939 New York World’s Fair silently greeted Nikola Tesla.
It was the morning of April 30th, 1939, and the Fair’s first day of operation had begun.
Tesla’s glance traced around the circumference of the 185 foot diameter Perisphere and then shot up to its left to follow skyward the line of its accompanying Trylon, a needle-like tower 610 feet high. Tesla stood staring at these two architectural features for several minutes. No one walking by could have known what Tesla was thinking. To the passing crowd, he was just a thin, old man who may have forgotten his hat somewhere.
Finally Tesla moved slowly forward with everyone else. He no longer looked at the sphere and tower that he approached, but at the people around him, mostly large families, everyone young, adults and children, and all of them bursting with the power of the morning sun flowing through their veins.
Young, Tesla thought. So much younger than me. Ah, to be young again— in a world where there is so much left to do!
Tesla stopped. The crowd kept going. Tesla wanted to go with them, but he was tired. He needed to rest somewhere…somewhere cool. Tesla put his right foot forward. He looked down and noticed that he was walking again. Maybe up there, Tesla thought, looking up to the shimmering Perisphere that now loomed above him. Maybe there’s a place to sit down up there.
Soon Tesla reached a moving stairway that took him— and the people around him— up inside the Perisphere where a moving walkway transported visitors around a model city of the future.
Tesla leaned on the railing and looked down at the towers and roads.
This will do, Tesla thought. A railing to lean upon is enough in the presence of what I have wrought— the future I have provided for…the people around me. The young people. The people yet to be born…long after I am gone. What I have wrought…despite everything. I have given them…tomorrow….
Then Tesla was departing the Perisphere along with the surrounding crowd, going down the Helicline, a long, curving walkway that descended to the ground.
Yes, Tesla thought, FDR is here today, but I shall not see him. He has made his decision and I have made mine. I may be old, but I am not crazy. I am not useless. I still have many ideas. I will have many more, yet. No, I will not see FDR today. I will wait until the day when he is desperate to see me— the day when all of the Seven realize that they still need me. Yes I am old. But I am not crazy.
And I did all this. Without me, none of this here would exist, for they would have had no electricity with which they could have made it.
Tesla walked on. He did not feel tired any longer. He had forgotten about finding a bench and a water fountain.
The promenade ahead of Tesla was the Court of Power which gave way to the Plaza of Light where stood the exhibition halls for U.S. Steel and General Electric. There in the Plaza of Light the crowds spread to the right and left, most of the people moving left along the Avenue of Labor that led to the Fair’s many restaurants. Tesla turned to his right and approached the Westinghouse exhibit hall.
Tesla came upon a circular courtyard with a tower at its center. Beyond curved the horseshoe-shaped exhibit hall. Tesla looked about the courtyard to the right and left and then entered the door of the main building.
Inside, Tesla walked slowly among the exhibits, taking something of a proprietary interest in each one. He had now been placed on the payroll of Westinghouse as a consulting engineer for the sum of $125 a month. The pay was only Westinghouse’s token public relations acknowledgement of Tesla’s achievements. Tesla did not sorely need the money, for he was now receiving an endowment of $7,200 a year from the Yugoslav government. Still, Tesla took his position as a Westinghouse consulting engineer seriously. Even now, his mind was in a creative fermentation with new inventions.
As Tesla looked over the Westinghouse exhibits, he thought, yes, I may now be a bit advanced in years, and, yes, perhaps of late, a bit foolish at times. But I am not finished. By no means. And I am not crazy.
Tesla went into the theatre for Elektro— the electronic robot that could move its hands, walk, and talk— and even smoke a cigarette. Tesla watched the twenty minute presentation, smiling faintly, thinking all the while what much more could be done along these lines with a little planning and capital. Perhaps it could be done right now.
After all, Tesla thought, I’m a consulting engineer again. So what if it is only for $125 a month? It is a beginning, a new start, a foot back in the door. After all, I am only 82 years old! It is not like I am truly old. I am only beginning the second half of life, as it were. Perhaps a more accurate, scientific appraisal of my true, biological age would be the term late middle age. Yes, that is the more accurate term to frame my present circumstances.
Tesla went out of the Westinghouse exhibit hall, leaving several decades of living behind him. He had entered an old man, but had exited in late middle age.
And what, Tesla asked himself
, is late middle age? Is not late middle age the Prime of Life— the era of a man’s greatest accomplishments? Yes, this is where I am situated today, here, now— in the Prime of Life— just getting ready to finally make a real start on things.
Tesla looked about. He had been lost deeply in thought. He looked at the crowds. He looked at the buildings. He did not see the Westinghouse exhibit hall no matter where he looked in any direction.
I am not lost, Tesla thought, not lost at all, only lost in thought. I will ask someone where I am.
Tesla went up to an ice cream vendor standing in front of a cart with the words “AA Frozen Deserts” printed on its front.
“The Westinghouse hall,” Tesla said to the ice cream man.
The ice cream man leaned his head to one side.
“Where is it?” Tesla asked.
The ice cream man shrugged, and said, “I just started. I don’t know exactly. It’s way on the other side of the grounds, I think. On the other side of the highway.”
“Where?” Tesla asked.
“Way over there somewhere,” the ice cream man said, waving his hand. “I don’t know. Maybe a mile over there, I guess.”
“A mile?” Tesla asked.
“Maybe,” the ice cream man said. “Maybe a little less.”
