Tesla: A Teen Steampunk/Cyberpunk Adventure (Tesla Evolution Book 1)

by Mark Lingane

  “You know,” Sebastian started, “today …”

  “Yeah?”

  “Something odd happened in the school. I had to close my eyes at one point and it was like I could still see the outlines of the kids in the class. But like they were ghosts. In fact, everything in the room was like that, just a faded outline of everything. I think it’s got something to do with detecting magnetism, but no one else could seem to do it. Well, not Isaac. Or Gavin. And those two seem to be at either end of the ability spectrum.”

  “Never heard of anything like that. Could be handy if you lose something. You could see it behind whatever it was hidden behind.”

  The door behind them opened and Mr. Stephenson walked out onto the roof terrace. In the fading light it was hard to tell if he was happy or not. He walked up to the youngsters and gave them a smile.

  “It’s good to see you two finally having a chance to relax. Melanie, the doctors would like to see you again tomorrow morning, at first light. They say don’t go to the toilet before the test. It will be best if you can, er, hold on.”

  There was a stunned silence.

  He continued. “Sebastian, I’ve spoken with Nikola, and we’re in agreement that maybe the tesla school isn’t the best place for you. He has a plan for you to go elsewhere. You need to go to his office now.”

  “Hah, you got kicked out of school after the first day,” Melanie said. “Even I lasted longer than that.”

  He looked down a little sadly.

  “Don’t worry.” She nudged him with her shoulder. “It makes you pretty cool.”

  He smiled back at her.

  “Not smart. But cool.”

  *

  “Ah, Sebastian. Have a seat.” Nikola indicated the chair in front of his desk.

  Nikola’s office was on the third story of Old Benjamin. The stairs were narrow and tricky, and Sebastian had fallen up them twice. The office was large and spacious, with the walls covered in bookshelves made from heavy, dark and ancient wood. The books numbered in the thousands and looked nearly as old as the shelves. The spines were cracking and faded, some already peeling and illegible. There was a large desk, made of the same dark wood. His chair was a tall-backed sofa. Its dark brown leather was also cracking due to extreme heat and age. Behind Nikola was a large window looking out over the city and into the dark mountains of the west.

  Nikola continued writing notes on the top of a large folder in the center of the desk, surrounded by piles of paperwork. Books were scattered on the desktop, opened at pages heavily marked with pen.

  On the other side of the desk was a tall-backed armchair. Sebastian sat in it, bolt upright.

  Nikola was wearing a small set of glasses. He looked up over the rims.

  “You have a lot of books here.”

  Nikola looked around with some trepidation. “I know, and it worries me.”

  “Why?”

  “My great-great-grandfather spent his life transcribing the previous books into these ones. As you see, they’re dying and needing to be transcribed again. My family has had the responsibility of maintaining the knowledge records for eight hundred years. Now it’s my turn, and I’m afraid I don’t have enough time.”

  “Can’t you get someone to help?”

  “Maybe one other, but it might be time to hand the task over to someone new, and young.”

  “Don’t look at me.”

  “The rewards are great. Think of it, all our collected knowledge passing through one brain.”

  “Mine would explode.”

  “We shall see.” He moved aside several books and picked up a piece of paper.

  Sebastian reassessed the books. There had to be at least two thousand. It would take decades and decades. And what if they had diagrams? You would need someone who could draw. Uh-oh.

  “I have your school report here.” Nikola waved a piece of paper in the air. “Shall we read it?” He read through it silently. “Maybe I should just read out the important bits. You don’t need to know everything that’s here.”

  He took a deep breath and began to read. “Lack of attention. Lack of respect. Indifference to authority. I won’t read out the next ones. Tardy. Shows talent but needs to focus.” He folded the piece of paper and placed it on the desk. “Could do better in class.”

  Sebastian slumped in his seat. “Not much changes,” he mumbled.

  Nikola shrugged. “You wouldn’t be the first, or the last, so don’t let it bother you. And if it makes you feel any better, my own reports were disturbingly similar to that.” He gave the boy a bright smile.

  There was a short, sharp knock on the door. It slowly creaked open. An old man with frizzy white hair and a bushy moustache stuck his head into the room. His face was lined with wrinkles. He carried a sense of joy and expectation in his face. His eyes twinkled with happiness and intelligence.

  “This is Albert. He’ll be teaching you … different things.” Nikola beckoned the old man into the room.

  Albert took some hesitant steps onto the plush carpet. He had his hands clasped in front of him and looked slightly sheepish.

  “Hello, young man. It vill be gut, ja?”

  Sebastian gave Nikola a concerned look.

  “He’s not from these parts,” Nikola said in explanation. “He’s going to teach you physics. Good stuff, physics. I think you’ll enjoy it.”

  “Ja, ve vill get our hands dirty vit the practical application of theory of electromagnetic radiation.”

  The man’s accent was so thick Sebastian had to concentrate on every word he said. It made his head tingle. It was possibly the first time he had had to concentrate in a scholarly manner for months.

  “We think electromagnetic radiation is important in defending ourselves from the trouble in the west,” Nikola said. He turned in his seat and looked out his large windows toward the dark and distant west. “We need to find something. We’re running out of options.”

  “Where should I find you?” Sebastian asked Albert.

  “I’m on the second floor of this building. I vill see you tomorrow morning. First thing. Ten o’clock.”

  “He’s more of a night person,” Nikola said to Sebastian. “Thank you, Albert. I expect great things from both of you, relatively speaking.”

  Albert gave a creaky bow, then turned and left the room. The door closed slowly and Nikola watched until the latch clicked into place.

  “He’s not a relative of yours, is he?” Sebastian asked.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “The hair and eyes are a bit, you know …”

  Nikola smiled. “Look, this is an abstract idea. I’m not sure if it’ll work, but I’m expecting your score to be in a realm we can’t fathom yet. New challenges need new answers. Work with Albert and see how you can apply what he knows. Go and discover exciting new theories. And change the world.”

  20

  ALBERT COUGHED AND cleared his throat. “Ve shall take the roll call.”

  Sebastian looked over his shoulder. There was no one else in the room.

  “Sebastian?”

  “Er, here.”

  “Gut.” Albert placed a large tick on his clipboard. “Let us commence.”

  The class was about a third of the size of the tesla schoolroom, which was not a problem as it had only one teacher and one student. There were four large benches in the room, with room for two people at each.

  “Will anyone else be coming?” Sebastian asked.

  Albert looked over his clipboard. “No.”

  “Ever?”

  Albert looked over the clipboard again. “No. Are you expecting anyone?”

  “I guess not. But it would’ve been nice to have some company.”

  “Vere ve are going ve don’t need anyone else.”

  “Vere—where are we going?”

  “To the high ground of the mind.” Albert pointed to his temple and threw his hand into the air.

  No dove appeared, so Sebastian lost interest. “Sounds lonely,” he muttere
d.

  Albert turned around and started to draw on the board.

  A screwed-up ball of paper hit Albert in the center of his back. “Who threw that?”

  “I think … it may have fallen from the roof.”

  Albert narrowed his eyes. “Attention, Sebastian.” He drew a circle filled with smaller circles, surrounded by three long ovals evenly rotated. He picked up a long pointing stick and tapped the drawing. “Atoms,” he said. “Vy are they the most important things in the vorld? Anyone?”

  Sebastian looked around. He was definitely the only other person there. He shrugged.

  “Because everything, everyvere, is made up of atoms. This table.” He brought down his stick on the bench with a resounding crash. “Your shoe.” The stick came crashing onto Sebastian’s foot.

  “Ow!”

  “Even you’re made up of atoms,” Albert whispered.

  “Don’t hit me,” shrieked Sebastian. He raised his hands in defense. He peered over his fingers when no blow was delivered.

  Albert was back at the board pointing to the drawing again. “Atoms are the smallest things in the vorld. They are the smallest building blocks on vich everything is made.”

  He lowered the end of the pointing stick to the ground, resting on it like a walking stick, and placed his other hand in his pocket. He started to pace from one side of the room to the other, his footsteps interspersed with the clicking of the stick on the wooden floor.

  “When you’re deconstructing anything, you get to a point vere you cannot deconstruct it any further. The book is made up of paper. Paper is made up of compressed bark. Bark is made up from vood. Vood is made up of …” He looked hopefully at Sebastian.

  “Trees?” Sebastian guessed. The stick hit him on the arm. “Ow!”

  “Not trees. For vat is a tree other than living vood? Vat makes up vood?”

  “Atoms?” Sebastian raised his arms in defense. There was no painful attack. He looked up. Albert was smiling.

  “Gut. Everything, from the biggest sun to the smallest grain of sand, is made from atoms. Atoms are at the core of everything.”

  Albert returned to his drawing and placed the end of the stick in the center of the circle, indicating the smaller circles. “Atoms are made up of two things. Protons and neutrons.”

  “Didn’t you just say atoms are the smallest things? How can protons and neutrons be smaller than the smallest thing?”

  “Ah, I’m glad you’re paying attention. The more ve explore the more ve find. The components of the atom are protons, neutrons and electrons. The three most important things ve vill deal vit. Elementary particles possess an intrinsic quantum mechanical property known as spin. This is analogous to the angular momentum of an object that is spinning around its center of mass, although strictly speaking these particles are believed to be point-like and cannot be said to be rotating. Spin is measured in units of the reduced Planck constant, vit electrons, protons und neutrons all having a positive or negative spin. In an atom, electrons in motion around the nucleus possess orbital angular momentum in addition to their spin, vile the nucleus itself possesses angular momentum due to its nuclear spin.”

  “What?”

  “Maybe ve move too fast.”

  “I didn’t understand one sentence in that.”

  “Okay, a long time ago ve used to think the atom was nothing more than a tiny indivisible sphere. However, a series of discoveries in the fields of chemistry, electricity and magnetism, radioactivity, and quantum mechanics changed that. Ve found that atoms ver made up of subatomic particles. Electromagnetism discovered the electron. Radioactivity discovered the nucleus, proton and neutron. And quantum mechanics put it all together. Electrons, protons and neutrons give the atom an electromagnetic charge. And when something vit a charge spins, it produces a magnetic field. Do you know vat happens when a positive magnet is put next to a negative one?”

  Sebastian thought back to Mr. Stephenson’s experiments at school. “They stick together.”

  “Ja! They attract. And ven atoms stick together, ve have an element defined by the number of electrons they have orbiting the nucleus. Hydrogen. Helium. Carbon. Carbon can be a diamond, coal or the lead in your pencil. Nitrogen and oxygen make up the air that ve breathe. The building blocks of life itself.”

  Sebastian was just about following what Albert was saying.

  “The magnetic field produced by an atom is called its magnetic moment, just as rotating a charged object produces a magnetic field, allowing us to stick the magnets together, the moment allows atoms to stick together.”

  “Are you saying magnetism holds everything together?”

  “Everything is bound together by its magnetic moment. So I ask you, Mr. Tesla, vat vould that mean to someone who can control magnetism at the atomic level?”

  Sebastian went very quiet. His mind flipped one hundred and eighty degrees and the world changed.

  “I’m going out now for a little vile. Perhaps you think about vat you have just learned.” Albert left the room and closed the door behind him.

  Sebastian stared blankly at the drawing on the blackboard, his eyes and mind wide open.

  *

  “Melanie,” said Dr. Rodgers.

  She had let her mind wander during the eternal tests and was brought back to the moment by the doctor’s wrinkled face suddenly several inches away from her own.

  “I understand you’re aware of your condition.”

  She sighed and nodded.

  “Did your original doctors have much experience with the condition?” He looked down at his records.

  She shrugged. “They looked old.”

  “Age doesn’t always equate with knowledge. Do you remember their names?”

  She closed her eyes and repeated the couple she could remember.

  The doctor pursed his lips. “I know one of these men. I can’t see him making such a mistake.”

  Melanie’s attention focused on him like a bull’s eye. “Mistake?”

  “Don’t get excited or your hopes up. You’re not well. But you’re not as sick as you’ve been told. I’ve checked your counts twice, and had them double-checked. I’m sorry, the news is still bad, but …” He shook his head again. “Look, perhaps it’s best if I run these tests again. There may be, there must be, something I’ve missed.” He tapped the end of his pencil against his notepad.

  “Why? What’s different?”

  He sighed. “Are you sure, really positive, that they said stage four?”

  She rolled her eyes. “It’s not something I’d forget.”

  “I’m sorry, yes. But according to our tests you’re trending between stages two and three. Now, I’ll admit that’s still terrible, but it’s not as disastrous as level four. I need to call your doctors to find—”

  “No!” she shouted. “Please, no one can know I’m here.”

  “Has anything happened recently to … this is pointless, no one goes from stage four to stage two. It’s impossible. There must have been an error originally.”

  “But I do feel better. Sebastian even said I look better, and boys are the worst at noticing anything, ever.”

  “I’m sorry, but it’s still terminal. You will die.”

  “We all die, but when?”

  “We’ll watch and test continually. But from similar findings I would guess five years, maybe even ten if things go well.”

  She fainted.

  21

  ALBERT RETURNED AN hour later. Sebastian was still staring at the board. He hadn’t moved. Albert started to rub off the drawing of the atom.

  “How can—”

  “No discussion now.”

  “But what if—”

  “Ve talk later. Now ve experiment.”

  “But—”

  “Nein!” shouted Albert.

  “Nine what?”

  “You think some more. Then ve talk.” He grabbed the stool next to Sebastian and placed it on the opposite side of the bench. He sat on it and leaned forw
ard. “Vere is it?” he whispered.

  “Where’s what?”

  “You know.”

  Sebastian closed his eyes and let his mind unwind. “Your back pocket.”

  “Gut,” Albert replied. “Tell me vat you can see.”

  “It’s like everything has been drawn, but in reverse. Like a white pencil on black paper. No, like light chalk marks on a blackboard. There’s shape but nothing’s clear. Some things are brighter than others, but everything’s blurry. He turned his head toward the south. “And I can see a strong line over there that seems to curve away for miles.”

  “Ja, ja, forget that. Keep your eyes closed and look at the bench.”

  Sebastian was amazed to see two bright objects with lines flowing between them, like an army of ants. He opened his eyes in surprise.

  “Ve believe teslas can read the flow of electrons. Ve think most people have this ability, but it has somehow become tremendously strong in teslas. Tell me vat you see.”

  Sebastian described what he saw, and Albert looked pleased. He picked up the aligned magnets and placed them in his pocket.

  “Why couldn’t I do this at home?”

  “Vere did you live?”

  “It was a small farming community.”

  Albert shrugged. “It’s hard to know, but maybe your senses have been heightened by being here by the isolines. Or maybe your mind is now open to the idea. Maybe the pressures of the last veeks have changed something in you. I don’t think ve vill ever know. But I’m thankful that you’re now avake.”

  “I’m not sure being awake is that great if I’m going to have to think like this. It’s hard.”

  “Those who valk around vit the mind asleep are the ones who must face the nightmares of life. An open mind like yours lives vit challenge. The sleeping mind lives vit fear.” Albert looked into the young boy’s face to gauge the reaction to his words, but Sebastian still seemed to be absorbing it all.

  “There are two things I vant you to think about.” He raised a finger. “In ferromagnetic elements such as iron, atoms join and are stable, but there is often an odd number of electrons left over, giving an overall magnetic moment. Ven the spins of these leftover electrons are aligned vit each other, the material can produce a measurable macroscopic field, something that is detectable, by you. You close your eyes and you can see it like you just did vit the magnets, ja?”