“But you have such powers to help.”
“Not as much as you would expect. You touched me, but I am not really here, in the here you understand. This coat, yes, the hat and boots. But me? My body is no more, my essence, my information? That alone remains. I cannot fight your battles, not in any physical sense.”
“Then in a metaphysical sense, join me. At the very least you could be using your knowledge to guide people, to create things, ease suffering, warn of impending disasters…”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“That was my original intent.”
“An impending disaster?”
“Yes, a constant in many variations of universes and paths. A comet, breaking apart. Its destiny and Earth’s unavoidable in most timelines.”
“What? When?” She looked up to the sky as if the time had already come.
“Soon.” He started waving his hands and pacing as he talked. Becoming more and more like the Tesla she expected.
“Do we know about it? I mean, our governments?”
Tesla ignored her. “It is coming, and the devastation…I have seen it, over and over and over. So many worlds destroyed, countless populations annihilated. I lived it, watched it, so many times. And not just this decade’s impact, but several in the past. I saw…”
He just stopped, lowering his eyes. “We should only watch. Otherwise, the responsibility is just too overwhelming. Why help this world, this time, and why not others? Why you?”
Phoebe forced herself to calm down. “I don’t pretend to understand what you’ve gone through, or what you’re going through now, but there has to be something. Do it, pull yourself out of those other responsibilities, I know it sounds cold, but cling to something. You were born, you lived, you brought joy to your mother as a kid, as a baby I’m sure. I’m recently a mother, and God I miss them with all my heart. You did something, you were something. Your inventions, your genius…we’ve rediscovered so many of those things, but hell, others were taken and I can’t believe you would have allowed them to be used as they have been.”
A grunting noise came from under the hat.
“The HAARP facility, subverting what you intended, weaponizing space, causing weather disruptions, earthquakes… Wait! What about using that technology to destroy the comet?”
“No no no, not possible. Too far out, need interference waves to cross at right angles, quite impossible unless we have ships out there with the beam technology, or on satellites or moons in the vicinity. No, the damage from the heated core that splits the comet into pieces will eventually detonate upon the earth. At that point, the weapon could work if it was just one asteroid or a sliver, but with this rain of meteorites, individual attempts won’t get them all. No, what would work however, is one of my other concepts.
“Which one?”
“A shield around the earth itself.”
“Can you do that?”
“I had the designs, the locations of towers — or ancient sites of power— all over the earth that would each give out scalar energy from rotating electrical fields that…” He shook his head. “To explain it all would take hours. Suffice to say, it would work, but could not be powered with the current level of energy output. And the missing component to direct all this properly, I found, had to be the greatest variable of all.” He sighed and gave her a look of such longing. “That of human consciousness.”
Phoebe stared at him, forgetting for a moment about Orlando. “This sounds like what an artifact we just destroyed could do.”
Tesla nodded vigorously, now rubbing at his neck, acting more and more human like. “Yes, yes. That is what they need, and will have it soon.”
“What do you mean? My brother destroyed it a couple years ago. It’s gone, never…”
“There is another, and…oh they have ways to get it. Using your friends. And I fear it is almost too late.”
“But I don’t understand. If we’re all doomed if we don’t create your shield thing, then why are you worried? Why shouldn’t we find this other Emerald Tablet and let them stop this comet? Or we can do it with your help!”
Tesla slowly shook his head. “Because…one of the reasons I am what you see now. I volunteered for the experiment, to become this ultimate explorer, but they only allowed me to go because I had refused to help any more in their drive to use my inventions. I saw what they intended — the consequences of using this free energy.”
“What consequences? If it’s free energy and all we’re talking is the big oil companies losing money, I’m all for it.”
Tesla sighed. “No. Something far worse than that. Which is why I have been so reluctant, even in this case, my own time and world. They want the shield, they want to save us from the comet, but only as a first step. The true reason…”
He shook his head again. “I do not know any alternative, and maybe you are right and there is a way to stop the comet with the beam weaponry. Maybe you must set out to do just that. But my time is ending, I am coming undone. Unhinged, if you will. Another reason we have stayed away.”
“What do you mean?”
“You have brought me back to the linear time, away from the breach in the holographic universe.”
“The what?”
“And now I am…not what I was. Reducing myself to this interaction has broken apart the transcendent expansion of my consciousness. It cannot go the other direction without this form degrading further.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You do not need to. But you have what you wanted.”
“What’s that?”
“My help. Come, we will join the others in the final fight. My final fight, not yours.” He looked at her with great sadness. “That has yet to come. But for now, you are right. I cannot let them warp my ideas and use my invention for their dark plans.”
“Okay,” Phoebe said, just trying to keep up, as the air suddenly shimmered.
The wall fell, and the sky brightened.
Two agents rounded the corner, guns drawn — until a bright light seared at their eyes and they dropped the guns.
Phoebe felt a twisting in her stomach, a rush of cold and a vacuum pulling her through what looked to be a tear in the very fabric of the air.
“Hold on to my sleeve,” said Tesla, “and let us lend a hand.”
24
Lightning crackled from high above Caleb as he slowly rose from his kneeling position. He was dimly aware of Boris’s presence behind him, on the platform amidst the terminals and dials and systems and all that wiring — no less a distraction than the great hollow bell above, and the light show straight out of some rock band’s epic final concert. The sound of water trickling and flowing all around, the bubbling elements composing the spaces between the platform and the walkway, covering the floor and serving, he was sure, as some kind of massive conductor for the electromagnetic energy between the bell, the rotating contraption and all the pylons and equipment down here.
One massive system for inter-dimensional travel. Doorways to time and space.
“I trust,” came Boris’s voice, cascading over the water and the crackling air, “you’ve succeeded.”
Caleb never took his eyes off the dazzling display of electro-plasma pyrotechnics above. Arms at his side, shoulders completely relaxed, still half in a trance, he managed a slight nod.
“If you’re lying, the others won’t have it nearly this easy.” Boris at his back now, speaking into his ear. “After I come back — and make no bones about that, I will come back — I’ll put a knife in your trachea and listen to you drown on your own blood before I give the order to have your sister and your son brought here. And with them, I’ll let the goons upstairs apply their influence to get what we want. And…”