The Tesla Legacy

Chapter 14

Joe stood at the billiard table with pages spread out across the green baize. The blueprint with the sticky note on it was for an unnamed device. There was no picture of it fully assembled, but it didn’t look as if it would turn into anything sinister. It looked like a tiny articulated figure run by gears and racks.

Nowadays it would be called a robot, but Nikola Tesla would have called it an automaton. Whatever it was called, it didn’t look worth all the trouble. Its harmless looks must be deceiving.

He read the newspaper clipping, learning about the collapse of a bridge in Connecticut a few months before he was born. Three (red) people had died. The article speculated that metal fatigue was responsible for the disaster. His father had stuck another yellow note on the picture of the broken bridge. On that one he wrote: I was responsible for this. May God forgive me. Show the wisdom I did not and have the courage to destroy it.

Joe had no idea what his father wanted him to destroy. He was hoping that the automaton would give him a clue, because he knew that he would follow his father on one last, crazy adventure and try to do as he asked.

Maybe it would help him to make sense of the man. Maybe it would help him to make sense of himself. Or maybe it was another wild-goose chase. Whatever it was, it was the last thing he had from a father he’d ignored too long.

He studied the newspaper clipping. How like his father to give him this as his final gift — guilt and a confusing request to show wisdom without an explanation as to how or why. Could his father have knocked down the bridge? If so, what did that action have to do with the plans for a tiny automaton?

Joe pored over the plans, making a list of items he would need to build the tiny creature. By the time he finished, his list looked a lot like the lists in Nikola’s folder.

His neck cracked when he straightened up. Too long bending over the billiard table. He rubbed his eyes and yawned. Time for bed, but he still had stuff to do.

First, he gathered the original plans and put them in the old cardboard box his father had saved for him. Even though he’d photographed every scrap of paper in the box and backed up the photos, he felt as if he ought to lock the box in a safe, just in case.

But he didn’t have a safe. He didn’t need one, because his entire house was more secure than most banks. He took the box upstairs to his office and stashed it in a closet behind boxes of turn-of-the-century Christmas decorations. It seemed like the last place anyone would look.

He stuck his parts list in his pocket and went down to the kitchen to make a cup of chamomile tea. Some previous inhabitant of the house had purchased an electric kettle made out of copper. Based on the wiring, he thought the device had been created in the 1930s. So far, it had always worked, and it had never threatened to set the house on fire, but he reminded himself, again, that it might be a good idea to take it apart and replace the electronics. He had no intention of parting with the dinged kettle itself. It belonged to the house.

Tea in hand, he headed to the parlor. His upstairs office was fine during the day, but he preferred to spend his evenings working on his laptop in the parlor. He liked the warmth of the fireplace. Edison did, too. The dog was stretched out in front of the artificial flames, snoring away.

Joe set the teacup on the marble-topped coffee table like a Victorian gentleman. This was a room his non-ancestor Nikola Tesla would have understood. Except for the laptop on the ottoman, everything dated from Nikola’s era, and the inventor would have recognized the laptop as a device he had predicted over a hundred years before, one that could wirelessly send and transmit information across the globe.

Nothing here would shock Nikola. For all Joe knew, Nikola Tesla might have visited this underground house and sat in this very parlor. He might have known the designer of one of the largest electrical underground rail systems in the world — one that ran under his very feet. If so, why wouldn’t the man have invited the famous scientist here for tea?

Joe pulled the leather armchair closer to the fire and set his shopping list on the arm. It wouldn’t take him too long to order the parts. He’d have them sent to his lawyer’s office. Mr. Rossi would forward them by bike courier to the information booth. That was how Joe got all his mail.

Before he started ordering, he needed to check his email. He’d been off the grid for most of the day, other than a quick note to his administrative assistant to tell everyone he’d be unreachable.

One (cyan) email had been sorted into his Private folder, and he went there first to see an email from Alan Wright, CEO of Wright Industries. Joe paused before answering it. Alan had sent him a few emails over the months he’d been in New York, and he hadn’t answered any of them. He hadn’t wanted Alan to see him penned up in the tunnels like a hamster.

He skimmed the email. Alan had heard of his father’s death and wished to express his sympathy. How had Alan heard, and why did he care?

Joe hadn’t told anyone but Celeste and Vivian about his father’s death, but the Internet was a giant tattletale, so presumably the whole world knew. Anyway, Alan wanted to meet tomorrow for a drink at The Campbell Apartment — a trendy cocktail lounge in Grand Central Terminal. That couldn’t be an accidental choice. Alan must know he was trapped here.

In some ways, Alan was as trapped as Joe. He could move around the world, but he couldn’t escape from his role as a billionaire CEO. Joe knew the trap of being surrounded by people suddenly afraid to tell him the truth, afraid to open up to him, ready to lie to make him happy, certain his life was far too glamorous for them and their concerns. He wondered if Alan missed being ordinary as much as he did. He tapped out a quick answer, arranging to meet him the next evening at eight (purple) for drinks.

Then he switched over to his Work folder which contained bug reports and a couple of questions from the young software architect he’d been grooming to take over maintenance of the facial recognition engine so that Joe could switch to working on gait recognition.

Gait recognition was new and interesting. In gait recognition, the computer tried to determine a subject’s identity from the way he or she walked. Gait recognition enabled identification from a much farther distance than facial recognition. It was surprisingly effective.

He dealt with those emails before moving to his newest folder, RRT, an abbreviation for Recognition Request Tracking. He whistled in surprise, and Edison lifted his head.

“It’s OK, boy, go on back to sleep,” Joe said.

But it wasn’t OK. Just the opposite. In the last few hours, a million more requests had been made than the week before. That didn’t make sense. Either his software had a bug, or all the governmental agencies in the United States were experiencing a massive crime wave, or something new had come online, probably something automated. His stomach clenched.

List forgotten, he logged into the system and began tracking the requests down, compiling reports of where the requests originated and the reasons why. So far, they all came from a single source.

Edison nudged his knee, but Joe pushed him away. “Busy, Edison.”

The dog dropped his head into Joe’s lap, blocking his view of the screen.

“What do you need?” He looked at the clock on the corner of his computer. He’d been sitting here for hours. “Bedtime?”

Edison wagged his tail and looked meaningfully at the door. The dog didn’t think it was healthy to sit here this long. He was right, of course. But he didn’t have to go to the bathroom. When he did, he stood by the door and gave a bark to let Joe know it was important. Just a single bark, because Edison, or Joe, was well trained.

“It’s going to be a while, buddy,” Joe told him. “Sorry.”

Edison gave him a skeptical look and wandered out toward the kitchen. A crunching sound indicated he had found a midnight snack.

Joe scrolled through the reports he’d just generated. It was unmistakable. The National Security Agency was submitting millions of match requests.

What was their source material? He found that, too. They’d submitted surveillance footage from all across the country — people going into stores, people crossing the street, people leaving church, people eating at McDonald’s. Any of those requests would have been normal, but so many of them at once meant they had tapped into thousands of surveillance cameras and were looking for automated matches of the millions of people who appeared on the videos. Those people couldn’t all be criminals or terrorists — the vast majority of them were innocent. But they were still being tracked.

Millions of innocent people were being tracked.

And Joe had created the monster.