The Tesla Legacy

Chapter 26

Ash opened the thick glass window. A white feather blew into the room. He watched it dance across the room before settling on his desk. Up here, almost nothing came in from the outside. Pigeons must be nesting above his floor.

He picked up the feather and studied it. Life would always find a way, no matter how much man tried to insulate himself from it.

He found the thought encouraging, and today he needed encouragement. He’d had a useless lunch with the mayor. While he agreed that solar road technology would save the city energy and money — the lots wouldn’t need snow removal, the road tiles could funnel energy into the buildings they surrounded, the energy generated could recharge electric cars — it wasn’t enough. The mayor needed broader political support to even consider such a radical move. The union for road builders was strong, the contracts with asphalt providers were long running, and all the other parties vested in the current system would resist. It would cost Ash a great deal of money, more than he had budgeted, but not more than he could afford.

He would win in the long run, but it might be a very long run indeed. The past was constantly reaching into the future and dragging it down. It would be easier to build a solar-powered road on Mars than in New York City.

His administrative assistant brought him a cappuccino and a printout listing his afternoon schedule. His next meeting was in half an hour with an Arizona mall owner who promised to be a strong beta test site for the solar road technology. Good numbers there would translate into sales, but good numbers in a place as far north as New York would translate into even more.

He browsed his email. Joe Tesla had not responded to his invitation. Ash didn’t like being ignored, so he pulled up his tracking app. The dot that was Edison was moving at a good walking clip, then stopping for over a minute at a time — long enough for a train to pass. So, Mr. Tesla and his faithful hound were in a subway tunnel heading north and west. Probably the 7 Line.

They stopped for a long moment at Times Square, then started moving slowly north toward Central Park. Maybe Joe was meeting his dog walker at a station close to the park. If so, Ash would lose track of Joe’s movements.

But from what he’d heard about Joe, he didn’t go anywhere without the dog, so if he was up to something interesting, Ash would wait him out. He took a long sip of cappuccino. His assistant got it from this fantastic coffee shop on the corner. The place had insane lines, but he’d never had to wait in them. Perks of being the boss.

Edison cut left, west, which meant they were in the E subway tunnel.

Ash called his assistant in and asked her to take the meeting with the mall guy. She was ambitious and smart, and her eyes gleamed at the thought. If she landed this, he’d let her manage the project and hire someone else to fetch his coffee, and she knew it. He waved her off and went back to watching Joe. His gut told him Joe was going somewhere significant, and that was more important than handling the Arizona deal himself.

When the green dot turned south again, he looked for Quantum online. He didn’t have anyone else whom he could tap at short notice for something like this, but he still hesitated. He was fairly confident that Quantum would do his best to come through for him, now that he knew the stakes. But would he be able to manage it? He had failed to retrieve the suitcase, had tipped off Joe to his presence, and missed his chance to steal the automaton.

Joe was now in the tunnel for the A, C, and E subway lines and walking ahead at a pretty brisk pace. A man on a mission. He was a couple of stops away from 34th Street and Penn Station. Ash knew what was there — the hotel where Nikola Tesla died.

He didn’t have time for a different decision. He found Quantum and sent him to a dark chat room they liked to use.

Ash grinned. It was good that he had Quantum on the case after all, and that the GPS was proving so useful. The device would be out of Joe’s hands and in Ash’s by the end of the day.

Then he could play with it.