Chapter Text
“Our first endeavours are purely instinctive, promptings of an imagination vivid and undisciplined ... but those early impulses, tho not immediately productive, are of the greatest moment and may shape our very destinies.” – Nikola Tesla
STORMS AND LECTURE NOTES
OXFORD, 1885
A ruffle of wings settled on the window. Their blur of white faded from the air as the creature turned its elegant head and nestled its beak between layers of feathers, knocking rain free.
The storm over Oxford hadn’t decided what to do, so instead it loomed, slowly grazing over the twinkling gas-lit streets. Their glow was just enough to light the underside of the storm in the absence of starlight.
A pair of bright eyes watched the sky, scanning the clouds as they rolled through each other. He could feel their friction and smell the droplets of water tumbling – ripping electrons free as they rose and fell in a maddening struggle. It was a scene alive with expectancy, like two lovers drawn apart, desperate to rejoin in what could only be a beautiful disaster.
He breathed in the energy, waiting for –
– a river of light cut through the heavens and dove into the earth with perfect silence.
The air around it burned.
Expanded.
And began reverberating through the sky towards his window.
Nikola Tesla felt the world shudder.
His shutters rattled and the pigeon hopped onto his outstretched arm in a frightened flutter, clawing its way along his suit.
“Sh...” he cooed, tracing a finger down the back of its neck. It nipped him affectionately. “This is the best part.”
“You’ll catch something from that thing,” Helen climbed into the university’s attic, sitting on the floorboards before swinging her legs up through the hole in the floor.
“I thought I told you not to come up here?” he replied, as he gazed at the violence.
“You say that every day but you never mean it,” she closed the hatch and strolled over to the window, keeping her distance from the stray bird scaling Nikola’s shoulder. There was a storm raging over the city but it was yet to reach them. She could feel its cool wind kicking through the open window onto their faces. “We have evening class tonight.”
Tesla lifted a thick eyebrow. “You are here because?”
Helen shook her head, turning her back on the window. Nikola had transformed the attic into a dormitory. A bed was pushed against the far side of the misshapen room – meticulously made. The rest of the space he had proceeded to fill with whatever he could scavenge from the engineering laboratories. Mostly it comprised a concoction of wire – bundles and bundles of it.
“I’m here because I was the only fool our lecturer could convince to come and retrieve you from this cave of yours.”
“Come here...”
She frowned. “Not if you-” but realised her mistake, Nikola was talking to the pigeon. Helen watched as he cupped the creature in his hands and knelt down onto the floor, as if hiding from something.
A moment later Helen screamed but no-one heard it above the roar that shattered the windows. She fell to the ground amid a hail of glass, holding her ears and slamming her eyes shut as the small room became a beacon of light. The accompanying thunder pounded through her soul until she thought it would break.
Suddenly, there was nothing.
She opened her eyes to a ball of light several feet across, spinning slowly in the centre of the room. It shimmered, tiny shards of lightning branching off. The sphere’s surface pulsed with burning veins that hummed in and out of brightness as though this were a living creature birthed to the world in a surge of mayhem.
The ball-lightning didn’t stay suspended for long. At length it rolled lazily through the air toward the window. Helen had to leap out of the way as it collided with a solid wall – dissipated and vanished.
The room was returned to darkness. Helen turned her head to Nikola’s quiet laugh. He opened his palms and the pigeon flew out into the storm just as the first sheet of rain hit the walls.
“Can we go now?” Helen hissed, clearly frightened by his little show.
Rain speckled his cheeks as he nodded and pushed what remained of the windows closed. “Indeed. I’m done.”
A young Helen Magnus blocked his path, hands settled on her hips just below the cinched waist of her gown. “You’ll be well and truly done when they university finds out you put a lightning rod on the roof!” she grabbed his sleeve and tugged him along. “And don't get me started on the stolen wire.”
Night class was easily the most poorly attended of all the physical science classes. A quick turn about the room made its avoidance plain.
The lecturer, stunted and balanced on a high stool at the front of the room, slanted over the black board scratching illegible diagrams in-between a series of annotations that lacked internal consistency.
By default, the front bench was left empty.
It wasn’t that the few students who bothered to show up disliked being close to the board, or feared looking too keen. Indeed, in different circumstances the perfectly amiable seating would have been ideal if only to stand a chance at deciphering the board. However, in this case the stench leaching out of the lecturer’s jacket was almost visible on the air. Like a noxious gas, it kept students at a safe distance.
A rumble of thunder woke Nigel Griffin. Snorting, he rubbed a hooked nose on his sleeve and nestled his head back in the warm ditch of his arm. Several of his books were considering a leap of faith from the desk but there was one book the world would never take from him; his diary. It was not because he kept secrets in it – he was not a particularly secretive person – no, this book contained a detailed list of all his appointments and lesson times, observations and ramblings of the world. In his first year, he’d misplaced this book, spent the day wandering around in a lost state and finally ended up locked in a cupboard. Not something he was keen to repeat.
At the back, right corner sat the rigid figure of James. Unlike the others who were either asleep or scribbling madly, James Watson narrowed his eyes and observed his peers. Every so often he tilted his head, changing subjects. The lecture board continued to fill but he didn’t feel the need to lift his feathered pen for there were far more interesting things afoot than the eternal motion of the planets.
The twin doors of the lecture room flew open with a gush of wind, startling those that had been napping. A young woman with a dishevelled mop of golden hair dragged a wiry gentleman behind her, depositing him in the nearest seat. She nodded at the lecturer and then collapsed next to Tesla, opening her book where she quickly set to work copying the board.
Nikola rolled his eyes, spun around so that he was lying lengthways across the bench and promptly went to sleep with his head irritatingly in her lap. Helen ignored him, brushing her hair out of the way.
“Mr Tesla?” The lecturer had stopped writing to stare expectantly at the empty section of bench hiding Tesla.
“Yes, sir?” came the half muffled, mostly bored response.
“You wouldn’t happen to know anything about a bolt of lightning hitting the south end of the building, would you?” His very large, white eyebrows furrowed. The lecturer knew that the young boy was fascinated by the sheer intrigue of raw current – with good reason. He had what could only be described as affection for it; a relationship that was proving dangerous for the integrity of the building.
There was a long silence in response. The lecturer shook his head slowly and returned to the board.
“Let me know if you remember...” he muttered, selecting a new piece of chalk.
Nikola, blissfully looking forward to his sleep, shut his eyes and started planning frictionless power systems. He’d just managed a smile when all the air was forced out of his lungs by the sudden impact of a heavy book on his chest. Coughing, he sat up with a start.
“What the...” there was a sizable text book in his lap.
“Niiice of you to join us,” a deep voice undulated over the air. It belonged to a tall, strong-cut face with a square chin and deep brown eyes. Eyes which trailed to Helen, hovered there for a moment and then returned to Nikola's shocked facade.
“And who are you?” Nikola dusted off the book and laid it on the bench. He coughed again and then groaned, feeling his skin burn from the impact.
“I’m new,” replied John. “Well, not that new. This is my fourth class but the first one that you’ve attended since I started. Helen said that I should return your textbook and thank you for its use.”
Nikola opened the cover and saw that it was, indeed, his. Not that he’d opened it. His name was written in Helen’s careful handwriting.
“Thank you John,” whispered Helen, risking a glance.
“You lent him my book?” Nikola frowned, lowering his voice so that the ominous student couldn’t hear.
“Don’t worry, I relocated the spiders nesting on it,” she smirked. “It’s not like you missed it, Nikola. Now quiet, I have to get all this down.”
“It’s rubbish anyway,” Tesla shifted the book to the side as he scanned the board. “There’s a new theory about to be published that shows the earth is much older than that.”
“Maybe but right now I need you to stop speaking.” She prodded him with the tip of her quill, which hurt quite a bit more than she meant it to.
It worked though. For at least two minutes Nikola did not say a word.
“Helen?”
“Sh...”
“Can I plagiarise your assignment on Inheritance and Mendal?” he inched in a bit, rocking ever so slightly until Helen flicked her damp hair over her shoulder and glared. “That’d be a no then,” he sighed, making the bench back into a bed.
Helen’s essay on Inheritance and Mendal mysteriously made its way into Tesla’s attic accommodation several days later where it was promptly skimmed, re-worded and presented in class where it received a B-.
According to the lecturer, Nikola had been marked on his ability to acquire answers discreetly.
James Watson, a creature who Nikola rarely spoke to except to taunt, held his own paper up so that its A was glaringly obvious.
“Your motor still bursting into flames?” inquired Tesla casually, ripping his own assignment into a thousand pieces.
James seldom bothered with more than one word, “Presently.”
“Excellent news. Let me know when your life goes up in smoke.” He tipped his hat and headed out the main doors to the garden.
Watson watched the strange man vanish into the morning. “Indeed...”
He was about to waltz off down to the dining hall when something beautiful caught his eye. Miss Helen Magnus, daughter of the currently discredited but once well-thought-of physician, was making her way toward him. At first he thought he must have been inadvertently standing in the way of her target but every time he took a subtle step she realigned her trajectory.
“’scuse me,” she started, quite out of breath.
He’d never spoken to her before now, except when handing out things in class and that one time they’d said an awkward, ‘good day’ in the corridor. James tried to look as pleasant as he could, shaking off his usual icy disposition and general dislike of conversation.
“Yes?” he managed, slipping his brass glasses into a more stable position, higher up the bridge of his nose.
Helen’s hands settled on her hips as she caught her breath. “I’m not wanting to disturb you,” she began, albeit a little suspiciously, “but – I was – wondering. You’re good at anatomy, if I remember?”
Not the first question he thought he’d be asked by the daughter of a doctor. “Presumably.”
“Would I be able to borrow you, for a little while? No more than an hour or so. If you have the time, of course.”
James clasped his gloved hands behind his back and nodded, curiosity getting the better of him.