White City

White City

By Lewis Shiner

They enter the Electricity Building together and stand in the center, underneath the great dome. This is the site of the Westinghouse exhibit, a huge curtained archway resting upon a metal platform. Beyond the arch are two huge Tesla coils, the largest ever built. At the peak of the arch is a tablet inscribed with the words: WESTINGHOUSE EELCTRIC & MANUFACTURING CO./TESLA POLYPHASE SYSTEM.

Tesla’s mood is triumphant. Edison, his chief rival, has been proven wrong. Alternating current will be the choice of the future. The Westinghouse Company has this week been awarded the contract to build the first two generators at Niagara Falls. Tesla cannot forgive Edison’s hiring of Menlo Park street urchins to kidnap pets, which he then electrocuted with alternating current – “Westinghoused” them, as he called it. But Edison’s petty, lunatic attempts to discredit the polyphase system have failed, and he stands revealed as an old, bitter, and unimaginative man.

Edison has lost, and history will soon forget him.

George Westinghouse himself, Tesla’s patron, is here tonight. So ar J.P. Morgan, Anne’s father, and William K. Vanderbilt and Mayor Harrison. Here also are Tesla’s friends Robert and Katherine Johnson, and Samuel Clemens, who insists everyone call him by his pen name.

It is nearly midnight.

White City. Photo by Elena

Tesla steps lightly onto the platform. He snaps his fingers and gas-filled tubes burst into pure white light. Tesla has fashioned them to spell out the names of several of the celebrities present, as well as the names of his favorite Serbian poets. He holds up his hands to the awed and expectant crowd. “Gentlemen and Ladies. I have no wish to bore you with speeches. I have asked you here to witness a demonstration of the power of electricity.”

He continues to talk, his voice rising to a high pitch in his excitement. He produces several wireless lamps and places them around the stage. He points out that their illumination in undiminished, despite their distance from the broadcast power source. “Note how the gas at low pressure exhibits extremely high conductivity. This gas is little different from that in the upper reaches of our atmosphere.”

He concludes with a few fireballs and pinwheels of light. As the applause gradually subsides he holds up his hands once again. “These are little more than parlor tricks. Tonight I wish to say thank you, in a dramatic and visible way, to all of you who have supported me through you patronage, through your kindness, through your friendship. This my gift to you, and to all of mankind.”

He opens a panel in the front of the arch. A massive knife switch is revealed. Tesla makes a short bow and then throws the switch.

The air crackles with ozone. Electricity roars through Tesla’s body. His hair stands on end and flames dance at the tips of his fingers. Electricity is his God, his best friend, his only lover. It is clean, pure, absolute. It arcs through him and invisible into the sky. Tesla alone can see it. To him it is blinding white, the color he sees when inspiration, fear or elation strikes him.

The coils draw colossal amounts of power. All across the great hall, all over the White City, lights flicker and dim. Anne Morgan cries out in shock and fear.

Through the vaulted windows overhead the sky itself begins to glow.

(Excerpt from The Year’s Best Science Fiction, eighth annual collection, edited by Gardner Dozois, 2008)