Son of Tesla

SON OF TESLA: Chapter 49

"WHAT IS IT?" he asked.

"A resonant oscillation platform," Petar grunted, hauling Jem further into the room. Brodham followed suit.

Together they bent down and rested Jem against a wall. His breathing was light and ragged. His eyes were closed, but as their hands left him, he smiled and said, "Did we make it?"

"Almost, Jem. We're almost there," Petar said softly, then stood and strode toward a bank of monitors along the far wall. Brodham stood, uncertain. He'd come to help, but this was way over his head. The room, unlike the main lab, was painted a sterile, reflective white. It wasn't large, about twenty feet or so across in either direction. The roof soared over their head, perhaps twenty feet as well. It was like standing in a large, white cube.

The center of the room was dominated by a large square platform. The base of it was black and soft-looking. Rubber, maybe, although it gleamed a little too brightly in the light. The soft base rose at least as high as Brodham's chest. On top of it he could see a smooth, flat metal surface.

The front and sides of the platform were open. Out of the rear edge sprouted a wall of tubes and thick electrical cables that rose to the ceiling. They seemed to grow from it like vines, some curled around each other, others perfectly straight all the way to the metal ceiling. More cables snaked across the floor and disappeared under the rubbery base. A few of them disappeared through the baseboards of the wall, but most culminated in what looked like a massive control bank along the left wall. That's where Petar stood, rapidly tapping keys on two keyboards simultaneously.

Three of the monitors in front of him – there were at least ten or eleven total – were glowing with activity. Two showed a scroll of white numbers, and the third was displaying some type of wave pattern, like a heart-rate monitor in a hospital.

Petar frowned at the monitor with the wave, then bent over the keyboards a second time. The sound of fighting from the main lab was muffled. They seemed to be safe for now. Brodham laid his M4 on the floor beside Jem and walked over to Petar.

"How does it work?" he asked.

Petar didn't look up. The keys clacked as he spoke. "An oscillation is a regular variation in magnitude around a different point. My father spent years working with them. It's how AC works." Brodham nodded. Alternating current. Tesla's most famous invention. "In a wave system," Petar continued, "a resonant oscillation uses a regular impulse timed to the frequency of the waves to build its magnitude without expending unnecessary power."

He glanced at Brodham, smiled briefly, then studied the numbers scrolling down the second monitor. "You know, I didn't think you believed me in New York."

"I didn't," Brodham said.

"What changed?"

"Had a little run in with one of your Koscheis."

For the first time, Petar's fingers paused over the keyboards. Just a brief hesitation. Then the clicking resumed.

"He read your memories," Petar said, eyes still forward.

"He was looking for you."

"That explains it." Petar's tongue peeked out the corner of his mouth as he concentrated.

"Explains what?"

"Why there was only one Koschei here with the vucari."

"That thing outside," Brodham guessed. Petar nodded.

"And you got stuck in his head." It was a statement, not a question.

"That's right," Brodham said. "It's all real. You, your father, the invasion. All of it."