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The machine works. If only you’d stayed, you would have seen our monstrous storm rip through the Great Lakes region of the United States. Twelve ships sank, at least thirty were disabled. The damage is astronomical, the investments I made in anticipation of this will turn a pretty profit.
The problem, Nikola, is that you are too much of an idealist to understand how useful the Coil will be to us. You are too concerned with the collateral damage. I’ve promised you we will find ways to mitigate the risk, to stop the machine from damaging human life. It will simply take time.
I know Edison’s men did a thorough job discrediting you, but you cannot give up, you cannot fall into your depressions. You must understand that what Edison says about you is unimportant, you are the brilliant one, the one whose name will live forever. You must believe me.
I know you have sworn to leave for good, to cut your ties to me and our machine. I know you’ve said society is not ready for this level of manipulation. But surely you understand that you can’t invent without first understanding how society will be changed by your advancement. Do not be lost to me, Nikola.
You needn’t worry about money, thanks to my father-in-law’s generous funding. Of course we will need more money in our next stage of development, and the only way to get enough money is to set the Coil to work for us.
Think of the power we will have, how we can bring about change, good change, to help humanity. Who knows what the future holds, what we can do with this in the years to come?
Please reconsider, Nikola.
Appleton
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
Castiglione Del Lago, Italy
Nicholas found Mike asleep when he stepped into her hospital room, carrying a prosciutto panino and a Coke Light from the vending machine. Between bites, he called Ben in London.
r /> “Tell me you have something.”
“I do, more than something. You aren’t going to believe what I have. I’ve been combing through a treasure trove here. St. Germaine has a letter from Appleton Kohath to Nikola Tesla, dating back to 1901, when he found a folio in a junk store he believed was a lost set of papers by Leonardo da Vinci.”
“Da Vinci? What’s that all about?”
“Give me a minute. Okay, so Kohath found this Da Vinci folio in Venice and sent it immediately to his good buddy Nikola Tesla, and the two of them married Da Vinci’s ideas to Tesla’s Coil and started cooking up a machine to control the weather.”
“You’re saying the Kohaths’ weather machine is originally a design from Da Vinci?”
“Yep. Didn’t you tell me Savich spoke to you about Tesla and his electricity experiments?”
Nicholas chewed on his final bit of panino. “Yes. When I asked Savich to research anyone early in the century who could possibly have done groundwork on weather control, he gave me Tesla, and reminded me about the Siberian devastation. I didn’t see it being any use at the time, but maybe he was on the right track. What did you learn about Tesla, Ben?”
“Since I’m not an expert on Tesla, I looked him up. Like Da Vinci, he was a man ahead of his time. He believed the earth could be used to create power, believed he could create energy from the earth’s crust. And go figure this: Tesla believed he could signal other planets.
“In addition to all his electricity experimentation, he did a number of experiments with the ionosphere, traveled all over the world messing with it. That Siberian explosion in 1908 was so large it knocked down sixty million trees across eight hundred and thirty square miles. Pretty intense for a couple of twentieth-century scientists.”
“But even knowing this,” Nicholas said, “how does it make sense that the Kohaths can control the weather?”
“I found another letter to Tesla after the 1913 Great Lakes Storm that killed many people and caused so much damage. Kohath was basically begging Tesla not to be such a wuss and a pessimist, and leave him high and dry. But, of course, Tesla did just that. Kohath even wrote about his wife’s father funding his work.
“He and Tesla never worked together again, saw each other again—but it didn’t matter. Appleton Kohath had figured out how to manipulate both the weather and the markets.”
Nicholas said, “So that huge 1913 storm, that’s how they got more development money.”
“Yes, straight-up stock buying, selling.”
“Nicholas, can you imagine, back at the beginning, Kohath sending Da Vinci’s papers to Tesla, saying, ‘Hey, lookee here, Da Vinci created a machine to control the weather but the old dude didn’t understand enough about electromagnetic energy to make it work. Between us, I’ll just bet we can make our own lightning bolt.’?”
Nicholas said, “And so together they developed a machine to create weather half a century before our scientists were on their way to figuring it out.”
Ben said, “Yes, and the Kohath family continued to refine and perfect their storm machine to the point where they can do precision storms, like starting that horrific sandstorm in the Gobi.”
Nicholas said, “Or sending a storm and tsunami to level Washington, D.C.”
“What? What did you say? They want to destroy Washington?”
