The Invention of Everything Else (11 page)

"We're broadcasting live from fabulous New York City," Big Chief Ezra continues. "Tonight's show is sponsored by Roll-Away Rugs, specializing in imported and hand-tied silk rugs. Visit them at their showroom on Twenty-fourth Street in Manhattan and let Yuri and his staff of experts take you on a magical flying carpet ride."

Big Chief Ezra's voice is like a perfectly tuned shock cutting through the low, dark room.

"We've got a real humdinger of a program for you here tonight, folks, as we have a very important guest. Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to Azor Carter, chairman of AJC Enterprises."

Walter folds his eyebrows at the mention of AJC Enterprises as if wondering how Azor could have left him behind, left him out of such an important-sounding venture, an enterprise. Walter's anger once again mixes with pride. He begins to applaud loudly, and it spreads throughout the room. Azor beams onstage.

"Now, Mr. Carter, your press release says that you have designed a time machine and for the price of twenty million dollars you would be willing to build such a vessel for the highest bidder, a vessel you claim will be able to reach not only the distant past but the future as well. That certainly is some claim. Can you tell us more about your plans?"

Louisa turns directly to look at Walter, to question such a report.

Walter glances at her once, wide-eyed. He shrugs as if to say that this is the first he's heard of it also and then leans forward, concentrating on every word Azor says.

Azor turns to face the microphone slowly, like a turtle, his mouth rounded as if full of marbles. He is the very opposite of Big Chief Ezra's enthusiasms. Azor is unhurried.

"That is correct. As we told the United States military"—Walter raises his brows at the mention of a "we" — "for the price of twenty million dollars we would be able to build such a craft."

"Who's this 'we'?" Walter spits under his breath.

"Great—then we'll just keep those phone lines open in case any of you history buffs out there in Radioland have an extra twenty million for Mr. Carter. Ha. Ha. Now, can you tell us a bit about how your craft works."

"I would be happy to." Azor crosses his legs on the stool. He looks dainty in the way that only men past fifty can, like an ugly wildflower. His speech is deliberate, unpracticed. "The circular foil craft that we are constructing in our Far Rockaway lab will be equipped with a number of capacitor plates so that though initially the power core will draw from an electrochemical battery, we believe that once we are fluid in the time-space continuum, it will tap into a universal free energy system, drawing its charge from the atmosphere."

"Far Rockaway," Walter mouths. A remote beachside community way out in Queens. He hadn't thought to look there. "Why Far Rockaway?"

Louisa has no answer.

"As I was trying to explain to you backstage," Azor continues, "the eutron electrical accumulator works with the principle that negative zero divided by positive zero equals zero. Now, I understand that there have been some concerns that in conventional algebra the idea of a minus zero is meaningless. I am standing, uh sitting, har har, here before you tonight," he says, spreading his arms out to the side almost in a curtsy, "to tell you that my associates and I are not using conventional algebra, but rather dimensional algebra of the sort found outside the sphere of our solar system. I tell you, we are using math brought here"—he pauses and looks heavenward—"from the future."

There are chuckles and a few gasps from the audience. Louisa stares at Walter, whose nose is crinkled. "Who are these associates?" he whispers to Louisa again.

"From the future?" asks Big Chief Ezra. "Well, who in blazes brought it here?"

But Azor will not be deterred by questions. He continues his curious speech. "When the eutron electrical accumulator begins to rotate, it metamorphosizes. You might imagine Leonardo's Circle of Man." Azor jerks uncomfortably, as though he knows he isn't quite making sense. He clears his throat for confidence. He continues in his slow, plodding voice. "Let me explain," he says as if that hadn't been what he was trying to do before. "Time and space are not linear. They are curved. When we look at the universe we see atoms, cells, lakes, jellyfish, planets, galaxies. We see circles and curves everywhere. It is the original form, meaning that all life springs from the circle. Think of the egg, the pregnant belly. It is my belief that we, as inventors and scientists, can use this idea, use the curvature of time to cut across it, slicing straight from there to there without following the curve."

"Burrow through time, like a mole?" Big Chief Ezra asks.

But Azor is rolling, and all questions, all prompts, bounce off him. He continues, "See, in creating an inertial attraction, unimaginable
velocities can be reached with the electro-magno force in place. After rising high above the Earth, jetting through time, we will be landing in 1776 within five hours." He shuts his lips together, hoping to give the impression that what he has just stated is as clear as day.

"Really?" Big Chief Ezra says. "I'm not sure I follow. Could you explain it in terms the layman might understand?"

Again ignoring much of the host's question, Azor continues, "We could schedule our return so that we will land squarely within the courtyard of the brand-new Pentagon building in Washington, D.C., whose construction is slated to be complete this January, 1943. But even if they miss the deadline we'll just program the craft to land a few weeks later."

The audience finally laughs.

"So you've been in contact with the military?"

"Yes, we have been in contact and communication with a number of military commanders who must remain anonymous."

Louisa turns a third time to see what her father makes of Azor's statements. A third time he meets her with a blank expression.

The audience is rapt. Some have tiny hints of smiles, not believing a word they are hearing, while others nod in agreement. One young man seated beside Louisa is taking notes so zealously that the lead in his pencil keeps popping, breaking as though on cue, at which point he withdraws a tiny silver sharpener from his breast pocket. He grinds away at the wood, much to the annoyance of a terrifically formal older woman seated in front of the young man. The woman cups her right ear toward the front of the room in order to better make out what is being said over the racket of so much pencil sharpening.

"Is it real?" Louisa asks her dad.

Walter simply shrugs, without taking his eyes off the stage.

Louisa looks up through the transom window. The snow loops in crazy swirls as if each flake has a mind of its own, a home it is furiously trying to get back to despite the heavy traffic.

"Now we'd like to take some questions from our audience members. Are there any questions?" Big Chief Ezra asks.

A young man raises his hand. "Sir, with no disrespect..." The young man rises to his feet. Louisa turns to see who he is but never makes it around all the way. In one glance, time travel, radio, and Azor's reappearance are erased because seated not too far behind her, perhaps
five rows back, is the man from the subway, the mysterious Arthur Vaughn. Louisa stops mid-turn. She stares openly and her blood begins to shift like the early rumblings of an earthquake. The tips of her ears catch fire and she grabs hold of them to stop the flame. Arthur watches the stage. He drums his fingers against the side of his head. She studies his movements, each fingerfall, the bone, muscle, sinew, knuckle, as if this motion will reveal what he is doing here. She studies the dark stubble, the red stain of his cheeks, and the twists of his ear. She sees his jaw, and inside his coat, a collarbone. If this were a radio drama, he'd turn out to be her long-lost brother with amnesia, or perhaps he is simply a German spy trying to infiltrate the Hotel New Yorker's maintenance staff. But this, Louisa reminds herself, is not a radio drama. What is he doing here?

The other young man asks his question. "Sir, how do you plan to deal with the paradox of time travel, namely that it creates the possibility that you might travel backward in time, kill your great-great-grandfather, and then instantaneously disappear, thus not being able to kill your great-great-grandfather and so reappearing again in your time machine only to kill your great-great-grandfather again and disappear?"

Louisa forces herself to turn back to the stage.

Azor stares straight ahead while Big Chief Ezra repeats the question into the microphone. Azor does not look at the audience but rather focuses on the back wall as if he is seeing all time swirling over the audience's heads, or would if only he could duck this annoying question.

Azor smiles suddenly. The question's monkey wrench is nothing more to him than an annoying black fly that can be swatted away. The on-air silence grows awkward. Azor is dazed, and in that moment of pause he begins to chew at his lips in a gesture so familiar that it brings Azor back to Louisa fully. He is lost in thought. There is silence for another moment until, at last, he turns toward the microphone, and squinting his eyes up into darts, he raises them heavenward again, muttering a scapegoat, a sentence. "Son, molecular flow," he answers, "is perpetual."

Relief settles back over the crowd as if those words explained something. They didn't to Louisa. They don't seem to make much sense to the question asker either. He creases his eyebrows, gets a puzzled look on his face, and gives up. He takes a seat. Louisa shifts again, trying to catch Arthur's eye.

A woman raises her hand.

"Yes, you there," Big Chief Ezra calls.

The woman stands. "What are the legal ramifications of a time machine?"

Azor laughs, stunned. He giggles, chucking his shoulders up and down before answering. "Madame, I can assure you, when I am toiling in my laboratory, the eutron accelerator humming beside me and invention on the wing, the laws of man loom about as large as the exhalations of one flea."

"Before, you called it a eutron accumulator."

"Yes, Madame. Both the accumulator and the accelerator are crucial to my work. You see, time travel is a matter of speed. It is a matter of gravity."

And so the woman seated beside the questioner stands, wanting more information. "But have you actually traveled through time?" she asks.

"We have flown a number of models on test runs," Azor says. "Yes, we have been to the future, Madame. It's wonderful." The audience gasps. Azor smiles.

"What about the past?" the woman asks.

"The past" Azor says. "The past is a bit trickier, but we are making stunning progress each day."

"Which leads us to our next topic, Mr. Carter. Now"—the host pats some sweat off his brow and shifts in his chair—"if time travel is possible, how come America is not flooded with visitors from the future? The people want to know. And we'll return with Mr. Carter's answer to that question just after this message from one of our sponsors."

Walter finally leans back in his chair and looks over at Louisa. "Azor," is all he says at first, and then, "Do you know what this means, Lou?" He is smiling ear to ear, but she is oblivious. She sits staring straight ahead, feeling the presence of Arthur Vaughn somewhere behind her back like danger or maybe delectation, heart pumping in her hands. Walter asks again, "I knew he'd do it. Do you know what this means, Lou?"

"What?" she asks without looking at her father.

Walter is stunned, staring up at Azor as if he were Walter's personal hero. "Honey. It means Freddie," Walter whispers. "It means we can go see Freddie."

Louisa sighs and slumps, shaking her head.

"Myyyyyyyyy!" Big Chief Ezra rolls the sound across his tongue. "Are they delicious! That's right. I'm talking about Myer's Mixed Roasted Nuts. One handful is never enough. The highest-quality mix of cashews, pecans, filberts, macadamias, peanuts, and almonds. Myyyyy-er's Nuts. For good health. For long life. Look for Myer's Nuts on your grocer's shelf in both the salted and unsalted varieties."

Big Chief Ezra returns to a neutral position, his normal voice. He continues. "Now, Mr. Carter. Visitors from the future. Are they here? And if they are here, why haven't they declared themselves to the proper authorities?"

Walter again leans forward. Azor sits staring out at the audience. He opens his lips and closes them. Opens his lips and closes them again. He exhales. "Yes."

Big Chief Ezra waits for a further explanation. One is not forthcoming. "Yes?" he prods.

Azor turns toward him and nods his head yes.

"Could you elaborate, sir?"

"It's a theory I have. I'm not certain, but I think visitors from the future are quite common. They are people you've all heard of, read about in the newspapers or history books," Azor says.

"Who are they?" Ezra asks.

"Well, Ben Franklin, Louis Pasteur, Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace. You know. Nikola Tesla. He lives right here in New York City."

Now it is Louisa's turn to lurch forward in her seat. Mr. Tesla? The old man at the hotel?

"Is he still alive? We haven't heard from him in years." Big Chief Ezra laughs.

"Oh, yes. Quite alive," Azor says seriously. "Indeed I've incorporated many of his ideas into my work."

"You mean you've met him."

"Well, no. Not yet, but I plan to."

Louisa considers how he sucked the electricity from the building. It's true Mr. Tesla is strange, but that doesn't mean he is from the future.

"Where's the proof?" Ezra asks. "Has he got some membership card from the future?"

"No," Azor says. "The proof is in the wireless technology that you are using to broadcast here tonight. Mr. Tesla invented it."

Now Big Chief Ezra stares. "Well" he says. "Well, I'm not sure what Mr. Marconi would have to say about that."

Azor barely stirs. He looks again at the back wall, above it all. "Mr. Marconi can go suck an egg."

The stage manager starts wildly circling his arm in the air and Big Chief Ezra looks his way and nods.

"There you have it, folks," Ezra says. "Visitors from the future? Do they exist? Azor Carter, chairman of AJC Enterprises, says yes. Sorry, but that's all we have time for today on
Big Chief Ezra's Science Discoveries.
Join us next week when we explore this conundrum: Gorillas, friend or foe? Thank you for tuning in. Signing of, this is Big Chief Ezra saying, Hiyahiyahiyahiyahiyahiyahi!"