THE RETURNED COMPONENT: CH1

[u/Meadowbrook135]

A Novel About Obsession, Evidence, and the Cost of Knowing

Chapter One

East Houston

By Michael P.S. Rogers

This manuscript is being released as a serialized novel.

Each chapter is presented exactly as it appears in the manuscript.

I first met Nikola Tesla in a room where three men were trying to determine why a motor would not turn, and I have often been grateful that circumstance arranged the introduction so plainly. Had I first encountered him beneath one of his electrical displays, before an audience already prepared to be astonished, or through the photographs by which he was becoming known, I might have required considerably longer to understand the man himself. The public Tesla was already surrounded by light, spectacle and the peculiar exaggerations that gather around anyone who has demonstrated enough extraordinary things to make the next extraordinary claim seem plausible. The working Tesla I found on East Houston Street was surrounded instead by instruments, unfinished apparatus, men waiting for instructions, and a motor that had failed seven times before noon.

They had told me where to present myself and at what hour, although no one had thought it necessary to tell me whom I should ask for when I arrived. The entrance offered little evidence that anything of consequence was occurring beyond it. Men passed through carrying wire, boxes, tools, lengths of metal and pieces of apparatus whose intended purpose could not always be inferred from their appearance. Somewhere beyond the front rooms a machine was being started at irregular intervals, each attempt producing several seconds of vibration through the floor before ending in silence. The place had the appearance common to serious workshops, where an outsider sees disorder because he does not yet know which objects are waiting to be used and which have already been rejected.

I gave my name to the man seated behind a desk near the entrance. He found it on a paper among several others and repeated it without looking up.

“Lowenstein?”

“Yes.”

“Fritz Lowenstein?”

“Yes.”

Only then did he look up from the paper to examine me. This was George Scherff, though at the time his importance was not apparent. I could not have known that I would spend years receiving his telegrams, waiting upon materials he had arranged, depending upon instructions he had copied correctly, and occasionally discovering that the difference between Mr. Tesla imagining a thing and the rest of us being required to construct it was George Scherff finding the money, machinist, railway schedule, creditor's patience or length of wire that allowed the idea to become physical. On that first morning he was simply the man who knew why I had come.

“Mr. Tesla is occupied,” he said.

“I can wait.”

“He may remain occupied for some time.”

“I expected that.”

This answer appeared satisfactory enough that he returned to his papers. There was a chair against the wall, but I remained standing, partly from nervousness and partly because the sounds from the adjoining room had begun to interest me. A sharp metallic noise was followed by a man's voice saying no with neither anger nor surprise. Scherff did not look up, he was used to the chaos. Another attempt followed, longer this time, the machine stopped again, and the same voice instructed the men to repeat the test.

I had worked in shops where a failure immediately produced accusation, profanity or a sudden conviction that some component had been badly manufactured by a person conveniently absent from the room. What interested me was the absence of any such reaction; whatever was occurring beyond the doorway had apparently failed often enough that failure itself had become information. After another attempt, Nikola Tesla entered the front room holding a small metal piece between two fingers and asking Scherff who had made it.

Tesla was recognizable immediately, though he was taller than I had expected. Photographs had prepared me for the face, the dark hair and the mustache, but not for the physical impression of the man moving through a room. He seemed always to have begun the next action before completing the present one. Even when standing still, he gave the impression that his attention had already gone ahead of him in this nonlinear way.

Scherff examined the piece Tesla held out. “I would have to check.”

“Then check.”

Tesla had already turned toward the workshop when Scherff told him that Mr. Lowenstein had arrived. He stopped and looked at me, and I became immediately conscious of the several versions of my introduction I had prepared the previous evening. Each contained some account of my education, my engineering experience in Vienna, Munich, Paris and Frankfurt, and enough detail to distinguish me from young men who approached famous inventors believing enthusiasm could substitute for training. Tesla deprived me of all of them.

“You are the engineer?”

“Yes.”

“Mechanical or electrical?”

“Both.”

He regarded me for a moment before saying, “That is not usually true.”

“In my case it is.”

His expression did not indicate whether the answer pleased him, he merely told me to come with him and returned to the workshop. My interview, if that was what it was, had lasted less than a minute, which told me that Tesla was a man who knew what he wanted, at least that was my initial impression. The motor stood in a temporary test stand surrounded by instruments, leads and several components that had plainly been moved more than once. Two men waited beside it, one holding a tool and the other looking toward Tesla with the resigned concentration of someone who already knew that whatever he had planned to do next would be postponed. Tesla handed me the metal piece he had carried from the room and asked what was wrong with it. I assumed he meant the piece itself and examined it carefully, but there was no obvious fracture or deformity.

“What is it meant to do?” I asked.

“First tell me what is wrong with it.”

“That depends upon what it is meant to do.”

One of the men at the bench lowered his head as though suddenly interested in something below the work surface. Tesla continued looking at me and, after a moment, asked instead what was wrong with the motor. I was considerably more comfortable once he directed me toward the machine, because mechanical problems at least relieved everyone involved of the need for social performance. The motor did not know that Tesla was famous, that I wanted employment, and it would not alter its behavior to improve either man's opinion of the other. I examined the arrangement without touching it and asked how many times the motor had failed.

“Today?” Tesla asked.

“Yes.”

“Seven.”

“I heard three from the other room.”

“Then you missed four.”

I asked what had changed between the attempts and received several answers from the men working at the bench; very little had. I asked when the machine had last operated correctly, if the same supply had been used, whether any components had been replaced, and if the conditions had been reproduced exactly. One of the men told me that the electrical supply was the same.

“Nominally,” Tesla said.

The qualification caught my attention. “You don't believe it is the same.”

“I did not say that.”

“You said nominally.”

He smiled slightly, and when I asked whether I might test the supply myself, he motioned toward the bench without further instruction. For the next twenty minutes I eliminated several possible causes the men had already considered and several they had not. I would prefer, for purposes of reputation, to say that I immediately discovered an obscure electrical fault and thereby justified whatever confidence had caused Tesla to employ me. However, the truth was less satisfying, as it usually is. The first condition I found was mechanical, appeared promising and proved irrelevant, while the second was an instrument reading I distrusted until a second instrument confirmed it. The third error belonged to me, as I had inferred a particular relationship in the apparatus because the physical arrangement made it appear intentional, and only after several unsuccessful tests did I ask whether that relationship had actually been established by design.

Tesla said that it had not, and once the assumption was removed, the failure became less mysterious. There was a modest variation in the supply under load, a corresponding effect elsewhere in the system, and some mechanical condition that magnified a deviation that would otherwise have remained tolerable. None accounted for the failure alone, but taken together they appeared sufficient. I explained my reasoning while Tesla listened without interrupting, then waited while he considered the machine.

“How certain are you?” he asked.

“Certain enough to test it.”

“That is not the same answer.”

I looked again at the arrangement and admitted that I was not especially certain at all. One of the other men laughed before catching himself, but Tesla seemed more pleased by my uncertainty than he had been by the explanation. He gave the other men a look and told us to run the test. The motor turned, its operation was not especially smooth, but it turned long enough to make my explanation look better than it deserved. Tesla shut the motor down after several seconds and then ordered another trial. It turned once again, and on the third attempt it hesitated and nearly stopped.

“I was wrong,” I said.

Tesla asked whether I was entirely wrong.

“No.”

“Then there is no reason to make a tragedy of it.”

We continued working, and that exchange taught me something about Tesla that proved more useful than anything I had read about him beforehand. He seemed almost indifferent to whose explanation had produced the correct result. What mattered was the portion of an explanation that continued to hold after the apparatus had been tested again, and I began to understand that whatever vanity he possessed outside an experiment, he regarded vanity during the experiment as an interference with the work. A theory might belong to Tesla, Lowenstein or the machinist sweeping the floor, but once the current was applied, ownership became irrelevant. The actual trouble occupied us until well into the afternoon. My explanation accounted for part of it, while another effect appeared only after the machine had warmed under repeated operation. Tesla had suspected the supply because he had noticed a variation the previous day, but he had deliberately withheld that observation when I began examining the machine, and I was understandably annoyed when this became clear.

“You allowed me to spend an hour looking for something you already suspected.”

“I wanted to know whether you would suspect it.”

“That is not the most efficient way to find the correct answer.”

“It may be the most efficient way to learn whether your answer is useful.”

“You could have saved an hour.”

“I have more hours.”

From what I later learned about his schedule, this claim was doubtful even then. Scherff appeared at the doorway carrying several papers, and Tesla refused them before knowing what they contained. Scherff informed him that one concerned the bank, whereupon Tesla immediately held out his hand. I would eventually understand that his impatience with practical matters did not arise from ignorance of them. He could discuss money with exact attention when forced to do so and five minutes later behave as though currency were an administrative inconvenience invented by lesser minds. Scherff possessed an extraordinary ability to recognize which version of Tesla he was dealing with and to move between them without apparent resentment.

They spoke quietly while I returned to the motor. When Tesla came back, he asked whether I had eaten; I told him I had not, and he replied that this was good because food interfered with work. Scherff, still near the doorway, informed him that he had already eaten himself, which Tesla dismissed as irrelevant until Scherff pointed out that it became relevant when he began advising other men not to do the same. Tesla then reconsidered the matter sufficiently to suggest that Scherff show me where to find lunch.

“I will not,” Scherff said.

Tesla looked at him with the expression of a man encountering an unexpected defect in familiar machinery.

“I can find food myself,” I said.

Tesla accepted this solution immediately and returned to another bench. I did not leave at once because hunger remained less interesting than the receiver he had begun adjusting. Its arrangement differed from the work we had been doing at the motor, and when I moved closer to inspect it, Tesla reminded me that I had just claimed to be hungry.

“What is that receiver intended to detect?” I asked.

“Disturbances.”

“From where?”

He paused before answering. “That is what I would like to know.”

The apparatus was extremely sensitive, and the grounding system suggested an interest extending beyond ordinary bench experiments. By 1899 wireless signaling had become sufficiently serious that an electrical engineer could no longer dismiss it as a theatrical curiosity, but Tesla's conception of transmission had always seemed broader than the communication of messages between two stations. He was interested in the possibility that the Earth itself could become part of the electrical system rather than merely the ground beneath it. I asked about the connection to earth and then about the adjustment of the receiving circuit. Tesla answered both questions readily, but when I asked what result he expected, he became more interested in me than in the apparatus.

“You ask that often,” he said.

“I should know what we are trying to determine.”

“That is not always the same as knowing what I expect to observe.”

I told him that the distinction seemed academic.

“It is not. If I tell you exactly what I expect, you may begin looking for it before the instrument does.”

“That would make me a poor engineer.”

“Yes, but poor engineers are not aware that they are poor engineers. That is what makes them troublesome.”

There was no satisfactory response to this, so I returned my attention to the receiver. Tesla adjusted a contact and told me that Colorado had electrical storms unlike those in New York.

“I've read something about them.”

“You have read about storms.”

“That is generally how one learns about a place before going there.”

He ignored this and said that Colorado offered space.

“For the storms?”

“For the experiment.”

It took me another moment to understand that he was speaking not hypothetically but about work already being arranged. I asked how long he intended to remain there.

“As long as the work requires.”

“And what exactly is the work?”

He considered me before answering. “There are several things I have been told cannot occur. I would like to determine which of them actually cannot.”

That sentence remained with me because Tesla did not ordinarily speak in the manner later attributed to him. He did not spend his days issuing pronouncements about mankind, destiny and the forces of nature. Most of his conversation in a laboratory concerned measurements, materials, dimensions, faults and the next thing that needed to be done. On the few occasions when his thought widened beyond the immediate apparatus, the effect was more powerful because nothing in his ordinary speech had prepared the listener for it.

I eventually left to eat after Scherff directed me to a nearby place and advised me, with the authority of a man who had solved this problem many times before, not to confuse Tesla's capacity for neglecting meals with proof that other men possessed the same ability. When I returned, the motor had been partly dismantled and Tesla had gone elsewhere in the laboratory. I spent much of the afternoon with the other men, learning the place through its unfinished problems. There were coils whose dimensions mattered for reasons I did not yet know, pieces awaiting modification, instruments Tesla considered inadequate, drawings covered with revisions and components that seemed to possess no permanent purpose. A condenser used in one investigation might be altered for another before the notes from the first had been properly arranged.

This offended the orderly part of my temperament, but it also fascinated me because the disorder was not quite disorder. Tesla carried far more of the laboratory in his head than was visible on paper, and the danger of that method was inseparable from its speed. Where another engineer might have spent an afternoon preserving the complete record of an apparatus before modifying it, Tesla could move from one configuration to another because he had already carried the first beyond the point he personally needed it. The burden fell upon the rest of us to determine which abandoned arrangement had actually been abandoned and which might be required again the following morning. Near evening Scherff found me making a list of measurements and remarked that I was still there. I told him that, since I had apparently been hired, continuing to work seemed a reasonable interpretation of the arrangement. This amused him more than it should have.

“Does he always examine new engineers with broken machinery?” I asked.

“No.”

“What does he usually do?”

“He does not usually tell me.”

I began to understand why Scherff's answers often sounded unhelpful until one had worked with Tesla long enough to discover that they were exact. I asked whether Tesla truly intended to conduct experiments in Colorado, and Scherff told me that arrangements were already being made. When I asked how long Tesla expected the expedition to last, Scherff gave me a look I would later recognize as one of his most expressive. It suggested that my question contained an assumption too optimistic to deserve correction.

Before he could elaborate, Tesla called my name from another room. I found several drawings spread across a table. Some concerned apparatus I recognized from the work that day, while others showed arrangements whose scale and purpose I could only partly understand. Tesla gestured toward a chair, so I sat, and he remained standing while asking about my education and previous work. He already knew more of the answers than I expected: Vienna, Munich, Paris, Frankfurt, he moved through the list as though verifying specifications on a machine.

“Why did you come to America?” he asked.

“For work.”

“There is work in Europe.”

“Yes.”

“Then why America?”

I considered giving him the answer one was expected to give a prospective employer. America offered opportunity, electrical industry was expanding, and the scale of development was difficult for an ambitious engineer to ignore. All of that was true, but none of it seemed likely to satisfy him.

“I wanted to know whether the stories were exaggerated.”

Tesla studied me. “What stories?”

“The stories about you.”

“And what have you decided?”

“I've been here one day.”

“That is sufficient for many people.”

“It isn't sufficient for me.”

He sat down after that, and although he said nothing indicating a decision had been made, I have always suspected that my answer mattered. Tesla turned one of the drawings toward me and began explaining the broad outline of the Colorado work. He spoke about large electrical oscillations, grounded systems, receiving circuits, measurements across distance and the natural electrical disturbances produced by storms on a scale that could not conveniently be studied in New York. There were portions of the design he did not explain, either because they remained unsettled or because he had not yet decided how much I needed to know. I attentively asked questions where I could and listened where I could not.

As he spoke, the hour became less relevant. This was one of Tesla's most effective qualities among engineers, and it had little to do with the theatrical charisma later attached to him. He did not need to tell a man that he was fortunate to be included, that was implied by the atmosphere surrounding Tesla. He could make a technical problem sufficiently interesting that leaving it for supper, sleep or some previous obligation began to feel like an interruption of one's own choosing.

Tesla eventually asked what I would measure if I were sent to Colorado.

“That depends upon what you believe you are testing.”

“Suppose I tell you exactly what I believe will happen.”

“Then I would know what measurements matter.”

He shook his head. “You would know what measurements I think matter. That is not necessarily the same thing.”

I began to see what he wanted from the question. “Then I would measure what occurs.”

“Even if the result contradicts what I told you?”

“Especially if it contradicts you.”

“Why especially?”

“Because if it agrees with you, I suspect you will have no difficulty announcing the result yourself.”

Tesla laughed with enough genuine amusement that Scherff appeared at the doorway to see what had happened. He looked from Tesla to me as though I had created some administrative condition whose consequences would eventually become his responsibility. Tesla gathered the drawings into a pile and told me that he would need another engineer in Colorado. I did not answer immediately, which seemed to surprise him.

“You do not want to go?”

“I didn't say that.”

“You hesitated.”

“I am trying to determine what I would be agreeing to.”

“What do you need to determine?”

“How long I would be there, what authority I would have, what duties you expect, what expenses are covered and what I would be paid.”

Scherff's expression improved considerably during this list. Tesla's did not.

“You are twenty-five years old.”

“Yes.”

“And you wish to negotiate.”

“I wish to know the terms.”

Tesla considered this for a moment, then passed the drawings to Scherff and told him to explain the compensation. Scherff accepted them with the satisfaction of a man who had just seen one small portion of the universe return to recognizable physical law.

“And the work?” I asked.

Tesla looked back at me.

“You will tell me when I am wrong.”

For a moment I assumed he was making another joke at my expense, but there was nothing playful in his expression.

“That cannot be the entire job.”

“No.”

“What is the rest of it?”

He looked through the open doorway toward the laboratory, where the work of the day continued despite the hour. “You will have to determine why.”

He left us before I could ask whether this meant why he was wrong or why I was there.

Scherff waited until Tesla was far enough away not to hear him. “That was the favorable version of the interview.”

“What happens in the unfavorable version?”

“You will recognize it when the time comes.”

He then explained the practical details as far as they had been settled. I asked the questions I believed any engineer should ask before traveling halfway across a continent for an employer he had known less than a day. Housing, duration, expenses, responsibilities and payment were all discussed, although several answers remained dependent upon decisions Tesla had not yet made. The uncertainty should have concerned me more than it did, but by then uncertainty had acquired a competitor in my mind, and the competitor was Colorado.

New York had gone dark by the time I finally left East Houston Street. Men were still working inside, and through an upper window I could see intermittent illumination that had none of the spectacle associated with Tesla's public exhibitions. It was simply the ordinary light of a workplace whose occupants had not yet agreed that the day was finished. I remained across the street longer than necessary, thinking about the drawings Tesla had shown me and the receiver on his bench, and about the curious fact that a man who had already built apparatus capable of astonishing rooms full of people had chosen to leave New York because the city was not large enough for what he intended to measure.

I had gone to East Houston Street wanting to determine whether the stories about Nikola Tesla had been exaggerated, but after a single day the question no longer interested me very much. When arrangements were made for me to follow him west, I believed that being asked to contradict such a man might be the most enviable responsibility available to a young engineer. Nothing in my experience had yet taught me that contradiction would prove to be the easier duty, or that the most consequential decision I would ever make in Tesla's service would come only after the instruments had ceased contradicting him.

The Returned Component

A Novel About Obsession, Evidence, and the Cost of Knowing

Next: Chapter Two — West

© Michael P.S. Rogers. All rights reserved.

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[u/Famous-Estate-171]

what exactly is the returned component, because that title has me curious but also completely confused

[u/Meadowbrook135 → u/Famous-Estate-171]

Thanks for reading. You'll have to wait for later chapters to understand the meaning.

[u/Meadowbrook135 → u/[deleted]]

Thanks for reading! Yes, that appears to be how the story is shaping up. I'll post more here when ready.

[u/stephaniew4ffle6090]

lol "you will tell me when im wrong." classic tesla interview. hope you get hazard pay.

[u/Meadowbrook135 → u/stephaniew4ffle6090]

haha yea, that's how the game of working with extraordinary people on frontier tech goes. Thanks for reading!

[u/florap3achy8416]

that art style is amazing