Tesla's Attic

“Caitlin figured he was about her age. The Tampa Bay baseball cap he wore revealed dark hair that was cropped short and only partially hid a small bandage on his forehead over his left eye. He had a nice tan, but his clothes were about three years behind the times. Florida, she thought, with a mental snort, and felt a bit sorry for him.”

Caitlin is popular at school; she’s used to judging others based on their relative coolness. Her quick judgment of Nick is a part of her manner of controlling her social environment by keeping things she likes, but can’t control, at a distance.

“Nick woke […] into dim morning light coming from a small frosted window in the far wall of his attic room. High above, the four triangular planes of the roof joined together in a pyramidal skylight, but the glass had been covered with black paint. The only way he knew it was a skylight at all was because of the small spots where the paint had peeled away. At even the brightest times of day, the attic lingered in twilight.”

The bedroom Nick has chosen is the attic, a strange place with a tall, pointed roof and little light. Its shadows literally foreshadow strange doings to come in the lonely room at the top of the old house.

“Cafeteria food is the same throughout the cosmos. It transcends both time and space as a universal constant.”

A science joke for bright school kids, the comment signals the spirit and intent of a story that’s big on humor and absorbed by technical wonders. It also implies that students with borderline-nerdy interests must maintain a sense of humor about school, its dull ways, and its total lack of really good things to eat.

“Caitlin struggled with the tiny chink that the reel-to-reel player had put in her armor. Her well-crafted social veneer only worked if she was convinced she truly was the person she presented. She believed herself to be the kind of girl who didn’t play games, who said what she meant in take-it-or-leave-it terms. But the impossible nature of that tape recorder hinted that there were parts of herself she didn’t entirely know.”

A machine that records a person’s words but plays back her thoughts and feelings has thrown Caitlin for a loop. She realizes she must re-examine the person she thought she was for possibilities long hidden. The machine serves as a challenge; Caitlin is the perfect candidate to meet it.

“This horrible, wonderful machine that could dig into her very soul, and put into words the things she couldn’t. The things she protected herself from with such subconscious force that it exhausted her. But to hear these things out loud—it both condemned her and freed her. She broke down into sobs. She knew it was all true. Yet, somehow, hearing herself speak the truth made it seem less powerful. Maybe she didn’t have to be afraid of it. And maybe someday, if she listened to her heart played back enough, she’d truly know herself.”

Sometimes the truth hurts, but hearing it can be a breakthrough. On the surface very happy and successful but underneath a bundle of angry nerves, Caitlin would rather hear the harsh words from her soul, as revealed by the strange tape recorder, than continue feeling stuck in her plastic life.

“‘What happened to you is kind of like a fire, in a way. I saw this thing once on TV. They said wildfires have to happen every so often. Brush gets too thick, trees get too dense. You have a hot day and whoosh! But the healthy trees survive. In fact, there are some seeds that won’t even grow until they burn first.’ Nick shrugged. ‘So have you lost some friends today? Maybe, but they weren’t real friends. They were just brush. And the ones who stick by you, the ones who get it? They’re the healthy trees.’”

Somehow, Nick knows precisely the right thing to say to Caitlin about her humiliation at school. His advice is suitable for anyone. Knowing that most of the social world is brush can help the rejected person grow back to be the strongest tree of all.

“‘If it’s your intent to make an impression,’ she offered, ‘it’s best to have something he needs. Even if he doesn’t know what it is.’”

Ms. Planck gives Petula some cagey advice about getting a guy interested in her. In Petula’s case, it’s Nick, but the guidance applies in any situation where a person needs something from someone.

“Archimedes, the great mathematician, once said, ‘Give me a lever long enough, and I shall move the world.’ Of course, another time he ran naked through the streets shouting ‘Eureka!’—which only goes to show that even history’s greatest minds have issues.”

Great scientists and inventors also are human beings, prone to the same yearnings and heartaches and stresses as everyone else. Conversely, having problems doesn’t mean a person isn’t a genius.

“‘Or maybe I’m just nuts,’ he said out loud. Hearing himself say it made him feel a whole lot better. How weird, he thought, that I’d rather be nuts than right.”

Mitch struggles with his place in life. Family stresses, social problems at school, and the strange adventure unfolding with the Tesla devices tempt him to think he has a mental condition, but he realizes he’d rather be himself than merely ordinary and proper. Maybe his eccentricities are what will get him through all the challenges.

“‘Sorry,’ said Nick. ‘I don’t believe in magic.’ ‘Good for you,’ said Jorgenson. ‘Neither do we. It’s science. It may appear as magic to the less enlightened, but people like you and me can see through it to the truth.’”

Dr Jorgenson flatters Nick, trying to manipulate him into thinking they’re friends. His words also state one of the novel’s basic rules: the amazing things described are ultimately based on science rather than fantasy.

“Although she tried to keep a low profile as she took a number of photographs downtown that morning, the box camera was cumbersome—and an oddball object held by an oddball girl had an exponential quality about it that was bound to square, or possibly cube, any amount of public attention. Well, let them gawk. I don’t care.”

Petula, like Mitch, is coming to terms with her own eccentricities. She’s learning to accept herself as she is. She’s by no means anyone’s candidate for Citizen of the Year—many of her deepest desires are selfish and anti-social—but in following her interests, she’s learning more about the world and deepening her perspective on her place in it.

“‘So how are Danny and your father dealing with what happened?’ ‘They’re not,’ Nick told her. ‘Danny’s the kind of kid who takes things as they come, and my dad—well, whenever there’s something that he can’t understand, he gets weirdly busy with stuff he does understand. When I left he was weed-whacking.’ ‘At night?’ ‘Exactly.’”

People everywhere struggle with uncertainty, each in their own way, and Nick’s dad is no exception. Nick and Caitlin, on the other hand, are learning to team up, face the strange events around them, devise a plan of action, and adapt quickly. It’s the beginning of adulthood for both of them.

“Danny muttered, ‘I wish she was back. I wish she was back,’ pleading with a field full of shooting stars to grant him his heart’s desire.”

Missing his mom terribly, Danny gets the idea that if he uses the Tesla glove to attract falling stars, the star-wish magic will happen, and they’ll return his mother. It’s a mark of his broken, desperate heart that he’ll try anything to lessen the loss. The glove and the other inventions are signs that people will go to enormous lengths to improve their situations. In a way, the Accelerati are like grown-up Dannies, still heedless and willing to do whatever it takes to attain life-changing powers.

“‘I know this is scary, Danny,’ he said, ‘but you know what? Everything in the world is scary until you understand it.’ ‘Do you understand it?’ ‘No,’ Nick said. ‘So I’m scared, too.’”

Nick admits to his brother that they’re in a dangerous predicament, but he does so in a way that shows he’s willing to face the problem, figure it out, and deal with it. This I-can-handle-it attitude is a central theme of the book, and Nick’s willingness to step up is a sign that he’s beginning to make inroads into his own fears, heartbreaks, and uncertainties.

“‘What the hell is wrong with you?’ Svedberg asked. ‘Can’t you see I’m busy?’ Svedberg spontaneously knew that he was dead. Realization of one’s own death must be a universal component of reanimation, although further research would be required to prove it.”

The authors revel in the humor of the situations in which they place their characters. Svedberg, murdered by the Accelerati, resents being reanimated, but the kids need him to tell them about the secret group. The idea that a dead person might be grumpy is one of many surprising and interesting effects of the various Tesla devices.

“Taking into account its speed and the earth’s rotation, the [giant asteroid’s] impact point was projected to be a neighborhood sports complex in Colorado Springs. The astonished astronomer who made the discovery was left with one all-important question: is it more appropriate to e-mail, call, or text your boss that the world is about to end?”

The dangerous puzzles Nick and friends must solve have just gotten a zillion times worse. Not only will everyone on the planet die because Danny caught one too many meteors with his baseball glove, but Nick will never get that date with Caitlin. No matter how dire the stakes become, every problem in the story has a darkly funny side: Tesla’s devices create situations that are wildly outrageous, ripe with potential, and vastly absurd. It’s a sly commentary on life in the modern, high-tech world.

“When one stands in the way of the greater good, Miss Westfield, one is often ground up by the wheels of progress. Don’t say you haven’t been warned.”

Dr Jorgenson threatens Caitlin; he has no qualms about killing her if she gets in his way. Confident that he’ll obtain what he wants, Jorgenson behaves with the calmly arrogant certainty that people will do whatever he demands. Jorgenson is also a true believer who’ll stop at nothing to achieve what he believes is right, even if “right” only means “benefits my group.” 

“He looked over at Caitlin sitting right there on the edge of his bed, thought of his father coming into the house, and he felt that knee-jerk reaction of being caught doing something he shouldn’t. Which annoyed him, because he wasn’t doing anything. And it annoyed him further that he wasn’t.”

Nick’s predicament is typical of the daunting social puzzles faced by kids his age, who are transitioning from child to teen filled with angst about dating. Nick’s multiple thoughts about the situation, each tumbling from the previous idea, is a trait he shares with Caitlin, whose mind’s mental gears mesh nicely with his and make them natural friends.

“Nick realized that he was now at war with the Accelerati. A very different kind of war, perhaps, but the principle was the same. They wanted to get their hands on this stuff, and like Napoleon’s army, they were a force to be reckoned with. But, like Napoleon’s army, they could be defeated.”

Nick realizes that he has what the Accelerati want, and he can use that advantage to defeat them. He’ll either destroy the Tesla devices or use them in innovative ways. He’s thinking strategically, an important milestone in every teen’s life.

“Vince had never liked the childhood games they had made him play in kindergarten. Even then he’d had enough objectivity to notice how almost all of them were designed to isolate and/or humiliate a single child. Namely him. Someone is always left holding the hot potato. There are lots of ducks, but only one goose. Some poor slob has to be ‘it.’ And, as everybody knows, the cheese stands alone.”

Vince has the cynicism of people much older than he; he sees through the small cruelties of childhood. Each kid, growing up, must navigate through these and other hardships of being small, ignorant, and weak. Vince’s solution is to take the dark side of things as his own. 

“‘I didn’t know what would happen,’ she tried to explain. ‘I just knew something would. And I couldn’t have stopped it even if I tried!’ ‘That doesn’t matter!’ he screamed. ‘Even if there’s nothing you can do! Even if it’s hopeless, you try! You try, and you don’t stop trying! YOU’RE the one responsible for his death!’”

Petula tries everything she can to warn Nick that her camera foretells a death at the boy’s house; when it happens, Nick feels the same intense guilt he had when his mother died inside their burning home and he could do nothing about it. He must find someone or something to blame, and he picks Petula. He knows she tried to warn him but he ignored her; now, overwhelmed by the death his laxity caused, he tries to put her at fault for his own failing.

“Few people realize that destiny turns not on the large moments, but on the tiny ones that go unnoticed. The moment Captain E. J. Smith chose to leave the Titanic’s engines at full speed ahead before retiring for the night. The moment Albert Einstein decided enough was enough and quit his dead-end job at the patent office. The moment Sir Isaac Newton, tired of the sun in his eyes, said, ‘What the heck, I’ll sit under this apple tree.’”

Like the big things in life, the story’s major plot points turn on small things: the junk in Nick’s attic, the car that nearly hits Nick and Caitlin, Danny’s love of baseball, Mr. Slate discovering black widow spiders on his arm. Each is a coincidence that changes the lives of the characters.

“‘When you know the future,’ Ms. Planck said, echoing a thought Petula already had, ‘you can either let that future happen to you, or be the one to create it.’”

Ms. Planck echoes Petula’s idea that the future can be altered by adapting to fate so it turns out well rather than badly. This concept opens up endless possibilities for human ingenuity and the power of the human heart to change anything for the better.