Free Petite Mort by Beatrice Hitchman

a monocle and spoke very quickly, in a Parisian accent; André, translating, struggled to keep up. The man accorded his salutations to Mr Edison; it was his pleasure to present the new Visiscope, his very latest invention, a revolutionary projecting machine that could show images to an ever-larger audience. He patted the projector’s casing, extolled its many virtues –
Think of the profits, sir!
– and sat back with folded arms, waiting for Edison to make an offer.
    André was bewitched. Auguste had taken him to a nickelodeon once in Baton Rouge, and he had seen illustrations, but never the apparatus of such a thing before. When the inventor opened the casing to demonstrate the mechanism, André leant closer and looked at the loving, ingenious armatures, savouring the hiss of the machinery. When the Visiscope started, and shapes leapt to life on the blank wall of the office, Edison was transfixed; but André did not glance at the wall once. He looked only at the way the film unspooled, smooth as water, inside the projector.
    Edison hemmed and hawed and twirled his moustaches. He hated to lose money on a deal, but feared still more that he would lose to one of his competitors. The inventor waited politely, with a smile like ice. Finally Edison sighed, crossed his arms behind his head and said to André: ‘Damn patent’s worth a million. Tell them I’ll pay it.’
    Though he did not understand English, the inventor leant forward, sensing victory.
    ‘I wouldn’t do that,’ André said to Edison.
    Edison coloured instantly. He was the inventor of the light bulb, of X-rays; it was years since anyone had contradicted him. ‘What the devil do you mean?’
    ‘The mechanism that holds the film in place could be improved. If we were to introduce a simple loop here, you would reduce the pressure on the film as it passes through. It would be safer. And sufficiently different to qualify for a new patent. We wouldn’t have to buy theirs.’
    Edison peered into the body of the projector and saw the boy was right.
    The inventor’s eyes darted from one face to the other.
    Edison sat back, the Visiscope forgotten, and stared at André.
    The year 1897 was a busy one at the New York State Patents Office. There were ten patent applications for new cinematic equipment. And, though they ranged enormously in technology – projectors and cameras and primitive sound-cylinders – eight of those patents bear the same blocky and youthful signature. Beneath the first signature was the confident flourish that the patent office knew so well – Thomas Edison – which signified joint ownership.
    In the year that followed, the patents continued to flow thick and fast, all with the same scribble and confident employer’s countersigning. It is only in 1899 that the rate of invention tails off: it peters out in a series of applications for licences. One for a ‘folding mirror device’ and another, a ‘handle-operated smoke-producing machine’.
    These were the traditional paraphernalia of the fairground attraction, with minor modifications. They were not countersigned by Edison, and not original enough to be considered seriously. They were rejected by the Patent Officer out of hand.

    Electricity was Edison’s business. He understood that a current will not always run smoothly: instead, it may leap erratically from point to point, arriving at its destination through the route that suits it best. And, though he never shared his view with anyone, Edison believed that people worked like electricity – coursing for the most part drone-like through life, but sometimes throwing up an anomaly. He, who had been expelled from school as mentally deficient, when all the time he was studying the flight patterns of the birds through the window, was his own proof.
    Therefore – knowing that brilliance, physical or metaphysical, might flare in unexpected ways – Edison gave André a long leash. Along with the rest of his engineers, the boy was set up on