Free The Tesla Gate: A SciFi Short Story by Drew Avera

September, 1904
    "It's been eighteen years, Nikola," she said, pursing her lips as she watched me work through a line of empty beakers and vials. "Can't you at least pretend you're excited to test our invention?"
    I scoffed lightly while scribbling more notes on a torn piece of paper. "My invention, Alokin," I reminded her. A negligible comment considering the small detail that we shared the same brainwaves.
    "I'm just as much a part of you as the image you see in your reflection," she retorted, "perhaps more, given our secret."
    Her words burned, molding me into a man less devoted to studies and more convinced that what I had to offer truly would change the world. Alokin was the one who insisted my talents were wasted with Edison. My true calling was to be perched atop the world and looking down on my own creation, like a god. She was right, though, it had been eighteen years.
    "I'm sorry," I whispered, partially for my excluding her from my work, but mostly for being too distracted to perform simple calculus proficiently enough to not make a mistake on the last scrap of clean paper I could find in my lab. I held back a curse as I thought of how many mistakes could be erased if I didn't insist on writing exclusively in ink.
    A smile stretched across her face and the elation in her eyes was distracting me. "Apology accepted, at least the part you meant for me."
    She knew me too well.
    A knock at the door distracted both of us for a moment. We looked into one another's eyes, both riddled with the frustration of work interrupted. Few things wrought such utter agitation as distractions, especially when I was on the cusp of the greatest discovery in the history of mankind. "I wasn't expecting a guest. Were you?" A smirk and shake of the head preceded her walk towards the door as she phased through my work station and passed through me like a spirit. I was used to it, even the jolt of shock which accompanied it. "Wait for me," I said softly, not wanting the visitor to know I was talking to myself.
    The heavy wooden door opened with a pull, made difficult because the frame was slightly warped.
    "Nikola," my visitor said as he pushed his way past me. His hair was a mess atop his head and he looked as if he hadn't slept for days. "I've been sending you letters, haven't you seen them?"
    I watched as Samuel shuffled through my correspondence, lackadaisically tossing the uninteresting slosh back onto the table. There was a time when I would have been nervous around him, given the stature of the man more commonly known to the world as Mark Twain; for me he was more than a celebrity, he was a savior. It was his words in story form which kept me going when I fell ill so long ago. I owed a lot to him, even if I never spoke about it. "I'm sorry, I've been really-"
    "Busy?" He interjected. He waved three letters in front of me; none of the envelopes were opened. "I swear if it wasn't for the fact I cared about you so much I think life would be more comfortable if I forgot you existed." It wasn't the first time he had said those words to me, but this time I could hear the hurt in his voice.
    "What's wrong?" I asked, frustrated at my lack of social etiquette.
    He stood stoically, hands in the pockets of his white linen suit as he fidgeted with something he didn't want to reveal just yet. His mustache dropped over his lips, matching the tirade of unkempt hair, but freaks like us never bothered with hiding our quirks. I eyed Alokin as the thought of being the same kind of freak crossed our collective mind.
    "After all this time I was hoping you had figured it out by now," he said. "Ever since Susy passed away I have been dreading the end of this life and passing into the hereafter. A parent should never have to endure the death of a child. If you could put that brilliant brain of yours into high gear, then perhaps I could skip the rigmarole of enduring such hardships and be able to relive my past immune from the depression I see myself slipping