Free The Forever Engine by Frank Chadwick

theory of a force-bearing aether.”
    “The luminiferous aether?” I asked. As I recalled, these Victorian scientists had been big on that until the theory got shot full of holes.
    “No, not the light-bearing aether, but a force-bearing one, which he claims is entirely different. The luminiferous aether is a propagating medium for thermal, radiant, and electromagnetic energy, but he speculates about a deeper, rigid propagating medium for force—gravity primarily, but also more fundamental forces which bind matter itself together. I understand he believes this force-bearing aether is also the source of mass itself, that without it mass would have no meaning or means of exerting effect on other objects.”
    I wasn’t a physicist, but I’d watched enough episodes of Nova to know that this force-bearing aether thing Thomson was talking about sounded a lot like the Higgs field, the omnipresent field which gave all particles in the universe mass—or at least those which actually had mass. Maybe these guys were smarter than I gave them credit for.
    “Ah . . . General Buller has cautioned me not to mention anything we know about the Old Man of the Mountain,” Thomson added as the carriage pulled up. “If you would accept a word of advice, I would not make any mention of your space exploration program, either. It may complicate things.”
    Probably good advice. Things were already plenty complicated as they stood.
    We left the carriage and made our way up the steps to the door. With the lecture attendees still leaving, this was like swimming down the Columbia River when the salmon were coming up. A doorman took our overcoats and tried not to stare at my ill-fitting and unmatched clothing—my own new duds wouldn’t be ready for a few days. As I handed my coat over, I saw my hand tremble and felt sweat break out on my forehead. Why?
    I was scared, that’s why. This meeting might very well determine my fate, even the fate of my world. Until I actually did the meeting, there was still the possibility, the hope, Tesla could whip up a miracle. But once it was over, and if no miracle emerged, I’d have exhausted one more of my very limited options.

    “You say 2018?” Tesla asked in a fairly pronounced eastern-European accent. He leaned forward, his curiosity aroused. “So you are from future , not past. Most interesting.”
    The way he said interesting didn’t make it sound like a good thing.
    “You didn’t seem to have a problem with me being from a different time, so why not the future?” I asked. Thomson and I had already told him as much background as I was willing to let go of, and he had reacted with interest rather than incredulity. The date of the Wessex accident was different, though. That brought him up short.
    “Unsettling,” he answered. “It is one thing to accept relics dredged up from past, animated museum exhibits. But a fully formed man from the future—that suggests a level of determinism in the affairs of men I find troubling. What if you were to tell me what I am known to have done in future and I do something different? Or better still, what if I were to find ancestor of yours and kill him before he produced necessary offspring? Would you disappear?”
    “Beats me,” I answered, not entirely truthfully. He studied me, his brow creased by a slight frown—partly from concentration and partly irritation. I looked him over again—tall and slender, black hair cut short and parted in the middle, neatly trimmed black moustache, high forehead, dark deep-set eyes, thin straight nose. He wasn’t a bad-looking guy, but there was something remote, almost incomplete about him, as if he existed simultaneously in two worlds and all you saw was the part that happened to be in this one.
    What did I know about Tesla from my own time? Not much. He was smart, and he was crazy—probably more smart than crazy. He’d come up with wireless communication and alternating current, both of which transformed the