xp_logs | V=IR: Part Nine - Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle

Arriving at Tesla's birthplace, Forge and Doug use some old-fashioned deduction to find the location of Tesla's hidden tower. Upon gaining entry, however, all expectations are shattered.

"Welcome to Lika-Senj," Forge read from the travel manual as he sat outside the marketplace. Getting from Siberia to Croatia had been an adventure in false names, irrational flight plans, unreliable rental cars, and at one point hitching along with a Gypsy caravan through Slovenia (a particularly educational experience that Forge was vowing to never repeat again) - all to ensure that they left Cortez and Milan any number of false trails to follow without leading them to Lika.

Nodding his head to the music from his iPod, Forge glanced up and hit pause as he caught sight of Doug. "Any leads from the locals?" he asked as he stood up.

Doug grimaced. "They're all perfectly pleasant and welcoming and helpful. Until you even hint at something like a laboratory or tower that Tesla built. I got twelve different offers to see 'the great Tesla's birthplace', but everyone develops a sudden case of lockjaw about anything else." He sat down on the bench next to Forge and pinched his eyebrows.

Forge looked around at the small town; most of the buildings looked as if they had been rebuilt on old foundations, probably over the last twenty-five years. "Not surprising," he said after a while. "This place has probably seen enough war come through, territorial fighting, Serbs and Croats and Muslims - they hold Tesla up like a hometown hero. The last thing they probably want is some foreign agents tearing up the place searching for something to exploit. I can understand that."

Tapping his fingers together, he caught sight of a faded map pinned to a community placard, displaying train schedules that were no doubt years out of date. Curious, he flipped through the pages of his travel manual to see a similar map. "These don't match," he said quietly so only Doug could hear. "Quick, see if they have any kind of hiking maps or anything here. I'll bet that someone's been obscuring map reports to try and mislead anyone from searching in a particular area. All we need to do is isolate the area where the maps don't match, and there's our zone of suspicion."

Doug nodded and got up from the bench, his stress headache a thing of the past. Making his way around the square again, he made sure to chat up different people from the ones he had approached earlier, and after a few minutes he returned to Forge with a small handful of maps. After looking at a few of them, he stabbed his finger down. "There," he said. "All the maps are different in that particular area."

"Let's get moving, then," Forge said as he stood up and hefted his duffle bag onto his shoulders. "Because I'm not using a goddamned horse again, and we'd better get a good start if we're going to reach that area before sundown."

---

The area around Lika-Senj was rather hilly, and most of the afternoon had been spent going up one side of a hill and down the next. Dusk was fast approaching as they crested yet another. Doug rested his elbows on his knees for a moment before looking up to see the last few rays of the sun glimmering over a metallic tower that looked like something out of a steampunk fantasy. He whistled low in his throat before turning to Forge. "I think we found it."

The tower stood across a ravine, seemingly isolated on an outcropping of rock. Forge scratched his head, trying to figure the approach. "I don't get it," he said, "how could this have stood here for decades without any kind of aerial or satellite photographs giving it away? What's more, how did they get the construction materials out there? I'm not seeing any bridge or any kind of signs of a traverse..."

The hiking path the pair had traveled to reach the tower, though not extremely well-traveled, did seem to be the only way to reach where they were. Doug squatted and examined the scene before them, nibbling on his lower lip in concentration. The path led down to the ravine, where it ended abruptly, pointing straight out to the tower and outcropping. After some time spent in thought, his eyes narrowed. Something of a wild theory sprang into his head, and he strode down to the edge of the ravine. Bending, he scooped up a small handful of gravel and cast it out into the ravine.

The small bits of gravel made tiny sparks in the air, then seemed to vanish from sight, although the sound of rattling could be heard. Forge cocked his head in curiosity, then pulled a slim laser pointer out of his coat. Kneeling down, he sighted along the edge of the pointer and tapped a button. A thin red beam shot out - then seemed to vanish and reappear twenty feet away.

"A static refractory field!" Forge exclaimed. Shuffling forward along the edge of the ravine, he slid his goggles down and began cycling through viewing modes before giving a yelp of triumph. "It works by polarizing the water molecules in the air. You know, like when you stick a pencil into a glass of water, it seems to bend? There's a similar effect right -"

He stepped forward and seemed to vanish from sight. "-here!" came the call from apparently thin air.

"Heh. And this long before Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade," Doug quipped, following along behind Forge. "Hey Forge, not that I'm necessarily one to cast stones here, but how come you've been so mean to Milan? I mean, from what you've told me, it seems like it wasn't really anything he did, even from the start."

Forge glanced over his shoulder, blinking at Doug as he saw the taller man walk onto the bridge from what seemed like thin air. "Huh? Oh, Milan. Come on, the guy's a spaz. You should have heard him go on about the 'master of mag-mag-mag-magnetism'," Forge mocked Milan's stutter with a snort. "And do I need to mention that whole bit with the whistle and the Russians? The guy's a tool."

Doug shrugged. "Yeah, I'm not necessarily arguing the point." Milan was rather spaz-tastic, in Doug's opinion, but... "You wonder if we make our own problems by our actions sometimes?" he asked quietly, remembering his interactions with Quentin Quire.

"Actions have consequences," Forge said through clenched teeth, holding onto the bridge for support as a quick wind whipped through the ravine. "I'm more aware of that than probably anyone. But I... wait, are you trying to say that I was bullying him? No way. I've been the subject of bullying, it's totally different."

Doug shook his head. "I'm not sure. I mean, is it only different because of the change in perspective? Sometimes I wonder. I mean, would Quentin Quire have made different choices if I'd been nicer to him? Or would he still have tried to pull the telepathic date-rape thing? I dunno."

Forge stopped in his tracks and turned around to face Doug. "Look, maybe I was a jerk to him. And sure, it was probably uncalled for. But unless you're suddenly developing Manuel de la Rocha syndrome, you can't make anyone do anything by your actions. People make their own decisions, and they're responsible for them. Until I perfect that whole time machine thing and create the ability to alter the past," he held up his ungloved metal hand and clenched it into a fist for emphasis, "everyone has to live with the consequences of their decisions. And we never have anyone but ourselves to blame, in the end."

"Hm." Doug paused, taking in Forge's points. "You're right. I mean, Quentin was pretty much a jackass to me from day one without even really knowing me. And he had a redhead fetish long before he ever knew Angie was my girlfriend, judging from the contents of his dorm room. I guess that whole 'might have been' thing with Angie's wacky power issue and those projections sometimes make me wonder about what might have been."

The mention of the "alternate-present" images that had been generated from Marie-Ange's power brought a smirk to Forge's face as he recalled what Marius had seen with him and Ororo. "You know, you can sit there and wonder about could-have or might-have-been or even should-be, but all that does is waste time. Believe me, I know," he said, masking a slight bitterness as well as he was able. "The only thing that matters is now. And right now, we're on the precipice of a potentially historical scientific discovery. And just as importantly, stopping these two whackjobs from co-opting it for whatever misguided purpose they have. So," Forge said, stepping off the edge of the bridge to cross to the base of the tower, "are you with me?"

The tower was even more impressive up close, and Doug craned his neck looking upward. "Okay, so we've passed the invisible bridge," he mused, looking at the seemingly solid metal in front of them. "Now the next puzzle. How the heck do we get -in-?"

"It's obviously a receiver tower," Forge answered, "but nothing like I've ever seen. I don't think Tesla was much of a Tolkien fan, so speaking 'friend' in Serbian is probably out. It's like--"

At that moment, Forge leaned against the tower, pressing his hand flat against the wrought-iron rails circling the base. He stiffened, as if an electrical shock had passed through him. "Holy crap holy crap holy crap..." he stuttered, eyes blinking quickly. "It's not just a tower it's a complete machine holy shit it's complicated this is huge like Deep Thought huge oh my god how can one man do all this it's insane there's too much here too much too much too-"

With a cry, he jerked his hand away from the tower, dropping to his knees and breathing heavily. "...holy shit," he managed to gasp, glancing down at his surprisingly unmarked hand. "That was like... like reading every book in a library at once. So much complexity and... what is this thing? It's not just a receiver for a power transmission..."

For a moment, Doug thought he might have had to slap Forge out of the fugue he'd gone into when he touched the tower. He wondered if it was comparable to the sheer overload that he'd felt when he'd had to touch the mind of Xorn in order to communicate with him. "You okay?" he asked Forge as he watched the inventor try to shake it off.

Forge nodded, wincing slightly as his headache returned. "I... I don't think I should touch anything here. Or probably even look at it too hard. This machine is just too big. I... I'll follow you, if you don't mind."

"Fair enough." Doug couldn't really blame Forge for feeling a touch out of sorts. He imagined it probably felt something like him trying to make sense of the code in Tesla's Portfolio. When he had to push his brain and power to their utter limits just to comprehend things. No wonder Forge was wincing and rubbing at the bridge of his nose. "Okay, so there was a bridge that we had to find, which means that this is probably not actually a solid metal wall, and there's a door somewhere. We just have to find it. Where's an elf with their whole 'I can detect secret doors just by walking by' ability when you need them?" he joked.

He looked up and down the wall as he paced along it, looking for something out of the ordinary, an anomaly that would say 'here!' After several minutes of looking and finding nothing, he moved closer and laid his hand against it, going back over the area he'd covered, searching for tactile imperfections. As his hand passed over an area much like the rest of the wall, an audible click sounded, and a section of the wall recessed along a track, revealing a hallway beyond.

"Um, open sesame?" he said with a grin.

"Sweet..." Forge drawled, looking past Doug to see the hallway sequentially light up, small globes on the walls illuminating one after the other. He made a motion forward, but then paused. "Dangerous," he said suddenly. "I don't know how, but it is. Look, you can see it there," he pointed to an area on the metal tiles that lined the hallway. "The areas that are shinier than others? That's electrochemical oxidation, like you find on a battery left outside too long. I'll lay odds that those parts are..."

He reached into his pack, pulling out a pack of matches and half of a leftover potato from the lunch that they'd picked up down in Lika-Senj. Cautiously, Forge pushed the wooden matches into the potato, then gingerly set it down inside the hallway, and rolled it towards the area he'd pointed out.

When the matches suddenly ignited into flame with a man-sized spark of lightning, he nodded to Doug. "Yeeeep. Some of these panels are probably carrying a significant electric charge, and I have no idea which ones. Sorry."

"Better than finding out the hard way," Doug observed wryly as he watched the potato slowly char. "Okay, if the oxidized panels are the conductive ones, then..." he trailed off, his eyes flicking from panel to panel, looking for a safe route down the long hallway. "...there then there then there then..." he muttered softly to himself. "Okay, I think I've got it," he told Forge. "It's like a big game of hopscotch, except, y'know, with electrocution involved. Just step where I step," he said, and began moving cautiously from tile to tile.

Twenty-seven awkward hops later, Forge and Doug found themselves in the central area of the tower. The chamber was lined with metal panels, reminiscent of Cerebro, with various schema etched into them. Between some of the panels, tinted windows reflected the fading light from outside the tower, illuminating the chamber. Curved staircases bolted to the walls spiraled up the tower in a sort of iron helix, and at the top, a large brass globe could be seen reflecting the dark clouds gathering in the open sky above.

Craning his neck to look up, Forge walked around the perimeter of the room. "This doesn't make... ow. Ow. OW," he suddenly exclaimed, closing his eyes and clapping his palms to his face. "Shit, Doug. Don't let me look at this. It's something big, and I don't know if I want to understand what it is. It's just too..."

His voice dropped off as he backed into something with an unexpectedly musical squawk. Peeking through his fingers, Forge looked behind himself to see what looked like a complex series of keys and levers, with thick electrical wires snaking around into the wall, not unlike an ancient switchboard.

"It's... a pipe organ?" Forge summarized, completely confused.

"A pipe organ? And I had good money on a crazy sharp saw blade that cut your head off if you didn't kneel before Zod, after the invisible bridge and 'Jehovah starts with an I' hopscotch board." Doug chuckled. "Hm. It's obviously connected to everything else, look at all the wires. You think this is the centerpiece of the entire tower?" he mused, looking up at the globe.

Behind Doug and Forge, a figure in a snowsuit, heavy boots, and wearing a winter hat with flaps over the ears and a pair of goggles stepped into the room. "There is no saw blade and I cannot shoot off your head but I do like the part where you KNEEL BEFORE ZOD!" Milan's voice came out from behind the zipped-up collar of the snowsuit, and he aimed a shotgun at the pair. "My aim is terrible but that is why I have a shotgun." He explained. "You do not have to aim those at all. Not at all."

Forge and Doug both whirled to see Milan with the shotgun trained on them. Narrowing his eyes at the firearm, Forge asked a silent question, and had it answered immediately.

"It's loaded," he said quietly to Doug. "Plan?"

Doug glanced around the room, which was suddenly far too open and lacking in hiding places for his taste. "None at the moment," he muttered, keeping his hands in plain sight and making no sudden movements. "Best bet is to keep him talking. Cortez can't be far behind."

"What a pleasant turn of events," announced Cortez, striding in proudly behind Milan. "And such a pleasure to see you again. A shame that we could not enter as brothers, Mister Forge."

"I like being an only child," Forge replied, trying to resist the urge to run past Milan and Cortez for the door. "So, here we all are. Wait, we know how we got here, how did you get here? It took a hell of a lot of work for us to figure it out," Forge pointed frantically between himself and Doug, "and we're geniuses. Well, I am, anyway. I mean, but... how?"

"We came on snowmobiles." Milan said, taking one hand off the gun to gesture. "You should be kneeling. I specifically remember telling you to kneel, kneel, -kneel-, before Zod. I did see that movie when I was a boy. A boy. The translation to Italian does not do it justice." He stopped speaking for a moment, and stared at Forge, blinking rapidly. "I also watched the cartoon Scooby-Doo when I was just, just a boy. I am not telling you all of my secrets!"

"We will give you one more chance to help us willingly." Cortez opened his duster, revealing a rapier hanging at his waist. "Refusal will not be elegant. Activate Tesla's teleforce death ray now, or - pardon the cliché - face the consequences."

"I can't!" Forge insisted. "Look, I know you probably know what I can do, but this... something like this is beyond my abilities. I understand machines, I can't command them."

"Oh, oh -very- well." Milan said, in an exasperated whining tone. He stared at Forge's coat pocket, blinking rapidly and clucking his tongue until, from the pocket came a loud blare of music and then the hiss of static. "I - I can command machines. Like Magneto commands the electromagnetic spectrum! I do not have your gift, if I do not understand them, I cannot make them do as I wish. Your iPod, that I understand. I have one myself. They are quite easy to make my own." He patted the pocket of his snowsuit. "It is sad that you do not have the iPhone. They are quite nice. I rather like mine. It speaks to me."

Forge gaped, drawing his iPod out of his pocket and staring at the display, which simply read "LOL" scrolling back and forth. Grimacing, he gripped the small device in his hand until the casing cracked and a squawk of static was the last thing heard from the machine. "You've been spying on us all along," he growled at Milan. "Every step of the way, you didn't have to do anything but listen. New York, Vienna, Tunguska, Lika-Senj... you son of a bitch, you fucking bugged me!"

He took a step forward, then stopped in his tracks as Milan waved the barrel of the shotgun. With a sigh, Forge stepped back and raised his hands. "Fine, fine. You guys can't make this work unless I can somehow understand it. And I'm telling you it's too big, okay? I'm one of the five smartest people on the planet and I can't grasp it. No matter how big a gun you point at me. I just don't have the power."

"False modesty." Cortez bared his teeth at Forge in something that might have been a smile, and pulled off his right glove. The stomping sound of his boots echoed in the silence of the tower. "You have the power, Mister Forge. Look deep within yourself. Let me show you."

Doug suspected that Cortez didn't have a power in common with Logan or Kyle Gibney. However, that didn't mean that 'feral' wasn't the first word that came to his mind to describe the expression on the mysterious man's face. Doug wasn't wild about the idea of letting Cortez lay hands on Forge, but the waving point of Milan's shotgun limited his options, and so he was forced to simply watch, his hands clenching and unclenching in frustration.

"Whoa there, dude," Forge exclaimed, shuffling away from Cortez, then realizing he was literally backed up to a wall. "Unless you want to see my amazing mutant power to throw down and whoop some ass, best you keep whatever bad touch you've got to yourself, yeah?" Despite the bravado in Forge's words, his voice was shaky as he held his fists up awkwardly.

"Your first hit is free," muttered Cortez. He gracefully lunged forward, like a fencer going in for a strike, and wrapped his bare hand around Forge's neck. The instant his fingertips contacted Forge's skin, the floodgates opened.

Forge closed his eyes instinctively as Cortez's hand touched his skin, but then opened them wide and gasped a deep breath. The air seemed to taste electric as he arched his back, spasmed, and then fell to the floor, gasping. He reached out, fingers grazing the walls and then it happened.

The world before his eyes erupted into patterns, blue and gold circling around each other. The ruined remains of his iPod on the ground, the shotgun in Milan's hands, the digital watch around Doug's wrist, all exploding before his eyes and reforming into an infinite array of form and function. The pain in his head all but forgotten in the light of this wonder, Forge rose off the floor, taking another deep breath.

And letting it out in laughter. Neither mocking nor congratulatory, but tinged with hysteria. Spreading his arms wide, he did the one thing he'd been fearing since they'd walked into the tower but now felt calling to him irresistibly. He looked upon the walls of the tower, not only with his eyes, but with his mind.

Then everything fell into place.

Head jerking slightly as he glanced about, Forge moved to the organ, fingers brushing the keys as the proper commands and arrangements lit up before his eyes. This was what real knowledge was, real understanding. This must be what Kick feels like, he told himself. This was everything he could do and so much more.

This is what Tesla himself must have felt like.

With blinding efficiency, Forge's fingers began to fly over the keys. A haunting melody began to emanate from the machine, eerily reminiscent of the coded message of the Vienna theremin. But more amazing was that as Forge played, glowing blue filaments of electricity began to spark from the machine, creeping along the metal walls of the tower as they began to rotate, panels shifting as the schematics shifted into place, forming the proper circuits and channels.

Whatever Cortez's precise power was, it was fairly easy for Doug to guess that the net effect was to accelerate Forge's power to the point where he now comprehended the nature of the tower. As the panels shifted, the patterns began to make sense to Doug. Or at least he began to comprehend their purpose, even if it didn't make much sense to him. The schema and inscriptions were beginning to match things he'd seen in Amanda and Wanda's library of mystical writings. Specifically, writings about the nature of life and death, and the subtle boundary between the two. He shook his head.

Whatever this tower was for, he didn't think it was a death ray like Cortez and Milan believed it to be.

Forge's head began to rock back and forth faster and faster as he hammered the keys of the organ, occasional bursts of electric light illuminating his face as his fingers literally began to draw sparks from the machine. Pieces were fitting together in his mind even faster than the tower could shift and reconfigure.

Then - connection. And it all became clear.

"Nikola Tesla was the most brilliant mind this planet has ever seen when it came to electricity," Forge shouted over the crackling lightning. "But his theories didn't extend solely to the matters of science. Tesla believed that the electricity generated by the human brain was something unique and wonderful. He's right. He's so very right."

The music built to a crescendo as actinic bolts of energy began to shoot down from the top of the tower, illuminating the strange schema on the walls with blinding light. "He believed that this electricity was what made up the human soul," Forge howled, whirling like a dervish to complete the machine's purpose, designed a century before and waiting here - waiting for him.

With mechanical precision and soulful power, Forge hammered out the last notes, resulting in a strike of lightning directly down the center of the tower - only unlike what seemed to be expected, the bolt of lightning froze, crackling in place.

Forge turned, wiping his brow and laughing as he stared through the beam of energy at Cortez and Milan. His expression was one of utter joy mixed with total lunacy. Blue sparks reflected in his dark eyes as his mouth widened in a rictus grin. "You wanted a death ray, Cortez. But you're wrong. Oh, you're so wrong. One hundred years, and I've completed Nikola Tesla's greatest experiment. The pattern of electricity in the brain - the human soul - it can be recreated. It can live on! Not death, Fabian, but life!"

In the center of the beam, blue energy began to coalesce, and a shadowed form became visible, rapidly becoming coherent. With shaking limbs, Forge staggered over to the three other men, gesturing as the figure stepped from the lightning.

Composed entirely of blue-white energy, the figure's features resolved into a narrow face, impeccably parted hair, and sharply focused eyes over a hawklike nose surmounting a neatly trimmed mustache. The figure looked over the four men, then focused on Forge, as if asking a silent question.

Forge nodded in assent, gesturing with a flourish. "Gentlemen, it is my privilege to present the finest mind of the twentieth century -Nikola Tesla."