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Nikole Tesla — The Beginning

November 3, 2021

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It was a quiet night on the streets of Industrial Parkway. The land of abandoned warehouses and archaic factories was only a few short miles away from the bustle of night commuters, taxi cabs, neon signs and shop windows. Here it didn’t smell like the rotting garbage that lined the streets or the sticky summer film that somehow creeped up through the sewers and lined the curb. Instead it reeked with the enchanting aroma of diesel fuel and the memory of assembly lines that hadn’t been running for decades. This was Nikole’s refuge and her sanctuary.

On a one-of-a-kind hoverboard of her own invention, Nikole Tesla took her turns at a reckless and breakneck speed, dodging potholes and blasting EDM on her earbuds as loud as she could stand it. She sometimes wondered why they even bothered to power the street lights in this deserted part of the city anymore. There was never anyone here, and Nikole loved that about Industrial Parkway.

Speeding past the worn down fences and broken windows that she’d seen hundreds of times before, Nikole thought back on the hard day that had preceded this glorious night. It was time to make a difficult decision, but she was ready.

Few people in the world are even aware that the great Nikola Tesla had any direct descendants. Famously quoted as saying things like “I do not think you can name many great inventions that have been made by married men,” the inventor was an unlikely candidate for companionship. The idea that he had a lasting secret affair in the early 20th century that resulted in a son was incredibly far-fetched to biographers, historians and scientists. Tesla had claimed that this alleged love affair was actually with a pigeon he was fond of, and his closest friends considered him eccentric enough to believe his story. The mysterious lady had died young, less than a year after childbirth, so Tesla kept her identity a secret even from her own son.

Tesla passed on a great deal of his knowledge of science to his young protege, Nikole’s Great Grandfather. When he died in 1943 at the age of 86, Nikola was all alone. This was because his only son was drafted into World War II in 1940. Nikole’s Great Grandfather spent a bloody five years fighting overseas until the Allies defeated the Nazis in 1945.

Nikole’s Great Grandfather returned home after the war, never surfacing as a descendant of the late inventor. The unknown heir to Tesla’s genius blended into mid-century American life, eventually finding a wife and raising a couple children of his own. In the late 70s, his son Theo had a son named George, who met Nikole’s mother at college and produced the great scientific genius destined to revive and rekindle the name of Tesla and bring something extraordinary to the world.

Nikole’s parents made sure that she understood her roots, all the way back to the Tesla family from Serbia before Nikola Tesla’s immigration to the United States. They educated her with all the secrets that had been passed down from generation to generation, and they filled her head with all the dreams and ambitions of any child of the 21st century. With today’s technology combined with the passed down genius of her ancestors, Nikole had always excelled in school. She graduated from high school at fourteen and was currently attending the Blakeman Institute of Technology, one of the most prestigious schools for inventors in the world. After three years at the Institute, Nikole had become bored and restless, tired of learning and ready to make a difference.

A young man at school named August had been enrolling in Nikole’s classes and becoming especially interested in her studies of electromagnetic engineering. At first Nikole had hoped that the young man fancied her, but earlier today she learned his name and realized the truth. His name was Edison. He was a direct descendant of Thomas Alva Edison, her Great Great Grandfather’s nemesis and the infamous rival who had bested him in the race for hundreds of patents. She was utterly unwilling to sink into a retelling of Nikola’s sad story, and she was out riding tonight to make a fateful decision surrounding the future of her family’s inventions.

Nikola Tesla once said “I don’t care that they stole my idea… I care that they don’t have any of their own.” Perhaps he was a better scientist than Nikole, but she didn’t care. There were still inventions to be made, patents to be claimed and lives to be changed. The Tesla family would still make a mark on the world, and Nikole would make sure of it. She was not looking for a nemesis. She was looking for a purpose, and to find that purpose, she would have to leave the city of her home.

Nikole killed the engines and stepped off the hoverboard, then pulled the noisy headphones from her ears. Standing there under the yellow glow of a streetlight and hearing the night noises of a deserted industrial graveyard after dark, she suddenly felt giddy with excitement and couldn’t contain herself. She raised her arms to the sky and let out a wild and boisterous laugh. She felt powerful like never before. In fact, she could swear that sparks flew freely from her extended hands.