The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities

Tesla needed an assistant, so the obvious person was John Wolt, who had been at school with Bannister and Frieze-Botham and was a great admirer of Tesla. He had already read his hero’s paper On Preparing a True Atomic Diminution Engine, printed privately in Chicago, and could think of no better way of serving both God and Science than helping carry the scriptures to the germs. “Better than trying to persuade the Germans,” he quipped, referring to Tesla’s humiliating experience in Berlin, which had rejected his electric recoilless gun, among other inventions.

Their work began apace.

Tesla, Wolt, and Frieze-Botham set to work unpacking and assembling the massive crates as they turned up from America. Soon an entire machine took shape in the church basement, and Tesla’s mood became increasingly elevated as his dynamos set to mumbling and whistling, then yelped into sudden life, drowning all other sound before being brought under purring control by their master.

“Messieurs, we have our power,” declared Tesla in his preferred language. His wife had always preferred it, too.

From what Begg pieced together and lodged under the “50 Years Act,” we can see that only Tesla, and perhaps Bannister, survived their attempts to shrink through what Tesla named “metamultiversal plates” down through the alternative universes to near-infinity. Practicing first on dead animals, then on human corpses obtained from Monk (which was what was turning up as parts of “fairies” or “Lilliputians” in the “meat” Monk disposed of through his usual means), the inventor and his colleagues were soon prepared to experiment on living animals and eventually on human subjects—and then themselves. All human subjects were volunteers and paid well, but only advanced to the first and second levels. Four died, all at what was called “the first level of descent.” Which was when Monk, who had supplied the corpses, now offered to take them off the vicar’s hands. He was growing rich on what they paid him and rather neglecting his usual dumping business.

When Tesla was satisfied that no harm could possibly come to human organs subjected to his electrics, he announced that he was ready to send a living creature straight through into what he termed the Intra-Universe, or Second Aether, down to worlds subtly different but ranged according to scale and mass so that the smaller one became the denser one, and the larger the more amorphous. The process had to be endured by degrees, stepping down a level at a time. All the laboratory guinea pigs used returned safely and indicated what was likely to happen to a human subject. At the first level, one remained small but visible and yet one’s normal weight. At the second level, one vanished from human sight, though one’s weight could still be measured as identical and the subject could be observed through a microscope; and at the third level, far more powerful instruments were needed until the traveller vanished completely from the scale, and weight became meaningless in the context. Wolt would, at his own request, be the first to be sent “downscale.”

Tesla was by no means oblivious of concern. He was nervous. He asked Wolt over and over if he felt ready. He received a steady affirmative. And so, the process began as Wolt stepped into the apparatus and the tall bell jar was lowered over him until it came to rest on the sturdy mahogany plinth. Lights and gauges let into the wood indicated the progress as Tesla’s dials and graphs began precise measurement of the man’s molecular structure before sending him on the first stage of his journey. Wolt carried with him portable versions of the crucial instruments, together with Dr. Bannister’s patented Portable Harmonium and a case of Bibles. On his left were the controls he would use for his return through five groups of six levels. Before returning, however, he would establish a base camp, where, before he returned, he planned to leave the majority of items he took with him.

The others watched eagerly and with concern the first transition, which the guinea pigs were known to have survived. Before their eyes, within a glorious, pale green aura, Wolt grew smaller and smaller until, triumphantly brandishing his Bible, he disappeared from view—to reappear in the viewing screen of the electric microscope still waving, evidently in good health. Another stage, and Wolt could be observed staring in awe at the lush, almost infinite world of the Submicroscopic.

He could be seen to consult his Bible at this point, and begin to preach. He was still preaching when he vanished at last from human ken, beyond the range of all Tesla’s detection devices.

Now the men waited impatiently. Would Wolt return safely?

Hours went by. Tesla, who always ate voraciously when nervous, sent out for sandwiches.