The Human Bullet. Joaquin De Torres

      * * * * *

      MIRA-CAL

      Marko Marmilic had tried everything: every theorem, every angle, every wild notion of how to make a land vehicle travel five times the speed of sound and make no noise. His working prototype could only hit Mach 2, and that was a jet-rocket sled on rails.

      This was not his specialty, not his area of expertise. Why didn’t the Pentagon go to NASA, Lockheed-Martin, General Dynamics or Boeing? Their answer? ‘We only trust you because you are the visionary! You can foresee things others cannot and make them!’

      And week after week, the calls would come about his progress, about his prototype. He had no answers for them. For four consecutive days, he had writer’s block, or more accurately, inventor’s block, where he simply sat at his drafting table, staring at all the numbers, all the designs, and all the schematics in utter, dumbfounded silence.

      * * * * *

      Raduć

      “WHAM!!! WHAM!!! WHAM!!! WHAM!!!”

      It only took two swings of the hammer on each padlock to break them off the crates. She picked up the heavy brass locks and threw them into the trash can she had brought in. She did a quick sweeping of the entire inner room, table, chair and cleared all the cobwebs in the corners. She removed the candle holders and used the lamp lights to illuminate the room thoroughly.

      The space was now well-lit, clean and ventilated. She planned to break down the rest of the wall later in the week, dump the bricks and wood outside in one corner of the yard. Once that section was down, she could decorate the area under the stairs with house plants, a couch, bookshelves, etc. But first things first – the crates!

      She opened the lid of the first one and saw that it was full of stacks of documents wrapped in protective paper and ribbon. She carefully lifted each stack and placed them on the table. It was now late afternoon and the Sun was setting behind the Velebit mountain range. Irena went to her large ice cooler and retrieved a bottle of Velebitsko Black and popped open the cap. She sat in the chair, sipping the beer and surveying the stacks.

      She drank half the bottle before she stood up and cut the ribbon of the first stack. Removing the protective outer paper, she set the contents on her lap and quickly sifted through each page.

      There were writings, official stamped documents, drawings, schematics and hand-written notes. All of it was scientific and mathematic in nature. Numbers, lines, measurements, angles, symbols and long strings of algorithms – all these things, were printed or scribbled on each page.

      Some pages were of drawings of whole machines, apparatuses, devices, mechanisms, along with their infrastructures, individual parts with size and strength measurements. Some of the notes were in Croatian, while others were in English. But she couldn’t focus on the writing because it had been a long day and there were just too many papers to look at.

      Feeling tired and hungry, her eyes and muscles sore from her physical attack on the wall, she downed the rest of the beer and decided to leave her detailed inspection for tomorrow. But something hit her that she didn’t notice when she was first rifling through the pages.

      Her eyes never bothered to look down at some scribble on the bottom right of each sheet. But when she did, her heart began to beat like a jackhammer. At the bottom of every page was the signature of Nikola Tesla!

      * * * * *

      MIRA-CAL

      “It can’t be done,” said Marko regrettably as he looked at the person on the other side of his large monitor. “My people are the best engineers and we’ve been over this for the months you’ve given us. There’s no way this can be done even with my technology.”

      Ericka Hedlin stared back at him with her large, but tired green eyes. She wanted to hear everything he had to say before she responded. Marko just shook his head like a beaten man.

      “No, Madam President, it can’t be done. So, with all due respect and the honor for having been entrusted with this project, I will immediately refund your entire investment, every penny of it, and turn over all my progress and prototype to your people.

      “MIRA-CAL has simply too many projects for saving and rebuilding lives. We’re not in the business of taking them. Please accept my apologies and I will send the money electronically back to your financial institution in the morning.”

      Hedlin remained expressionless. Marko could see she was not disappointed but aggravated by his answers. Her continued silence said it all as he began to sear under the heat of her glare. It seemed like minutes as her heated stare and cold silence dried his throat, yet he dared not reach for his cup of coffee just inches from his hand.

      “I’ll wire you an additional 150 million,” she said finally.

      “It’s not the money, Madam Pres-”

      “And another three months.”

      “It may take longer than that, but I don’t-”

      “MARKO!” Hedlin yelled. Marko froze at the sudden boom of her voice. She pinched the bridge of her nose and closed her exhausted eyes. When she spoke, her tone had softened, but he couldn’t find anything but frost and desperation in her words.

      “Don’t you understand? If you don’t do this. . .I’m dead.”

      * * * * *

      Raduč

      NIKOLA TESLA! her mind screamed within. Irena Pezelj was no longer tired, no longer hungry, no longer a regular person. She poured over the work like a woman possessed. She was so nervous, so excited, so full of adrenaline, she couldn’t believe what she was looking at, reading, holding in her very own hands! She marveled at each page, savoring this unbelievable moment as if entrusted with her nation’s greatest treasure and secrets.

      She put down the papers and left to wash her hands thoroughly. She took a deep breath and tried to clear her head. She needed to be objective, not an excited little girl. Page after page, notebook after notebook, she sifted through these precious articles of knowledge and antiquity.

      She gently rubbed her fingertips on the parchment, smelled the scent of aged wood and mildew, viscerally trying to understand how unbelievable this all was. She soon realized by the handwritten notes and remarks, that these files, these documents and drawings, were not prints, but original works from the legendary inventor himself!

      She swallowed deeply and sweat began to glisten on her forehead in nervous tension and excitement. I should call someone! she considered. I should call the Tesla Technical Museum in Zagreb! No, the museum in Smiljan! No, the Tesla Science Center in New York! No, the Smithsonian Museum in Washington DC! No, the Tesla museum in Belgrade!

      “Wait. Fuck Serbia!” she spat. She finally concluded that these works would remain with her until she found a suitable institution to either sell or donate them to. Until then, she was going to just keep them with her, her own little secret, and study.

      “My god, look at all this!”

      For three days, she traveled back and forth from Gospić to Raduč to read over the stacks of documents, plans, calculations and mathematical equations. What was most interesting to her were Tesla’s side notes and comments that were so cryptic that only she, a mathematician, could immediately understand what he was thinking. The drawings were so intricate and detailed that, because they were originals, could fetch millions of dollars if she were to auction them off.

      She began categorizing the documents by subject matter: electric power, hydraulic power, wireless communications, gravitational power, etc. and searched areas of both the dining room and the sitting room. She had no furniture in the house yet, so she walked barefoot on the cool wooden floors she had polished by hand, laying the documents in neat rows and columns according to their subject matter.

      Almost all of the documents from the first crate were simply copies of his work which could be found in technical museums