Dr. Tesla's Disappearing Act

On Sunday, January 10, 1943, Dr Bernard Wheelock was eating breakfast and reading the Sunday newspaper when an obituary caught his eye. Three days earlier Dr Nikola Tesla had been found dead in his hotel room.

Bernard's thoughts flew back to a day at Cambridge in 1925 when Dr Tesla lectured there, and he had been his volunteer in what the news of the day called 'Dr. Tesla's Disappearing Act.'

His mother, Ruby, had left Bernard with his grandparents while she established a stage actress career. His grandparents had covered for her, not letting anyone know the true circumstances of her pregnancy or the reason she had left her son in their care.

At age six, Bernard started school, and about the same time, the grippe hit the area. Bernard came down with it and although he recovered, first Granny and then Grandpa Grace died, leaving Bernard alone until Ruby was located.

When she came for him, she sold the farm and they moved on, taking Bernard with her on acting tours throughout the countryside.

At ten, he asked his mother to tell him the truth about his father, and that's when he found out the strange events surrounding his birth.

Ruby said his father was a traveller from a future time, and one day, he would meet Bernard.

In 1915, Ruby married Baron Bronwyn Gaskell and they moved to England. Bernard developed a close and loving relationship with his stepfather who was a kind, thoughtful and generous man who loved Ruby very much.

On her death, in 1921, in a letter, Ruby told him his father's name was Markeis Hammontree and to be wary of 'Alien Grubbs.'

Bernard attended Cambridge and made a friend, Rune Gadsden. He accompanied him to the lecture given by Dr Tesla and urged him to accept the chance to assist Dr Tesla in his demonstration. Bernard sat in Dream-seeker, the Chair of Release and Remembrance, and learned of its uncanny ability to connect the living with the dead, as well as travelling over space and time. He was reunited with his father. They travelled to Unity Central where they found themselves in a hearing with Trinity, and after this Bernard returns to the lecture hall.

Dr Tesla and the audience were glad he has returned. For more than four minutes, Bernard had completely vanished.

Although his father told him he's the inventor of the 'timer-casa', and that he must come back in it, Bernard wasn't sure he wanted to return to that time one thousand years distant.

In the epilogue, it concludes in 1943, and with World War 2 raging, Bernard has made his mind up. He wants to go back to the future where his father waits for him.

But his attempts at building a machine that travels across time and space have met with failure, until he realizes he's had the means to do it, all along.

Bernard travels to Louisiana and leases from its present owner, the Chair of Release and Remembrance, secretly intending on using it as the device that will carry him back to the future; and having eight months, he thinks it should be plenty enough time to do whatever needs to be done. Having the 'timer-casa' in working condition is the only way his parents will meet...and his very existence hangs in the balance.