Tesla and the Spheres

During the nineteenth century, crowded as it was with material achievements, most of the inhabitants of this earth were too busy to pay much attention to goings on elsewhere, but Nikola Tesla is now ready to make himself a medium of communication with the rest of the solar system.

More than that, he has discovered that somewhere in the solar system there are beings trying desperately to get into communication with us.

Tesla has all kinds of instruments, and he says that some of them have been behaving very queerly lately. He cannot explain their actions, and what Tesla cannot explain has an origin somewhere outside the bounds of mundane things. Therefore somebody in the universe is signaling the earth.

It is all very simple, and at the same time most touching. It shows a kindly feeling of neighborliness on the part of those beings, we must say, and we hope that Tesla will master the dialect and work up a reply as soon as he can. And let him not forget to discover on what planet these well meaning neighbors are located.

What he will tell them or what he will ask them when he is ready to begin the conversation no one can guess. There is a story that by laying out an immense illuminated right angled triangle somewhere on the earth and causing squares to be built upon the two sides a man once got information from Mars that the thing to do next was to draw a square on the hypotenuse. But that is not very original information to go so far for. It isn’t new, and it is distinctly lacking in the human personal flavor which near neighbors should inject into their intercourse. If Tesla can find out from another planet what they are doing about the hired girl question, or what there is that will make hair stay curled in damp weather, or how to win a match when your opponent is three up and two to play, he will have accomplished something.

The perplexities which embarrass such communications are well known. It is said that a survivor once got a chance to talk to a departed relative who in life was a very tall man.

“Is that Bill?” he said.

“Yes.”

“Are you happy, Bill?”

“Yes.”

“You’re in Paradise, ain’t you?”

“Yes.”

A long pause, for lack of something to say, ensued, and then the survivor, struck with a happy thought, inquired:

“Say, Bill, how long are you from tip to tip?”