Tarot Reading
- A foreseen destiny will now manifest.
(The effect of this reading is limited to the current floor)
Shffff—
Once all three cards lay face-up on the table, the Leaflet gave a brief explanation of the Perk. The woman rolled up the Leaflet with practiced ease and turned her full attention to interpreting the cards.
"Hmm—"
"?"
Visitor C stared at the three cards spread out in the air for a long while, unable to string a sentence together.
Even looking at them, I have no idea what they mean.
The cards bore beautiful Western-style paintings, the kind you'd find in a fairy tale. To me — a complete ignoramus where tarot was concerned — they looked like nothing more than illustrations in a picture book.
When in doubt, watch the reaction of someone who can actually read the cards.
I fixed my gaze on Visitor C and studied her emotions. She was running her fingers through her hair with the same composed eyes as before.
…I don't know tarot, but this much I do know.
The cards came out well.
"And what do they mean?"
At Tesla's question, Visitor C traced a smile across her lips. Then, with a long slender finger, she swept it over the first card. Light rippled around the card like the flicker of a will-o'-the-wisp.
"This card is The Magician."
A magician? Doesn't look like one to me….
It was a picture of a figure standing behind a table. A person of indeterminate gender, holding a staff aloft. Raised like a torch, more than anything — it hardly gave off the air of a magician.
"One who commands unseen forces. Someone who has already grasped principles not yet fully formed. It fits The Magician card perfectly."
Visitor C praised Tesla in an even steadier voice. Had she done readings for a living before entering the tower? She carried on without the slightest hesitation, her interpretation flowing like silk.
"Technology a whole era ahead of the world. Naturally, things will grow busier, and those seeking this technology will multiply."
"Haha. The cards speak of such things?"
"It's because you drew that card, Mr. Nikola Tesla. Destiny will flow just as it is meant to."
Visitor C put deliberate weight on the words destiny. Perhaps to let me know that there was no need to manipulate anything at all.
"And the Tower."
A tower burning with lightning. And people falling from that tower.
How could this possibly be read as something good…?
I couldn't tell whether they'd fallen because the tower had collapsed, or whether they'd leapt downward to save their own skins. Either way, it was an image that radiated a thoroughly negative impression.
"Your question about alternating current is both the technology — and you yourself, Nikola Tesla."
"So the Tower carries the same meaning, then."
"That's right. It is unstable, and it tears down the existing order."
Amid that banquet of every negative word imaginable, I swallowed dryly. But an instability that shatters the existing mold could, read generously, be a change toward a better future.
"This lightning is both a blessing and a curse."
Of course the picture would have lightning in it. It suits Tesla perfectly.
"For alternating current, it is the blessing that will carry your name out into the world, Mr. Tesla."
"And the curse?"
"I'd read it as danger, or perhaps suffering. What curse exists in this world, after all?"
"Haha, it's rather amusing to hear a fortune-telling gypsy say that."
Tesla, who had been listening to the interpretation, let out a laugh far looser than before. A curse. Danger. Suffering.
However you defined the words, it all prophesied the same future: Tesla, never fairly compensated, ending his days in poverty.
"Since The Magician came first, your technology — alternating current — will continue to advance. Of that I am certain."
"Then what dangers await me?"
"…Affection, money. When it comes to such rewards, you may not get the results you desire."
"I have no time to court women, and the time I lack is not devoted to money alone — so I shall manage."
Tesla seemed relatively unattached to matters of love or money. Though I'd wager he still weighs financial reward heavily — he considers it the fruit of his own research and ability.
"You know, Doctor. It's rather remarkable, isn't it?"
"Pardon?"
Then, out of nowhere, Visitor C addressed me. A startled sound slipped out of my mouth, which had been quietly listening to the reading. She kept her eyes on the cards even as she left the opening hanging.
"You could call it gypsy superstition, but I have no choice but to believe my own cards."
Her eyes brimmed with more conviction than I'd ever seen in them.
"They always point to the future, true and proper."
"Ten of Pentacles. Reversed."
The last card depicted a scattering of gold coins. Reversed…? Now that she mentioned it, the Ten of Pentacles, unlike the other two, had been laid upside down.
So even the orientation of the card changes its meaning.
"Even if it is not pure creation, your achievements will become history, institutions, the everyday life of humanity. But…."
Visitor C brushed her hand over the Ten of Pentacles card. That fame, that wealth, that legacy — they could end up meager compared to what Nikola Tesla imagined. Having piled up so many achievements, it was only natural he would want renown to match — more than his actual recognition.
"Do you wish to be rich? Or do you wish to be the victor of science? If you must choose between the two—"
"The latter, without question."
Tesla answered instantly, without a moment's deliberation.
Even if he himself were to fall, he would not let go of the lightning.
Shffff—
THE MAGICIAN
THE TOWER
TEN OF PENTACLES
The spread Leaflet and the tarot cards dissolved into light in an instant and vanished.
Tesla gazed at the soft glow that had enveloped his body and marveled.
"According to the alien, hmm. Alternating current will have a great influence on the civilization of the future. It will be in use for generations to come."
"Haha."
The moment the reading was done, Visitor C hastily folded the alien into her tarot narrative. Tesla gave another short laugh. He was pleased that his own conviction had come back to him through another person's mouth.
"I do not care for those who judge and critique me. And yet."
Tesla cupped the last of the vanishing motes of light in his hands. Scars, calculations, electric current and metal — a texture strangely ill-suited to hands long accustomed to logic and science.
"Even without grounds, praise is welcome. Recognition is the energy resource of humankind."
This man is far more human than I expected.
Perhaps I had placed too great a weight on the creature called a genius. He was human through and through, after all.
"I intend to hand over the patent rights to my alternating current to Mr. Westinghouse shortly. Naturally, I shall receive proper compensation."
"……"
"That, too, is recognition."
It was not conceit — his manner suggested he was speaking nothing but the truth. I got the feeling this was a decision he had already verified in his own mind a dozen times over.
"Well said, Mr. Tesla. I respect your way of experimenting while holding fast to your ideals. However."
I took a short breath and went on. Advice, not interference — a light suggestion, light enough that it wouldn't touch history itself.
"You have to survive before you can protect your ideals, don't you?"
"……"
It wasn't really a question. Tesla seemed to catch that as well, offering only a silent non-answer. History prices ideals dearly, but within one man's actual life, a person has to scrape up whatever profit he can find.
Thanks to the tarot card Perk, Tesla's destiny is now fixed as-is. So advice to this degree isn't a bad thing.
He needed some posture to push back against Edison — to defuse Edison's fear marketing before it took hold.
Please, don't let yourself get swept up in Edison's mistakes.
"Now then. I must ask you both to leave. You've cost me a full twenty-seven minutes — and that's not counting the racket on the train, or the time it took you to walk to my door."
"……"
"Sleep is out of the question tonight."
The moment the conversation ended, Tesla threw us out. His words were courteous; his regard for us could not have amounted to the dust in the corner of his eye. Visitor C and I bowed our heads in dumbfounded farewell. This absurd goodbye would most likely be our last with Tesla.
"Thanks to the effect of my Perk, Tesla's future will remain safely intact."
We slipped out of Tesla's house and walked until we were well beyond earshot of his door. The moment we hit the street, the gentlemen and ladies of the city shot sidelong glances at us.
Is it the clothes?
Our rumpled modern garb, utterly unlike the tailored fashions of this era. Even as Visitor C and I kept walking, fresh stares latched onto us at every step. I briefly considered buying new clothes, but we had no money. For now, I tried to shrug off the oppressive feeling of being watched.
"What would you have done if the cards hadn't come out right, and Tesla's alternating current had been put in danger?"
"Well, going by what you told him, alternating current will be used well into the future."
"That's right."
Visitor C stared off into empty air, as if retracing in her head the explanation I'd given her and the Docent's materials.
"Tesla was never a businessman at heart, which is why he sold the AC patents. Which means it stopped being his destiny alone."
The destiny now extended onward to Westinghouse, who had bought Tesla's patents.
"Even if the cards had read negatively for Tesla's alternating current, that would be a fate he has to bear. It can't steal away Westinghouse's destiny too."
"But as you yourself said, Ms. C — couldn't a butterfly effect shift another person's fate as well?"
"And from your explanation, Tesla's future didn't exactly sound luxurious to begin with."
"No… that's true."
"So, well. A negative card wouldn't have mattered much either way."
Visitor C laid out the reasons for her conviction with flawless logic. But to me, what underpinned it all was nothing more — and nothing less — than her confidence. The image of her, moments ago, hardening her faith in her own reading as she interpreted the cards rose vividly before my eyes.
"And since you can manipulate things anyway, you acted boldly."
If even one of the three cards could be swapped for a hopeful one, she could coax the reading toward a favorable interpretation no matter what.
Visitor C, listening quietly to my deduction, lifted the corner of her mouth into an even more self-assured smile.
"That's the thing, you see. It's less that I change the cards, and more that I simply draw again."
"? Then couldn't another bad card come up?"
"It could."
Visitor C gave a simple nod of agreement to my words. But she didn't seem to genuinely feel the point.
Drawing a card is a pure gamble. How can anyone hold faith and conviction this absolute?
For someone like me — who, if pressed, had always harbored doubts about fortune-telling — it was nothing short of astonishing.
Then Visitor C opened her mouth again, quick to fill the silence.
"If it weren't for you, I wouldn't have taken the chance at all."
"Pardon? Me?"
"You taught us Tesla's future in advance. If he'd been a proactive type — hmm, someone like Edison — it would have been hard to touch his destiny."
Getting a compliment from Visitor C while I'd been doubting her tarot readings left me oddly guilty. Even if our knowledge runs in different directions, I should learn to believe like she does.
"And besides teaching me all that knowledge—"
Visitor C paused, choosing her words, then added them clearly.
"I heard it from the Curator. The visitor of unprecedented notoriety — the one who created the quest in the Boundary."
"……"
"Thanks to you, I got one more chance as well."
Even if none of it was my fault — even with the lingering resentment she might still carry, since her older sister, who'd been with me, had been erased — trust came before calculation in her gaze.
"Well then, it's Edison's turn next, isn't it? Where do we go?"
Ever since the tarot reading had ended, Visitor C had left every decision entirely in my hands.
"……"
I looked around at the streetscape. The 1880s of America — bustling, and yet somehow forlorn. Call it an age of great progress; the roadside hardly brimmed with vitality alone.
"How do we go about meeting Edison?"
"…We'll have to let time pass."
Visitor C, having waited for my answer until her patience wore out, pressed me again, more urgently this time.
"The newspaper!! The newspaper!"
And just then, the very problem-solver we needed appeared before us.