The Shock City Ball

Chicago. A July afternoon. Sitting beneath the giant dynamo with her father, Agnes has trouble focusing on his little lesson about electricity. Somewhere else in the Fair’s giant Machinery Hall, she can hear the spinning shaft of another dynamo skip a beat every few moments:

Hmmmmmmm THRIP.

The skip sets off a buzz of intuition: something about her strong, handsome father isn’t right. But what?

Hmmmmmmmmmmmm THRIP. On all sides of Agnes, men in linen suits, women in straw hats and shirtwaists walk past the row of dynamos. Overhead the sun beats down from the skylights, with high catwalks just below. Children in shorts or gingham dresses skitter around corners or stop to peer at workers in shirtsleeves, jackets off, derbies clamped firmly on their heads, crawling under the machinery of another dynamo, which sits unmoving under the brilliant sun. The green metal cover is off, exposing rotor and coils. Agnes wonders why her father isn’t supervising the workmen instead of sitting on the granite base, giving her a science lesson.

“Now this here. This is what we call wiring it in parallel.” Her father has already assembled a whole set of lamps on a board as a model. “Can you say that in pig-Latin, sweetie?” He gives her a poke in the ribs.

“Wiring-way— Wiring—”

“Iring-way in arallel-pay.”

“Iring. Way. In. Aralell. Pay.”

“Beautiful!” Another poke. “How ‘bout lighting my cigar for me?”

“Yes, papa.”

“That’s not electrified yet.” Jacket off, sleeves rolled, green necktie pulled tight against his high collar, he radiates his own personal voltage.

THRIP.

Laughing, he hands her a box of kitchen matches. She strikes one and holds it to his cigar, gloating at her ability to hold the match till the last possible moment before it burns her fingers. How do cigars taste, she wonders.

“Hey! Watch yourself,” Johnny says. Gripping a knife, he hooks a length of copper cable, wrapped in rubbery gutta-percha, to the lamps on the board. A moment later, he disconnects one lamp on the board and grins as the others stay on.

At times like this, Agnes knows, she’s the envy of her classmates, even her teacher. “Children, Agnes is spending the summer at the World’s Columbian Exposition. Her father is chief of the electrical bureau. Agnes, is it true he’s responsible for electrically lighting the whole Fair?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Now she puts down the sack of popcorn she’s been nibbling from.

“Great day for circuitry,” Johnny says.

“Yes, papa.”

“Nothing like a July day to wire up this circuit board, right, honey?”

“No, papa.”

Yes, papa. No, papa. Her gingham dress feels sticky. Her cotton stockings feel sticky. Even her braids are itchy and sticky.

“But wait a mi—” her father says. “We haven’t wired it in series yet, have we?”

“Didn’t we do that last Saturday? We did, papa. I know we did.”

“Let’s do it in series now, okay?”

“Yes, papa.” Better not to press when he acts like this.

Ned approaches, gnawing on a turkey leg. “Johnny,” he says.

“Don’t interrupt.”

“That dynamo,” he says between bites of drumstick. “The shaft––”

“Can’t you see I’m busy with my little girl?” Hanging onto his words, nibbling popcorn again, Agnes barely notices one of the men turn and slip from the Hall.

“As I was saying.” Johnny points to the row of bulbs. “The power goes from this lamp, to this one, then to the next and the next. But it also goes past each lamp at the same time. That’s wiring it in parallel. Arallel-pay iring-way.”

Why is her father joking? Why did he ignore Ned’s warning? Two passing men  and a woman with a ruffled parasol stop to watch. Seeing them, Johnny tips his derby. “Hello there, and welcome,” he says. “To the greatest display of electrical invention this year. Lamps? A hundred thousand, easily. Of course—” He chuckles. “—next year, 1894, might be bigger yet.” The men smile, as if this lighthearted spiel were a delightful free surprise from the Fair itself.

“Amazing,” one man says. “Is Mr. Edison part of this?”

“Edison?” Johnny says. “No indeed.”

“Oh, and why not? I read in the Tribune—”

“Then you read wrong. Mr. E—if I may call him that—Mr E. —  has no place here. Did I not explain those hundred thousand lamps? Mr. Edison. Hah! Couldn’t move power from here to the Midway.”

“This must be your father,” the woman says to Agnes. “Aren’t you proud?”

“Yes ma’am.” Something is wrong. Agnes doesn’t know how she knows. She knows.

THRIP.

Another man in rough overalls touches Johnny’s shoulder. “Boss.” He nods toward the skipping dynamo. “If number three blows, half the Fair goes dark. Shouldn’t we do something?”

Slowly, Johnny puts down the board with the lamps. Slowly, he stands, unfolding to his full six-foot-four height. His mustache twitches. “Didn’t you hear me? I said don’t bother me when I’m with my little girl.”

By now Agnes knows her father is having one of his “episodes.” That’s what people call them. “Oh, no, not again,” they murmur in tones of reproach or resentment, as if he were cheating the Fair with these outbursts. It’s clear he hasn’t noticed the fellow who slipped out of the hall a few minutes ago approaching him now, accompanied by an important-looking man in a black suit and silk hat.

“I know what you’re doing,” Johnny continues. “Trying to come between a man and his daught––”

WHANG! As the faulty dynamo seizes up with a sickening crack, the woman drops her parasol, screams, and clamps a gloved hand over her mouth. A HUMMMMMMM wells up from the dynamo’s interior, followed by a BANG and a burst of sparks. A burnt metal smell fills the air; lights overhead blink and die.

“I knew it,” Johnny yells. “You sly devils will do anything to steal this Fair from me.” Before anyone can reach him, he grabs Agnes by the waist, jerking her in the air, and runs toward the iron ladder against the wall.

“Don’t go up there!” Ned pleads as Johnny begins a tricky one-armed climb up the ladder, his other arm wrapped around Agnes. Looking below, she sees more men in silk hats rushing up. “Some of you start the backup,” one shouts. “Prepare to switch the circuits.” The workmen hurry to obey.

“P’raps you’ve forgotten who I am,” Johnny shouts from the narrow catwalk just below the skylights. “I am the chief engineer, electrical bureau, for this Fair.” One of the men suppresses a laugh.

The man in the silk hat now begins climbing the iron ladder after him. “Easy now,” he shouts upward.

“Papa!” Agnes screams, because her father has just grabbed her waist with both hands and hoisted her over the catwalk railing. The room sways; she kicks her legs against empty space.

“Climb another rung and I drop this girl,” Johnny shouts.

“Papa, papa!” She can hardly recognize Machinery Hall in her quick glances, the skylights garishly close and bright. The paper sack slips from her hand and tumbles downward, showering people below with popcorn.

“John,” says the man on the ladder. “Look at me. Look at my face, John. Do I look like I want to hurt you?”

“Papa, please! It hurts!” Agnes can’t even think about the upturned faces below.

“We’re your friends,” says the man on the ladder. “If you’d only—”

“Need I remind you who’s in charge here?” Johnny says.

“John, no one’s trying to take anything from you.”

Why is that man so calm, Agnes thinks. So reasonable, somehow? Before she has time to think about it, Johnny shakes her up and down so violently she thinks she’ll throw up. “You all know there’s no one else could have planned the electrical elements of this Fair,” she hears. “So don’t try to––” Then Agnes hears the thud of a man’s fist connecting with Johnny’s jaw. Even twisting her neck, she can’t see who it is. Johnny moans, his grip releases, followed by the clang as his body hits the catwalk floor. For an instant she’s falling through space, then she isn’t falling at all, but being lifted high into the air by a pair of strong hands beneath her arms, over the railing and down to the safety of the wire-mesh catwalk.

“Ooooooh!” screams the crowd below.

Sitting on the catwalk, Agnes hugs her knees, trying to recall why she came to the Fair today. A summer afternoon. Cotton candy. Trying to talk Mrs. Kimmelman, the ticket-taker, into letting her ride the Ferris wheel free. All that could have been, now utterly and completely ruined. Her stockings feel clammy; she realizes she’s wet herself. In her shame she doesn’t see the two men who grab Johnny’s arms and twist them roughly behind his back before dragging him toward the door.

*

With Johnny committed to East Moline Hospital for the Insane, Agnes’s mother was left alone to face the consequences when, a few years later, the child began having episodes of her own. Sewing a button on a shirt, the girl saw static electricity make the shirttail stick to the hem of her starched apron and began to weep. Agnes: Look, they’re embracing. Mother: Why are you crying? Agnes: Because they love each other.

Two months later, the child watched a squirrel scamper along a thick skein of overhead power lines. Flash. Bang! The creature touched the wooden pole, grounded itself and plummeted to earth. “He kissed it goodbye,” Agnes told her mother, smiling as if she’d discovered a secret insight into things.

By her early teens, the girl demonstrated a level of scientific intuition not explainable as mere talent. At the invitation of her seventh grade teacher, she explained Ohm’s Law to her class, then for no discernible reason, added Coulomb’s Law. The head of the science department was summoned, a brusque skeptic who took pride in spotting talent as well as seeing through its imitation. “Can you explain induction?” he asked the thirteen year old.

“Send an alternating current through a copper coil,” Agnes shot back, like an oracle garbed in a middy blouse. “The coil produces a magnetic field. Put another coil in that field. You can measure an electric current flowing through the second coil. That is induction.”

“Excellent,” he said. “Now can you tell me—”

“Have you wept today?” the girl interrupted. “Do you understand the evil that is being done?” At which the department head left the room, muttering.

If “prodigy” didn’t precisely describe this flammable mix of science and prophecy, it came near enough. Within the year, superintendent of Chicago Schools Ella Flagg Young, perhaps recalling her own youthful hunger for intellectual challenge, intervened to give the teenager exceptional opportunities. Though Young may not have realized what spark she was fanning. “Behold a simple evacuated glass tube, connected to nothing,” Agnes, now fourteen, told a schoolwide assembly, holding it for all to see. “I place it in the presence of an induction field—” She threw the switch, “—it glows with a light of its own.”

The students murmured.

The textbook explanation for this feat concerns the transformation of electricity to magnetism (and the reverse) and induced energy from one medium to another. But these accounts fail to explain what Agnes did next. “Watch now as I add another glass tube.” The murmurs grew, then the students gasped in unison as, holding the two tubes aloft, she slowly coaxed the light out of both till it seemed to hang in the void between them, pulsing.

“Are you alright?” a girl in the front row said as the assembly ended and other students rose to leave.

“I have a mission,” Agnes said. “People are speaking to me. I follow their commands.”

“You don’t talk normally.” the girl said.

“I can’t explain,” Agnes said. “It has to do with the way I play the violin.”

“The what?”

Was this science? Stage magic? Madness? If a trained scientist creates a glow in an evacuated cylinder, you may accept a natural explanation even if you cannot follow it. When a child (even the offspring of a scientist) makes light beams perform tricks in empty space, you might wonder where the angels come in. Comparisons with Tesla were inevitable after this episode; comparisons with Houdini’s escapes or even Einstein’s incomprehensibilties followed, especially when two science teachers dismantled Agnes’s apparatus into a jumble of parts and wire and declared they could not understand how she did it. Ignoring Agnes’s incoherent remarks, Superintendent Young intervened to place the adolescent in science courses at the University of Chicago, where Agnes told Professor Albert Michelson, “There is only one way to recover alternating current from Mr. Edison. Re-invent it from the beginning as if it had never happened.”

Michelson, deep into his project to measure the speed of light with ever greater precision that would win him the Nobel Prize, frowned. “You mean rebuild it.”

“No, begin at the beginning as if no one knew anything.”

“That’s impossible, little one,” he said, fixing his level gaze on her. “You can’t un-know something. Even if you didn’t know the technique, you would still know it could be done. Faraday never had that advantage when he studied electro-induction, nor did Gaulard with transformers, nor Ferraris with rotary magnetic fields.”

Agnes looked back into his hazel eyes, which were neither kind nor forbidding. “If the task is noble enough there is no limit to the number of times you can invent it,” she said. “Re-inventing delivers us from the demon Edison. And his allies the Jews.”

“You’re not making sense.”

“Edison is Jewish too,” Agnes said. “He’s a priest. A Jewish priest.”

The frown lines on Michelson’s face deepened. “In the Hebrew faith, young lady, that is called a rabbi.”

“Edison’s real name is Lincoln,” Agnes replied. “Lincoln contains the word ‘link.’ Link means connection, like an electrical connection. Do you think that’s a coincidence?”

The essential seriousness of Agnes’s mind never prevented a wave of talk about her “unique attributes” as Michelson and others put it. The question of why school officials tolerated such behavior is no easier to understand than why an earlier generation tolerated Johnny’s extremes. A straightforward medical-clinical analysis seems never to have been considered.

*

After another lecture, students were exiting and Agnes was powering down the circuitry when an unfamiliar man emerged from the rear of the classroom. “I wondered what it was like to be in the presence of magic,” the man said. “Now I know.”

“It’s no magic, only simple cause and effect,” Agnes said.

“Call it what you like.” The man smiled before introducing himself as Cyrus W. Hill, president of— There followed a blast of words suggesting a rising firm poised to wire the whole country.

“What do you want?” she said.

“What makes you think I want anything? Isn’t it enough to appreciate genius?” Trim, fortyish, not more than five-feet-seven or five-eight, he wore owlish round glasses that would have given him the look of a librarian if the gaze behind the lenses hadn’t been so cool and assessing.

“The world is at a crossroads,” Agnes said. “Any gifts I possess are in the service of fighting direct current.”

“I can see you have a mission,” Hill said, flashing a sudden, beaming smile. “I do too. Come visit our power station. We believe we can improve the efficiency of transmission lines over 300 miles by as much as ten per cent.”

“Well— I have school every day.”

“I can take care of that. Butchie?” He turned to a taller man she hadn’t noticed who moved forward with his hat brim too far down to see his eyes. “Butchie Zawadzki, my private secretary, will make some calls. You’ll be excused from classes as long as you need. Meantime I’ll send a car tomorrow to drive you to our experimental station.” Agnes wondered if she were being pushed or beckoned. Something about Hill suggested he never wasted a second.

*

Agnes tried to remember enough about Machinery Hall to compare it with this brick and stone prototype of empire-scale power beside the Calumet River near the steel mills. On the vast floor, along with a crowd of financiers in gray suits and homburgs, she watched operators ramp the generator up to a humming 220 kilovolts, then to 330 then 440, with rock-steady line stability; nary a transient. The lights overhead never blinked as two men applied an additional dummy load to the line. They dropped the generator to IDLE, the hum dropped to a low rumble.

Applause echoed off the walls, then Hill began rhapsodizing on the need for more generating capacity. “Chicago puts out 4.6 per cent of the country’s total energy though it has but 2.6 per cent of the population,” he said. “I see a need for at least ten generators of 40 to 60 megawatts.” Hands behind their backs, the bankers nodded in unison.

Agnes understood what this was about—alternating current. That was the main thing. Yet her feelings were clearly different from everyone else’s. “Why did you ask me here?” she said.

“This station was built for long-distance transmission,” Hill said. “Up to three hundred miles so far. We think we can send power as far as a thousand miles. Think is the key word. At present, we’re having too many flashovers.” On cue, an arc jumped eighteen inches from one ceramic insulator to another with a loud bang. Four startled bankers piled into one another as the pressure wave knocked over a stepladder.

“There it goes again,” Hill said. “Just for fun, what could you do to fix those?”

Butchie, who had been lurking in the shadows, spoke up. “I was reading about the way you made them lightning balls fly around the room. How’d you make them things move like that?”

“How? By being one with the apparatus. By feeling its power within me then giving back.” Without a further word, Agnes turned to the insulators as the flabbergasted bankers watched them bend apart from the strength of the power surge. She turned away and the surge died.

“If she can do these things, who’s to say what she can’t do?” muttered Reynolds of the Continental and Commercial National Bank, rolling an unlit cigar lovingly with his fingers. “Anyone who can do that is our kind of genius.”

“Money. That’s what I smell. Money,” said McGuinness of Home Bank and Trust, with his usual subtlety.

“You want me to help you, Mr. Hill,”  she said. “But I have a mission too. Mr. Edison and the Jews—”

“And that’s what we love about you,” Hill interrupted before the bankers could react. “We never know what you’ll say or do next. If you can help solve the transient problem on long distance transmission, we’re prepared to build your own lab for you right here in the plant.”

Her head buzzed with noises: bells, clicks, whirrs, the sound of paper tearing. She couldn’t make sense of it, yet  wasn’t this her chance to strike a blow against her enemies?

“I’m tired,” Agnes said finally. “People don’t understand. What I’m trying. To do.”

*

The following weeks were a stew of excused classes, long taxi rides (always at Hill’s expense) to the cavernous plant where Agnes was expected to perform her “miracles” for the bankers. Hill started fast in the morning, she learned, and seemed to gain energy as the day progressed. Visiting his office, she saw him breeze through three telephone calls at once, pointing to the one he wanted, while Butchie passed him each receiver.

“Never spend your own money,” he told her. Taking a dollar from his wallet, holding it to a mirror, he pointed to the reflection. “See that bill in the mirror? That’s the dollar you spend.” It was sneaky, somehow; could you buy groceries that way? Yet there he was, spinning his promises while people gave him cascades of money, a speculative frenzy that let him push his generators from 35 megawatts in 1900 to 150 megawatts a few years later. And there were his impulsive acts of generosity, buying everyone ice cream one afternoon, treating the staff to a weekend at Watwason Lodge in Lake Zurich. “Don’t hoard your money,” he said with a startling, uproarious laugh. “Spend it. Throw it around. Make it do tricks; it’ll come back to you with interest.”

It is tempting to speculate about what drew Agnes to Hill (an affinity for brainy, charismatic men?). A better clue may lie in Professor Albert Michelson’s aphorism: “Knowing what kind of problem is worth attacking is more important than merely carrying out the necessary steps.” Agnes herself said, “I can only make those things happen if I try hard enough. I think and think and think about what I have to do. What must be done. Then it happens, most of the time.” Perhaps it was that spark of uncertainty, along with Hill’s persuasiveness, that kept the capital flowing.

Flowing from all except Charles Michelson, “dean of Chicago financiers” and brother of Agnes’ skeptical mentor Albert. Days after Agnes dazzled the bankers, Charles dropped in on Hill without even a by-your-leave to see what the fuss was about. “Bankers exist to create money,” he said brusquely, as Agnes and a crowd of staff shuffled into Hill’s office to hear. The banker took a quarter from his coat pocket, flipped it into the air, palmed it, then, as the crowd stared, opened his palm—two quarters. “Isn’t it amazing what you can do when you put money to work? You can double it, triple it—quadruple it.”

“My pop used to do that stuff with coins,” Butchie said. “It’s a trick, ain’t it?”

“That’s right–just a little amateur prestidigitation,” Michelson said with a thin smile. “Of course you have to know your limits with money. If not, if you’re over extended, you might trigger a margin call. And then—” He tossed the quarters into the air; they vanished before everyone’s eyes.

“Hey! That’s pretty good,” Mabel the head bookkeeper said.

“I hear your chief scientific advisor is quite the magician too. So my brother says. Can you actually make electron beams fly around?” Michelson said to Agnes.

“I can when I become one with the instruments.”

“Some people might be impressed by that claim,” Michelson said.

Agnes didn’t answer. The man was clearly malign, sent to test her faith.

Hill had been watching this exchange without expression. Now he spoke up. “This girl is a prodigy.”

“How can anyone lend money based on that?” Michelson said.

“If you don’t you have faith in this child,” Hill said, “don’t you at least have faith in my record?”

Michelson thought a moment. “Someone is crazy here,” he said finally. “I don’t think it’s me.”

“Call it anything you want,” Hill said. “If it works—”

“A lot of people say I’m crazy,” Agnes blurted out. “I simply want to protect the world from the demon Edison and direct current.”

“Just what I said. Completely nuts.” Michelson waved his hand and a torrent of quarters tumbled from the air, bouncing and rattling on the table to Butchie’s embarrassed giggle.

*

Flush with funding, Hill accelerated his plans to new extremes. “I’m going to celebrate electricity with the biggest ball in town,” he told a staff meeting. “Ramp up the amps, let everyone feel that hum in their guts. Agnes can demonstrate her powers in front of hundreds of people.”

A ball? For what? More evidence of Hill’s hypnotic talk, Agnes thought. Perhaps he didn’t care about her crazy episodes because he sometimes seemed equally crazy, only with ever so much more focus.

Butchie cleared his throat. “Don’t let no one get too close to them busbars, boss. They could get a nasty shock.”

“Butchie,” Hill said.  “You just named this event. The Shock City Ball.”

“Whatever you say, boss.”

“Agnes,” Hill continued. “I’m granting you options as soon as we complete our next stock offering. Hiram, how are sales?”

“Eighty-four per cent subscribed as of yesterday.” Babyfaced Hiram Sorensen functioned as Butchie’s perfect foil. Where Butchie was burly and elaborately polite, Hiram worked in sleeve protectors, a statistical whiz who could project power demands five years hence in his head and spoke in clipped phrases. “No.” “Yes.” “We can do that.” “Not possible at this time.” Bankers called the trio Cy, Hi and Butchie, adding some of the legend that Tinker, Evers and Chance gave to double plays.

“Those options will make you a very rich little girl,” Hill added.

“Do we seem like mere businessmen to you?” Hiram added. “Do we? I believe we’re more than that. We’re evangelists. Prophets, even.” A glitter shone in his eyes. “By spreading the fixed costs of production across a greater volume of power, we’re making electricity so cheap that people can’t afford not to want it. They say the utilities are getting too powerful. Yet what brings more benefit to mankind than electricity? Name one thing. One. As long as you do the things you’re doing, investors have a reason to believe.”

“Gosh, Hi.” Hill’s indulgent smile. “I haven’t heard you so talkative in years.”

“You know, I have a B.S. in electrical engineering,” Hiram continued as though Hill hadn’t spoken. “Cornell, class of ’05. I thought I understood electricity. But I have to admit, watching your feats is like seeing the face of God.”

Heading home, Agnes wandered into Woolworth’s. An electric fryer was making apple fritters, further evidence that empires of power were everywhere: new lines, new plants, more efficient steam turbines. Entering the el station she paid her fare, pushed through the turnstile. Train doors just opening, darkness coming on quickly, the platform lit up by rows of naked bulbs.

A crush of overcoated bodies pushed out, more bodies pushed in. Get away from me! She struggled back to the platform as the doors crashed shut, sat on a bench, lit a match and placed it in her mouth. Amid swirling crowds, she let the match burn, then swallowed it at the last minute. She struck another match.

“What’s the matter, hon?” It was Mabel the bookkeeper, on her way home too, bending down next to her.

“Something. I can’t tell anyone,” Agnes said.

“What are you putting in your mouth? A match? Stop that right now!” Mabel smacked Agnes’s hand, sending the match flying to the platform.

“I saw—”

“What is it?” Mabel asked. “What did you see? You can tell me.”

“Mr.— I can’t say the name.”

“You mean Edison?”

“Yes, that’s who. Last night. He was hovering overhead in a giant metal airship. Beaming rays into my head.”

“What?”

“I asked the electric clock by my bedside what to do. I asked my toaster why this was happening.”

“You—”

“They said they love me and they’d protect me. Then they started bickering. The toaster called the clock an idiot. I couldn’t listen.”

“If you say so, hon.”

“I can’t help it if I’m not like other people. Mr. E is trying to take over the world with direct current. The Jews are helping him. I saw them on my way to this station, signaling each other with mirrors. Why? Why? All I want is to do my work and perform great deeds like my father.”

“Honey, can I buy you a cup of tea?”

It may never be possible to know the effect of this pressure on a teenage girl, especially one with Agnes’s disheveled mind. Her mother, perhaps still mourning Johnny’s institutional commitment, said nothing. Mabel, too, seemed powerless to help the girl, though she told several people, “She’s very brave. Doing so much for those big businessmen at her age!”

*

With sure stagecraft, Hill held a news conference at the plant so Agnes could show reporters the “vaudeville” that had sent the bankers into spasms. Generators were powered down to keep too-curious gentlemen of the press from electrocuting themselves; a table laden with free sandwiches, knockwurst and dill pickles encouraged a jovial mood.

“The Shock City Ball will be held at the Blackstone Hotel,” Hill told the scribblers, then paused. “Mr. Edison himself has agreed to attend,” he said after a dramatic stage wait. “We can’t believe our luck.” Laughter as he added, “I ran up some horrifying telephone bills,” then he announced the main attraction. “And now our young prodigy will offer a preview of what Mr. Edison will witness.”

Focusing hard, Agnes coaxed a pair of glowing electron beams from two matched Geissler tubes, made them fly up to the skylights, loop around the overhead crane and dive back to floor level where they seemed to play tag with each other before the flummoxed scribes. “What’s the angle, Mac?” the man from the Evening Post shouted, whereupon the two beams chased him around the lunch table to much laughter. “Encore!” the reporter from the Globe shouted, cueing the same from others: “Encore!” “Encore!”

“Take a bow, Agnes,” Hill called out. “With two or three of you, we could wire up the world.” Obligingly, the girl dipped her head and the beams returned to the tubes like racehorses after a canter.

While some papers gleefully wrote this up as another example of Hill pushing his ballyhoo one step too far, others sought explanations for the way she made the electron beams (which never showed in the photos) circle the room. Albert Michelson was quoted as saying, “She was my student, but I can’t explain it. It clearly needs further investigation.”

The enterprising Tribune called on Dr. Hermann Sauer, Chicago’s best-known alienist. “I believe we are seeing what the profession calls dementia praecox,” he chin-stroked. “It appears in adolescence and is characterized by auditory hallucinations, violent but groundless hatreds and fears of persecution. It is heritable. A parent may also have been afflicted.”

Reporter: “But how does she makes those light beams fly around?”

Sauer: “Does she really? Or is it simply her power to compel others’ belief in her delusions?”

Reporter: “But—”

Sauer: “Personally, I refuse to witness such nonsense.”

Regardless, the news of Edison’s visit to watch (and perhaps learn from?) a teenage genius seemed to tickle the fancy of a public weary of Teddy’s Rough Riders, the antics of England’s corpulent Edward VII or capitalist clashes with striking miners. Hill kept Agnes discreetly away from the public while sharpening the knife edge of public nerves with a steady stream of stunts, even contracting with a Chicago confectionary to create “Jolts: The High-Voltage Chocolate Bar” (with lightning bolt on the wrapper) and giving away 100 thousand at Cubs games. Offered one by the Tribune man, banker Charles Michelson waved it away. “If Cy spent half the time on substance that he spends on candy, I’d corner the market on his stock.”

Perhaps it was only coincidental that reports of the girl’s most extreme statements surfaced in multiple Chicago newsrooms at this time. That Hill had enemies is beyond doubt; that they sought advantage by covert attacks on a brilliant, disturbed child shows how brutal competition in the power industry could be. The racket was amplified by nine savagely competitive newspapers drooling for spectacle, hoo-ha, exploding cigars, anything to splatter across the front-page. More dignified outlets such as the Tribune lessened their coverage in the week preceding the Ball; others did not.

“Honey, have you seen the paper?” Mabel remarked to Agnes about this time.

“What paper?”

“It’s here somewhere.” Mabel shuffled through a stack on the reception desk. “The Evening Post, that rag. ”

Together, they scanned the headlines: BEHIND THE PRODIGY CHALLENGING EDISON. ELECTRICAL GENIUS? WHO’S DELUDING WHOM?

“Hon, are you really sure you want to attend the ball?” Mabel said. “You can quit this company any time, you know.”

“No. I’ll go.”

“Cy wouldn’t want me to tell you that.”

“I’ll go because I must.”

*

At 6:00 the evening of the Ball, a solid KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK sounded on Agnes’s door; there stood Butchie in a Palm Beach suit, ready to escort her to the Blackstone. Bowing slightly, he led her down the front steps to his maroon Plymouth. “Come sit up front with me,” he said. “Say, could you answer me something? My brother says you can save money if you take the fuse out of the fusebox and stick in a penny. He says everything runs okay and the fuse never blows no more.”

“Ask your brother if he wants to burn his house down,” Agnes said. “Better to blow a fuse now and then.”

“Are you ready for Mr. E?” Butchie said. “There’s gonna be a lot of big men at that ball today.”

“I’m ready. I have science and truth on my side.”

“Aren’t you scared?”

“My mission is to prevent Mr. Edison’s direct current from possessing us. What are my fears compared to that?”

Butchie glanced over as Agnes, garbed in a loose dress of funereal black, smiled.

*

The noisy, cavernous hotel reminded Agnes how much she preferred the calm order of the lab or the classroom. Maroon uniformed supernumeraries hurried to and fro amid potted palms in the power-plant sized lobby, carrying luggage, pushing carts, walking a poodle clipped and trimmed like a topiary hedge. Worried-looking men emerged from telephone booths or stood in little knots making important points to each other.

“He isn’t here yet,” Hill told Agnes and Butchie just inside the revolving door. “The mayor’s here, though, and half the Aldermen. It’s going to be the biggest— Hello, Max. Hello, Bob,” he said to a couple of passing gents. “Agnes, your coil and tubes are at the speakers’ table.”

Men in summer suits, women in hobble skirts crossed the lobby, converging to a crush of bodies outside the ballroom doors. So many bodies and noise, a chaos that amplified the clangor in her skull. You can harm Mr. E. It’s your one chance.

A hearty-looking gent with a full bush of iron-gray hair grabbed Hill’s hand. “Cy! Wonderful to see you. Have you ever seen such a crowd?”

“Horace, this is Agnes McAllister,” Hill said. “Horace is master of ceremonies.”

“Johnny’s daughter?” Horace said. “Well I’m sure Mr. Edison wants to meet you.”

So you can get rid of him said the voice in her head. Get rid of him. Do away with him. So you can– The noises in her head! Noises, noises, a chaos of squeals and voices and whistles and voices! and voices! and voices! So you can. So you can,” she heard. Harm Mr. Edison. Harm him. Hurt him harm him hurt hurt hurt hurt hurt—

“Alright!” she gasped.

“Are you okay?” Butchie’s strong hand grabbed her arm as the floor tilted.

“I need to sit. Someone was talking to me.”

“What?” Butchie said. “What was they saying?”

“Things. I don’t know. Things.”

“You was overcome by the heat. It’s a scorcher! You want some seltzer?”

Entering the crammed ballroom alone, Agnes squeezed past overcrowded tables, ignoring a girl with a Kodak attempting to take her picture. She scanned the speakers’ table, looking past silver, napery, baskets of rolls, an ice sculpture centerpiece of a dynamo, oblivious to the waft of chicken hash from the kitchen. There sat Edison, looking cranky as a waiter leaned over to refill his water glass. Moments later every eye turned to watch him rise, a white-haired man in a light gray, slightly wrinkled suit ambling to the lectern without permission.

“TO YOU, MY MANY FRIENDS IN THE ELECTRICAL INDUSTRIES OF CHICAGO, I EXTEND MY WARMEST GREETINGS.” Why was he shouting so? Destroy him! Destroy! hating voices yelled through the splintering sound of cracking ice.

“I WAS NOT SATISFIED WITH THE EARLY EXPERIMENTS IN ELECTRICAL GENERATION AND DISTRIBUTION,” he bellowed. “BUT SOUGHT—”

Push him off the stage, the table lamp shrieked. Here’s your chance.

“—EVEN AT THE COMMENCEMENT OF MY LABORS, TO DEVELOP THE APPARATUS—THE GENERATORS, THE LAMPS, THE MOTORS,

EK-CETERA—”

She won’t do it, the chandelier whispered. She can’t.

“—WHOSE FRUITS WE NOW ENJOY, NOT ONLY AS INDIVIDUAL DEVELOPMENTS—” It dawned on her that the old man must be hard of hearing.

Drop him, screamed the fan. Push him. Now!

“—BUT, MINDFUL THAT AT ALL TIMES, IT WAS THE ENTIRE SYSTEM WHICH MUST BE TAKEN INTO CONSIDERATION!!!”

Push him. Push HIM!

“I ENDEAVORED FROM THE VERY BEGINNING—”

Rush the stage! On a count of ten. One, two— The path forward beckoned. —three, four—

“—WITH MY FIRST POWER STATION IN NEW YORK—”

—five, six—

“—TO PURSUE THE THREE-WIRE SYSTEM WITH ITS GREATER EFFICIENCY—”

Applause spread across the tables in rippling waves. “Bravo,” one man shouted, oblivious to the MC bellowing, “Order! Order! He’s not finished!”

Do it! Make him fall!

A dozen men rose and repeated: “Bravo! Hear hear, Mr. Edison.” One man tossed his boater high in the air; others followed. “Three cheers for Edison!”

“Hip hip HOORAY!”

“Hip hip—!”

“Order, gentlemen! Order!” the MC repeated. Laughing, the men caught the cloud of hats and tossed them up again. And again.

Amidst the cheering, Agnes felt a hand on her shoulder. “Ready?” Hill said.

“Cyrus?” she said. “I think— ”

“What?”

“I— Need to move the apparatus. To the balcony.”

“Now? Whatever for?” Hill stiffened as the cheering died and a follow spot found the two of them. “The MC is about to— ”

“People can see me better.”

His features tightened.

“Something is up there for me,” the girl insisted.

Hill glanced at the crowd.

“If I can’t go to the balcony,” Agnes said, “I might not do this at all.”

“Butchie, help her,” Hill said with a faint sigh. Then the spotlight began following the two figures climbing the staircase to the balcony with the glass tube and coil.

“And now, if you’ll leave me alone,” Agnes said to Butchie when the apparatus was plugged in.

“Don’t you want no help?”

“I have all the help I need.”

“Where?”

“My father. Is nearby.”

“Your—”

“When I reached the balcony I knew.”

“As you wish, little girl.” He turned and trudged toward the stairs.

The cheering for Edison died down; heads began to turn as the spotlight found the girl on a little projecting lip of the balcony high over the ballroom floor.

The MC rose. “This is happening a little earlier than expected. But I think you’re in for a treat. Agnes?”

Wordlessly, the girl powered the step-up transformer. Observers below saw blue sparks as she hooked up first one tube, then the other. The initial patter of applause turned to expectant silence as she raised both tubes above her head. Silence turned to confusion, “What—” “What’s she doing?” when Agnes approached the railing.

How far out can you lean? said dynamo number 1 below. Dizzily, the girl leaned over the railing into empty space.

Lean farther. Can you feel the eddy current? Then a gasping groan rose from below as the crowd struggled to comprehend.

How could they ever comprehend the girl’s leap to the ballroom floor fifty feet below? How could those who’d applauded, who’d invested in her talents, grasp what she saw as she jumped: not the ballroom but the Fair, another hot July day. She had an appointment.

As she leapt, Agnes saw a car of the great Ferris wheel, outlined in electric lamps, sweeping up to meet her. Eagerly she stepped aboard, deaf to the MC’s shriek, the horrified yells of the audience as she plummeted. From within the car she saw the vastness of Machinery Hall where her beloved father waited. In another moment she’d step off the car and see him bounding up to meet her, grinning, holding a sack of popcorn, his greeting eager and playful. “Ello-hay, itttle-lay irl-gay.” There was work to do and they only had a few hours before dark.