The Six Messiahs - Mark Frost [94]
"Do you know who that is?" whispered Stern.
Two steel balls fell from the man's hand and clanged in the steel bowl. The sound woke him; instantly alert, looking up to face them; broad brow furrowed to a deep cleft between bushy white eyebrows, a wide frowning mouth, and the keenest intelligence in his eyes. He spotted Jack first and beckoned him to the desk, shaking his hand, exchanging quiet pleasantries.
"That's Thomas Edison," said Stern.
Jack waved them over and made the introductions: Edison lit up like his famous incandescent bulb when he met Doyle.
"The Holmes generator, in the flesh," said Edison with a laugh; to their puzzled silence he explained that the "Holmes generator'' was well known in scientific circles as a precursor to the electromagnetic engine.
"Oh," said Doyle.
Edison seemed unable to express strongly enough his enthusiasm for Sherlock Holmes: Most novels teemed with creatures of such uninspired and feeble dimwittedness it was a wonder any author could be bothered to write about them; but what a joy to encounter such unapologetic brilliance in a fictional character! Doyle was flattered into utter befuddlement.
Edison leaped to his feet with the spring of a teenager, shimmied up the rolling ladder bolted to his library stacks, pulled down a leather-bound volume of Holmes, and insisted Doyle sign the title page for him.
"Any more Holmes stories in the works?" Edison eagerly wanted to know. "Surely our man's sharp enough to have found a way to survive that little problem at the waterfall."
"There's been some talk about it," said Doyle, hating to disappoint the great man. Innes stared at him as if he'd just spoken in tongues.
They chatted about Doyle's work habits, Edison keen on facts: How many hours a day did he write? (Six.) How many words did he produce a day? (Eight hundred to a thousand.)
Did he write by hand or with one of the new mechanical typewriters? (Fountain pen.) How many drafts of each book? (Three.) Then the conversation shifted to the mysterious origins of creativity in the mind. They agreed that the brain's relentless appetite for order resulted in the spontaneous development of organized ideas attempting to simplify the problems of daily living, be it a story that shed light on some troublesome aspect of human behavior or a machine that reduced the difficulty of essential physical labor.
"We're all detectives," said Edison, "wrestling with that question mark at the end of our existence. A large part of the universal appeal of your Mr. Holmes, I think."
"But he's just a machine, really," said Doyle modestly.
"Oh, but I disagree; with all apologies to Sherlock, and the prevailing medical wisdom, our brain is not a machine. When induced into the appropriate state of readiness, the brain, I believe, enters into contact with a field of pure ideas; not a physical place as we understand it, but not a purely theoretical one, either. A dimension of abstract thought that parallels our own, overlaying and informing our world in ways hard to imagine. We experience it directly only through the auspices of a properly prepared human mind. And drawing down the visions that we find while visiting this 'other place' is the source of all great human inspiration."
"May I ask, sir, what you were doing with those balls and the steel bowl when we arrived?" said Doyle.
"I can see where our Mr. Holmes comes by his observational acuity," said Edison with a smile. "I discovered early in my life that the best ideas took shape in my mind when I passed through the dreamy borderland we cross on our way either into or falling out of sleep; I've come to believe this brief passage is when the brain reaches its optimum state of receptivity for making contact with this realm of pure reason. The difficulty comes in trying to maintain ourselves in that dreamy middle ground: We quickly fall either deeper into sleep or back toward wakefulness. So ..."
Edison picked up the bowl and the balls and sat down in his chair to