“Thomas Edison invents electric light,” the headline read.
I smiled when I saw his name boldly inscribed on the headlines of the newspaper that morning. He had a glowing bulb in his hands, smiling like he had discovered the exact date of the second coming of Christ. At that moment, it dawned on me that I had messed up.
"He did it!" I whispered, standing there in my dusty workshop with Selene, my apprentice. My hands were black with grease, the oil lamp flickering in the wind that sneaked in through the window, and my chest was tight like someone had tied a rope around it.
"Who, sir? Selene looked up from the half-built steam kettle she was working on.
“Edison,” I picked up the paper and walked down to her.
“You speak like you know him, sir?”
“Yeah, he was my friend,” I replied with the smile of a proud man. “My partner.”
She blinked. “You mean Thomas Edison?”
I chuckled happily. "That man." I pointed to the picture on the paper. "We worked on that project together. Years ago. But I gave up after several attempts and left.”
Selene raised a brow. “Why?”
I pulled my workbench and sat down on it. Then I leaned back like a man about to unravel a mystery. The weight of the past coming down on my shoulders like heavy regrets. “Because I didn’t believe in our vision anymore. Imagine trying a thousand times and you weren't successful.”
"What really happened, sir?" Selene kept pushing.
—------------
I took a deep breath and let my mind drift back to 1876. We were young, adventurous, and hungry for discovery. Tom was the dreamer. I was the builder. Always talking about wires and currents and flames enclosed in a glass with its source not from steam or oil, but from a different source. We were two young men cursed with different things. I loved to hold, fix, and break things. He liked coming up with ideas and solutions to world problems. We loved inventions.
“Electricity, Alva,” Thomas said to me one evening, eyes wide behind his dusty spectacles. “It’s the future. Doesn't need steam. Nor oil. Just power from a different source,” he added, raising up the wires and coils he had in his hands.
“And miraculously, it would light up the world?” I’d joke. “And our empty pockets, too?”
We weren't well-to-do then. Just young boys trying to survive. Living in a one-room, almost fallen apartment just outside Boston. With just one tiny fireplace and rats living under our floorboards.
We literally survived on bread, soup, and our stubbornness to succeed.
Tom would never stop tinkering. I remember nights I would leave him to sleep. But he never lets me rest well with the constant smell of burnt copper and the sound of him yelling, “Damn it!” or sometimes, “Almost!”
Trust me, I wanted our ideas to work. But not at the detriment of my own peace and sleep. As months turned to years. People and investors laughed us out the door. They called us mad and started withdrawing their funds. It made me mad. I got tired. Tired of it all. I gave up hope. I thought that our invention was impossible.
I tried to make Tom see the reasons with me why we should leave the idea of electricity and try something else. But Tom was like a beast ready for battle. He forged on.
“You’re chasing smoke,” I remember telling him one night, wiping my hands off another failed experiment. “We’ve lost everything chasing this ghost.”
Tom didn’t look up. He kept twisting wires around a bulb like a kid who just got a new toy. “Trust me, Alva, we're close. I can feel it in my bones.”
“Same way you've felt it for years. We'd better come up with something else or I’m done.”
He looked at me then. Like I’d hit him in a delicate part.
“Alva, you've got to trust me. It's so close I can feel it.
"Close? Did you say close? We've been on this for over five years, and every time we fail,, you keep telling me we're close. " I fired back.
"So what, you're going to just leave?” he asked.
“I’m sorry, but I have to. I've got other things I'm building that work, Tom. Things people buy.”
"So, can't I plead with you to stay?. Just this last time."
I didn't reply. I only packed my bags and walked to the door. "I'm sorry, Tom. I just have to. I have a family to feed."
He didn’t say anything. Just nodded.
I walked out the door. He didn’t stop me. I think that hurt me the most.
I saved up a little cash from the little tinkering I did. And rented a tiny apartment. The years that followed, I built easier but useful things, like kettles, hand-crank sewing machines, etc. Just as I wanted, they sold fast and well. I made money and opened my present workshop. Took on apprentices like Selene.
But it kept tugging at my heart that nothing I made lit up the world. It wasn't up to Tom's idea.
On another thought, Tom's idea kept failing several times. So I kept consoling myself that I was still on track.
“Did you ever talk to him again?” Selene asked, bringing me back.
“No. I didn't." I said. “I thought he had gone crazy by sticking to one thing that wasn't forthcoming."
She stepped closer, cautious. “Sir, if you had stayed…”
I cut her off. “I know. But also, I might have finally convinced him to stop dreaming. I might have dragged him to my style of invention. He might not have built electricity."
Silence sat between us.
Finally, I walked to the corner of the shop, opened a crate, and pulled out something wrapped in cloth. I unrolled it. A bulb. Old. Dusty. Cracked at the edge.
“He gave this to me before I left,” I murmured. “I still remember his words, ‘One day, you’ll see, I'll light the world.’”
Ada ran her fingers gently over the glass. “It’s beautiful.”
“It wasn't back then for me. But now…” I sighed. “Now, I see its beauty.”
Selene looked at me. “Regret is heavy.”
I chuckled bitterly. “But it lasts you a lifetime.”
She nodded slowly. “It's not too late to write to him. Congratulate him."
I nodded. Selene was right.
I walked to my drawer. Picked up my quilt and paper. Took a deep breath and wrote.
"You did it, Tom. You light up the world. Congratulations.”
