he doubled over and undid the straps on his legs and ankles.

Gingerly, he stood and stretched, then sighed tremendously.

"Chet, Chet, Chet. I hope I didn't frighten you too badly. This is Old Sparky, an exact replica of the electric chair at Sing-Sing Prison in New York. Edison, thief and charlatan that he was, insisted that his DC current was safer than my AC, and they built a chair that used my beautiful current to execute criminals, by the hundreds.

"Nicola Tesla and I became one when I was eight years old, and I received a tremendous shock from an electrified fence. I was stuck to it, glued by the current, and after a few moments, I just relaxed into the current — befriended it, if you will. That's when the spirit of Nicola Tesla, a-wandering through the wires for all the years since his death, infused my body.

"So now I use Old Sparky here to recharge — please forgive the expression — my connection with the current. I once spent eight years in the chair, when I needed to disappear for a while. When I woke, I hadn't aged at all — I didn't even need to shave! What do you think of that?"

Chet was staring in horror at him. "You electrocute yourself? On purpose?"

"Why, yes! Think of it as a trick I do, if it makes you feel better. I could show you how to do it. . ." he trailed off, but a look of hunger had passed over his face.

#

I get all kinds of access to bat-house records from the vid in my apt on my new world. No one named Gaylord Ballozos ever lived in any bat-house. Apt 12525, and the five above it, were never occupied. The records say that the locks have never been used, the doors never opened. It won't be searched when they evacuate the bat-house.

That's what the records say, anyway.

Electricity gives me the willies. The zaps of static from the dry air of the FTL I took home to Earth made me scream, little-boy squeaks that made the other passengers jump.

I don't remember that it was ever this hot in Toronto, even in the summer. The sky is all overcast, so maybe it's a temperature inversion. Up here at Steeles Avenue, I'm so dehydrated that I spend a whole dime on a magnum of still water and power-chug it, though you're not supposed to drink that way. Almost there.

#

The other kids in the abandoned apt on the 87th floor ignored me. They'd been paying less and less attention to me, ever since I started spending my afternoons up on 125, and I was getting a reputation as a keener for all the time I spent with The Amazing Robotron.

That suited me fine; the corner of the gutted kitchen was as private a space as I was going to find in the bat-house. I had the apparatus that Nicola Tesla had given me plugged into the AC outlet under the sink. I closed my eyes and breathed deeply, concentrating on the moments after my breath left my chest, that calm like the ocean's silence. Smoothly, I reached out and grasped the handle of the apparatus and squeezed.

The first time I tried this, under Nicola Tesla's supervision, I'd jerked my hand away and squeezed it between my legs as soon as the current shot through me. Now, though, I could keep squeezing, slowly increasing the voltage and amperage, relaxing into the involuntary tension in my muscles.

I'd gotten so good at it that I'd started using the timer — I could lean into the current forever without it. I had it set for three hours, but when the current died, it felt like no time at all had passed. I probed around my consciousness for any revelation, but no spirit had come into my body during the exercise. The guy who thought he was Nicola Tesla didn't know if there were any other spirits in the wire, but it stood to reason that if there was one, there had to be more.

I stood, and felt incredibly calm and balanced and centered and I floated past the other kids. It was time for my session with The Amazing Robotron.