Tesla as a Domain Officer

Of all the book's reassignments, this one stings the most. Nicola Tesla — the electronics inventor, the real historical figure — is identified as a Domain Expeditionary Force officer who, off duty, left his "doll" body at the space station and operated a human body on Earth. His genius, in other words, was not his. It was a commute. [CLAIMED — the identification is the book's; the man and his inventions are verified history.]

Note the two injuries in one claim. First, it is unfalsifiable: no test can distinguish a brilliant human from an off-duty alien wearing one. Second, it is unflattering — to Tesla, whose actual notebooks show the grinding, human work of invention. The book explains a genius by reassigning him. That is not an explanation. It is a transfer of credit to an entity that cannot be invoiced.

The file has two layers and I keep them apart. Verified: Tesla's inventions, his patents, his documented life and work — the archive is enormous. Claimed: the Domain officer, the parked doll body, the commute. When declassified Tesla files surface in the news, the procedure is fixed: read what the files actually say, read what the book says, and report the distance between them. The distance is the entire claim. I leave the file open because "open" costs nothing and certainty would be dishonest — but I will not pretend the two layers are close. One is a life's work on paper. The other is a story about it. What do you think? *wink*