'There are some variations, and some people run higher or lower, but
that's pretty much the basic model.'
'All right,' Michaels said.
'So now I know about brain frequencies.'
Jay nodded.
'Over the years, various agencies of various governments have tried
broadcasting certain extremely low-frequency radio waves in an effort
to alter human consciousness. In the fifties, the Russians had
something called Lida, a machine that supposedly rendered people
susceptible to hypnosis. The North Koreans had variations of this
during the Korean War, used on American POWs. They didn't work very
well, but that was not for want of trying.
'For years, back in the old Soviet Union, the Russians beamed
microwaves at the American Embassy in Moscow, centered on the
ambassador's office. The CIA discovered this in 1962, and some effects
on various ambassadors were speculated upon, including a leukemia-like
illness, and a couple of deaths from cancer. Nothing proven.
'In 1976, ham radio operators around the world noticed a peculiar
signal originating in the Soviet Union that came to be known as the
'Russian Woodpecker,' from the staccato way it interfered with their
radios. This signal was thought to come from big Tesia transmitters,
and was thought by the CIA to be designed to depress or irritate the
recipient.'
'Tesia? Like the Tesia coil?'
Jay grinned.
'Let me tell you about Nikola Tesla. There are some who believe the
Tunguska Event--an explosion estimated in the 10-to-15-megaton range
that blew down half a million acres of pine forest in Siberia in
1908-was either a test--or a malfunction--of one of Tesla's giant
transmitters.'
'I thought it was a comet,' Michaels said.
'You probably think Oswald shot JFK, too. Boss.
Merely a cover story, according to the conspiracy theorists.
Some say it was an alien spaceship, others a runaway black hole, others
a speck of antimatter, but, hey, my money is on Tesla. He was a
certified genius. Aside from being the guy who came up with and
patented the idea of alternating current, thus helping George
Westinghouse to become filthy rich, he created working fluorescent
lights long before Edison's uncredited lab monkey made the less
efficient incandescent bulb. Tesla patented all kinds of stuff. His
work was the basis for the X-ray machine. He sued Marconi--and
won--for swiping his work to create radio. Tesla came up the ideas
that would later become radar and tomography.
'Listen, in 1904, in Colorado Springs, he built a big power generator
for his wireless power transmission experiments.
Using what he called 'terrestrial stationary waves,' he lit two hundred
lightbulbs twenty-five miles away by pumping juice into the ground, no
wires. He could generate artificial lightning bolts of a couple to
three hundred thousand watts that were more than a hundred and
thirty-five feet long; you could hear the thunder fifteen miles away in
