History keeps its ledgers neat—dates, patents, premieres, applause measured in curtain calls and kilowatts. But between those lines, there are nights no archive records. This is one of them.

In the thin, electric air of Colorado Springs, where storms climb the mountains like living things, Nikola Tesla built a cathedral of wire and intention. His laboratory stood apart from the town’s lamplit streets, a place where lightning was invited indoors and obeyed. Copper coils rose like musical staves. Sparks leapt, sang, and vanished. Tesla called it research. Others called it sorcery.