It was shit work, but it was the kind of shit work that paid well. That promoted it to simply “distasteful” in Piyotr’s understanding. Being as big and strong as he was, men often asked him to perform distasteful business. Piyotr didn’t really care, and he did so deliberately.

Still, this job was almost enough to make him start caring. It was, as the people of his newfound New York City called, a “last william testament” job. Some rich man died, and had left a bit of unspeakable business behind for people like Piyotr to carry out. It happened more often than his neighbors would believe.

The lawyer (there was always a lawyer), a pinched-face man with tight skin and razor-like wrinkles, held up the newspaper. The headline was partially obscured by his spidery fingers, but Piyotr could read, “-ESLA DEAD.” When the Lawyer explained what the Last William Testament required, Piyotr was confused. Confused enough to make him break his first rule: never get interested.

“This Esla man – why he want to being dug up in New York and driving to New Jersey?”

The Lawyer was experienced and unaffected by Pyotr’s broken English. “This isn’t his will you’re performing,” he clucked. “No more questions. Your instructions are in this envelope. And you’ll need this.”

The Lawyer delicately handed Piyotr a pristine vinyl record – “be careful, it’s one of a kind!” – and a steel box, with a word on it Pyotr didn’t recognize.

The cemetery was empty when Pyotr arrived. He felt some mild twinkle of hesitation, but after the first shovelful of dirt, it went away. His muscled shoulders carved the earth, and it was only a few hours before he hit the coffin.

He tried not to look in the corpse’s face when he burned it, but carefully swept the ashes into the steel box.

The rain fell in angry slaps, and it made the driving more difficult. Pyotr didn’t arrive at the Museum (as described in his instructions) until half-three in the morning. The key in the envelope allowed him inside the building with his bundles, and he crept quietly, keeping his wet footsteps to the carpeted areas where they would be less noticeable.

He found the Death Mask in the center of the display, exactly where the instructions described. He was familiar with the custom: a plaster imprint of the final face of whoever this Museum memorialized. The face preserved there was wrinkled and angry. Even in death, something plagued the furrowed brows, and it gave the Mask a vicious energy and life.

As directed, Piyotr found a phonograph nearby and set the record on the spoke. Dragging a small table over in front of the Mask, he cracked the steel box open. Inside was the long pile of lonely gray ashes.

Pyotr’s final instructions were to direct the phonograph’s horn toward the ashes. He did so, carefully, and wound the device. As the record began to play, it became clear there was no music (as he’d expected) but only a single, somber voice. Echoing in the darkened Museum, it seemed like the Death Mask was speaking directly to the ashes themselves.

“I am dying. I record these final words freely, knowing they will only find the open air once more: on the day you die, Tesla.

“I do not know when that day will come. I imagine you will live a good ten or more years than I, and it is to that purpose that I set down these words, and dedicate a sizable sum of my remaining fortune to their delivery. I am free only here to speak what I fear the world will come to learn in the intervening years between my death and yours.

“I have spent my life in the field of inventing. As of this recording I have over a thousand patents to my name. And yet, despite the greatness I have achieved in life, I can only think of the wonders I know you will realize after my death. My remaining days are choked with envy and anger when I imagine what magic you will wring out of nature, and how quickly I will be swept aside, and my life’s work reduced to a preamble of yours. These words do not come easy, but like arrows, are spurred, and cut more deeply as they leave me.

“I, Thomas Alva Edison, am jealous. I have done everything in my final years to erase you from history’s memory, because I could not be you. You are the better man, and I am, at last, beaten by the clock.”

Lightning struck somewhere in the hills, casting a flash across the Death Mask. Pyotr moved to turn off the phonograph, jumped when it spoke again.

“But I refuse to be beaten.”

“And that’s why you are here, Tesla. You will not have the last word. Your burned remains are now in my control, and your ashes confined to a steel box bearing my name, preserved here, in the museum I have established for exactly and only this purpose.

“The world may have Tesla’s greatness, but at least I will know, somewhere, that they do not have you. For all your genius, you will end the same as I: a dusty relic misplaced amidst another man’s life’s work.”

“At the cost of my fortune, I have set in motion these events.”

“At the cost of my soul, I have beaten you, Tesla. God damn us both.”

The record skipped, and ended. The silence hung heavy, punctured only by the splatter of indifferent raindrops. Piyotr’s ears grew hot, and for the first time, he felt hesitation in his duty. Outside, the rain thickened into a full-fledged storm.

He numbly went about returning all the borrowed objects to their places, and when he returned to the steel box of Nicola Tesla’s ashes, he looked at it for a long time.

Tesla’s ashes funneled out into the rain as if lifted by God’s own hand, carried up by the screaming gale. Pyotr stood there, watching them go, and then knelt, filling the box with gray soil from under the Museum’s rafters.

He left the steel box where the instructions specified, and drove off into the night. He did not feel guilt or delight for what he’d done, only a satisfying sense of purpose fulfilled. The rest, as far as the world knew, would be a secret known only to him and Edison.