Nick Slate

Nick on the Hungarian cover of Tesla's Attic.

**Nicholas "Nick" Slate** is the protagonist of The Accelerati Trilogy. He's stated to have "big ears" and commonly wears a baseball cap.

## Biography

### Early Life

Nick was born and lived in Tampa, Florida until he was fourteen years old, when his house burned down, killing his mother and forcing him and the rest of his family to move to Colorado Springs, Colorado.

### Tesla's Attic

While moving into his new home, a Victorian house owned by his Great-Aunt Greta, he discovers a lot of items (the Teslanoid Objects) in the attic after his head gets injured by the toaster, and holds a garage sale to clear the attic and make some money. A thunderstorm threatens to shut down the garage sale, and Nick turns on a stage light, which attracts people by the dozens, and seems to compel them to buy objects. He meets Caitlin, Vince, and Mitch at the sale, and saves Caitlin from getting flattened by a car. He eventually turns off the stage light, causing most of the people there to leave, except Caitlin, who still buys the reel-to-reel recorder she initially wanted to use in an art project. An SUV pulls up, and people in pearlescent suits file out and sweep the remains of the sale into bags. The leader, a man in a vanilla suit comes up to Nick and pays him for the items, and to tell them if anyone returns their items, leaving a buisness card before leaving.

The next day, he tries out the toaster that his neighbor returned. It lets out a power surge, hurling Nick against the wall and incinerating the bread put inside it.

While at school, the principal calls him to the office and tells him that his school records are nonexistant, thus meaning that he officially doesn't exist at the school. At lunch, the lunch lady, Ms. Planck, notices his struggles so far and suggests he dumps his lunch on the biggest jock in the lunchroom, which he hesitantly does. This earns him school-wide popularity and a thank-you from the jock. After school, Mitch comes by Nick's and they experiment with the Shut Up N' Listen that he bought from the sale, afterwards going to Vince's house to see what the wet cell battery does. After swearing the 2 to secrecy, he asks Caitlin if the reel-to-reel recorder she bought does anything weird, to which she says she smashed it already.

The next day, Nick has a conversation with Caitlin and Theo, which is recorded on the reel-to-reel and broadcasted on the loudspeakers by Petula. He goes to Caitlin's house after the incident, and comforts her while she's crying, saying her true friends will stick with her. He also reveals why he moved to Colorado Springs to Caitlin.

The principal of Nick's school calls him to the office about his school records again, saying that they state Nick is from Denmark, and that his previous school claims that they have no records of him there. Nick wants information about the box camera Petula bought from the garage sale, and she only gives him the information while on a date she forced him into, where he finds out the items were made by Nikola Tesla, a genius inventor.

Nick, although he agreed to help Caitlin with one of her garb-art projects, goes with Mitch to visit his father, in exchange for the Shut Up N' Listen. After the visit with Mitch's imprisoned father goes sideways, Nick lets Mitch keep the item.

Nick tries out as a pitcher for the local Little League team, a role he played well back in Florida, but gets distracted by Mitch and thoughts of his mother and blows it. His brother, however, gets on a team despite not being remotely good at baseball. Nick goes to Danny's first game with his father, and sees Danny getting impossible catches. He deduces it's because of Danny's glove, which his father reveals he took from the garage sale. After seeing Danny catch a small meteor, the Accelerati arrive and the vanilla suit man, Dr. Alan Jorgenson, bargians with Nick's father for the glove and meteorite, giving him a job in exchange for both. Nick tricks him into taking a different glove.