4.1 Sinnerman - Nina Simone (10:20)

Tom Widdle

Tom’s foot splashed down into another puddle and coal water soaked straight through his shoe and into his sock.

“Of course,” he muttered under his breath.

The rain had stopped about ten minutes ago. It had been a flash storm that had lasted only long enough to dump half the sky onto the city and then it disappeared before anyone could find shelter. The fact that he was soaked to his bones had made an already shit day so much worse.

Everywhere he looked, people were gathered on the streets, taking in one spectacle after another. Outside a cafe was a crowd gathered around a man who was cupping his hands together. A quick glance his way showed Tom that the man was standing there with a flower between his fingers. One second it looked dead and the next the blossoms unfurled impossibly fast before popping off the stem and drifting lazily into the air, awing the crowd and drawing gasps of delight.

Two blocks later, he’d been forced to walk in the street to pick his way past another knot of people. This group was gathered around a newspaper cart, reading the latest headlines before the papers sold out. He couldn’t help but catch a few of the headlines himself.

One was about an expedition that had returned from a place called “confection valley.” Tom had heard about it. It was supposedly a valley where the trees now grew cake instead of fruit.

There was another headline about a lake where the waters granted visions from years past to anyone who was brave enough to drink from it. Another newspaper was filled with detailed sketches of creatures that had been discovered beyond the northern mountains. They had six eyes and feathered antlers and it was said they could speak three different languages.

A few years ago, those headlines would have only existed in the gossip rags. But now they were the biggest stories of the day. What’s more, it was doubtful that any of those stories would last more than a single news cycle before being supplanted by the next weird new thing.

Tom wove his way through the gawkers and passersby and couldn’t help but think about how quickly the world had changed. Even though he was only in his mid-twenties, he still felt like an old man remembering what the city used to be like.

People had raced to work and they stopped to do some shopping and they would nod at each other in the streets before heading back home. But nobody really stayed out on the streets. But now? Now, every street seemed to have something vying for attention. Every corner promised another miracle. Magic had somehow come to the world and everyone was obsessed with it.

Tom sighed and hugged his briefcase close so it wouldn’t bump anyone as he squeezed his way through the crowd. His suitcase had seen better days. The corners were worn thin and scuffed from all the travel he’d done. The handle was barely holding together, and one side was covered in a tidy row of tiny air holes that looked like wounds.

People who saw the briefcase always assumed that it merely held paperwork. Because what else are briefcases for? But Tom’s briefcase held something so much more interesting. 

Nestled deep inside, resting comfortably in a carefully constructed wooden compartment that was lined with soft cloth, was the entire reason that he’d come back to the city. Hell, it was the reason he’d spent so much time wandering strange forests, creepy marshes, damp caves, and forgotten valleys.

It wasn’t a dragon or a phoenix or a griffin or a pixie or any of the other strange new beasts that had been popping up in the world recently. Instead, he’d found something so much more interesting than any of that. He’d found a beetle.

Tom still hadn’t settled on a name for the thing. As its discoverer, the privilege belonged to him, but whenever he thought about a name it either sounded too grand or not grand enough. The beetle deserved something memorable. It deserved something amazing. And he just couldn’t quite make up his mind about it.

Unfortunately for Tom, nobody else really seemed to enjoy his discovery.

A few days ago he’d heard about a man who had walked into a tailor’s shop and started throwing fireballs around because he was angry at the prices. The newspapers were still dining out on that incident. Two cities over there was a woman whose fingernails secreted enough venom to be able to kill a cow. People had come all over to talk with her and see her put on some shows. Then, of course, there were the rash of explorers who were off surveying those strange new islands migrating their way across the ocean.

When set next to all of that, another species of beetle sounded hopelessly ordinary. But Tom couldn’t have disagreed more.

His beetle wasn’t just another ordinary insect. It was evidence. It was evidence that magic was doing so much more to the world than simply creating spectacular monsters and impossible landscapes. It was evidence that magic was slowly leaking into everyday life and changing the simple creatures that most people stepped over without a second thought.

If insects were adapting, then it stood to reason that everything else would follow. To Tom, that was the real story. That was what should have mattered. It should have been news. It should have had the scientific community standing up and taking notice. But apparently he was alone in thinking so.

His first meeting that morning had been with the Explorer Society. Their imposing headquarters had been filled with a frantic energy that reminded Tom of a military campaign. Porters hauled crates through the halls, each one marked with expedition numbers. Clerks hurried past carrying maps and journals and stacks of reports. And nobody seemed to have any time to spare a simple entomologist.

He remembered standing there in the middle of the building and staring at the enormous charts pasted to the walls. They showed territories that had only recently become available to be explored. Fresh notices covered what limited space was left, talking about recruitment drives for expeditions that would be leaving within the week.

Tom had finally found a receptionist to help him out and she’d taken his card and then parked him in a sitting room beneath a mounted wyvern skull that had become the Society’s newest prize. When he’d finally been escorted to a room and a committee to show off his discovery, he found five seated men around a table that was cluttered with maps.

None of the men had seemed pleased to see him. They all were looking haggard and worn, and Tom could tell that they were asking themselves why they were taking time out of their day to speak with some stranger who they’d never heard of before.

He’d tried his best to make a good first impression. He’d smiled and introduced himself and set his briefcase gently down on the table. And then he’d begun his presentation.

“Hello. My name is Tom Widdle and I believe that I’ve documented a previously unknown species of beetle exhibiting characteristics consistent with magical adaptation,” he’d begun. “I discovered that-”

One of the committee members immediately held up a hand to forestall him, and Tom had noticed the look of confusion across the man’s face.

“A beetle?”

“Uh. Yes.”

The man had shot a quick glance to his colleagues before gesturing for Tom to continue, but something had shifted in the room. The committee was polite, and they were listening, but Tom could tell that none of them really cared about this meeting.

But he pressed on. He talked about where he’d discovered the beetle and why the surrounding environment suggested magical adaptation. He talked about rapidly changing ecosystems and how insects, with their short life cycles, could reveal changes long before any larger animal. None of the committee members interrupted again, and that somehow made it all worse.

It was like they simply didn’t care. When he finished, the chairman of the committee folded his hands on the table and offered him a sympathetic smile.

“Mr. Widdle, your enthusiasm does you credit.”

With that, Tom’s heart sank. He knew that was the end of the meeting. He knew the man was only being polite, and Tom couldn’t do anything but stand there and listen to the rejection.

“The difficulty we are facing is one of priorities. We currently have three expeditions preparing to investigate reports of living mountains in the western ranges, another team is preparing to verify the existence of an inland sea that only appears during eclipses, and we have, just now, received two separate requests from the government regarding newly awakened ruins.”

He spread his hands apologetically. “I’m afraid we simply do not have the resources to devote to an unidentified insect.”

Looking back at it now, Tom thought that if that meeting hadn’t been his first of the day, maybe he would have simply nodded and accepted the committee’s dismissal. But he felt like he had to try to at least get them to take him seriously.

“It isn’t just an insect though. If I’m right, this might be the first example of ordinary wildlife adapting to magic coming into the world.”

The youngest member of the committee, a weedy little man seated at the far end of the table, smiled at Tom.

“Maybe if your bug had been attached to a dragon, or if you’d found it crawling around on one of those floating islands, I imagine we’d all be fighting over the chance to fund your research.”

A few quiet chuckles leaked out of some of the committee members and Tom had felt a warmth creep into his face. The chairman shot a disapproving look at the younger member and then turned back to Tom.

“As things stand,” he said gently. “I’m afraid that we simply have more pressing mysteries demanding our attention.”

That had been the end of it. He’d been quietly dismissed and was forced to walk back to the streets while, inside his suitcase, his beetle had crawled quietly against the wooden compartment, completely unaware that it had just been dismissed as less interesting solely because it hadn’t been attached to a dragon.

The meetings grew worse from there. At least the Explorer Society had pretended to listen. None of the other groups seemed to really care. The Adventurer’s Guild - a wholly new organization that had started popping up in cities and towns across the region - didn’t even pretend to be interested in the science.

Their headquarters had somehow been even louder than the Explorer Society. Mercenaries and adventurers and rough men wandered in and out of the building, carrying battered packs and weapons and the occasional trophy. Maps had been tacked onto every available wallspace and each of them were covered in hastily scribbled notes and circles and warnings that were all written in different hands.

The guild representative had listened to Tom for maybe thirty seconds in total before he raised a hand to stop him.

“Can it produce treasure?”

Tom blinked before shaking his head. “...No.”

“Can it kill monsters?”

“Uh…also no.”

“Can it help us kill monsters?”

“I…I don’t believe so.”

The representative scratched something off on a sheet of paper and then turned back to Tom. “Can it be sold?”

Tom hesitated at that. “I suppose anything can be sold.”

The man’s eyebrows lifted hopefully. “For enough to make an expedition worthwhile?”

Tom looked down at his briefcase with a wince. “Probably not.”

“Then I’m afraid we don’t have much use for it then.”

That meeting had ended so quickly that Tom barely had time to get his bearings before he was unceremoniously ushered outside. But at least it had still been better than his meeting with the Royal Society.

He’d been stuck for three hours in a waiting room, surrounded by marble busts of dead scientists while secretaries drifted in and out of offices carrying stacks of letters and correspondence. Every fifteen minutes someone would stop by and assure him that someone would be with him shortly. And every fifteen minutes turned into another fifteen minutes.

When he was finally shown inside a room and put in front of people, he found that they all looked every bit as exhausted as he felt. They listened politely to him, asked a handful of thoughtful questions, and never once made him feel like an outsider. But then they carefully and apologetically explained that their attention was currently better fit elsewhere.

“We are investigating magical geological events that threaten entire regions, biological anomalies affecting complete ecosystems, and several phenomena whose implications extend well beyond the scientific community. An unidentified beetle simply doesn’t rank very highly against those concerns.”

None of them laughed at him. None of them mocked him. None of them took him seriously. They thanked him for coming, wished him luck with his research, and then sent him on his way.

It was the Royal Entomological Society that had stung the deepest. They were supposed to be his people. When he’d finally gone to their headquarters - saving them for last because it was the one meeting he was most excited about - he had smiled. It was like coming home.

The whole place smelled like old paper and polished wood and preservation chemicals and…learning. That was the word for the smell. Cabinets were filled with meticulously pinned specimens, displaying butterflies and beetles and moths and insects that were so strange they looked almost imaginary despite having been collected decades before magic’s return.

Portraits of famous naturalists watched him from ornate gilded frames, and every hallway he ventured down felt like a monument to people who’d devoted their entire lives to understanding all the small creatures that most of the world ignored. Tom remembered walking through those doors and thinking to himself, finally. People who will understand my discovery.

But they didn’t. Not only that, but they were so much worse than the explorers and the adventurers and all the crowds littering the streets hoping to see some small bit of magic being displayed.

When he was finally shown into a committee room, he’d been bombarded by questions before he’d even had a chance to set down his briefcase.

“Where did you receive your doctorate?” I don’t have one. “And which university sponsored your expedition?” None. “Who supervised your field research?” I supervised it myself.

At that, seemingly everyone had stopped caring. One of the members quietly set his pen and notebook to the side and then leaned back in his chair, no longer interested in the conversation. Another had his focus drift to the walls and the windows, looking like a boy who’d been forced to stay inside on a beautiful summer day.

The questions kept coming though.

“Have you published in any respected journals?” No. “Have your findings undergone peer review?” No. “Which institution has verified your observations?” None.

With every question answered, Tom could feel himself getting angrier and angrier. No he hadn’t studied at university, and no he hadn’t been tutored by some celebrated professor whose recommendations could open doors. Everything he’d had and everything he’d earned and everything he’d learned had come from the field.

He’d paid for his expeditions however he could, by taking odd jobs and calling in favors and living cheaply enough that his apartment only had a bed and a week’s worth of clothes in it. All he owned were his notebooks and his briefcase and his beetle.

He hadn’t done it for prestige or wealth. The reason he’d become an entomologist - and he was, no matter what these “academics” might say - was because he loved insects. He’d loved them ever since he was a kid. And he found himself, standing before the committing throwing judgement at him, where his love had slowly started to slip by the wayside.

“With respect, my credentials aren’t important. It’s the specimen that is important,” he said as he rested a hand on his briefcase. “If you’ll just let me show you what I brought back, I think you’ll-”

He was once again interrupted. One of the committee members butted in before he could finish his sentence.

“Has anyone with proper qualifications verified your observations?”

Tom hesitated before biting back an answer and saying, “the proper qualifications…and those would be?”

The question slipped out a lot harsher than he’d intended. He’d felt the irritation bubbling up in him and he’d tried to hold it back before he said anything that couldn’t be taken back. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a few weathered field journals and spread them out across the table.

“I’ve documented everything here, if you’d like to take a look.”

The journals represented years of his work. They were filled with observations, measurements, behavioral notes, meticulous sketches, weather records, and anything else he thought to jot down during his travels. One of the committee members grabbed at a journal and flipped through a few pages before closing it and putting it back down on the table. Another peered at one of Tom’s sketches before sliding the notebook back across to Tom.

Finally, the oldest member of the committee folded his hands and cleared his throat.

“Mr. Widdle, your enthusiasm is admirable.”

God, did he hate that sentence. It was just like what the man from the Explorer’s Society had started with. It was the sentence used by academics to tell you that you weren’t good enough. That you’d never be good enough.

“But enthusiasm cannot replace proper academic rigor.”

The committee members all started nodding at that bit of insipid wisdom.

“If you have truly discovered something unusual, the responsible course of action would be to donate the specimen to a university collection. There it can be examined by trained researchers under appropriate conditions.”

Tom had stared at them for a moment before slowly gathering up his journals and stuffing them back into his coat pocket. Then he grabbed his briefcase and turned to the door.

He’d wanted to scream at them. He’d wanted to ask them how they dared to call themselves entomologists while not showing the slightest interest in a new species. He wanted to point out that they’d all spent more time discussing his education - or supposed lack of one - than talking about a rare discovery. He wanted to tell every single last one of them where they could shove their academic rigor.

But he simply turned and left. He knew that the “academics” weren’t rejecting his beetle. They were rejecting the very idea that a man like him could have discovered anything worth looking into in the first place.

When he stepped out into the street, he’d found that he had no interest in heading to any future meeting. He’d had enough. He was tired and all he wanted to do was wander the city and let his mind drift as he walked.

A burst of applause caught his attention and made him look up and he saw a small crowd had gathered in a nearby park around a neatly dressed entertainer. He might have kept walking on if the crowd hadn’t all chosen that moment to gasp in awe. Curiosity got the best of him and he drifted over to the edge of the crowd and took up a spot there.

He saw the entertainer holding out a hand and smoke was pouring from between his fingers and twisting itself together to form a shape. A few seconds later and the smoke folded itself and Tom was able to make out what looked like a fox standing on the sidewalk.

Its body was made up of the swirling gray smoke. Wisps constantly peeled away from it before curling back into place. The audience all broke into applause as the fox trotted in circles around the entertainer. Children laughed and adults tossed him coins and everyone peppered the entertainer with questions.

“Can it understand commands?”

“Do you need to feed it?”

“Can it fight?”

“What sort of magic is that?”

The entertainer was clearly enjoying all the attention sent his way. He answered the questions with a smile and had the fox do tricks. Tom watched for a couple minutes before quietly slipping away and continuing his walk to his hotel. And as he walked he couldn’t help but note the differences between himself and the entertainer.

None of the “academics” he’d met that day had shown even a fraction of the curiosity that had greeted the entertainer. All the adults and children from the crowd couldn’t be considered scientists. Hell, most of them wouldn’t have been able to tell a beetle from a weevil if their lives depended on it.

But they’d asked questions. They’d shown curiosity. They’d been intrigued. Tom had seen them lean forward and cheer and clamber for more. That was more than could be said of the scholars. All they wanted was to know where he’d gone to school.

A raindrop chose that moment to slap him in the face and Tom stopped walking and looked up at the sky in both anger and resignation.

“Don’t you dare.”

The sky ignored him and opened up and, within seconds, Tom was soaked. He let out a short, humorless laugh and a “why not?” before he broke into a run towards his hotel.

By the time he got to the lobby, he was dripping wet. A spreading puddle of water followed him wherever he walked and his shoes squeaked on the polished floor and his socks squished unpleasantly and all he wanted to do was crawl into bed and sleep. He’d made it halfway through the lobby when the clerk behind the front desk cleared his throat and made a motion towards him.

“Mr. Widdle?”

“Afternoon,” he nodded tiredly.

“A gentleman has been waiting to see you for nearly an hour. He’s in the sitting room.”

Tom stopped and blinked before his eyes slowly drifted around the lobby to the room that was set just off to the side. His first thought was that maybe one of the societies had changed their mind and had sent a runner to invite him back. His second was that news had probably spread about the strange man wandering the city with a beetle in a briefcase, and someone decided that mocking him in person was good use of their time.

Then his eyes found the man who was in the sitting room and Tom was surprised. He didn’t look like someone who played practical jokes. He was in his mid-fifties and dressed in a suit that was…well, it was much more expensive than everything that Tom had on him.

The man looked up and smiled politely when he caught sight of Tom.

“Mr. Widdle?”

“Uh. Yea. That’s me.”

The man crossed the lobby and reached into his jacket and pulled out a cream-colored envelope that he offered with a gloved hand. Tom grabbed at it and looked down and froze. The paper of the envelope was something else.

It was impossibly smooth. The whole thing felt like cardstock. Elegant lettering had been pressed into the front of the envelope and a dark wax seal held it shut. Tom couldn’t help but think that he’d never felt paper so expensive. It screamed old money. It screamed money that was so old that it didn’t need to impress anyone because everyone was already impressed.

Tom broke the seal and slid open the envelope and his eyes went wide at the paper inside. The heading said The Royal Society for Entomologists. His pulse jumped and for a brief, dangerous moment, hope surged in him. He quickly tamped it down and read the letterhead again before looking up and letting out a weary sigh.

“If you’re going to play a prank, you should really do better research.”

The gentleman raised an eyebrow at that.

“It isn’t the Royal Society of Entomologists,” he said with a tap of the card where the title showed. “It’s the Royal Entomological Society. That’s the name.”

A faint smile spread across the gentleman’s face.

“Mr. Widdle, I do not represent the Royal Entomological Society. My employer has no use for fake academics.”

That answer sent a thrill through Tom and his eyes widened before he looked down at himself. Water was pooling under his feet and his clothes were damp and clinging to him. He looked sheepishly back up at the gentleman.

“Uh, if your boss wants to meet me then I should change first.”

“Of course,” replied the gentleman. “I will wait here.”

Tom raced back up to his small room and peeled off his coat, shirt, pants, shoes and socks. He hung everything up over the radiator despite the fact that he knew none of it would be dry by morning. But that was okay. A few minutes later he’d toweled himself off, dressed in his only other respectable suit, and made his way back down to the lobby.

The gentleman had been waiting in the lobby and, once he saw Tom again, guided him out of the hotel and to the curb where a long black car sat waiting. Tom couldn’t help but whistle when he took it in. The car was…expensive. Every piece of chrome glistened in the rain and its deep black paint reflected the light from the streetlamps.

Tom quickly got inside and tried not to look like someone climbing into the most expensive and fancy car he’d ever sat in. The leather seats were softer than the bed in his hotel room and the carpeting was thicker than what had once been in his apartment. The gentleman closed the door behind Tom and then got into the driver’s seat and they were off.

They drove in silence and Tom stared out the windows. The car gradually left the city behind. The crowds disappeared first. Then the newspaper carts and the street performers and finally all the buildings clumped up together. A few minutes of the drive was enough to get them to the outskirts of the city where the quieter neighborhoods were.

The houses they passed weren’t ostentatious but they still sat behind large stone walls and iron gates. Tom gave up guessing where they were going and just sat back to enjoy the ride.

After only a few more minutes, the gentleman slowed the car to a stop in front of a squat brick building that was tucked between two much larger builders. Tom frowned at it because what he had built up in his mind was not this building.

“This is it?”

“It is.”

The place looked abandoned. It was all weathered brick and ivy clinging to the sides and weeds that had worked their way through the stone steps leading up to a positively ancient looking door. If someone had told Tom that the place had been condemned twenty years ago, he wouldn’t have argued.

The gentleman climbed out of the car and Tom followed close behind and they both headed up to the ancient building. The door opened and the gentleman ushered him in with a flourish and Tom stepped across the threshold.

Instead of a foyer or a mudroom, he found a staircase that led deep underground. He was a little nervous about following the gentleman as he started down the steps but…what else was he going to do?

The first part of the trip down the stairs was unremarkable. It was just old stone steps encased by a brick wall with iron sconces on it. It felt like walking down into the basement of a very old building. But as Tom kept traveling down the steps, he noticed that the area around him was slowly changing.

The bricks became solid blocks of stone. The ceiling climbed high overhead and the corridor widened enough that four people could have walked down the stairs without bumping into each other. The whole place felt so much older than the city that Tom had been walking through earlier in the day. It felt like it belonged to a completely different era.

Tom had spent enough time poking around forgotten ruins to recognize the feeling of it. He ran a hand lightly along one of the stone blocks as they walked and he quickly raised his voice to ask a question.

“How old is this place?”

The gentleman smiled at the question but didn’t break his stride. “Older than anyone can say with certainty.”

They kept walking down the steps until they hit a landing and, a few feet past, Tom came to a stop. The gentleman took another few steps before noticing that he’d been left behind and, when he turned around, found Tom standing perfectly still in the middle of the corridor with his eyes closed.

“Mr. Widdle?” he asked.

Tom didn’t answer immediately. He took a breath, in through his nose, and then smiled. He’d felt a brush of air in the corridor and it carried with it a familiar scent but, when he looked up, he saw the gentleman looking at him with a confused look.

How could he tell the man that he smelled libraries? How could he tell him that wherever the air was coming from, it carried the scent of old books and paper that had been sitting on shelves for fifty years? How could he explain that that scent spoke of museums and archives and…knowledge?

“Sorry about that,” he said and he started walking again. The gentleman led him to a pair of heavy oak doors at the end of a passage. He pushed them open and warm firelight spilled out into the hall. Tom stepped inside and immediately knew that this was a room filled with money.

Thick carpets covered the floor and dark oak bookcases climbed to the ceilings. Glass cabinets were dotted around the room, filled with fossils and old maps and ancient artifacts. Oil paintings hung on the walls and there was a massive fireplace at the end of the room. In front of the fire was a man and, before Tom could get a look at his face, he caught the smell.

It was money. That sounded absurd, but he knew what old money smelled like. It was wax rubbed into leather jackets. It was wool coats that had been repaired instead of replaced. It was expensive tobacco and polished oak and heavy linens. There was a difference between someone who had become rich and someone whose family had never known poverty. Tom had spent enough time visiting private collections to recognize the difference immediately.

Tom looked around and realized that he was in an old gentleman’s club. There were oversized leather armchairs and crystal decanters and silver cigar boxes. Half a dozen elderly gentlemen sat around the fireplace. Some of them had brandy snifters and some had cigars and they were all in the middle of a conversation.

One of the men reached for a crystal decanter without saying a word and he poured a generous bit of brandy into an empty snifter before sliding it across the table towards Tom. Another gestured towards an empty chair beside the fire. Tom accepted the glass and settled into the chair and he rested while trying to get his bearings.

The men didn’t break their conversation. They were talking about expedition reports and trade routes and something involving mineral deposits. Finally, after ten minutes - where he was allowed to catch his breath and figure out where he was - the conversation reached a natural stopping point. One of the elderly gentlemen shifted in his wheelchair and adjusted a plaid blanket covering his legs before turning to Tom.

“So,” the old man started. “Did your tour of our city’s learned societies prove as disappointing as we expected?”

There wasn’t any mockery in his voice. If anything, the man sounded mildly disappointed on Tom’s behalf. Tom let out a tired laugh and leaned back in his chair.

“They were about what I expected,” he admitted. “The Explorer Society is too busy chasing dragons to care about a beetle. The Adventurer’s Guild wanted to know if my beetle could be sold for treasures. When I told them no, they thanked me for coming and showed me the door.”

A few of them snorted out a bemused laugh and the old man quietly shook his head like he’d heard the story a hundred times before.

“The Royal Society was at least polite about it,” Tom continued. “They listened to what I had to say, but then they told me that they had other issues that were more important than a single new insect.”

“And the Royal Entomological Society?” the man in the wheelchair asked.

Tom let out a sour laugh. “They didn’t even ask about the beetle. I…uh, I guess I’d hoped for better from them, but I never even got to open my briefcase.”

Several of the men exchanged knowing looks. None of them seemed surprised in the slightest. Finally, the old man nodded slowly.

“I’m sorry to hear that. Unfortunately, it happens more often than you’d think. Especially these days. Magic returns after centuries, and suddenly everyone loses their minds. They all want dragons, giants, floating islands, buried cities and impossible monsters. They’re all just chasing whatever will make the biggest headline for tomorrow’s newspapers.”

Tom’s attention snapped to the man in the wheelchair but the other members of this strange gentlemen’s club were nodding along and adding their own thoughts.

“The spectacular gets the funding,” another man said. “It always has.”

“And yet, history rarely changes because of the spectacular. It changes because of the things that people overlook.”

The man in the wheelchair smiled at that.

“Entire civilizations have risen and fallen because of insects. Mosquitoes have killed more human beings than armies ever have. And fleas. Let’s not shortshrift them. People remember the Black Plague as a disease, but they forget that plagues need transmission vectors. They need transportation.”

Several of the men nodded around the room.

“The plague permanently altered Europe. It reshaped governments, economies, religion, labor…everything. All because of something small enough to squish beneath your thumb. So, Mr. Widdle, I think you’ll find that no one in this room would dismiss your talk about insects. If anything, they’re exactly where we’d start looking.”

Tom felt himself relax and he smiled. He hadn’t realized how badly he’d needed to hear someone say that.

“That’s exactly what I’ve been trying to tell people,” he said as he reached into his coat and started pulling out his journals. They were the same journals that he’d tried to show back at the Royal Entomological Society, but this time when he brought them out none of the people in the room hesitated.

Hands reached for the notebooks almost before he’d finished setting them down. One man opened a field journal while another started flipping through the sketches. Before long, they were passing the journals between one another, pointing at hastily drawn maps and comparing notes and asking questions over each other in their excitement.

Tom pulled one of the journals back towards himself and opened it to a hand-drawn map.

“I found the beetle in a valley where almost everything was starting to change. It was all exhibiting minor magical characteristics. Nothing dramatic, mind you. If you walked through the place, it’s doubtful you’d notice anything unusual. It wasn’t at all like what you read about in the newspapers, but there were changes.”

He tapped several locations on the map.

“The plants were the first clue. It was small stuff. Moss spreading where it shouldn't have survived and flowers blooming out of season. But then I started noticing the insects. None of the larger animals in the area were showing any changes at all.”

One of the men studied one of Tom’s sketches for a few seconds before looking back up at him.

“You’re thinking the insects adapted first.”

“I think they almost have to,” said Tom as he reached for another notebook. “They reproduce faster than the larger animals. More generations means more opportunities for adaptation. If magic is becoming part of the environment instead of just appearing in isolated incidents, then insects will be responding long before mammals do.”

The conversation flowed naturally from one question to the next and it was possibly the most enjoyable twenty minutes of Tom’s life. None of them had asked him where he’d gone to school and they didn’t interrupt him to quiz him on his credentials. They simply talked about soil, weather, nearby waterways, the breeding cycle of the beetle, migration patterns, and every other detail that Tom hoped people would be curious about.

The old men around the table were practically vibrating with excitement, and Tom couldn’t help but be reminded of when he was young and had started getting interested in bugs. It brought a smile to his face as he talked and he almost lost himself in the discussion.

Eventually, the old man in the wheelchair closed one of Tom’s journals and looked up at him with an eager smile.

“One question.”

Tom smiled back at him. “I was wondering when someone would ask.”

“Did you bring it?”

Tom reached down beside his chair and lifted the briefcase up onto the table. He undid the brash claps, folded the lid back, and carefully opened the padded inner compartment to unveil the beetle.

Even sitting perfectly still, it was one of the most beautiful insects that Tom had ever seen. Its polished shell refused to settle on a single color. Emerald shifted into bronze which melted into jade and then, with a slight flicker of movement, a bit of ruby swept across its back before disappearing again.

Tiny crystalline hairs covered part of its thorax and the base of its wing cases. On those hairs were small grains that looked like gold. They were almost impossible to notice until the beetle shifted its legs, but once it did the grains caught the light from the fireplace and glittered like flecks of gold.

The room was silent as everyone slowly leaned forward to get a better look. Tom rested a hand beside the specimen box and was unable to hide the price in his voice when he talked about the beetle.

“The gold isn’t purely decorative,” he said as several heads turned his way. “It’s part of a defensive adaptation after prolonged exposure to magical environments. When it becomes frightened, those grains are released as a cloud of microscopic spores that can render almost any nearby animal unconscious.”

One of the gentlemen continued studying the beetle for another few seconds before asking Tom, “how long does the effect last?”

“That was one of the first things I found out, unfortunately.”

The room chuckled and Tom rested his forearms on the table as if he were settling in to give a lecture he’d rehearsed a hundred times.

“Everything that I’ve observed suggests that the spores are remarkably safe. Victims lose consciousness for a relatively short period of time - around ten to fifteen minutes - and then they wake up on their own with little more than a headache and a bit of grogginess. I’ve never documented any lasting effects.”

Several of the men were nodding while one pulled out his own field journal from his pocket and started scribbling notes.

“The really interesting part,” Tom continued, “is that repeated exposure builds resistance. The body gradually builds up an immunity until, eventually, the spores become almost completely ineffective.”

That earned a noticeable stir around the room.

“So it’s self-limiting,” one man said and Tom nodded at it.

“Whatever evolutionary cause produced this defense mechanism also prevented it from becoming overwhelmingly effective. Predators who survive a few encounters stop being vulnerable, which means the beetle still has to rely on camouflage for most of the time.”

“Fascinating,” another man murmured. “Nature rarely puts all its eggs in one basket.”

A third man leaned over the table and asked if Tom had actually seen the spores being deployed and Tom chuckled.

“Well, the first time I saw it wasn’t entirely intentional,” he said. “I picked one up before I understood what it was capable of and woke up fifteen minutes later lying face down in the underbrush, wondering why I’d decided to take a nap in the middle of a valley.”

That drew laughter from the group and Tom felt a slight stirring of belonging. He was among people who respected what he’d discovered. He was among people who were enamored with the beetle. He’d waited so long to find the Royal Society of Entomologists, and now here they were.

“After that, I conducted controlled observations. I watched it in different environments and from different distances. It took me a while to build enough immunity to be able to observe the responses without collapsing alongside everyone else.”

He reached into his briefcase and held out a finger so that the beetle could climb onto it. Once he had the beetle in hand, he lowered it onto the polished tabletop. The insect stepped off his hand with slow movements and then wandered around a few inches for rotating in place. Its antennae swept through the air as it took in the table and the strange people staring at it.

“It’s pretty timid,” said Tom quietly. “That’s how I was able to collect it in the first place. Most of the time it would rather hide than defend itself. I found that it rarely releases the spores unless it genuinely believes that a predator is around. As long as you’re careful, you won’t be exposed to the spores when you’re handling it.”

“How difficult is it to get it to expel the spores?”

“Not very,” Tom smiled.

He slammed a palm down against the tabletop and the crack echoed through the room. The beetle reacted instantly. Its wing covers snapped open with startling speed and a glittering cloud burst from its body like golden smoke. The spores spread through the room and, within seconds, a cloud covered everything.

The gentlemen all started coughing. One tried to wave the cloud of spores away but he started coughing harder and harder. Another pushed himself halfway out of his chair before he started swaying on his feet and collapsed backwards. The man who was taking notes watched as his pen slipped from his fingers. He tilted his head in confusion and then passed out.

The old man in the wheelchair fought it the longest. He looked at Tom with an expression of both admiration and annoyance.

“Remarkable,” he muttered before he fell back in his wheelchair.

The room went quiet. The cloud of golden spores drifted lazily through the air before it settled onto the carpets and bookshelves and polished wood. The sound of a grandfather clock tick ticked away somewhere in the room and Tom just sat back in his chair for a few seconds and watched, making sure nobody was faking it.

Finally he took a slow breath through his nose and calmly counted each of the unconscious men. When the last member finally slid sideways against the back of his chair and was breathing peacefully, Tom gave a small, satisfied nod. He reached into his coat and pulled out one of his journals and started writing down his observations.

Seven subjects. Average onset remains approximately four seconds in an enclosed environment.

He closed his notebook, slid it back into his coat, and finally turned his attention to the rest of the room. His eyes lingered on the antique display cases and the glass cabinets and the neatly stacked correspondence littered throughout the room and a slow smile spread across his face.

He stood from his chair and took a moment to brush a few stray grains of pollen from his sleeves. Once he was satisfied that he was presentable, he looked around at the unconscious gentlemen and offered them an apologetic smile.

“I’m only going to borrow the interesting things,” he said. “I promise I’ll leave the rest exactly where I found it.”

He wasn’t a common burglar. A burglar emptied drawers haphazardly because he thought they might have something valuable in them. Tom only took things that had a story attached. There was a clear difference.

He slowly wandered the room, stopping occasionally when something caught his eye. There was an elegant fountain pen that he pocketed after he admired the balance of it. There was a curious pocket watch whose case had been engraved with constellations instead of numbers. A small collection of unusual coins earned an approving nod before they were slipped into his pocket. A few stranger objects tempted him as well. One looked like an ordinary brass compass until he noticed that its needle lazily rotated in perfect circles instead of pointing north.

Tom ignored anything that looked expensive simply because it was expensive. He walked right past the crystal decanters, silver serving trays, and paintings in elaborate gold frames. Wealth had never really interested him. He lived fairly simply.

Eventually he found himself standing beside a large writing desk that was tucked against one wall. Several neat stacks of paper were bundled together with a ribbon and labeled in an immaculate hand. Tom leafed through them carefully and quickly read through what was on the table.

Most of the letters were about expeditions being sent out by the different societies of the city. There were reports from remote valleys, requests for funding, sketches of newly discovered ruins, and summaries of magical phenomena from places whose names Tom didn’t recognize. He paused over a few of the pages, tempted to read further, but he was on the clock.

There was one envelope that caught his eye though. It wasn’t with the others, instead resting by itself near the corner of the desk as if someone was going to deal with it later. The envelope was so much more impressive than the invitation he’d received from the Royal Society of Entomologists.

The stock was impossibly thick. The edges had been perfectly cut. The envelope itself was sealed with a black wax that bore a mark that Tom had never seen before. It wasn’t a family crest or the insignia of any society that he recognized. It was simply an elegant geometric design that felt ancient.

He carefully broke the seal and slid the card out. There wasn’t much written on it. The card itself was heavy enough that it almost felt like thin wood rather than paper, and a single line of raised black lettering was in the middle of the card.

The Collectors request your attendance.

“Well, that’s interesting,” he said as a slow smile spread across his face. He slipped the invitation into his briefcase with a lot more care than he’d show any of the other items.

Once he had taken a slow circuit around the room and grabbed anything that looked interesting, he quietly closed his briefcase and fastened the brass claps. He gave the room one last thoughtful glance to make sure everything else was as he’d found it before returning to the chair where his untouched brandy still waited.

It seemed a shame to waste it, so he picked up the glass, took a swig of the amber liquid, and set the empty snifter back onto the table. The warmth lingered pleasantly as he straightened his jacket and looked around at his sleeping hosts.

“I genuinely enjoyed my evening. It was the first proper scientific conversation I’d had all day. I’m sorry about…well, all of it. I realize it’s probably not the ideal way to conclude a meeting.”

He looked down at the table where his journals were still spread out and the beetle was making a circuit around the table. He arranged the notebooks into a neat stack and then gently brushed the beetle on its head.

“I’ll leave these with you,” he said. “The journals contain everything I’ve learned so far and I think you all deserve to have the beetle. I haven’t given him a name so…I’ll leave that to all of you. I hope that’s adequate payment for any inconvenience I’ve caused. If nothing else, you’ll have the chance to examine the specimen.”

With that, Tom gave the room a small nod of farewell and quietly let himself out, leaving behind a table full of research, one remarkable beetle, and a bunch of unconscious gentlemen who’d have a story to tell once they woke up.