Alana Rodrigues-Birch | Prose

Her footsteps echoed through the empty marble halls of the ever-shifting maze. In her mind, she’d started calling it The Museum of Anywhere. Not just because it held curious items that could not have been found in the world she came from – a levitating, taxidermied rabbit with small leathery wings, or a star-catching gadget made from glowing purple metal, as two examples – but because she was lost. Not in the simple way where you might try to find a store in a mall and spend hours walking past the same places, tying yourself into knots, but as physically, factually lost as one could ever be, especially in a place where one could not be physical or factual. For our dear, lost researcher, ‘lost’ was a state of being. And yet she trotted forward. Such is the indomitable living spirit. 

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I can’t possibly get more lost than I am now, she thought to herself. In some ways, but not others, she was right. She went onwards, upwards, sideways, and in all general directions until the smooth, white marble – Parian marble, if the island of Paros in Greece existed in this place, which it did, though not singularly, anyway – gave way to a shimmering paua-shell-and-Roman-glass mosaic. Our dear researcher looked up. She found herself walled in by rows and rows of tall shelves filled with rows and rows of wooden drawers, all labelled in an orderly fashion. Between the shelves, suspended in air, sat small jars of – were those beetle elytra, glowing like tiny stars? What a strange and beautiful place. Our researcher often thought this. She wandered through the shelves. When she reached one with a huge, open display of butterflies and moths – to her, Lepidoptera, but you will find that there are as many variations in organising taxa as there are ways of existing – she clicked on her tape recorder. 

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“In a room with rows and rows of shelves with rows and rows of drawers, there’s a display case of Lepidoptera.” Familiar doubt crept into her voice. She still hadn’t gotten used to the sound of her own voice despite twenty-three years of speaking with it. I couldn’t tell her how well she was doing and how far she had come. Therefore, I relay it to you. If you ever end up in The Museum of Anywhere, do tell her. She needs to hear it.

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“The butterfly at the top left corner is large and mostly black, with small white spots sprayed over both sets of wings. It says here that it’s named Aster stellaria. Interesting. Wherever it comes from probably uses a different name for the daisy family. Anyway.” 

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Her eyes lit up as she scanned the case for her next subject, hands dancing in her excitement. Lepidoptera were her third favourite insect order. She settled on a small one in the middle row, fourth from the right. “Our next featured creature is a moth the length of my thumb with bright orange wings. The brown pattern on the back spells out ‘YIPPEE,’ ‘YIP’ on one wing and ‘PEE’ on the other. This one doesn’t have a scientific name. I mean, it doesn’t have a scientific name in a convention I recognise.” See, she’s starting to get it. “You know the smiley face you can type out with a colon and a capital ‘D’? It’s that.” 

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If you’re not one for conjuring images in your head, I’ll show you. The scientific name for the moth is ‘:D’. 

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Our researcher laughed. “Hell yeah. Oh, this one’s cool. It’s, like, half the size of the display case. Bigger than one of those Hercules Atlas moths. Says here it’s called the – wait, really? It’s called the Behe-moth. Awesome.”

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“Oh you’ve found the Behe-moth!” A voice called out from somewhere behind her. Our researcher jumped about a foot in the air. “Oh dear, don’t panic! It’s quite alright!” The voice was soft and kind, and our researcher found herself trusting it instantly. A short figure with thick, round spectacles and a mossy beard bustled into view. “Hi there! It’s been a very long time since anyone’s come around. Please spend as long as you like looking at the bugs. There’s a beanbag if you want to take a nap between the wasps and the damselflies.”

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Our researcher, dazed, tried to remember the last time she’d met anyone this amiable. The last people she’d run into had been a purple-skinned elf with a buzzcut and a squat woman waving around a glaive, but both had regarded her with distrust and were about as lost as she was, so she went her own way. She tried to remember the steps for introductory conversations she’d written for herself in primary school. Step one, your name. “Hi. My name is Augustina, but you can call me Gus if Augustina is too long.” Step two. ?? Step three. This person is now your acquaintance. 

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The figure beamed. “It’s lovely to meet you! Which name do you prefer?” 

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Gus shrugged. “I don’t know. Both are cool. My favourite book is about a girl named Gideon, so I think it works for me to be called Gus sometimes. Gus is less fancy than Augustina.” Herein lay the problem. When one introduces themself, they give their name and perhaps some personal information. But nobody had ever specified to Gus what that personal information had to be, so she tended to drop whatever seemed relevant at the time. This time, her introduction worked. The figure nodded enthusiastically. 

“Oh, perfect! Gus is a sweet name. I’m Bug Collector!”

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Gus nodded back. “Cool. So what’s your name?”

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“That is my name! First name Bug, last name Collector.”

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“... Huh. That’s also cool. Your bug collection’s a nice coincidence.” She gestured to the display case. 

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“Oh, my homeworld really has a thing for nominative determinism. They knew I’d grow up to like bugs, so it became my name.”

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“But is it nominative determinism if they knew what your future was going to be?” said Gus, frowning.

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“Maybe it isn’t, or maybe the name was a way of making sure I followed that future. Who knows for sure?” Bug Collector clapped his hands together. “Would you like something to drink? The beetle case doubles as a table, so you can have a look while you sip.”

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Gus thought for a moment, then accepted. The last time she’d had anything to drink was from a water fountain shaped like a lion’s head. She’d slurped water straight from its mouth, until it bit down, which scared her badly enough to move her face away but not badly enough to stop drinking. She followed Bug Collector to his kitchenette. It looked shackled together, the decor a mix of many times and places. 

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Gus chose a space-age, sixties-style chair and sat in it cross-legged. “Where did you find all the shelves of bugs? Were they here already, or did you drag them over from somewhere else?” 

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Bug collected two mugs from a cupboard and set the kettle to boil. “Well, a bit of both, really. I came across this place years ago. Back then, it was just two lone shelves of insects. All beetles, naturally. I’ve found they’re someone’s favourite no matter what world they come from.” He placed a steaming cup of tea on a coaster shaped like a snail and slid it over to Gus. “There you go! It’s chamomile and lemonbalm.”

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“I had a question about that,” said Gus, eyeing Bug’s pale green skin and verdant beard. 

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“About the tea? Shoot away!”

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“Oh. About your world, actually. I’m a bit confused. I keep seeing things and people that I never would have seen in the world I come from. Why’s that?”

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“Because this lovely place is a meeting ground of every reality. People from every where and every when wander around in it, each for their own reason.”

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“I’m not sure what mine is. I’m not sure what this means.”

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“It means what you make of it.” Bug raised the mug to his face, letting the steam collect in his moss. Gus supposed this was how he stayed so lush. She had more thoughts, but I have a word limit, so I’ll hurry us along. 

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“So… How do I leave?” she said.

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“You’ll leave when you want to.”

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“I’ve been looking for a way out for ages!”

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“But do you want to leave?”

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Gus thought. She thought very long and hard. She thought so long and hard that she got distracted by a small black beetle. “That looks like one from my home-world,” she said.

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“It might be,” said Bug. “Oh! That reminds me. I love your jacket.”

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“... My raincoat?”

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“Yeah! It’s a fantastic shade of yellow. Which also reminds me.” He placed a small box on the table. “I found this little specimen on a leaf in a greenhouse a few floors up. The stairs changed on the way down, so I took a while to come home, but I think it was worth it.” He opened the box. Cradled inside, mounted on a pin, lay a beetle with bright yellow elytra. The thorax elongated into two points on either side of the head like an upturned collar. “Your raincoat made me think of this one, yet to be named. Would you like it named after you, in the scientific convention of your home-world?”

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Gus, lost for words, nodded so hard her skull almost came loose. After explaining Linnaean taxonomy to Bug – who took everything in, eyes glittering like dragonfly wings – he proclaimed its scientific name. Which, of course, meant nothing to the insect, but everything to Gus, as Bug had decided to name it Pluvium augustina. She smiled until her face hurt and tears pricked the corners of her eyes.

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On Bug’s invitation, she spent hours poring over the drawers of insects, more than could have been described and given full justice in a lifetime. When it was time for her to go, he sent her on her way with a thermos of warm tea – he found thermoses all the time and so had several, not to be confused with the pharaoh Thutmoses, whom he’d met wandering around an Elvis Presley display – and a bag of chocolate chip biscuits. He told her to keep an eye out for an elderly fisherwoman. She’d passed through some time ago looking for a selkie she’d fallen in love with in her youth. A selkie, perhaps the same one, had taken residence in the saltwater pools of the pink-and-white-terraced display room three floors down and three corridors to the right, and Bug believed that having as many people as possible on lookout would increase the chances of reuniting them. Gus taped their conversation so she could come back to it later. She thanked him, hugged him, went on her way. 

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And so her footsteps echoed down the empty halls once again, spurred on by unconquerable curiosity, maybe forever, maybe not.