As a tenured professor of archaeology at Roman & Brookes University, I find strange requests arrive with precise irregularity. Serious men, or men who pretend to be, show up from time to time and ask for my insight on unexpected historical treasures. The number of obscenely wealthy men in trench coats who have crossed my threshold has astonished me in my older years. At first it was more amusing than anything, and I didn’t think much of it. After twenty years, I’ve had exactly 384 calls for my services beyond the walls of this university. Most requests were straightforward enough. They had a large sum of money from oil or a trust fund, and they simply had to find some hidden location encoded in cryptic historical or theological puzzles.
Their rules were simple.
Help them find the thing and I would share in the spoils. And so I did. Again and again. But no such promised plunder ever landed in my checking account. Even so, the enthusiasm of wealth-at-hand that radiated from these peculiar men was intoxicating. What they asked me to do was never less than enthralling.
Until the night a rather odd young man approached me.
He was considerably younger than most who seek my services. Slight in build, with restless hands he kept forcing still at his sides, and eyes that moved the way a chess player’s eyes move, measuring distances before committing to anything. What he wanted didn’t quite fit the wheelhouse of what I had spent my entire life learning.
Before he told me what he needed, he handed me a small box. The relic inside was odd, to say the least. It wasn’t a hologram, even though my finger seemed to slip right through it when I poked it.
“It’s technically an ultra-high-frequency quantum density crystal,” the young man said. “At least that’s what the white coats told me.”
“What do the others say it is?” I asked.
“No one else had any idea what to make of it,” he said, his hands flat at his sides.
“Where did you get it?”
Before he would answer, the lights cut out, then flickered back on. The crystal looked larger in the dark.
“Did you see that?” I said, jaw hanging. “What exactly is a quantum crystal, and what does any of this have to do with me?”
He paused, watching me. Calculating something. Maybe I shouldn’t have seen that.
“Tell me, Professor,” he said, moving slowly away from me. “What do you know about the Lost City of Emeralds?”
I took a moment to gather my thoughts. This is fiction. It isn’t real. Out of all the rich men who had come to see me, not one of them had ever wasted time chasing fairy tales.
“Young man,” I began. “This place you speak of exists only in the imagination. I have seen no record of it anywhere but the fiction section of the library.”
“Your reputation precedes you, Professor,” he said, with a half-smile almost too small to catch. “I have no intention of debating the reality of such a location. What I asked is what you know. I didn’t ask whether you believe in the tangibility of this place beyond the stories told to children at bedtime. I’m sure a location like this, even if it exists only in the overactive imagination of some eccentric madman, has come up in conversation with colleagues over drinks at some point in your career. Has it not?”
My eyebrows folded. I scratched the side of my head. One long breath.
“I’m sure you’re aware,” I said, “that taking such things seriously is entirely plausible in certain circles of higher society. One man shares a discovery, and the other offers something more grand, until the pecking order resolves itself. There are many ways of attaining power, and I am not entirely unfamiliar with power. What I can say is this: the descriptions of this location have, at minimum, a pinky dipped in credibility. What remains a mystery, even granting its reality, is not only how you plan to arrive at a location unknown to history, but how you plan to arrive there in a condition that still resembles something entirely human.”
“Professor,” he said, setting down his glass. “Your initial assessment of my inquiry exceeds my expectations, as I expected it would. What I don’t know is whether you intend to take this with any degree of sincerity. What we believe we’ve found is not only extraordinary, it’s something science doesn’t yet have ready answers for.”
“What I think I know about this place,” I said, “is that it isn’t only an allegory veiling a deeper mystery. It describes a dark place. Not dark as in evil, or occult. Simply a geography with an absence of light, a space where light cannot exist. The purpose of this I can only guess. How it is possible, I have only speculation. That is still assuming this story is not fiction.”
“We know about the absence of light, Professor. As you saw when the lights flickered, this Emerald City is not a fairytale. It is real. If the crystal bends what’s real, so does the place it came from.”
The two of us stood in silence. I was processing more than I preferred to at this hour. We were alone in my private lounge, a room only a handful of professors on this campus have access to.
“What do you propose we do?” I said, still not quite granting him the degree of seriousness he expected. “I’ll admit, I saw the crystal behave in ways I’ve never witnessed, nor heard of. But what of it? To what end do you seek this place? If it exists, a place where light is extinct, what do you see when you’re inside it? Is this lightless place the origin of your crystal? If someone has already been, how did they get in, and how did they carry out something that my finger passes straight through? It seems to me you know considerably more about this place than I do. What are you actually looking for? Is the place itself not the treasure? Is this stone made of ghost not enough?”
“It wasn’t I who made the journey,” he said, moving back toward the table where the crystal sat. “The evidence in the crystal points to someone who found it and now doesn’t want to be found. Whether they went inside or stayed at the gates, I don’t know. What I do know is that this crystal came from that place. The myth is ancient, but the reality persists. If we weren’t meant to find it, they wouldn’t have left a map or a trail of breadcrumbs. The crystal is the first crumb, and it is certainly not the most curious artifact in our possession. What I’ve shown you tonight is one of many strange remnants of a civilization from antiquity.”
I studied him sideways. A curious young man, convicted of a fiction story, carrying evidence that wasn’t entirely without strangeness. If there was an ulterior motive, and there almost always is, the only promise I accept from people like him is a monetary one. At this point, he still hadn’t told me what he actually wanted me to do. He kept circling back to the quantum stone and other artifacts whose impossible constitutions might warrant further investigation, if a person were inclined toward that sort of integrity.
Artemis howled from his perch in the corner of the lounge, twenty feet up. The young man startled, but said nothing. Though young and slight, the conviction in his manner reminded me of myself at his age. In any other circumstance, someone from his wealth class would never have approached me with claims this wild.
“Young man,” I began, in the voice I used when my son needed his bubble carefully, not cruelly, deflated. I hesitated. Does this young man deserve to have his dream taken from him? And would he even hear me if I tried? The certainty in his enthusiasm. The rich details of a location to discover. A dimension with a measurable, possibly quantifiable existence. I let him talk. I found moments to interrupt, but the momentum of his belief had a persuasive sway that was tempting, if only for the pleasure of the chase. He was well-educated, no question.
“You’re not here for money,” I continued, “and you don’t need my wisdom. You have a brilliant story. But I want you to think very carefully about what you intend to do once you’ve reached wherever it is you think you’re going. You have a peculiar quantum crystal, yes. Fascinating, no doubt. But the scientists you brought it to were apparently not moved to act. Now I’ll admit, this crystal is unlike anything I’ve held. And as much as your devotion brings this story alive, I still don’t understand how my particular skills serve you. What could I possibly offer that you haven’t already asked someone else for? You’ve shown me a stone and told me a story. The men I’m most accustomed to helping bring me deep pockets and verifiable evidence on which we can take action tonight. All you’ve brought me is an artifact that bends the laws of physics in uncomfortable ways, and a dream with no foundation.”
“Sir,” the young man said. “I don’t need your money, we have plenty of that. I don’t need you to believe the story is true; that’s my problem. All I need is for you to help us find this city where light does impossible things. The scientists who evaluated the crystal did so under tightly controlled, compartmentalized conditions. Not one of them had full knowledge of what they were analyzing, only a fragment. What I’ve shown you tonight, only you and I have seen together. This artifact is one of seven. We have six. The remaining artifacts require more careful management due to the nature of their constitution, their arrangement generates spontaneous phenomena that require constant monitoring. The dream has a foundation, Professor. We will find the seventh, and when we do, we will have a complete map to the Lost City of Emeralds.”
I was, I’ll admit, on the edge. Not entirely for reasons of logic, and not entirely because I see my younger self in him. The kid could be onto something. His confidence never quite tipped into arrogance, which made it harder to dismiss.
Artemis called twice, spread his wings, and landed beside the crystal.
When the lights were on, the crystal looked like vapor passing through a ray of sunlight, a barely observable vibration humming around its edges. Its color was more a reflection of its surroundings than any color of its own. Not reflective, not dull. It didn’t shimmer when rotated. When I moved it back and forth, it moved in the opposite direction. I passed my finger through it, back and forth. But in certain corners along its edge, I felt something faintly solid. Feeling carefully, I found a top and a bottom where I could grip it, and lifted it into my palm. It had weight, a density like lead, and yet my finger still passed through it.
I walked over and turned off the lights. Again, the crystal grew. It wasn’t pitch black; the parking lot lights outside kept the room dimly lit. As my eyes adjusted, the crystal shifted, subtly. I brought it as close to my eye as I could still focus, and turned it slowly. Artemis leaned in and pecked at it, flicking his tongue two or three times.
I placed the crystal back in its box and set Artemis on his stand.
“What I’m about to tell you, young man, may come as a shock,” I said. “What I say to everyone who comes to me for help finding something, I will say to you now. If I agree to aid your expedition, I take eighty percent of everything we find. I understand that everyone who seeks me out arrives in their hour of desperation. I’m the last person anyone wants to come to. Not because I don’t give answers, I give precise answers. Men in your class avoid me because my reputation precedes me, and that reputation has been carefully cultivated. It is not by accident. I do not pretend that my reputation fails to serve those who are not serious in their pursuit. What you have brought me is, regretfully, worthy of serious inquiry, even though it shouldn’t be. I am still not entirely convinced that what you’ve presented matches the myth in any tangible way. But to give this proposal any form of priority, I’ll need a commitment that signals you are equally serious. My fee is eighty percent. No less. You may look for someone who will do it cheaper. You will find no one. And even if you do accept my offer, statistically, you will not reach a swift resolution. Expeditions of this scope require time, resources, and a faith in the decision that does not exhaust itself. If you persist, you may achieve. If you underestimate how much persistence it requires, your resolve was never truly resolved to begin with. Eighty percent and we begin. Otherwise, I’ve heard quite enough for one night.”