Adapted from The Mighty Doc Stalwart #251 (February 1984)

Everything was a collection of stories. Mikah had learned that. Every object told the tale of what it was, where it came from, and who had been part of its life.

      Mikah looked around the messy office. The chair told him the stories of the carpenter who made it. The paperweight on the desk before him told the story of the beach from which the glass originated. The desk told of a thousand uncomfortable meetings, like this one, it had borne witness to.

      People, however, were a different matter. They were secretive. Elusive. They were also collections of stories, but they were often far more careful about revealing them. One of those people sat across from him now. Mikah was trying to remember the man’s name. Mister Golden? Golding? Something like that.           

      “We’ve been watching you,” the man said, his eyes still perusing the file folder he’d been flipping through for several minutes, “impressive.”

      “Thanks,” Mikah answered. Maybe Goldfinch? Maybe not.

      “Your work with the location of the Erbis Totem was quite the feat. How’d you do that?”

      Goldfarb? No… “Come again?”

      “How’d you find it? The Totem?” The man was still looking at the folder. Mikah wondered what story the folder was telling the man. He wondered if it was different from the story it would tell him.

      “Oh. We had a piece of Emperor Tessek’s memorial garb from like the fourth century BC. The Totem had touched the garb at some point. I touched the garb. Connection.” Mikah popped his lips as he took his fists and expanded into jazz hands. These became shaky jazz hands. Mr. Silvers seemed unamused. Silvers! That was it. Wrong metal altogether. Wow.

      “I see.” Mr. Silvers closed the folder, pushed his thick glasses up to the bridge of his nose, and studied Mikah from across the desk. His white dress shirt was spotted with several coffee stains. He had a comb over. No one was going to think that was his hair’s natural location, “We’re thinking of moving you to a high-profile project...” Mr. Silvers didn’t seem like he had decided yet. His eyes went back to the folder, “mutant, huh?”

      Mikah nodded.

      “Other than the object-directed-extra-sensory-tele-location- meta-awareness, any other gifts manifest?”

      “Not so far. I mean, it’s only been a year, and I know that new things can spring up into your twenties…”

      “Right. At thirteen, you’ve got time…”

      Mikah nodded. At the Citadel of Tomorrow, the gifts people exhibited were quite remarkable. Levitation. Telekinesis. Some (literally) mind-blowing stuff. He’d seen a four-year-old girl who could walk through walls. Object reading was comparatively tame.

      Still, he was here. At the North Pole. Sequestered from the world. Taking part in experiments every day. Feeling like the thing in the middle of a petri dish under a microscope. Twenty-four-seven-three-sixty-five.

      Mr. Silvers put the folder down. “How’d you like to try some field work?”

***

The elevator took them from Sub-basement C-7 to the Central Tower, whisking past the levels dedicated to supernatural lore, above the cybernetics tactical processing centers, and even upwards beyond the facilities for research into dimensional travel. Mikah’s palms were sweating more than usual.

      The door opened to reveal a wide hangar bay. Mr. Silvers walked forward, shuffling his feet and keeping his eyes pointed to the ground. This was his usual gait. His old leather satchel hung from his left shoulder.

      To his right, Mikah saw a huge window. The entire arctic spread out before them. They had to be at least a thousand feet up. The word ‘vista’ came to mind.

      The hangar was space enough for a fleet of jets, but only one craft was here.

      And it was weird. The first thought was that it looked like a 30’ long insect. It was a dull grey, sat on a series of narrow legs that served as landing gear, and had a pair of protruding mandibles at the front.

      “It’s… a beetle.”

      “That’s a great name! The Beetle. LOVE it.”

      A man stepped from behind a work shelf and into view. It wasn’t just any man. It was…

      “Doc Stalwart.” Mikah almost choked on the words.

      It was him. In the flesh. Right here. THE Doc Stalwart.

      “Pleasure to meet you, young man!” Doc extended a big hand from his big arm, as he flashed a big smile. Everything about him was big. He was a giant of a man.

      Mikah shook his hand. Doc Stalwart squeezed firmly but could have easily reduced Mikah’s hand to pulp or wrenched his arm from the socket with a flick of the wrist. This was a man who knew his own strength. If he noticed how clammy Mikah’s hand was, Doc didn’t show it.

      Mikah realized his jaw was hanging open.

      Doc had turned, and was walking back towards the ship, “The Beetle. That’s the name we’ve been looking for.

 Right, Zirah?”

      Sitting under the ship, a slight girl with jet-black hair and dark eyes was sharpening a sword. Had she been there the whole time? She didn’t nod. Doc acted like she did.

      “Yes, indeed. The Beetle. That’s a fine name. Glad to have you aboard, son!”

      Mikah gulped.

      Doc had taken some wrench-like object from the workstation and was now underneath the side of the Beetle. He’d opened a compartment and was working on something that looked both mechanical and organic at the same time. “I reviewed your file. Nice work on the Tessek assignment. That mummy is one nasty foe. Glad to know that his Totem is safe and sound...” Here he gave a wink. Was he joking?

      “Thank you, sir.”

      Mr. Silvers was still standing there, three steps back from Mikah. He produced another file folder from the satchel he always carried. This was a man who loved file folders. He probably purchased them by the carton. “Doc Stalwart, I have the file you asked for…”

      Doc paused. He finished adjusting what he was working on, returned the wrench to the workbench, and used a white towel to wipe off his hands. He checked them to make sure they were clean. He walked over to Mr. Silvers and carefully took the folder in hand.

      “Thank you.”

      Silvers sort of nodded, “let me know if you need anything else.”

      Doc Stalwart was already perusing the folder. For the first time, his smile seemed to crack. Just a little.

      Mr. Silvers called to Mikah from the elevator, as the doors slid shut, “effective immediately, you report directly to Doc. He will give you assignments from here.”

      And then he was gone.

      Doc spent a minute examining the pages of the folder. From ten feet away, Mikah could see a few black and white photographs, a map, yellowing papers with red ‘classified’ and ‘ultra-classified’ stamps across them. Flipping the last page over, Doc whistled, and the smile returned. In a small clear plastic bag was a bright coin.

      Doc had turned and was walking back towards the Beetle. “Come on aboard. Let me show you around.”

***

Inside the cabin, something was growling. And hissing. And snarling. And speaking something that sounded like an intentional and angry form of gibberish. The sound was coming from the far side of the cabin. There, housed in a shining blue cage affixed to the wall, was a tiny demon, maybe a foot and a half tall. No lie. It was totally a demon. It was dark red and had bat wings and fangs and claws. Like, this was an actual demon, albeit a really small one.

      Doc was going through the routine of activating the ship’s systems, flipping switches and pushing buttons. Lights and sounds came to life all around them, “Don’t mind Jynx. He’s just an imp. No worries, though. He has sworn a 66-year blood oath to me, so no chance of him trying to eat your face. I mean, normally, yes, he’d try to eat your face. But now, it’s all good.”

      Jynx was staring at Mikah, probably thinking about how his face would taste.

      Doc moved next to where Mikah was standing and reached down. He opened a trap door in the floor, revealing a storage compartment. Doc pulled out a bag of charcoal briquettes, and he started rummaging through the bag. This seemed like an odd time to start a campfire.

      Doc’s hand brought forth a half-dozen briquettes, and he tossed them, one at a time, towards the cage. Jynx snatched them from the air as they flew in his direction. Once he had all six, he gathered them together, moved to the far side of the cage (which wasn’t really all that far), and sat down. He started to devour them. He seemed almost content. Almost. His forked tail swished back and forth, smacking the sides of the cage.

      Yeah, he was totally thinking about eating Mikah’s face.

      The entirety of the ship’s cabin formed a single cavernous area. There were what appeared to be engine mechanics at the back, a few benches around the sides, and a series of controls at the front. There, three chairs were mounted on swivel bases. Doc took a spot in the largest center chair, motioning for Mikah to have a seat on his left.

      “So, object reading, eh?”

      Mikah nodded. He sat down.

      The girl, (Zariah? He’d already forgotten for sure) had come into the ship, moving up the ramp. Jynx had finished his (its?) snack and started to snarl at her. She walked towards the cage, held up her left hand, and suddenly, there was absolute silence. Pin drop type stuff.

      The imp had not stopped his rant. In fact, Jynx had doubled down, thrashing against the cage and spitting little sparks of flame. Mikah could see him, but he didn’t make the slightest noise. Not the imp, not the shaking cage, not the flapping wings. Dead silence.

      The girl turned, went towards the opposite side of the cabin, and pressed something on the wall. A bunk slipped out just above her head. She pulled herself up to it with considerable ease, and (from this vantage point) appeared to lay down.

      Doc was still studying Mikah. His hands were folded across his chest, elbows on the arm rests.

      “So. A name.”

      Mikah shrugged. “Huh?”

      “You need a name. A codename. Do you have one?”

      The others in his group called him ‘fish’, because his hands were cold and wet all the time. This was probably the worst code name in the world, but that’s what he went by. He was about to admit this.

      “There are at present 168,342 words in the English language, when you include 9,217 derivatives. And that doesn’t include the 47,156 obsolete words…” Doc said this off the top of his head, like he was just sharing a bit of common knowledge to provide context, “so there has to be a perfect word for what you can do.”

      Mikah shrugged, “I find stuff.”

      “Stuff finder boy!” Doc smiled again. He had a different smile for when he was joking.

      It was better than fish.

      “No. Just kidding. Finder. That works.”

      Great. Now he would be ‘Fish Finder’ when he went back to his unit. That was almost worse.

***