It had been two days since the watermelon incident. Jack was sitting in psychology class, and his power had just finished charging up. If he used it now, another mystery would be created and he would have an excuse to meet up with Marie and Simon again. He felt out for the power, flexed the invisible muscle, and something changed about reality.
Jack looked around, but nothing was different. Right. Why would I see the change immediately? I’ll just need to wait until I hear about something strange happening on campus. The professor’s voice droned on about long outdated theories which Jack found impossible to care about. As he sat there worrying and planning, Jack was snapped out of his thoughts by a commotion around him.
Students were muttering to each other and pointing around them. Ladybugs were entering the room, through the doors and vent. Dozens of them wandered in with no direction or coordination.
The professor soon stopped speaking and looked around the room, when his attention turned to the doors the students were pointing at, he stepped over and opened one. Out in the hallway were thousands of ladybugs, crawling over everything. They began pouring into the open door, until the professor closed it, and the stream fell back into a trickle.
Looking around the room, the professor said, “Well, I’m not sure what to say except that this might be the end of today’s lec-” But it was no use, the students were loud and no one had been listening to the professor for a while. Jack watched as the professor calmly gathered his things and walked to the door. He opened it a crack and peeked through as if judging a plan of action. It was only a few seconds before the professor closed the door, walked to a window, opened it, and climbed out.
Seeing the professor climb out the window, the students started rushing out that way en masse, thankful that the classroom was on the ground floor. After a few minutes Jack was left alone in the room, still sitting in his chair.
I guess I found the mystery.
He stood up and walked to the door in a zigzag, avoiding the ladybugs in his way. He pulled it open a crack and looked through. The ladybugs were more dispersed than before, but still too dense for him to walk out there. He could see some doors down the hall opening as the other classrooms finally realized something was happening.
They’re probably not going to let students wander around investigating this. I need to do something before I’m kicked out.
Jack pulled out his phone and started recording. He made sure to get a good shot of the ladybugs in front of him, before turning the phone to look down the hall. Then he moved to the vent, which ladybugs were now pouring out of, and recorded it. When he turned around he saw that the room was getting filled with ladybugs. If he waited too long, the path to the window would be blocked off. He snapped one more picture of the classroom, before darting out the window.
Outside, he looked side to side. Off at the front of the building seemed to be a growing crowd of students. That’s probably my best bet at finding Simon and Marie. Sure enough, Jack soon found Simon standing near the back of the crowd, with a distraught look on his face.
“I hate bugs…” Simon muttered quiet enough that Jack was unsure if Simon had seen him, or was talking to himself.
“Hey, Simon!” Jack waved him over, “I guess we found another mystery.”
Simon sighed “Yeah, but bugs? Really?”
“Hey, I don’t choose what weird things happen on campus.” Actually, if Marie had been more specific, I might have been able to.
“Well, let’s see if Marie is anywhere nearby. Hopefully she doesn’t hate bugs too.”
Jack and Simon wandered around the crowd looking for any sign of Marie. I guess if I want to become Marie’s friend it makes the most sense for me, Simon, and her to become a group of friends. I should probably try to get along with Simon too.
“So, you were the one who first started trying to solve the watermelon thing, right?”
“Yeah.”
This guy doesn’t talk a lot, does he? “What made you decide to do that?”
Simon examined Jack for a moment, again he seemed to be analyzing Jack or looking for some sort of information. “Well, I’m a philosophy major, but I want to switch to something else. Until I decide what, though, I don’t see much point in taking any classes. So I had an empty schedule and that seemed like a good way to spend my time. It was just a whim.”
“I guess that’s better than watching tv all day.” Jack said. Finally, I’ve gotten him to say more than two sentences at once. “So why are you switching from philosophy?”
“Well, I thought it was interesting, but as I get through college I realize that the only philosophers worth respecting are the ones people stopped respecting hundreds of years ago.”
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
“Ah, well- Wait. There’s Marie.” Jack spotted her all the way at the front, arguing with security.
----------------------------------------
“Why can’t I go in there?” Marie was leaning forward with her hands on her hips.
“Why would you want to, it’s filled with bugs?” The security man was hardly paying attention to her.
“I want to find out who did it.”
“Just leave that to the administration. Besides, you can go in there and look for clues or whatever in a couple hours when the ladybugs have left.”
“I want to go look while the ladybugs are still there.”
Jack turned to Simon, “Looks like she’s not scared of bugs.”
Simon shook his head. “I just hope she doesn’t expect me to go in while the ladybugs are still there.”
Jack walked up and waved “Hey Marie, I guess you showed up too.”
“Yeah, but this guy won’t let us in to investigate.”
“Don’t worry.” Simon said “They’ll have to open the windows to let the bugs escape, and they can’t guard all the windows. We can just sneak in then. But in exchange for this advice, I demand to not be the one going in.”
“Please don’t.” The security man looked like he had a headache. “I guess I can’t stop you, but that could really get me in trouble.”
Jack smiled and pulled out his phone. “Don’t worry, we don’t actually need to be in the building while the bugs are there. I was there when they first showed up.”
“Wait. You were there at ground zero?” Marie asked excitedly.
“Yeah, and when I was the only one left in the classroom, I got some videos.”
“I was wondering why you came from the direction of the building to meet me.” Simon said, “I assumed you’d just been wandering around the crowd though.”
Man, this guy is actually pretty perceptive.
Jack started pulling up the videos on his phone when Marie interrupted him. “Oh, I just remembered, in case you want to see it, some student did get a picture of the watermelon on the bell tower.”
She handed her phone to Jack. It was a picture from below of the watermelon, impaled on the spike at the top of the bell tower. It’s cool that Jared managed to do this, but the picture is just what you’d expect. “Oh, cool.”
After looking at it for a bit, Jack handed the phone to Simon, who looked at it intently, smiling. He stared at it for several seconds before handing it back to Marie.
Jack finished pulling up his videos of the ladybugs and showed the one of the hallway to the others. Marie stared in amazement at the number of ladybugs, while Simon seemed to not want to look at it at all.
As the video panned to look down the hallway Simon must have seen something, because he forgot his fear and looked intently, asking. “Hold on, can you restart it?”
Jared started the video from the beginning, this time with Simon’s eyes glued to the screen.
“This is a good start.” Simon pointed to the screen. “Notice that the bugs are denser right in front of your classroom, and then they become very sparse as they go down the hall. In fact, you mentioned that the other students in your room had left at that point, but the classrooms down the hall were just now noticing the bugs. This means that they were released right there in that spot. Since the floor isn’t broken there, we know they had to have been placed there. In other words, it was a person who did this and not some freak accident.”
“You noticed all that?” Marie asked, “That’s impressive.”
“Yeah, but how do we know they were released?” Jack said. “Maybe they were lured to that spot from outside.”
Simon thought for a second before responding. “That can’t be it. First of all, look at the video, the ladybugs are generally moving away from that position, not towards it. Also, if they were lured in from outside, the other classrooms would have seen the bugs first, since they would have gone through those rooms to get to this spot. I think we know for sure that a person released massive numbers of bugs right there on the floor.”
“Well, aren’t you quite the little detective?” The security guard said, “But if you guys don’t mind, could you take this somewhere else?”
Marie made sure to glare at the guard one last time as the trio walked away and looped around to the side of the building. They stayed outside, but still looked through the open windows. Some of the bugs were making their way out through the windows, but most of them seemed content to sit in the classrooms. Before long they gave up on seeing anything more interesting than ladybugs sitting in rooms, and Jack showed the others the video of the vents.
“So, they were coming out of the vents too?” Simon said.
“Isn’t that kinda weird?” Marie asked, “If they were all released at that spot in the hallway, why would they be coming out of vents?”
“They must have been released in a couple of places.” Jack said “The ones we know about now would be the hallway and the central air system.”
“I’m not so sure…” Before continuing, Simon shuddered and flicked off a ladybug that had climbed up his leg, “Would ladybugs even survive in the central air system? Also, look at the amount that’s coming out of that vent. How many would have to be released for that many to come out of every vent? I’m not sure what this means, but I don’t think it adds up…”
The three of them stood around thinking for a minute, but no one seemed to have any suggestions. After a few more minutes of silence and half-baked explanations, Marie looked at her watch.
“Oh, sorry but I have a class I need to get to. Please don’t solve it without me!” Without waiting for a response she darted around the corner.
Jack thought for a second before saying “If we can’t solve it without her, how are we supposed to meet back up? We didn’t exchange numbers or anything before she left.”
“Yeah, that’s a good point…”
After a few more seconds Marie came rushing back around the corner “I just realized, we should probably exchange numbers before we split up so that we can get back together to solve this!”
The three of them set up a group chat called “Ladybug Chat.” As soon as it had been created, Marie turned around to dash off again, but this time Simon interrupted her.
“Hold on! Before you go, I think I know how to narrow this down a lot. What we need right now is a video of the ladybugs appearing from the perspective of another classroom. Someone had to have recorded it. If either of you gets the video, send it to me.”
“Got it!” Marie yelled. She must have been late, since she dashed off again as soon as the last words were out of Simon’s mouth.
Simon walked toward a nearby tree and sat down against it. “Oh, Jack, just a word of advice. Don’t share your ladybug videos with anyone.”
“Oh, why not?”
“Because we want to get another video of it. If your footage is the most interesting, then it’s what people will share around, and other videos might be forgotten about.”
“Oh, that’s a good point. But I might be too busy to share around videos anyways. I need to get some homework done.”
“Alright” Simon said, closing his eyes. “I’m going to stay here. There’s still a couple more leads for me to look into. But I’ll see you later.”
“Yeah, see ya.” Jack said, “And text the ladybug chat if you find anything.”
As Jack walked away he looked back, and Simon was sitting against the tree, looking at the building. Simon looked down and sighed, as if there were some inevitable misfortune, weighing on his mind and making him dread the future.