by A. J. Ponder
“How dare you question me?!” Jeremy Wilder points a remote at you – no, it’s not a remote, it’s Frankie’s transmogrifier.
A light shines on both you and Eric, The world appears to spin and grow, and in seconds you’re the size of insects.
“Cool!” says Eric. “I’ve always wondered what it would be like to be small.” He drags you out of the way of giant footsteps that are running up to confront the Bugman.
Ms. Xavier? She’s so big it’s hard to tell. But they definitely look like her sensible shoes.
A voice rings out. “Jeremy Wilder. What are you up to this time?” You’re sure it’s Ms. Xavier’s, but it seems much deeper than usual, and very loud.
“I’m going to take over the world and become an all-powerful overlord. Bow to my rule.” His voice booms too.
“Hey!” You turn to Eric. “We have to stop him. There has to be something we can do.” You spot the fire alarm. If only you could reach it.
“Insects can do lots of things,” Eric says. “Size isn’t everything.” He pulls out his phone to call someone, but it doesn’t work. “At least I can take a selfie,” he says. He gets you both in the viewer, pulls a face and takes a shot.
“But why doesn’t your phone work properly?” you ask. “There must be a reason.”
“Physics is different at this size.”
“So we could climb walls?”
“Yeah, why not? Most insects can.”
The fire alarm appears to be very far away, but you have to try. “See the fire alarm? If we can make it, we might be able to stop him.”
Despite your size, you can move pretty quickly, bounding bigger distances than you thought you’d be able to. Getting up the wall is pretty easy, so long as you don’t look down. Getting past the glass is slightly more difficult. Together, you and Eric lever it out as far as you can before slipping in behind it and jumping up and down on the switch.
The class is already heading out the door, burdened by huge terrariums. “Quick,” you yell. “We need to jump as hard as we can. One, two, three – jump.”
Eric slips, as the switch flicks on, and the alarm begins to ring.
You grab his arm, “Hold on tight.” The noise is unbelievably loud, and it’s hard to hold on with Eric scrabbling to regain his footing.
He slips again. You clench your teeth and haul him up.
The Bugman stops in his tracks. “Who did that!?” He runs around pointing the transmogrification remote at students – shrinking nine people before he stops and orders everyone who is left to pick up the terrariums again.
On the ground, six of the miniature students are having a selfie party, determined to photograph themselves next to everything. The favorite item is a paperclip. They lean on it, hold it up in the air, and wear it like a giant hat.
Eric nudges you. “Look,” he says.
Three students and Ms. Xavier are under a table, fighting off two giant cockroaches.
“Quick,” you say, thinking fast, and talking between siren blares as you climb down the wall. “We need to grab that paperclip and rescue them.”
“Hey, we need this,” you tell the students playing with the paperclip. Together, you and Eric make it into a long pointy thing – a cross between a sword and a twisted spear and run over to Ms. Xavier and the students fighting off the cockroaches.
By the time you get to them, Ms. Xavier is looking ragged. She has bites out of her clothing and she’s missing her purse and one of her shoes.
Leaping in, fearlessly, you stab one of the cockroaches.
It scuttles away.
The fire alarm stops, but other sirens can be heard in the distance, even over the Bugman screaming that there aren’t enough people to carry the terrariums.
A SWAT team sneaks in. They’re as loud as a herd of elephants, their footsteps shaking the ground. The giant letters on the flak jackets say “WOS – World of Security.”
The second cockroach lunges at you. Bravely, you raise the paperclip, but this time the cockroach doesn’t back off. It snaps at the sliver of steel, grabbing it and throwing it aside. Its enormous mouth is coming right at you.
You’re going to be eaten! It’s biting your arm!
Eric shoulder barges into the armored brute, and you wrench free.
A light shines from above.
Suddenly, you’re proper sized again. Eric, Ms. Xavier, and some of the other kids are too.
Ms. Xavier squashes the cockroach with her remaining shoe. “Horrible creatures,” she says.
Eric shrugs. “They’re not so bad when they’re not trying to eat you.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” Ms. Xavier says. “Has everyone been rescued yet?” She begins to counts all the students, then searches the floor. A girl with a pink spider bag appears.
Looking sheepish, Kennedy, Steve and a few others return with Frankie in tow. Frankie brushes cobwebs from her clothing. Some of the students with her also look worse for wear. Their clothes are splattered with blue, like they’re three years old and painting the sky in art class. Or as if they’d re-enacted a horror movie with blue blood.
After the last student has been found, Mr. Adams reappears with coffee in hand. “Goodness, whatever happened?” he says. “Lucky you were here to sort it out, hey Ms. X?”
Ms. Xavier glares at him, but says nothing.
“I wouldn’t like to be him,” Eric says. “I’ve heard Ms. Xavier holds a grudge.”
She seems to like you, though. She congratulates you and Eric for your bravery and offers you both a job at some kind of secret organization called WOS – either in the science department or as a spy. Eric shakes his head. “No, I don’t want anything to do with WOS, both my parents are agents and they’re the most boring people I know. I’m going to be an entomologist. I believe bugs will save the world. The Bugman just had it a little bit wrong. We should use co-operation, not force, and work together.
You have a choice. Do you:
Become an entomologist?
Or
Join WOS (World of Spies) as a spy?
Join WOS as a spy
You take Eric’s place in Ms. Xavier’s class. At first, it’s pretty quiet except Ms. Xavier gives you a ton of detentions.
Then you notice that the worksheets you have to do in detention all have encoded puzzles down the bottom. The rest is all fluff for the naughty kids.
You’re being taught half a dozen codes, including simple replacement codes
The first replacement code you learn replaces letters with numbers. The key is: A=1, B=2 all the way to Z=26 Can you solve the message below?
23,5,12,12–4,15,14,5
The Caesar Shift Cipher is another handy code for any aspiring spy. Here, Ms. Xavier moved the cipher six to the left so A=V and B=W etc. (You could also choose to read it the other way around with A=F, but Ms. X doesn’t like it that way, and it won’t work for the example.)
Xjibmvopgvodjin!
One of the last (so called) simple replacement codes you learn is the atbash cipher. Atbash is another form of replacement cipher, but uses the alphabet backwards to encrypt messages. So A in a message becomes Z, B becomes Y etc. See if you can decipher this, it’s pretty tricky.
Vcxvoovmg, blf’iv z nzhgvi xlwv yivzpvi!
Now you’ve figured out how to solve codes, you’re well on the way to becoming a spy. The World of Spies holds a special ceremony to make you one of their own. It’s a massive party with cake and pizza and ice-cream and you get a very special spy ID. It looks just like an ordinary school ID unless you look at it beneath a WOS torch on the Doppler setting. You also get your very own WOS torch, a laser pen and ten different types of gum, from explosive to edible, including your favorite, Forget-Me Gum.
During the ceremony, Ms. Xavier congratulates you for rescuing her from the cockroaches. It seems no one even realizes that you and Eric saved the world from the Bugman by setting off the fire alarm. But you don’t mind, because now that you’re a real spy you can join th
e WOS mailing list by pressing this button. You can check out the books anywhere, in all kinds of fabulous locations, like on the train, the bus, airplanes and even your own bedroom.
Sometimes you wonder what would have happened if you’d chosen another path. You chat with Frankie, and she says, “Let’s find out.” She offers you her time machine. You have five choices:
1. Help Frankie
Or
2. Help Kennedy
Or
3. Join Eric as an Entomologist
Or
4. Go back to the museum.
Or
5. Go to the Adventure Contents and choose any path.
Become an entomologist
The life of an entomologist is full of excitement and adventure. When you’re not in the lab, you get to fly all over the world and hunt for new species of bugs. You name three of them after your friends, Frankie, Kennedy and Eric.
Sometimes Eric and you team up on really big projects, like making the biggest buggiest adventure park in the world. But the best fun of all, is going to schools and telling people all about the exhilarating and dangerous world of bugs.
From time to time, the World of Spies and other important organizations call on your expertise, but you don’t always give it. They just don’t understand the importance and wonder of bugs. Too often, you find yourself explaining that without bugs, the world would fall apart, and we’d all starve to death.
People from all around the world congratulate you on your amazing work. But sometimes you wonder what would it would be like to take a different path. Would you be eaten by spiders, dragged into an antlion pit trap, or live to save the day?
When you’re ready, you may want to try another adventure, braving untold horrors so that you can live a wonderful life as a spy and retire on a desert island with a two hundred year supply of marmalade, live on a desolate farm in a place called Nowhere, or visit Martians.
For more adventure click on a link to:
Go back to the museum.
Or
Go to the Adventure Contents and Choose any path.
Stay silent and see what happens
Ms. Xavier steps forward and yells at the Bugman, “Stop. Back away from my students.” She's standing in front of the class protecting everyone. What’s she doing there all by herself? You look around for Mr. Adams but he’s nowhere to be seen. Kennedy’s also disappeared, and Frankie’s long gone.
This is turning out to be a strange field trip, but how much trouble can a man in a lousy grasshopper mask be?
He pulls something from his pocket. It’s Frankie’s transmogrifier. It can’t work, surely?
The Bugman aims it at Ms. Xavier. A beam of light shines on her and she shrinks, until you only think you can see her on the floor. A little smaller than a thumb, she’s hard to see with her green and brown clothing.
Some of the students scream, but you surprise yourself by bravely taking a step closer. Maybe you can rescue Ms. Xavier?
“Ignore that,” the Bugman says, waving the remote in the direction of the class. “Pick up these terrariums and follow me, or you’ll be next.”
Eric nudges you with his elbow and reaches down to pick up the tiny, Ms. Xavier.
“Stop that,” the Bugman screams at him. “I warned you. Help with the terrariums or I'll shrink both you and your friend.”
Eric coughs. “Um, I was just trying to find my contact lens. I’ve dropped it here somewhere.”
Do you:
Help Eric look for Ms. Xavier?
Or
Obey instructions and grab a terrarium?
Help Eric look for Ms. Xavier
“Hey, Mr. Bugman,” you say. “Eric can’t see without his contact lenses. It’ll be quicker if I help look.”
The Bugman sighs and points Frankie’s transmogrifier at a couple of ants he’s pulled out of a terrarium. The ants grow until they’re the size of bulldogs.
“I don’t have time for your nonsense,” the Bugman says, spraying the giant ants with a can labelled Bugman Patented Ant Spray. “Now, get to work,” the Bugman snaps. “And ants, you can eat the stragglers.”
Eric puts Ms. Xavier on his shoulder, and nudges you, pointing to where she’s sitting. She’s rifling through her handbag as if nothing is wrong.
You glance nervously at the Bugman. “Awesome, Eric, you found your lenses. How about giving me a hand?” After all, there’s no point in rescuing Ms. Xavier, if you’re both going to be eaten by ants.
Eric winks and helps you grab a terrarium as five ants escort everyone out an emergency exit, after the Bugman.
Outside is a small courtyard, surrounded by statues. The Bugman has rushed over to an elephant statue and is sitting next to its feet. You can’t really see much, there are too many people in the way, and you’re carrying a very large terrarium.
“Quick, quick!” the Bugman shouts, standing up and waving the transmogrifier. People start disappearing down an open hatch underneath the elephant. You follow them down a short flight of stairs to a long dark passageway.
Lights from several rooms sneak out from under the doors. Then the lights flick on.
“There, that’s better,” the Bugman says. “Now hurry up, let’s get moving.”
A door opens. As you pass by you peer in. There are about fifty people sitting at computers and wearing t-shirts with WOE on the back and World Wide Web of Envelopes on the front.
“Hey,” Eric whispers. “Ms. Xavier says to drop her off in this room near a computer.” He slows to talk to a red-headed boy in ratty jeans behind you. “Here Joe, help my friend with this. Careful, don’t let the Bugman see.” The red-headed boy winks and grabs the terrarium.
Eric disappears into the computer room.
Just a few yards down the corridor, the Bugman stops. He looks at the ants waving their feelers wildly, and then up and down the corridors. It seems very much like the ants are communicating with him. He counts everyone. “Who’s missing? Where is that aggravating boy with the bug t-shirt?”
Someone at the front yells, “He must have gone to the bathroom, sir.”
There’s a flash.
The Bugman’s turns the shrink ray on whoever it was.
The class gasps and shuffles back. Another person has been shrunk! You need to make a decision— Do you:
Tell the Bugman where Eric went?
Or
Keep quiet and hope Eric and Ms. Xavier are okay?
Tell the Bugman where Eric went
“Sir,” you say. “Please don’t shrink any more people. Eric just went through that door.”
“Traitor!” Joe yells. He drops the terrarium, sending insects and shards of glass flying.
“Ow!” there’s a large spike of glass in your leg. Maybe not that large, but it hurts a lot. Carefully, you pull it out.
The Bugman laughs. “Come on then. Let’s go find him.” He leads the way back to the computer room. At first you don’t see Eric because he’s wearing a World of Envelopes t-shirt and is hiding behind a desk.
“Ah, there you are!” The Bugman shouts. He’s spotted Eric. You can tell, because he’s pointing the transmogrifier right at him. Then he smiles and shrinks Eric.
“Oh my goodness, and what do we have here,” the Bugman says, grabbing at something hiding behind the computer mouse.
It’s Ms. Xavier.
“Mwah ha ha ha,” the Bugman squashes Ms. Xavier under his hand. “How dare you defy me!” he yells. “I am the Bugman, the most dangerous supervillain you have ever seen—I mean, you will ever see.” He holds out the transmogrifier. “Wait a minute, what was I doing? Here have a t-shirt.”
He pulls a t-shirt from a shelf. “This looks about your size. I got them made especially, but these idiots wouldn’t wear them.” He glares around the room.
They all hurry to put on the new shirts, which still have WOE on the back, but instead of World of Envelopes emblazoned on the front, World of Entomology is stitched over the silhouettes of various insects. A
fter you put it on, the Bugman claps his hand around your shoulders. “I like you,” he says. “And my ants do too. I think I have the perfect job for you. One moment.” He sprays something at two of the ants and they scurry off.
“Now, follow me, everybody. We’re about to change the world.” The Bugman marches everyone into a room filled with lab benches. He presses a button and strange funnels drop down from the ceiling like oxygen masks. “Put one funnel into each terrarium, now!” he yells. “And do match the insects with the name on the funnels.” He takes his time checking each funnel and the plastic piping attaching them to the ceiling. When he’s certain each of the terrariums is properly hooked up, whatever that means, the Bugman and his ants force everyone not wearing a WOS t-shirt into a cell. A sign on the outside says, Insect Food.
“Hey,” you say.
“Come on,” he says. “Forget about them.” He points the transmogrifier at you. “Minions, come, we still have work to do if I am to take over the world.” He forces you and the other World of Envelopes t-shirt wearers to walk to the next room. It’s lined with giant screens and strange machines with hundreds of buttons and switches and is large enough to fit over twenty of you, including ants. My Evil Plan, is written in large friendly letters on the top of a whiteboard covered with Photoshopped images of militarized insects taking over the world.
The Bugman puts Frankie’s transmogrification remote into a drawer in the machine and presses a green button that says happily ever after.
How bad can it be? you wonder, as the screens flicker.
In minutes giant bees are swarming over City Hall, giant spiders are dropping from the skies and giant termites are eating a holes out of the local police station. The Bugman cheers, and some of his hench-people cheer too.
The remaining students (who were quick-thinking enough to have put on World of Entomology t-shirts) are horribly silent as they watch the devastation of Greenville, and the rest of the world unfold. The worst bit is when ants take over the White House.
“Look!” says the Bugman. “With bees in city hall and ants in the White House, things might finally get done. Now henchmen, get to work, and start looking after the next generation of rulers.”