I Loaded the Mysticism Panel

It was as quiet here as last time. The stone walls were tinged blue-green by the winter frost.

At the end of the alley, the side door next to the Branch Office was ajar.

When he reached the third-floor office, he could already hear the HISS of a kettle.

The door was open. He knocked twice and pushed his way in.

"Sit, sit." Old Big didn’t look up. He was squatting under his desk, rummaging for something. "You’re here bright and early today."

Richard placed his bag by the chair.

"I brought those chestnuts I promised you."

"Oho! You really brought them!" Old Big emerged from under the desk, a smile immediately spreading across his round face.

"From that old man’s place on Grafton Street?"

"Yep."

"The big two-pence bag?"

"The big two-pence bag."

Richard set the wax paper bag on the desk.

"You’re a man of your word, kid."

He grabbed a chestnut, popped it into his mouth, and chewed a couple of times, his eyes narrowing in pleasure.

"Mmm... this guy’s roasted chestnuts are just more interesting than anyone else’s. He doesn’t use regular charcoal."

"It’s elm charcoal," Richard said.

"How do you know?"

"I asked him."

"...I can’t believe you’d ask about something like that."

Old Big handed him a chestnut.

Richard took it, peeled it, and ate it slowly.

The two of them sat in silence at the desk for a moment.

He chewed the chestnut, its smoky flavor from the charcoal fire giving way to a hint of sweetness that emerged from deep within the starchy flesh.

After eating for a moment, Richard decided to get to the point.

"I came today because I want to buy a gun."

Old Big wasn’t surprised. "Finally remembered, have you?"

"It’s been on my mind, but I wasn’t proficient enough these past two months."

"Alright, I’ll need to make a call to the chief."

He reported the matter to the lead Inspector.

After getting permission, he took a key from the iron cabinet against the wall and unlocked it.

Inside the cabinet, a neat row of gun cases of all sizes was arranged, from short-barreled handguns to long-barreled revolvers.

"The Branch Office issues three models of sidearms for Trainee Inspectors."

He pulled three gun cases from the cabinet and laid them out in a row on the desk.

"Take a look first. No rush to choose."

He opened the first gun case, revealing a short-barreled revolver.

The gun was on the shorter side, with a grip that fit snugly in the palm and a six-round Bullet Nest.

"Webley Police Model, modified version," Old Big explained.

"Unlike the big ones for military use, this one only weighs one pound, eight ounces. It has moderate recoil and an effective range of twenty-five meters."

"Twenty-five meters? What good is that?" Richard frowned.

"It’s enough to hit a pickpocket from a dozen meters away in an alley, and enough to hit an Evil Being that walks through your door."

"At any greater distance, even if the revolver’s accuracy holds up, you won’t be able to hit your target."

Richard nodded. That made sense. After all, he was just a rookie shooter who had only been firing at stationary targets for a few months.

He opened the second gun case. Inside was a long-barreled handgun.

"An Enfield Mk II."

"The barrel is two inches longer than the first one. Effective range is thirty meters."

"The trade-off is the weight—two pounds, one ounce. And it’s long, so you can’t hide it in a pocket."

"It’s fine with a belt holster, but it’s very conspicuous walking down the street like that."

Richard hefted it in his hand. It was indeed much heavier than the first one.

The contents of the third gun case looked quite different from the first two.

It had a flat-sided frame. It was magazine-fed.

"This one’s new," Old Big said, a rare note of pride in his voice.

"The Branch Office just started issuing them this year. It’s a new design from the Imperial Capital called an ’automatic pistol’."

"Automatic?"

"After you fire a round, the gun ejects the empty casing and chambers the next round all by itself."

"You don’t have to cock the hammer. Just pull the trigger to fire continuously."

Old Big worked the slide to demonstrate.

"Magazine capacity is seven rounds, effective range is twenty-five meters, and the recoil is a bit less than the revolver’s."

Richard stared at the gun.

He knew what an automatic pistol was, of course, but he was a little surprised to see this model in the Albion Imperial.

"It’s a new design, so it must have its flaws, right?"

"Of course. This gun has a pretty high malfunction rate," Old Big admitted freely.

"Our Branch Office was issued twenty of them this year. Four have broken in the last six months, mostly from jamming."

"This particular one hasn’t jammed yet, but who’s to say it won’t next month."

Richard’s gaze lingered on the flat-sided pistol for a moment longer.

A seven-round magazine, continuous fire, low recoil... for a newcomer with poor marksmanship, every one of those features was beckoning to him.

Old Big seemed to see right through his hesitation.

The chatterbox didn’t wait for him to speak before continuing.

"I bet you’re having second thoughts. Thinking the automatic pistol sounds more impressive, right?"

Richard didn’t deny it.

"You’re young. Who doesn’t like new things?"

Old Big lifted the automatic pistol out of its case and weighed it in his hand.

"But the ’newness’ of this thing is precisely its fatal flaw."

He laid the gun flat on the desk and poked the slide with his index finger.

"For daily patrols, catching a thief, dealing with a drunk? It’s fine."

"But if you ever follow a team across a certain line and take a peek at the other side of the Curtain..."

His tone was still casual.

"Then this thing is just a hunk of iron."

Richard didn’t respond, waiting for him to continue.

"The layer closest to our side interferes with machinery," Old Big said with a rare seriousness.

"It’s not like a pulse that just—SNAP—shuts your machine down. This interference is subtle, insidious."

"The Ether Layer and the Material Layer are too close together over there. The little gears, springs, and slides inside metal objects stop following their proper paths when they operate."

"Between the parts, there’s a little bit of slip, a little bit of stickiness, a little bit of ’I can’t put my finger on it, but something’s just not right.’"

"You can’t say it’s broken, because it’s not. But you can’t say it works right, either."

"The more parts a device has, and the more precisely they fit together, the more severe the effect."

He gestured toward the revolver with his thumb.

"A revolver is easy. The mechanism is so simple you could take it apart and recognize every piece.

Bullet Nest, firing pin, trigger bar. Three springs and three pins do all the work.

In a place near the boundary, you could fire this thing all night and it would jam once or twice at most. A couple of taps and it’s good to go again."

He pointed again to the automatic pistol lying on the desk.

"The automatic pistol is a different story."

"Recoil spring, firing pin spring, extractor, sear, disconnector... every time you fire a shot, a dozen different actions have to happen smoothly inside."

"If any one of them is off by just a little, it jams."

Old Big made an exploding gesture with his hand.

"If you’re lucky, you just rack the slide to clear the chamber and try again. If you’re unlucky... catastrophic failure!"

"Three years ago, one of the senior female Inspectors went with a Hunter team into the old northern mine shafts.

There was a young woman on the team, a Hunter, who thought revolvers were too slow to reload. She paid out of her own pocket for an automatic pistol from an arms dealer, even fancier than this one."

"And then?" Richard asked.

"It jammed on the second shot," Old Big said nonchalantly.

"When it jammed, the girl was jogging, so she didn’t look and just pulled the trigger again."

He tapped his own right wrist. "Her right thumb and half her palm—gone."

Richard looked down at the automatic pistol.

Old Big recounted the story as if it were a casual anecdote over drinks, and bit into another chestnut.

"So, you see, complex machinery, the borderlands, and a newcomer—when you put those three things together, the outcome is never pretty."

"We have an old saying in this line of work: ’Behind the Curtain, the simpler something is, the longer it lasts.’"

"Swords and knives last the longest, which is why Hunters still use blades today. After that come crossbows, single-shot matchlocks and flintlocks. Only then do you get to revolvers."

"Automatic pistols, machine guns, repeating rifles... those are for the world on this side of the sun."

Richard’s fingers paused for a moment on the grip of the Webley.

But it was clear that Old Big had no intention of letting the topic drop.

He picked up the teapot, refilled his own cup halfway, and added a little more to Richard’s cup as well.

"Speaking of which, I’ve got to run my mouth a bit more."

’It’s not like his mouth was ever closed to begin with,’ Richard thought with a wry smile.

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