The Unseen Empire: Delft, 1676

JOURNALIST: The date is October 9th, 1676. I’m standing on the Hippolytusbuurt in Delft. The air here is thick, heavy with the smell of stagnant canal water and the sharp tang of wet wool. It’s a gray, drizzling afternoon, the kind that soaks into your bones. Most people here see only the rain, the mud, the grey sky. But inside the house behind me, a draper named Antonie van Leeuwenhoek is looking at a drop of this rain and seeing something that will terrify and transform the world. I’m here to witness the discovery of the invisible.

(Pause)

JOURNALIST: I’ve just stepped inside. The front room is a draper’s shop, piled high with bolts of linen and broadcloth. It smells of dust and lavender. A young woman, likely his daughter Maria, just ushered me toward the back room. She looks tired; her father’s obsession is clearly a household burden. She points to a heavy oak door. I knock.

LEEUWENHOEK: (Distracted, muffled) Who is it? I told you, Maria, no more customers today. The light is fading!

JOURNALIST: (Speaking through the door) I’m not here for cloth, Mijnheer. I’ve come about the letter. The one to the Royal Society in London.

(Pause)

JOURNALIST: The door opens abruptly. Antonie van Leeuwenhoek stands there. He’s forty-four, dressed in a simple black coat, his collar stiff and white. His hands are stained with ink and something acidic. But it’s his eyes—intense, suspicious, burning with a secret. He pulls me inside and shuts the door quickly.

LEEUWENHOEK: The Royal Society? You are from London? You don’t look like a philosopher.

JOURNALIST: Let’s just say I’m a correspondent interested in the... smaller things. You’ve found something, haven’t you?

LEEUWENHOEK: (lowering his voice) Found? No. I have seen. Come. Sit by the window. The light is poor, but it will suffice.

JOURNALIST: The room is cluttered. Not with books, but with brass tools, strange metal plates, and glass vials. On the table sits a blue glazed earthen pot. It looks like it’s been sitting out in the rain.

LEEUWENHOEK: (Pacing) They call me a fabric merchant. A counter of threads. But the threads of God’s tapestry are finer than any loom can weave. You see that pot? Rainwater. Collected four days ago. Just common water from the heavens. But look.

JOURNALIST: He hands me a tiny device. It doesn’t look like a microscope as we know it. It’s a small brass plate, no bigger than a stamp, with a tiny glass bead fixed in the center. He holds a sharp pin behind the lens. On the pin, a single drop of water.

LEEUWENHOEK: Hold it close to your eye. Closer. Almost touching your lashes. Now, look at the light.

JOURNALIST: I’m trying to focus. It’s difficult. The brass is cold against my cheek. I see a blur of light... and then... my god.

LEEUWENHOEK: You see them? The wretched beasties?

JOURNALIST: It’s... it’s a city. It’s chaos. Antonie, there are thousands of them.

LEEUWENHOEK: Thousands? Millions! More living souls in that one drop than there are people in all the Dutch Republic. Look for the tiny eels.

JOURNALIST: I see them. Wiggling, thrashing about. And there are others... spinning like tops?

LEEUWENHOEK: The little bells! Yes! They extend a stalk, and then—snap!—they coil back like a spring. I have watched them for hours. They stop, they turn, they tumble. They are alive, my friend. As alive as you or I.

JOURNALIST: He takes the device back, gazing at it with a mixture of pride and horror. The silence in the room is heavy. Outside, the church bell of the Oude Kerk tolls, a deep, mournful sound.

LEEUWENHOEK: I wrote to Mr. Oldenburg in London. I told him: 'I discovered living creatures in rain water.' Simple words. But do you know what they will say? They will say the draper of Delft is mad. They will say I am seeing dust, or spirits, or flaws in the glass.

JOURNALIST: Does it frighten you? Knowing you’re the only man on Earth who knows they are here? That we are surrounded?

LEEUWENHOEK: (Quietly) Sometimes. When I eat... I wonder. When I drink... I wonder. I put pepper in water to see if the heat would kill them. It only made them dance faster. They are everywhere. On our teeth, in our gut, in the canal. We think we are the masters of this world, walking through our stone cities. But we are just... islands. Islands in a sea of invisible monsters.

JOURNALIST: He leans back, the candlelight flickering in his eyes. He looks exhausted, yet energized by the terrible burden of the truth.

LEEUWENHOEK: But it is beautiful, is it not? The perfection of it. A louse has an eye, and that eye is a mountain to these creatures. And perhaps... perhaps there are things smaller still, watching them.

JOURNALIST: The sun is setting over Delft. The light in the lens fades. The frantic city in the water drop goes dark. Antonie van Leeuwenhoek carefully places his brass plate in a velvet box. He doesn't know that it will take two hundred years for the world to understand what he has seen today. He doesn't know that these 'little animals' are the architects of life and death.

LEEUWENHOEK: You will tell them? In London?

JOURNALIST: I’ll tell them, Antonie. But I don’t think they’re ready to believe.

LEEUWENHOEK: Then let them look. The truth does not care if it is believed. It only cares to be seen.

JOURNALIST: I leave the shop. The smell of wet wool is still there, but now, the world feels different. Crowded. The rain falls on my face, and for the first time, I don't just feel the water. I feel the life within it. This is the Unseen Empire, and the gate has just been opened.