St. Remedius Medical College: "The Only Thing Worse Than A Giant Worm On the Moon"
...is wondering where the rest went
(Who was St. Remedius? And why is a medical college named after him?)
By the beginning of the 21st Century, humanity was finally starting to get a grasp on its old cohort deoxyribonucleic acid. Everywhere life had been, DNA stayed behind. It produced residues in microscopic pockets, it left bits in the roots of continents, it was subducted under oceans and was blown to the moon by asteroid impacts. Fragments cake up on the inside of jet engines and around the screws on deep-sea submersibles, and every last human on Earth shed a disturbing amount of it with every brushing, every shave, and every flush. So does every other terrestrial-based life form, as well as a few others, and those who leave no recognizable DNA leave proteins as biomarkers. By this means, supposition of the presence of life forms at a particular time in the geological past, whether indigenous or from elsewhere, went from speculation to confirmation or at least highly likely.
This applied to other visitors, too. Machines leave tiny bits of metal, plastic, carbon fiber, or extrusite as they travel, and the particular composition can be distinguished from that used for environmental suits. Beings bathed in magic leave traces as they pass over, under, or through objects, and the discovery of dweomer haloes in 1926 allowed an exploration of paleothaumaturgy without the energy-intensive and often paradoxical use of most time travel theorems. Nanobots, nanites, and threadbots, as well as pseudofungus networks, left trackable and identifiable traces, even long after their expected life expectancy, as did elementals and Norigi apparitions. Psionic and psychochronic influence left similar disturbances in matter and energy, and the study of dark matter became infinitely easier when understanding the eddies and flows caused by otherwise unknown entities thousands or millions of years earlier. Even music and poetry left their own tracks upon the Earth, all able to be followed by those who knew how.
This is why the Nogha Anomaly found within the Mare Humorum on Earth’s moon was so surprising. The Puiseux crater within the mare was generally thought to be a “ghost crater,” one filled with lava from the massive eruptions that formed the maria in the first place, and generally ignored compared to the sorcerors’ retreat on the nearby Promontorium Kelvin. Both technological and magical drones passing over the sea showed no trace, and it was only a chance team of St. Remedius Medical College geology graduate students who noticed the odd patterns on the edge of the crater. Followup investigation turned up something…BIG.
The Nogha Anomaly is essentially the remaining structure of a gigantic life form, nearly 90 meters long, partially buried in lunar regolith. The much-crumpled and battered exoskeleton, much of it so fragile that it turned to powder when handled, suggested a large burrowing form roughly resembling a tardigrade, with large armor plates along its dorsal surface, five pairs of stubby but apparently extremely strong legs with digging claws, and a mouth able to crush rock, where it was passed to the central core for digestion. Surprisingly, its analogue for a digestive system had multiple anuses, where the tract separated out specific metals, silicates, or even carbonates and excreted them as ingots about two meters across. The odd patterns around the Puisex crater rim were partly from the organism moving along the crater wall and partly from its excreta in the form of nodules of elemental iron, silicon, and even a few of neodymium and gold. Radioactive ores apparently passed to the body of the organism for energy, using a poorly understood process, and many silicates were excreted outwards to form its armor. More surprising, while body tissues had structure similar to the microtubules of terrestrial fungi, but composed of aluminum, iron, boron, and titanium fibers instead of chitin.
The biggest surprise, though, came from trying to ascertain cellular structure. Every other catalogued life form this large used organic chemistry, if not highly derived machines, with DNA or RNA for cellular information, protein production, and replication. The Anomaly, though, had nothing of the sort, nor anything analogous to cells. Detailed analysis was still frustrating St. Remedius researchers at the time of the school’s disappearance, but one theory suggested that metabolic functions such as repair and reproduction were conducted by metal salts interacting with highly derived and sophisticated clay lattices, thus bringing disturbing comparisons to “living machines.” This precluded the need for an atmosphere or much in the way of cellular solvents: the Anomaly was apparently able to function autonomically in any area with significant igneous rock, consume it for raw materials, and excrete the rest. In this case, it did so for about six months before suddenly stopping, one boulder still halfway in its mouth, in its present location.
The “when” was even more mysterious. Dating of the uranium found in its structure suggested that it arrived in the crater, by means unknown, approximately 467 million years ago, coinciding with what was commonly referred to as the Ordovician meteor event, occurring just before the first great extinction of multicellular life in Earth’s history. While known meteorites from the event were carbonaceous chondrites with a known lineage, researchers knowing what to look for rapidly discovered, in rocks all over the world from shortly after the event, traces of the metal salts and clay lattices found in the Anomaly. No fossils had survived, or at least none recognized as such, but the traces were omnipresent, and they were particularly prominent in sedimentary rocks at the end of the Late Ordovician, possibly spread by the global glaciation affecting Earth at that time. Plenty of competing theories tied the sudden drop in atmospheric carbon, widespread erosion of rock both above and below the planet’s surface, and subsequent crash of terrestrial life to the Anomaly’s cousins, but one thing was certain: the Anomalies stopped whatever activity they started with no warning and no resurgences. From available data, the investigation stopped dead.
In an attempt to gain further answers, both the Advanced Technologies and Metaphysical Studies departments at St. Remedius looked at both direct time travel journeys and remote scrying, only to find that visiting that period was absolutely impossible, either physically, psionically, or magically. Mapping the temporal eddies around Earth at that time revealed a massive series of disturbances, with the planet in the center like a single orchid seed in the middle of a monster truck rally, with most attempts to follow the furrows to their source being caught up in even more disturbance at multiple levels. One furrow seemed promising, leading to a time inhabited by the temporal nomads known as the Assemblage of Kurran, but they had absolutely no knowledge of any such journey nor submental instructions to stay away by their distant descendants. That period wasn’t a temporal dead zone, but closer to an island with such ferocious storms and currents that sailing to it was impossible.
Multiple mysteries. A massive extinction event that may have changed the course of terrestrial metazoan evolution, coinciding with a massive meteoric bombardment and glaciation. One single organism on the moon, dating from the same period and showing direct connection to events on Earth. A massive chronoturbation preventing investigators from exploring further. Research slowed, until a major clue came from a completely unexpected source: Agata Wiśniewski, the famed Warsaw vampire known as “Piękny Koszmar” to Polish resistance fighters in the end of World War II and “Tod” to the Nazis. That clue may have delayed or deflected certain casualties during the last microseconds of the Quantum War, had it only arrived two days earlier.
Want more hints as to the history of St. Remedius Medical College? Check out Backstories and Fragments. Want to get caught up on the St. Remedius story so far? Check out the main archive. Want to forget all of that and look at cat pictures from a beast who dreams of his own OnlyFans for his birthday? Check out Mandatory Parker. And feel free to pass on word far and wide: the more, the merrier.