St. Remedius Medical College: "Time Travel For Tobogganers"

Every Form of Time Travel Has Rules

(Who was St. Remedius? And why is a medical college named after him?)

Photo by Filip Bunkens on Unsplash

For the most part, time travel within our continuum is a slow, expensive, and often extremely painful process that never gives the results expected. Temporal currents and eddies, paradoxes, the various life forms (if you can call them that) which feed either on lost items or on travelers seeking them…the number of known time travelers only seems impressive when not contemplating the tremendous gulfs of time between those with access to and resources for temporal exploration and exploitation. For the overwhelming majority of entities during the lifespan of the universe, from its initial expansion to its final implosion, time travel is as unattainable and as ridiculous as squaring the circle or implementing trickle-down economics.

Every once in a great while, though, the universe gives not so much a refutation of assumptions made by its sentients as a sidestep. Most mystics on Earth posit that the veil between worlds becomes particularly thin during fogs and mists. Close but no Swisher Sweet: the real veil opens with a good snowfall.

The trick is to look for a good steady fall of fluffy snow. It may be possible to access timelessness in a sleet or hail storm, but everyone involved would be too busy looking for shelter to want to look around. The same goes for a snowfall with heavy winds, exceptionally cold temperatures, or windborne ice. The perfect snowfall is one of the first of the season or the absolutely last of the season, especially in places that rarely if ever get heavy accumulations. Don’t run into an onrushing storm: let it flow around you and behind you, walking toward its apparent center. As the snow deadens sound and obscures sight, just take it all in. Don’t get into a car or other vehicle (bicycles are okay if you can keep your balance, but never use anything powered or motorized): just walk in and keep walking until things don’t quite look right.

That’s the tipoff that the timefall is in force. Known landmarks disappear into the snow, replaced with vague shadows and hints of new vistas. The travelers on the roads change, too, starting with more and more anachronistic attire. This comes with a gentle euphoria: everyone knows that things aren’t their normal, but the general emotions are joy an curiosity instead of fear. Travel long enough, and the fellow wanderers range from far beyond your experience, and sometimes beyond your imagination. It’s not unheard of to walk to a hill or overpass and find beings normally separated by millions or even billions of years to share sleds, engage in friendly snowball fights, or work toward making art galleries in the blizzard that will be obscured or melted by the next day. The effect isn’t limited to sentients, either: since the totality of the genus Tyrannosaurus never lived within range of a good snowfall, any sightings of alleged tyrannosaurs are probably of very bemused Acrocanthosaurus too enamored with the sights to do more than stop, sniff, and wander on.

The important thing to remember during a timefall is to stay outside. While signs and sigils may shine through the snow from time to time, those caught in a timefall can only look through shop windows or at video screens. Entering a locale for a better look causes the quantum effect behind the timefall to collapse, forcefully pushing the traveler back to their own time and place. Likewise, any deliberate violence causes the effect to separate and leave both parties back where they belong. Quiet conversation, though, is perfectly acceptable in a timefall, with a special ability for the duration to communicate beyond one’s knowledge of language or metaphor. The annals of Earth’s literatures are full of tales of chance encounters that turn within minutes into lifelong friendships, as well as love affairs of the age, with not all being within the same species or geologic epoch.

Eventually, though, the snow has to end, and with it the timefall effect. Turn away from that new friend, even for a second, and the observer is alone. Occasionally traces, such as a quickly scribbled note or a handprint in the fresh snow, remain for a time, but more often these evaporate with the snow. The wonder and mystery is gone, leaving a hungry longing to return like being awakened from a particularly pleasurable dream, and many having met their perfect counterparts spend their lives walking into fresh snowfalls in the hopes of getting just a little more time. For the overwhelming majority, while they may enter a new timefall, they never reconnect to that particular timefall they seek. Again, the annals of Earth’s literatures are full of tales of unrequited quests to find that perfect counterpart on the other side of a timefall, only to discover that the chronal gulfs keep them apart over and over.

Every once in a great while, though, the universe randomly displays something that could be anthropomorphized into mercy, and clues remain when the snow ends and time flattens out again. Even more rarely, the parties involved either have access to effective time travel in their own areas of influence, or understand enough of the concepts behind time travel to attempt to make their own vessels or wormholes. And this is how the great friendship between the St. Remedius Medical College Advanced Technologies professor Bennett and Miss Christine Ketterley of London got its start, ultimately changing the face of the universe forever.

(Many thanks to Susie Bright, whose introductions to the photographs of Marco Rasi inspired this installment. Go visit Marco Rasi, too, because his photos of New Orleans are truly awe-inspiring, in the most honest sense of the term.)

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.