Time Is A Constant AND A Concept, And Should Never Be Confused
(Who was St. Remedius? And why is a medical college named after him?)
Many issues complicate a proper understanding of the assembled annals of St. Remedius Medical College, and one is a proper understanding of time. That is, not just an understanding of perspective but of absolutes. The Kelvin scale exists to measure temperature starting at absolute zero, the temperature where all molecular motion ceases, but at what point does one set up a similar scale for time? Does the scale start at the first microseconds of the Big Bang, at the first microsecond where matter coalesced out of the soup of leptons left from the Big Bang, or at the time of the ignition of the first star? Does the baseline for time exist when the universe’s pulsars all aligned in the Great Dodecahedron billions of years ago, or when the Lesser Dodecahedron forms billions of years from now, and how do we define “ago” and “now”? If using a human calendar, which one? Which religious figure or prophet, from Jesus to “Bob” to Elvis to Stahl, marks the baseline separating “before” and “after”? And like how the metric system is constantly upgraded to measure the exact weight of a kilogram for those needing to know exactly how many silicon atoms and how much dark matter comprises a perfect kilo, does the selected calendar take into account tidal friction slowing the Earth’s rotation, the gradually increasing radiance of Earth’s sun, and the drag and acceleration of Earth’s orbit around the sun as its moon continues its progression? And what about continual gravitational influence of nearby stellar clusters, nearby galaxies, nearby collaxars (whole galaxies deposited around a black hole), and other perturbations of space-time?
This is more than academic, as so many chronal explorers discover to their peril. Most take into account that trips to a particular past involve arriving where the destination was within the universe, and not where it was at the time the trip started. Some take into account space-time currents, waves, and eddies that affect the trip. It’s exceedingly hard, though, for those travelers to wrap their psyches around the timestream and the best measurement of that timestream for the job to be done.
Probably the best example is why St. Remedius Medical College had a very large collection of extremely accurate chronometers measuring all of these variations, but the calendar used as a baseline in the college was the Gregorian Calendar, starting at February 3, 1630. The year was when the Esoteric Order of St. Remedius went from a conclave of poor but enthusiastic monks to the exonormal studies powerhouse it became until the College’s disappearance, and the date was that of the Feast of St. Remedius, the presumed birthdate of the saint. As always, the situation was considerably more complex (as with November 22, 1963, the actual birth of St. Remedius was timelocked centuries ago specifically to prevent temporal interference), but a subject of the Vatican II.7.v283_998 Conference was to establish a chronal equator and Greenwich Mean for subsequent time studies. (For further elaboration on the arguments in the Conference, refer to The Library‘s collection of discussions on the subject.)
The care and feeding of a chronal baseline not only affects such diverse subjects as astronomy, physics, and chemistry, but also astrology, alchemy, and prognostication. In the days before the Zwinge Foundation helped confirm and standardize thaumaturgic studies and proficiency, any number of small and large disasters threatened and occasionally occurred because spellwriters were sloppy or deliberatively obtuse about their timescales. If the times line up, it’s possible to travel to Vitruvian Park in Addison, a northern suburb of Dallas, and see the effect firsthand.
The joke about February 2 being the day that Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious rises from his crematory urn, looks down for his shadow, and acknowledges that he has to wait six more weeks until spring got its start from a special Dallas tradition in Vitruvian Park, involving the local musicians Bart Wentletrap and Cassie Monsoon, at one time darlings of Top 40 radio programming directors and Creative Onanism “Music of the Year” concerts, but at this point looking back morosely on their names and music styles being a perpetual punchline. When even Benjamin Willard stopped stalking Monsoon and Wentletrap’s father burned through the last of the family fortune to pay for Bart’s last three albums, both started a dialogue about how to regain their lost fame and airplay. Wentletrap suggested crashing the Cotton Bowl and biting the head off a llama on national television. Monsoon wanted to go much further: using magic to make their music an essential ingredient in the temporal crystal. If things worked well, every time time crystals resonated anywhere in the universe, they would resonate to the choruses of their greatest 1980s hits.
As can be expected, things didn’t work out well, even though it should. They chose St. Remedius Day for its auspiciousness and because their original chosen date a week earlier was interrupted by a massive ice storm that paralyzed Dallas more than usual. The pair burned through their remaining resources to purchase the grimoire of the Lexican wizard Alphonse Ravenstone, specifically for one passage detailing an experiment that even he was too afraid to attempt. They discovered that the vacant field upon which Vitruvian Park now sits had the perfect confluence of ley lines and power webs to make the passage take life, and they moved heaven and earth to find the perfect tektite and silver arowana necessary as sacrifice to give them eternal influence over the whole timeline. The only thing they missed was that Ravenstone forgot to include the exact thaumaturgic timescale he used for his passage, and they punted. To this day, St. Remedius Day is a special holiday in the Dallas area, and thousands travel to Vitruvian Park and millions view through Web feeds for the spectacle. If the night is clear and the moon rises over the park just after sunset, the temporal veil shifts and clears, and the crowd can see the pair locked in a perfect time crystal and hear them screaming in fear and agony. Tradition has it that the longer they scream, the better the rest of the year, with special provenance if they manage to yell coherent words other than profanities before the moon fades and they go out of phase until the next St. Remedius Day. The crowd disperses, the food trucks move elsewhere, and thaumaturgic students and teachers alike make sure, absolutely sure, that they’re using the correct timescale.
(For those in the Dallas area, the next Feast of St. Remedius meetup is on February 3: get your space to listen to the screaming now.)
Want to get caught up on the St. Remedius story so far? Check out the main archive. Want more hints as to the history of St. Remedius Medical College? Check out Backstories and Fragments. 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. Questions, concerns, and disgust over generative AI? Check out Contact, Privacy Policy, and AI Policy. And feel free to visit the St. Remedius Medical College Redbubble shop for all of your Mandatory Parker needs.
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