St. Remedius Radio: “Quantum Ramen”

One Reason Why St. Remedius Students Kept Coming Back

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

The first week of the summer semester at St. Remedius Medical College always hit differently for the students who returned home for the summer versus those who stayed on campus or worked intern slots with Dallas industries. Without fail, those who spent the summer away from campus gradually looked at the world in slightly duller and more muted colors every day, only reversing when they returned to campus. Even after graduation, many former students found excuses to work for St. Remedius in any capacity. This in itself wasn’t surprising, as any big university will demonstrate, but the surprising factor was why.

Since the earliest educational organizations, students have subsisted on the absolute bare minimum necessary to sustain life: many a student of Aristotle looked for ways to make a diet of random grasses and leaves more appetizing. Since the early 1980s, when ramen soup mixes first became available in the United States, ramen became one of the essential collegiate food groups alongside pizza, chicken wings, and frozen burritos, partly because of its ease in production and the fact that it could be eaten raw in an emergency. It weighed little, it stored well for a long time, never went moldy or stale, and could be augmented with any number of easily accessible spices and additions ranging from hard-boiled eggs to peanut butter. One could tell one was in a college town solely by the number of shaker bottles of parmesan cheese and cracked red pepper literally chained to tables and booths, and the scarring, scoring, and burning of the chains before students realized they could unscrew the shakers, dump the contents into a handy container, and abscond with a months’ dietary variety. One could tell they were at an arts university by the number of restaurants that held student ID until they returned those shakers and put up “Hall of Shame” posters of repeat offenders who attempted to abscond with the stockpiles held behind the front counter.

In this regard, St. Remedius was no different from any other, except for the brand available. Due to a distribution error that lasted for decades, the grocery and convenience stores immediately around the St. Remedius campus carried a distinctive brand with a Chicago manufacturer address. Most Americans that came across it might have been surprised by the brand name and the cartoony image of the brand mascot, but for St. Remedius students, the word “Binturong” stimulated the salivary glands like nothing else.

Binturong Ramen, for those who never experienced it, was not just the only brand of packaged ramen that promised 100 percent of a recommended human daily allowance of vitamins and minerals. It came in seven flavors, labeled “Red,” “Yellow,” “Blue,” “Green,” “Orange,” “Violet,” and “UV.” While most ramen flavor packets had at least a slight connection to what flavor could be detected past the obscene amounts of salt, Binturong ramen flavors had no connection to anything any taster had encountered before, but everyone agreed that Orange was distinct from Green and that both flavors were exceptional. UV was both the scarcest and the most desired, mostly because it was only released the week of St. Remedius Spring Break, so they were snapped up, fiercely hoarded, and only shared with those most special of compatriots. Indeed, many campus married couples first decided to expand the horizons of their relationships when their beloveds brought out a five-pack of Binturong UV from its hiding spot in hollowed-out mattresses or from lockboxes marked “Radioactive Waste: Do Not Apply Rectally.”

The real reason Binturong ramen was popular, though, and why it was so desperately missed after St. Remedius’s still-mysterious disappearance was more than just the flavors. Regular consumers gradually noticed vagaries in the world that had never been possible before. Binturong Orange gradually gave the ability to sense magnetic fields. Binturong Red gave the regular eater the ability to smell gamma rays, while Yellow allowed the eater to feel concentrations of neutrinos like a gentle tingle. Regularly eating Binturong Blue imparted the ability to absorb oxygen directly through the skin, allowing swimmers the opportunity to stay underwater for as much as an hour on a single lungful of air. Green gradually turned the eater’s hair follicles into sensitive radio wave receivers, not enough to pick up radio or television transmissions, but enough to know that they were in range of a transmitter. Violet gave a sensitivity to ultraviolet pigments and patterns, just enough to catch fluorescent and phosphorescent effects before they were visible to anybody else. And UV…UV was the campus goth’s dream, preventing and healing sun damage from long exposure. (A prevailing theory was that its release during Spring Break was for the benefit of those who had no choice but to go outside that week, and the protection usually lasted through the summer, making the regular eater unable to tan or burn until autumn.) Eat a different flavor every day of the week, and the starving student not only had a full range of nutrition, but literally the world was different to them, so long as local stores carried a suitable supply.

The worldwide shock that coincided with St. Remedius’s disappearance, sadly, also caused a reset of whatever SKU tracking software allowed delivery of Binturong ramen to the Dallas area, and it was never available again. Inquiries with the manufacturer at the address listed on the backs of packets led only to an empty warehouse, and alleged Binturong Web sites were blatant frauds attempting to sell visitors on the cryptocurrency GoatseCoin. Occasionally, packets show up on online auction sites usually dedicated to vintage sodas, selling for eye-popping prices, and the carefully curated hoard of the dragon Cephalotus Ascendant temporarily flooded the market with Orange and Green for about three months when the dragon died a year ago. As to who was behind the Binturong brand, the mystery continues, but the number of home-designed Binturong tribute T-shirts and bandannas attests to its still-dedicated fan base.

And while you’re at it, the request lines are now open, complete with playlist.

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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