Plant: Cephalotus follicularis “Elizabeth” (Who was St. Remedius? And why is a medical college named after him?) The saga of the Harkun, one of the five earliest sentient species to evolve on Earth, has been told elsewhere. What is less well-known is that even after the rest of the species evacuated the planet after its famed and humiliating defeat by the human Charity Smith, one Harkun leader jumped the turnstile at the last…
Tag: Backstories and Fragments
Backstories: “LifeBay 14” (2020)
Plant: Nepenthes fusca (Who was St. Remedius? And why is a medical college named after him?) Mani and Mia weren’t awake when the asteroid struck Indiana. Not that many people were: the three-kilometer-wide mass, moving at speeds and a trajectory that pointed to an extrasolar origin, hit shortly after 3 in the morning local time, and around 4:00 their local time. Technically, Mani and Mia weren’t asleep, either, although they were snug and…
Backstories: "Plowshare" (2020)
(Who was St. Remedius? And why is a medical college named after him?) While historians tend to focus on the immediate actions of war, they don’t usually worry about the implications of what gets left behind on the battlefield. When peace breaks out, neither side worries overmuch about what to do with weapons, structures, facilities, and other materiel legacies of the conflict, leaving that for the ages, the elements, the survivors, and whatever…
Backstories: "Clockwhirl" (2020)
Plant: Nepenthes boschiana (Who was St. Remedius? And why is a medical college named after him?) By best estimates, what humans call the Milky Way Galaxy contains approximately six billion worlds roughly similar in diameter and density as their homeworld, with approximately one-third of these mapped by direct survey or indirect observation via flyby automation or gravitic lensing. Of those six billion worlds, at least half are inappropriate for any life utilizing carbon-based…
Backstories: "Archive" (2020)
Plant: Nepenthes x ventrata (Who was St. Remedius? And why is a medical college named after him?) Across species, worlds, galaxies, and dimensions, one absolute applies to technology: usability. No matter the tool, if ostensible improvements do not improve upon the actual user experience, the general response is “ignore” or “actively avoid.” A natural response to that is to lock the user into having to use the alleged improvement, with the idea that…
Backstories: "The Persistence of Packaging" (2020)
Plant: Cephalotus follicularis “Elizabeth” (Who was St. Remedius? And why is a medical college named after him?) Tracking the evolution of a specific life form to a specific time is usually recognized only in retrospect, and the emergence of a new genus even more so. However, the beginnings of a whole new kingdom of life, complete with multiple phyla, can be traced to exact moments within Earth’s history in one specific case, and…
Backstories: "Mashup 2" (2020)
Plant: Cephalotus follicularis “Elizabeth” (Who was St. Remedius? And why is a medical college named after him?) Doctor Dissemble’s Museum of Malicious Mashups had fallen on hard times. Like most of the popup enterprises of the Late Social Media Era, the idea was simple: quick and catchy attractions intended to draw in audiences seeking something, anything that would distinguish their camera rolls from those of everybody else. Most of those depended upon otherwise…
Backstories: "Huntington's Folly" (2020)
(Who was St. Remedius? And why is a medical college named after him?) Sometimes astroarchaeological discoveries lead to deeper mysteries, and one of the greatest in the annals of our galaxy involves massive structures known as Nogha entropy conduits. Named after the world on which the first was discovered, Nogha entropy conduits do precisely that: the current theory on their purpose and operation is that each one taps into the quantum foam, the…
Backstories: "Supernova Express" (2020)
Plant: Cephalotus follicularis “Elizabeth” (Who was St. Remedius? And why is a medical college named after him?) Out of all of the successful and failed projects by early spacefaring civilizations that ultimately allowed their successors to become what we now call “galactically aware,” two of the most influential came from the now-sadly-extinct species Bolun. Originating on a particularly life-conducive world orbiting a remarkably stable yellow dwarf star in an arm of our own…
Backstories: "Innovator" (2020)
Plant: Cephalotus follicularis “Elizabeth” (Who was St. Remedius? And why is a medical college named after him?) Assumption: when cataloguing examples of advanced technology throughout the known universe, most students attribute the developments to a specific species or civilization, and further attribute those developments to some sort of racial will to forge and refine it. Reality: with far too many of the really esoteric discoveries throughout the Five Realities, everything comes from one…