Why St. Remedius Is What It Is (Who was St. Remedius? And why is a medical college named after him?) Contrary to expectations, St. Remedius Medical College wasn’t the only organization dedicated to exploring, documenting, chronicling, exterminating, or otherwise researching extranormal phenomena. It wasn’t the best-funded, nor the largest, or the oldest, or even the one with the best archives. Where St. Remedius succeeded was in name recognition. Members of top-secret government or…
Mandatory Parker: “In the Beginning”
The origin story of the Lint-Covered Breast Implant Dog people always mock us cat people about our situations. We don’t plan and organize to get a cat, they say. The beast just shows up, right about the time you’ve reconciled yourself that another cat in your life is going to be at someone else’s house. Sometimes they fall out of the sky, sometimes they come up through the floorboards, sometimes…
Backstories: "Vestibule" (2022)
Plant: Nepenthes maxima (Who was St. Remedius? And why is a medical college named after him?) Xenoarchaeology is a risky endeavor under just about any circumstance. In the field, researchers face hostile wildlife, fascinating new diseases and parasites, and the ever-present danger that a billion-year-old artifact might be carrying a quantum black hole facing a critical failure on the insulation of its containment vessel. Those back in academia usually envy the field researchers,…
Backstories: "Watcher and Waiter" (2022)
Plant: Drosera adelae (Who was St. Remedius? And why is a medical college named after him?) Once, it and its people were teachers, guardians, shepherds, surrogate parents. They worked with innumerable sentiments reaching toward the stars and showed them the wonders and terrors of the universe, letting them know that they weren’t alone and that someone was protecting them. Eventually, though, the students reach the limits of learning, the weak become strong, the…
Backstories: "Accelerated Aggression" (2022)
Plant: Nepenthes specularis x tenuis BE-3884 (Who was St. Remedius? And why is a medical college named after him?) Our immediate galactic cluster produces a surprising number of so-called “deathworlds”: planets whose biota accept any kind of intrusion only after the application of overwhelming force. A few are hive minds who use their animal and plant analogues as surrogates for other organisms’ immune systems. Others are so nutrient-starved that to pass up relatively…
Backstories: "Degradation" (2022)
Plant: Pinguicula x “Titan” (Who was St. Remedius? And why is a medical college named after him?) Do you ever really think about where your garbage goes? Of course you don’t: you went to college because your parents were on your case about “go to school so you can get a good job and not have to be a garbageman for the rest of your life.” Never you mind that somebody has to…
Backstories: "Signal to Noise" (2022)
Plant: Drosera adelae (Who was St. Remedius? And why is a medical college named after him?) A standard physics thought experiment: the gravity well around a black hole is so tremendous that matter or energy cannot escape, but information could possibly escape. The unspoken implication: what kind of information? Merely information about the conditions inside a black hole’s gravity well, or something else? For most physics students and teachers, the implication is purely…
Backstories: "Bulwark" (2022)
Plant: Drosera capensis (Who was St. Remedius? And why is a medical college named after him?) Not all of Earth’s monsters were myths, and not all of them remained on Earth when they had the opportunity to escape. Of all of the great menaces from humanity’s distant past, a few managed to leave the solar system and find new lairs, where they hid and dreamed of greater days. Others found welcome among similar…
Backstories: "Rotor" (2022)
Plant: Nepenthes “Rebecca Soper” (Who was St. Remedius? And why is a medical college named after him?) With enough dedication, almost anything can become a source of energy. Gather enough dead flies and pile them up, and the options increase, depending upon the gatherer’s needs and resistance to revulsion. When that pile of dead flies encompasses the known universe, the only question is how much energy a project needs and how long it…
Backstories: "Saga of the Gold Moai" (2022)
(Who was St. Remedius? And why is a medical college named after him?) For every subculture, there’s that one seemingly unattainable artifact that sums up the hopes and dreams of so many of its members. For computer buffs, it’s a piece of Charles Babbage’s original Difference Engine prototype, complete with Lady Ada Lovelace’s holotype programming guide. For chess fanatics, it’s the original Morphy Watch. For comics people, it’s the hope of finding a…