Plant: Heliamphora x minor (Who was St. Remedius? And why is a medical college named after him?) Do you remember? Do you? Do you really remember what happened, or are you remembering what IT wants you to remember? No, I’m not being difficult. It’s just that when IT isn’t on, it’s still hard to tell the difference. Memory’s like that. It’s already so easy to make false memories all on your own, but…
Backstories: "Nift" (2021)
Plant: Nepenthes x hookeriana (rafflesiana x ampullaria) (Who was St. Remedius? And why is a medical college named after him?) Approximately 30 million Earth years ago, a vast civilization known today as the Catesby Hegemony dominated a significant portion of what is now called The Broken Galaxy, an irregular galaxy orbiting the edges of Andromeda. Getting its name because stellar movements within the cluster could not be explained by standard celestial mechanics, analysis…
Backstories: "Magma" (2021)
Plant: Nepenthes ventricosa x hamata (Who was St. Remedius? And why is a medical college named after him?) Strictly speaking, the classic definition of a Dyson sphere is “an artificial shell intended to capture all energy emitted by a star,” and of the known artificial worlds in our galaxy, most are intended just to capture energy. By the time a civilization becomes advanced enough that a Dyson sphere becomes a necessity, it is…
Backstories: "Agak" (2021)
Plant: Cephalotus follicularis “Elizabeth” (Who was St. Remedius? And why is a medical college named after him?) “Okay, it’s like this. Someone is knocking. “No, I don’t mean ‘standing on the other side and knocking. Well, maybe, but that depends upon how you define ‘the other side.’ “Okay, backtrack. We know it’s a mechanism of some sort. We’ve known that for years. The radio signals coming off it were how we picked it…
Backstories: "Gagak" (2021)
Plant: Cephalotus follicularis “Elizabeth” (Who was St. Remedius? And why is a medical college named after him?) Nilwii Janss iw-Raan wasn’t a particularly dedicated student, but she knew rocks. Her hatchclub, his collective, and the greater alliance that protected the hatchclub and collective from scavenger onslaughts lay at the foot of some of the greatest mountains of her world, not that she or anybody else she knew had any idea of other mountains…
Backstories: "Timeanchor" (2021)
Plant: Cephalotus follicularis “Elizabeth” (Who was St. Remedius? And why is a medical college named after him?) Everyone entering knew they had one chance. The testing was sound: the world’s first time corridor was live, with timeanchors on either side of the chronal abyss keeping the fantastically complex mathematical construct complete and taut. The plan that day was to send the first scientific equipment through, in order to check atmosphere, photoperiod, gravity, and…
Backstories: "The Lungs of Hell" (2021)
Plant: Nepenthes bicalcarata (Who was St. Remedius? And why is a medical college named after him?) Throughout most of known reality, evil is an abstract. It has no weight, no mass, no volume, and cannot be measured on a quantitative basis. One can feel overwhelming evil, but no scale exists in our realm to weigh it. The atmosphere of the moon is crushing by comparison. This is true for our realm, but evil…
Backstories: "Lagerstatte" (2021)
Plant: Nepenthes x ventrata (Who was St. Remedius? And why is a medical college named after him?) Abstract: Description of a uniquely preserved fossil bed dating approximately 65 million years before the present Details: While the fact that our planet once had an extensive civilization across all major landmasses has been established for at least 60 years, that civilization is still poorly understood. Due to extensive chemical weathering of the surface, the traces…
Backstories: "Senseweb" (2021)
Nepenthes rafflesiana x sibuyanensis BE 3819 “Suki” (Who was St. Remedius? And why is a medical college named after him?) At first, they were found on old, dead worlds. Massive chrysalises by the hundreds, seemingly impervious to cutting tools, waiting in alcoves and caves, surrounded by metallic fibers that slowly waved as if in a light breeze, even if in total vacuum. When disturbed, the chrysalis cracked open, with the monstrosity inside attacking…
Backstories: "Professor Lindsay's Amphibian Wedding Present" (2021)
Plant: Nepenthes spectrabilis x tenuis (Who was St. Remedius? And why is a medical college named after him?) Contrary to generally accepted wisdom, the first serious experiments in DNA manipulation and editing came not in the early part of the 21st Century, but in the latter half of the 19th. Professor Huxley Lindsay of Rice University in Texas never knew the word “deoxyribonucleic acid,” and would have taken a bullwhip to anyone trying…