Dear Readers,

   In the very recent past (October for you, only a few days ago for me), the University was attacked by a group of foreign entities and it shut down a great deal of our infrastructure.  It took us a few days to get back up and dust ourselves off.  I was wounded in the fighting, and every department has worked around the clock to figure out what they are and how they got here.

 Today for 2log, instead of a story, I’ll let you know a little bit about these creatures.

  They are about seven to ten feet all, and incredibly beautiful, at least at first glance.  They look like idealized warrior-humans, with a harsh edge that disqualifies them from being angels.  That, and their wings, which can span twenty feet, are usually mottled colors and rarely white in their entirety.  Their hair can be any color, but for some reason their commanders always have black hair.  We wonder if their hair changes color based on the status they have in society.

  On closer examination, one discovers that much of their appearance is trickery.  They are not the beautiful creatures they appear to be, but rather are theatrically costumed to inspire love, awe, and fear.  Wipe away some of their affectations and you begin to see sinister creatures with terrifying natural weapons.

  As for technology, they have much the same as we at the University have, except that they seem to have a device that can transmit matter through times.  There are limitations to the use of this device, for example that it cannot travel to or from locales where strange matter has been created, but overall it allows anyone to transmit themselves to any time stream.

  From what we have learned, they use these devices and their talent for trickery to blend in and influence the events of certain key time streams.  We assume that this is to some nefarious end, because outside interference almost always is.  Also because they tried to kill many of us and destroy our resurrection systems.  That did not win them any friends.

  Because of their propensity to manipulate events and try to be in control from backstage, I have dubbed them the Puppeteers.  I hope only that we can thwart them if they try something else.

  Always,

  Dr. John Skylar
  Chairman
  Department of Anachronism
  University of Constantinople

Dear Readers,

You might wonder just why it is I care about all these things that seem so fictional to you.  I care because there is crazy out there, and I want to know about it.  I care because I’m curious.  I care for a variety of reasons that have little to do with the real reason the University continues to operate.

There are things out there, things I haven’t even dreamed of.  Possibilities for technologies beyond the realm of sanity, for governments with higher levels of fairness, and for injustices and dark ages untold.  These stories don’t just deserve to be told; they need to be told in order to inform every time stream that we contact of the possibilities and the dangers.

There is a certain feeling that one gets staring out over the edge of possibility into the craziest thing that could be conceived.  Underwater Greek Polytheist Futurist Colonies?  Canadians are vampires of American positivity?  Pantheist 12 foot tall blue people (okay, not mine, but still unusual)?  Stare over that edge and you’ll come back a little funny.  Actually, in this company, I bet you’ll come back a lot funny.  In a good way.

In a way, what I do is like bungee jumping.  I push what my mind is willing to believe to its roughest edge while the data comes streaming in.  Often I have to doubt it as absurd, or nonsense.  But I have to doubt those doubts, too, and that’s what Anachronism is for.  That is its purpose, and my purpose: I make you doubt the assumptions that swirl around you, the “normal” life.  We force our students to question their times and their societies, to become something more than normal.  To become metanormal.

  Always,

  Dr. John Skylar
  Chairman
  Department of Anachronism
  University of Constantinople

Dear Readers,

  This "story" post is titled as it is out of a nod to Eudora Welty's famous story "Why I Live at the P.O.," but it is of a very different nature.  I hated the story, but the title stuck with me.

  Sometimes, there are time stream variations that you would never notice.  Ones that live just beneath the surface, in the dark caves of your contemporaries' personal lives and there is little you can do to figure out quite which possibility you live in.

  One such possibility is treated in today's post, a primary source from a time stream I published a paper about once.  Specifically, this time stream has a little difference as regards Canadians and their odd obsession with Tim Hortons.  You know TH as a coffee shop with curiously delicious maple donuts.  It is a cornerstone of the Canadian economy.  Most Americans know it through its little outposts, and the occasional appearance on How I Met Your Mother.  However, in some time streams, TH is a much more bizarre prospect, as you'll come to learn in today's story.  Don't worry; it's not actually an episode from your time stream.  I'm pretty sure, at least.

Always,

Dr. John Skylar
Chairman
Department of Anachronism
University of Constantinople

I stood in the cold with bated, visible breath.

Before me lay the last threshold, the final step on my journey to becoming a true Canadian.  I could feel the too-expensive passport that burned its way through my pocket, and could imagine that the strange bulkiness of my wallet came from my citizenship card.  None of that really mattered.  What mattered lay in front of me.  The Tim Hortons.  No apostrophe.

Ten years ago, now, I suppose, I stood in front of the door of that coffee shop, the name of a famous hockey player flickering over my head.  I still remember it with vivid trepidation.  I twisted my wedding band on my finger, the real manacle that bound me to this patch of socialist permafrost.

I lifted my bemittened hand to the door, but even through the fleece I could still feel its magnetism.  Tim Hortons wanted me.  It would take me.  And there would be no going back.

Right now I'm sipping their coffee, as I have every day since.  Some say they put nicotine into it.  At least, that's what we tell the people in the States.  It's worse.

That day, though, I knew little of the place.  Just that my wife said I had to go, or I wasn't a real citizen.  I remember that clearly, too:

"Honey, there's one last thing before you're really in," she said to me in bed the night after I got my citizenship card.  Her face glowed a little while she said it.  At the time I thought it was about me.  Now I wonder.

I laughed, "Oh?  And what's that?"

The smile on her face before disappeared as she spoke, and her voice entered a hush, "You have to go to Tim Hortons."

It confused me that she seemed so serious.  She'd teased me before about my Starbucks-going ways.  Now it seemed like a bigger thing.  "You're not kidding, are you?"

"Nope.  You want to be a Canadian, you've got to go there.  Get a donut and a coffee.  And drink deep.  Do it tomorrow."

That exchange creeped me out enough that I went straight to sleep that night.

This precipitated the next day's anxious staring contest with the cafe door that I described earlier.  I pulled, and the door came free with less effort than I expected.

I stepped through and made a beeline for an awkward-looking teenage girl in the uniform I would soon come to associate with my dark addiction.  Her dyed hair and little spots of acne fit with the awkward way that she said, "Hi! Er, hello.  Would you...what would you like?"

I ordered what my wife suggested.  I decided on a maple donut.

"Will that be all sir?"

I nodded and paid.

Once I found a table, I raised the paper cup to my lips and blew a little through the tiny opening in the lid.  I could feel the heat inside thaw my breath.

Then I took a sip.  As it burned my tongue, I knew why my wife demanded I visit.  The taste, of course, was fantastic, but nothing compared to the sudden awareness that it gave me.

The caffeine, and something else, something I now know to be Canada's darkest secret, opened my mind.  I knew I would not be able to go one more day without this substance.  I could see it all.  From the frozen top of the world, I saw the machinations of the US and the blithering insanities of Europe.  With my elbows on a shiny formica perch and the caffeine coursing through my blood, I saw those things canceled out by the fanaticism of the developed world's enemies and I was filled with a profound sense that so long as I kept sitting there, kept sipping the coffee, everything would be all right, despite it all.  It gave me something like awareness, but something more powerful: perspective.

I can't tell you what the active ingredient really is.  It's not caffeine.  It's not nicotine or newspaper.  It comes from a rare fish, and it's very concentrated in seals.  They're a national treasure.  It can also come from people, but they have to give it up freely.  It's a part of the spirit, and watch out if you spend too much time with a Canuck, because they can drain you of it before you even notice. 

A Canadian who goes through withdrawal turns into the most surly of evil bitches in just a matter of days.  Without the THC (Tim Hortons Coffee), we go crazy.  And now I'm one of them.  With it, I can see right into anyone's soul and make them do what I want.  And better than any voudoun, that seeing leaves me with a profound sense of comfort.

Time for my daily fix.  I'm watching you, USA.

Dear Readers,

Over here at the University, we have a clever assortment of crazy and strange people to fill out our faculty.  The requirements are that you have to be notable, and because of technological restrictions, you must have died in an interesting way.  Our full faculty are among the best and brightest, taken from across history and for the study of humanity throughout time. Without further ado:

Dr. John Skylar, Flavius Petrus Sabbatius Iustinianus Memorial Professor of Anachronism: Well, this is me. I play my biographical details pretty close to the chest, since for you, most of my life hasn’t happened yet!

Dr. George Sphrantzes, Gaius Flavius Valerius Aurelius Constantinus Memorial Professor of Classical Anachronism: Dr. Sphrantzes is an "original," and comes to us shortly after the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in your timeline. In time-normal life, he was a famous chronicler of the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire, and he and I both agree that his history’s vilification of our Provost, Loukas Notaras, the last mega doux of the Empire, has held back his career at the University. I try to help out Sphrantzes wherever possible. Thankfully, his tenure, and our President, protect him.

Dr. Amelia Earhart, Professor: Dr. Earhart is one of the "newest" additions to our staff. She made quick strides to advance her education on arrival, and is an indispensible asset. Her unique understanding of adventures and adventurers leaves her especially well-suited to studies of periods of human expansion and exploration. As soon as another named chair opens, Dr. Earhart is destined for it.

Sir Francis Bacon, Professor: In life, Sir Bacon was the pioneer of what you would think of as "modern" science. He created the idea of rigorous experimentation, and his philosophies of truth laid the groundwork for your "modern" investigational science. At the University, he stays up to date on the evolution of philosophy after his death in an unfortunate chicken-freezing incident.  I’m not kidding. He also examines different schema of philosophy from other time streams, and is our resident expert on source criticism and types of evidence.

Dr. Francesco Petrarca, aka Petrarch, Professor: Petrarch is a very singular human being, and our faculty here is augmented beyond description by his presence. His humanist philosophies helped to pull your time stream from the Middle Ages, and he was the first to refer to that period as a "dark age." He lived on the very edge of that age, before your world resurged in the Renaissance. At the University, he busies himself with understanding the causes of dark ages and Renaissance-like events.

One of our main problems at the University is advancing female faculty; it has thus far been difficult to convince some of the other faculty from less accepting eras that a more egalitarian approach is prudent. Hopefully we will be able to remedy this situation.

And so, my friends, those are my closest colleagues and our Department's shining stars. I hope you enjoyed reading about them.

Always,

Dr. John Skylar
Chairman
Department of Anachronism
University of Constantinople

Dear Readers,

I thought I’d try to introduce you to some of my work now that you know who I am.  What I do is twofold: first, I translate sources we have obtained via augury.  Second, I use those sources to construct narratives so that we can better understand the worlds we’re studying.
One of the worlds I work on, I call neo-Aegea.  It is a world covered in water, colonized by humans far in your future.  A Greek culture with a caste system dominates, and Engineer-priests control everything from economics to warfare through their control on knowledge.  The general population, unable to distinguish their technology from their gods, is kept controlled.

To fight wars on neo-Aegea, the Engineers construct biomechanically engineered soldiers that can survive the pressures of the deep.  One early type, which the local contemps will call spartoí, will essentially be clones made for warfare. In the original, spartoí means "sown men” in Ancient Greek.

In the original, ancient myth, Cadmus, future founder and King of Thebes, visits the Oracle at Delphi. Augury at the Oracle (though extremely rudimentary Augury) tells Cadmus to follow a cow until it stops, and then found a city there.  I gather it made more sense at the time.  During his attempt to do this, Cadmus and his men ran into a dragon, which Cadmus killed. Athena, who stopped by to have a look, took the dragon's teeth and gave half of them to Cadmus, and told him to plant them. She saved to other half for an adventure with Jason, of Argonaut fame, later on.

Unfortunately, this dragon was sacred to Ares, and after that, things got a little dicey between him and Cadmus.  Awkward. When Cadmus planted the teeth, men grew from them. These men were the spartoí. In some versions, Cadmus tricked them into fighting each other, and the five survivors helped him found Thebes. In other versions, only five arose to begin with. Either way, it made Ares angry, and Cadmus had to make up for this, but that's another story.

That’s the ancient myth.  Below is the neo-Aegean myth, which builds on the myth of the spartoí.  I’ve attributed it to Civet the Storyteller, a neo-Aegean bard with similar fame to Ancient Greece's Homer, Spain's Lope de Vega, or England's William Shakespeare (the latter two, at least, in time streams where the Spanish Armada lost). Civet's writings, like most neo-Aegean myths, are a mixture of Ancient Greek stories and elements from across the cultural history of the humans of neo-Aegeea. From these references, I am able to surmise that the neo-Aegeans descend from your time stream, or something very close to it.

Story translated below. The manuscript is intended to be read aloud by a storyteller, from memory, and some performance notes appear italicized in brackets.

Always,
Dr. John Skylar
Chairman
Department of Anachronism
University of Constantinople

Gather round, deck apes and Pilots alike! Hear the story of the Spartoí, from the greatest story-teller in all Aegea! [It is recommended that one compliment the audience at this point. Jokes also help your audience grow.]

In the days before the Clone War with Nemesis, the Great Engineer Cadmus lived in Aegea. he was so respected that all Cities begged him to serve as their Chief Engineer, but each he refused. Instead, he traveled all of Aegea in a Golden Bathyscaph, almost the size of a small colony in itself, in search of the greatest Oracle. While he possessed some skill with augury, everyone knows that you can never see your own future, and so he needed someone else to read his fate.

In those days, the City of Oz held the best augur-Engineers in the Ocean, and so Cadmus followed the rumors to their Machine Shop. There, he met Tiresias, the blind augur and Oracle of Oz. [Some storytellers tell this dialogue; that lacks style. Act it out!]

Cadmus entered Tiresias's Great Hall, shrouded in complete darkness. The seer preferred it that way. He also demanded that his guests remain silent until addressed.

After three days of waiting without food or water, Tiresias's voice boomed from the darkness, "A SUPPLICANT HERE HAS DARK HAIR AND GREEN EYES, LIKE A NOBLEMAN, BUT LIGHT SKIN, LIKE A PEASANT. HE IS CADMUS, THE GREAT ENGINEER. COME FORWARD, CADMUS."

Shocked that the blind seer could know his features in the dark, Cadmus walked forward several paces. His footsteps echoed through the cavernous chamber.

He began, "Great seer, I-"

"I KNOW WHY YOU ARE HERE, CADMUS. YOU WISH TO FOUND YOUR OWN CITY, FOR YOUR SON, TUT, TO RULE. YOU WILL FOUND THIS CITY, CADMUS, AND YOU WILL NAME IT THEBES. WHEN YOU LEAVE HERE, YOU WILL FIND A SCHOOL OF SELKIES. ALL WILL CHANGE COLOR AS YOU APPROACH, SAVE ONE. FOLLOW THAT ONE TO THE ENDS OF AEGEA, AND THERE, FOUND YOUR CITY. NOW GO. I WILL FIND YOU WHEN YOUR CITY IS FOUNDED."

Cadmus, still in awe of the great seer, followed his instructions exactly, and departed as soon as he saw the selkie that did not change color. They followed it as it swam away. His bathyscaph traveled for forty-one days and forty-one nights, to the ends of Aegea itself, just as Tiresias predicted.

On the forty-second night, the selkie stopped in a deep cavern on the sea floor. Cadmus saw this and knew that they found the place to build his City. "Stop the bathyscaph, Thistle," he told his chiliarch, "We shall build it here. First, though, we must find petrol to burn this selkie as an offering to the gods who brought us to this place."

Thus, he and his men put on pressure suits and wandered out in search of a source of petrol for their offering. It was not to be so. Instead of petrol, they found a great beast that breathed like a Promethean Sling, and shot out fire that could burn even underwater. They called this beast Smog, for it choked out black clouds of charcoal and fire into the water around it.

From the moment they saw it, Smog killed hundreds of Cadmus's men with his fiery breath. Enraged, Cadmus pulled out a weapon that he built many years before, with Athena's help. A saber made of Aegis-light, it would kill anyone or anything which did not possess the Engineer's bloodline. He ran the beast Smog through with his saber, and though it tried to belch its flame upon him, the blade proved too much for the creature, and it instantly died.

When it fell, the sea floor rocked and petrol shot up from vents beneath. As the ground quaked, Cadmus and his men were knocked unconscious, and cast into a deep sleep. In dream, Athena visited Cadmus.

"You have come back to me, Cadmus," he glory and beauty were so strong, that she did not need to say these words. Cadmus merely looked upon the goddess, and knew her warm greeting.

Then she spoke, and the power of it almost killed him, "You will take Smog's teeth, and plant them near your City. From these teeth will grow men, the spartoí, who will become your soldiers. You can grow more, also. They can be copied, like any other men. You will need them for the times to come, or too many of your people will die in war. You have done something terrible, Cadmus."

"What have I done?" he wept before her. [This is the point of greatest suspense; your audience wants to know what will happen next! Make them pay you to hear it, since later, they will not feel so generous!]

"Smog was sacred to Ares, Cadmus, and you have slain this creature. The god of war does not forget, Cadmus. War will come, between the Engineers and the City of Nemesis, who do not follow the gods, but follow anger and hatred instead. This war will be called the Clone War, and it will be because of you. Prepare yourself!"

Cadmus awakened, the air in his suit almost empty. He gathered his men, and they returned to the Golden Bathyscaph. They returned to gather the dragon's teeth, and just as Athena said, they grew into soldiers in just hours. These were the spartoí, the first grown soldiers of Aegea. The Thalassians you know today descended from these soldiers. Each of you might have known war in your lifetimes, if not for Cadmus, who invented the spartoí, so that men would not fight and die in war. [Here you may advertise that you will tell battle stories if your audience stays longer, or if they come back tomorrow.]

Dear Readers,

  First of all, I’m honored and excited to be guest-posting over here at 2log.  It’s not every day you get to collaborate across time and space.

You may be wondering just who this “Dr. John Skylar” is, and I’ll tell you: I spend a great deal of time wondering this myself.  Once upon a time, I was one of your contemporaries, a scientist and speculative fiction writer who had a somewhat notable career.  However, sometime during that career, I got an email from someone who claimed to be me.  Well, a later version of me, to be precise.  After a few email exchanges with myself, I discovered a new path had opened to me.  I would train to become an Anachronist, and eventually become the Chairman of the University of Constantinople’s Department of Anachronism.

Anachronism is a tricky subject to write about, so I’ll start off by explaining the University.  When the Byzantine Empire fell, a freak accident preserved the University of Constantinople outside of time.  Efforts by the few survivors to understand what happened led them to new technologies and understanding of the universe around them.  They discovered that they could pull people from across time into their isolated institute, and that they could study all of the many forked paths of time through a discipline called Augury.

Augury, a scientific discipline in its own right, is the tool.  Anachronism is the discipline wherein we study what we learn from Augury.  We can get all kinds of data with our Augury machines.  Anything printed or static, really.  It’s harder, the way the technology works, to get sequences of images or sounds, so video is very difficult.  We take these sources and we put together analysis and understanding of the cultures that they came from.

I’m not exaggerating when I say that we can see all the possibilities.  Every time you make a choice, a new “time stream” is born.  Many of these just rejoin the original river.  For example, you breathe in, you breathe out.  Not much of a net change.  Others diverge forever.  Imagine if you breathed in and never breathed out again.  A world without you would be a different world.  Our data comes from every divergent path.

Thing is, we don’t get to choose where our data comes from.  We tune in, get the information, and then we have to figure out its context.  We have to figure out a time and place for something without either.  We have to assign chronology to what is inherently anachronistic.  Such is our discipline, and it is one of the central strengths of our University.  Over the next week, I hope to show you how it works, and share with you some of my own research in this very exciting field.

  Always,

  Dr. John Skylar
  Chairman
  Department of Anachronism
  University of Constantinople