By Anonymous
Part One published Oct. 14, 2024.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” said the time traveler, entering Trinity’s second floor lounge at 10 p.m. “After a solid rest, I believe I am quite ready to continue the tale I was telling you yesterday. Now, where was I?”
Putting down our playing cards, we four reminded him, and he continued: “Oh yes, quite right. I never saw the charismatics and trads interact again, and that proved to be their downfall. You see, after about three months of living in their time, a mysterious disease broke out. I shall spare you the gory details, but suffice it to say, those who caught the illness — if left untreated — were dead within seventy-two hours. I caught the disease.
“As you can infer from my standing here before you, I was treated. It was the nursing major whom I first met upon waking up in that strange time. She tried her best to cure me, but like all the rest of the diseased, it was of no use. I continued to decline as the first two days passed, and I think that, if not for an unplanned treatment, I too would have passed.
“You see, I was smoking my pipe to try and take my mind off my impending death, and the nurse reached over my head to grab something. While she did so, a small flower fell from her flower-crown, landing directly in the flame of my pipe.
“It burned in a flash and created a sweet scent, relieving some of my symptoms immediately. I knew in that moment that we had found a cure, and when I was fully recovered, I set about trying to incense all the ill. Unfortunately, my little pipe would be nowhere near sufficient for the task, and I needed access to more of those flowers.
“Having seen the healing I had undergone, my nursing friend was more than willing to let me experiment with her crown, and at the end of these experiments, I found that it was specifically the yellow flowers with orange centers that did the trick.
“Unfortunately, I came to find out that these were rare flowers only found miles from campus. However, it was a common practice for the charismatics to hike to said location barefoot, so most of them had one or two in their flower crowns to mark their adventures, meaning we would have ample suppl– if I could convince them to offer up their crowns.
“This was not easy. The few who saw the healing effects on a small scale offered their crowns readily. The others thought I was trying to steal their beauty, and they would not relinquish their prized items so easily.
“I tried chasing a few of them down once or twice in a frustrated attempt to get more flowers, but if their softened souls were quick to sing praise, their hardened soles were quicker to run from me. I guess traveling everywhere without shoes has its advantages.
“At this point, I knew time was running out for the ill, and the only way I could conceive of to treat all of them fast enough was to get them into the trads’ cathedral (there were many sick persons here as well) and to burn a large supply of the flowers in their giant thurible hanging above the congregation like Botafumeiro.
“This proved more difficult than I thought it would. I was leading a group of the charismatics over, when suddenly the sound of an organ came booming from the cathedral, followed by a volley of polyphonic chanting voices. The charismatics recoiled in fear and booked it back to CTT. The piping organ and chanting voices never ceased from that moment on, so that plan was foiled.
“Next, I tried to get a group of the trads to come with me to CTT, but when they heard the guitars and praise songs, they were repulsed with disgust and could not bring themselves to move any closer.
“I tried repeatedly to get either side to stop their music or put aside their differences for long enough to dispense the healing flower, but it was all for naught. They had let their division grow to a point of irreconcilability. The disease continued to spread, and the people died in droves. There was nothing I could do but return to my own time.”
The time traveler had finished his tale, and we all sat in silence for some time. The silence was broken by the crunch of a Taki.
“Really?” said the theo-cat. “We just learned of the death of two civilizations, and you’re hungry?”
“You don’t actually believe any of this, do you?” retorted the com arts major, red crumbs falling from his mouth. He turned to the time traveler: “Fun story, but I know your senior project is a robot-mini-fridge designed to bring you beers on command.”
“You caught me! I decided to use my one elective to take a fiction writing class, and you all just screened my outline. Pretty good, huh? It would be crazy if trads and charismatics were actually that polarized,” he chuckled.