“Clearly. Give the lad the tape and let’s get on with our debrief.”
Ruthven gave a start. It was too early in the day to have his hopes raised so suddenly. “Tape?” he mouthed.
Oxford winked, in a manner he probably thought was covert and subtle. “Good to be back,” he said, and went in for the hug. Oxford’s hugs were rather like being pleasantly assaulted by an armchair, if that armchair also had a swishy cat perching irritably upon it.
Ruthven felt the slight pressure of a hand on his pocket, and something slipping inside. Too light to be a VHS or Betamax tape. “Did you actually —” he said in disbelief.
“Shh,” said Oxford, his lips brushing Ruthven’s ear. “Don’t distract me. Don’t you know I have a report to make?”
He strolled off, whistling while being handsome. Several nearby undergrads sighed romantically as he went past them. Nero rode upon Oxford’s shoulders like a Napoleonic soldier on horseback. His white tail swished behind them both, and a trail of soft white hairs fell like breadcrumbs in a forest.
Ruthven poked his hand into his pocket, and felt the unmistakeable circle of glass between his fingertips. A chronocle. “You unbelievable bastard,” he muttered under his breath. To his annoyance, it came out sounding fond.
1 Season 85 of Midsomer Murders screened internationally in late 2084, and is generally considered by fans to be the last decent season before the show really started to run out of steam.
2 It was not real sunshine. There was no reason at all for the brightness dial to be turned up so high on a space station, but someone was a little too pleased with their environmental controls. That person was Debby. Don’t worry about Debby. She has her own stuff going on.
3 Ruthven had the cheekbones of a villain, the brooding stare of a poet, and a mild allergy to sunshine, artificial or otherwise. Also, dark hair falling into his eyes, making him look mysterious. Add to this a sort of tragic air, caused by the loss of his feline companion three years previously, and the overall effect would have been romantically devastating if one had never met him. Sadly for Ruthven, Chronos College was a closed community, and opportunities to be perceived as a mysterious stranger were few and far between.
4 Oxford could never wear dark colours, thanks to Nero’s constant shedding. Luckily, he looked good in cream and white. And everything, probably.
Four
Lost Media
As all media collectors know, the twin enemy of preserving any kind of filmed media is 1) time, and 2) format. Anyone who has, for example, spent many hours of babysitting money on precious VHS tapes in their teens, only to see that format replaced over and over by cheaper, more robust options as the decades fly past, knows that the only thing worse than having to re-buy all of your favourite shows is when your favourite shows are finally too obscure to make it over to whatever the cool new media storage widget is.1
Then there were the content massacres of the Streaming Wars in the mid twenty-first century, which taught a whole generation that you can’t take for granted your favourite show will always be there, in its entirety, at your fingertips. Even piracy has its limits.
Time travellers obsessed with vintage media have it particularly tough.2 Most people have one lifespan’s worth of media platform updates to take on the chin, and a finite number of stories to which they might get unreasonably attached. Time travellers have access to many centuries of weird cult TV shows, old timey music, obscure arthouse films, and multi-media injectibles.
Combine a completionist personality with access to time travel, and that individual may never have a moment’s peace.
Then there is the tragic fact that most media formats are incompatible with being physically transported through time. Even when multiple cats are involved.3
Luckily, the recent invention of the chronocle solved many of these problems. This cunning little device not only has the ability to upload store huge amounts of data from various antiquated platforms and devices, but it has the added benefit that it looks like a small circle of glass, and not an obviously clunky technological anachronism.4
The downside, of course, is how often these very expensive devices get accidentally broken or lost due to someone attempting humorously to wear a chronocle as a monocle. Time travellers are the worst.
Zadie Kincaid, A Rough Guide To Time Travel
1 What do you even do with all those outdated VHS tapes and dodgy audio cassettes? Throw them away? Don’t you know they were worth something in the 90s? No, obviously hanging on to them makes sense. Just in case there’s some kind of media apocalypse wiping out all digital media and leaving a small community of survivalists with no hardware but perfectly functional VHS players. All very logical, nothing to see here.
2 Which is to say, 98% of them; vintage media is a known gateway drug for potential time travellers. If you’ve ever daydreamed about travelling back in time to read, view or listen to something that is not currently available in your timeline… you’re a possible candidate. Have you considered applying to Chronos College? They’re always looking for capable, enthusiastic young people. Though ‘always’ does refer to a specific couple of decades during the twenty-fourth century.
3 Yes, they tested this. The trick was finding enough cats who had strong opinions about the early seasons of Doctor Who, and were willing to join the experiment on the off chance of saving the lost episodes of “Marco Polo.” Sadly, the experiment only salvaged ten minutes or so of an episode of “The Space Pirates” which hadn’t even been lost in the first place.
4 For a reference on why the latter is a bad idea, check out the monograph by Montague J Monterey on how he almost got arrested in Ancient Rome by dressing up as a flute girl and trying to smuggle a camcorder into a religious party hosted by Caesar’s wife.
Five
“Have you watched it?”
Back in the recording suite, Ruthven slotted the glass disc into his retroplayer and waited for the familiar opening credits to flick up on to the screen.
To his left, the terminals of the Media Archive lit up with pings and notification sweeps as the footage from today’s returning time travellers poured into the system. This was the best part of his job, usually — getting first eyes (apart from the travellers themselves, jammy bastards) on whole new vistas of history. He might not get to experience it in person any more, but he got to watch it and file it, which was almost as cool.
Today, Ruthven didn’t even glance at the notifications. He could file vital snippets of Monterey and Lovelace swashbuckling their way through their aesthetically pleasing shenanigans tomorrow.1 He was far more interested in seeing which lost episode of their favourite ancient TV show Oxford had managed to smuggle home to the twenty-fourth century.
Ruthven frowned as the janky electro sounds of the 80s revival theme tune flooded the small space. Return to Cramberleigh? Why on earth would Oxford think he cared about one of these dreadful late 80s reboot episodes? Unlike the original run, these had been recovered pretty much in their entirety by fans in the early years of time travel. 38 out of 39 episodes were logged and archived, and the only one missing was a clip show.2 You could watch your Return to Cramberleigh episode of choice on any wall screen in the college. You could remix them, revoice them and consume the karaoke versions as jelly chewables.
The usual credit sequence played out, showcasing the main cast from 1985: Lady Cradoc, Bones the butler, Sheena Swythe, Dead Desmond. All the usual suspects glammed up with their enormous fringes and shoulder pads to make the show seem more relevant.
Then the episode’s title card came up: Blast From the Past. Ruthven stilled, eyes locked on the screen. It couldn’t be. Could it?
Clip show.
Ruthven didn’t see Oxford again until the canteen. He had just sat down with his tray (soup of the day, bread roll, pouch of juice) when his friend appeared, changed from his stripes and boater hat into the generic Chronos College jumpsuit that most people wore around campus. The garment was comfortable, robust, and somehow both stretchy and tweedy at the same time. It looked like a librarian had been asked to design a yoga outfit for a professor of archaeology.
Naturally, Oxford transcended this generally unflattering garment, because he was incapable of looking bad in anything. He bounded across the canteen now, collected his food (somehow his smile earned him double portions even though it was a literal robot distributing the trays) and flung himself carelessly into a chair opposite Ruthven. “Well?” he demanded, glowing with enthusiasm. “Have you watched it?”
“Waited for you,” Ruthven lied.
Oxford’s face broke into an even wider-than-usual grin. “Liar,” he said. “Is it amazing?”
“It’s interesting.”
