Time of the Cat

part one

chronos college

one

don’t get lost

Dear Boz

Wish you were here. Wish you were here. Wish you were here.

Wish this postcard was working. What’s the point of a call for rescue that doesn’t pick up?

Nothing works. My opal’s not working. This stylus clearly doesn’t work— this is the fourteenth message I have written you.

No rescue. No hope. No cat.

I wish that I knew you were safe. (I wish I knew I was safe.) I hope you’re doing better without me than I’m doing without you.

Always your partner in crime,

Cressida ¹

1 Fragment discovered at Fenthorp Manor during minor archaeological excavation, early 30th century. Origin unknown. Materials unknown. Author unknown. Probably nothing to worry about.

two

don’t lose your cat

The secret to time travel is cats. A secret so devastatingly unlikely, it’s no wonder it took humanity so long to catch on. Once we did finally crack that tricky corner of theoretical chrono-physics, time was our oyster.

Or, at least, our squeaky mouse toy.

Fact the first: A human cannot travel through time (except the most dull and predictable form of time travel, 1:1 ratio moving forward) without a cat by their side.

Fact the second: Cats may travel wherever they like, including through time, regardless of human company. According to most cats.

Fact the third: in 99 out of 100 time experiments, cats travelling in time without a human at their side ended up… well, no one can say for certain where they ended up. But it wasn’t back home, that’s for sure.

History is silent on whether or not this was intentional; cats, of course, claim that everything they do is intentional.

On the whole, it is best to accept that the proper method for safe and efficient time travel is by means of an equal partnership: one human, one cat.

The greatest danger in time travel is not treading on a butterfly or accidentally having sexual congress with one’s grandparent. It is losing one’s feline travelling companion along the way.

Bathsheba Tonkins.

The Human Time Traveller’s

Almanac of Practical Advice

First Edition published 2384 CE

Second Edition published 1066 AD

Third Edition published 10,000 BCE

Fourth Edition published next Thursday

three

it’s amazing you can still speak in full sentences.

Ruthven hated this part: when the time travellers returned. Every brick and pane of Chronos College vibrated as the portals in the quad hummed back into life.

Students and staff gathered to watch the spectacle: giant hooped ovals brimming with oceanic light, cresting, bubbling…

Finally, the travellers appeared: humans in their shabby, travel-worn costumes, accompanied by cats looking exhausted and smug. Cats and humans, humans and cats. A little charred, perhaps, a little worse for wear. Proud as punch. Why not? They had the best job in the world, and they’d all come home alive. Together.

Ruthven knew exactly what it was like, to be one of them. But that was long ago.

Before he lost his cat.

Normally, Ruthven would concentrate on his work so as to conveniently ignore the return of the travellers until the footage from their travels cascaded into his in-tray. He had a particularly good digital recording of Midsomer Murders Season 85 to re-colour before he uploaded it to the media archive. ¹

He had many other excuses, lined up and ready to pull out if he needed them.

But Oxford was due back today, and while Ruthven had become a bitter and cynical recluse in recent years, he was also trying to be (where possible) a half-decent friend. That meant showing up to witness your friend’s victory lap.

Reluctantly, he put his work on hold and headed out of the dank recording suite to face the blazing sunshine of the quad. It was noisy, of course, and far too bright. ² He strolled past the statue of Cressida Church with her perfect hair and form-fitting medieval gown. He angled his head as he always did so he didn’t have to look at the other, smaller marble statue nearby, of a heroic-looking calico cat, lost too soon.

If a physical description of Eliott Ruthven would be helpful at this juncture, consider the platonic ideal of a Byronic hero, wrapped in a futuristic jumpsuit and a thin layer of insecurities. ³

If asked to describe him, the majority of Ruthven’s colleagues at Chronos College would use the word ‘intense,’ possibly attached to the clauses ‘way too’ and ‘don’t you think?’

He wasn’t popular, which did not bother him in the least. The only human he ever wanted to impress was about to step through one of the time hoops in the quad.

Humming. Cresting. Swirling. Bubbles.

As the travellers emerged from the time hoops, the crowd converged upon them. Professors, well-wishers, students who hadn’t yet lost their heady enthusiasm about the coolest academic specialty ever, datemates. Ruthven might as well have not bothered. No way Oxford would think to look for him in all this chaos…

"There you are!" Oxford loomed over him, dusty and dishevelled but basically perfect. He was a tall man with sandy hair, blue eyes and the kind of stupid handsomeness that was especially fashionable in the early twentieth century during activities involving boating and cricket.

Oxford’s partner Nero, a snooty and extremely fluffy white cat, lay sprawled over one of his broad shoulders, too busy and important to walk anywhere under his own steam. ⁴ Oxford, as ever, showed no objection to being treated like cat furniture. He turned his entire attention on Ruthven. It was like being caught in a spotlight made of sunshine. You wouldn’t believe how hot it gets in Egypt.

Careful, said Ruthven, smiling up at his friend. He couldn’t help it. His natural state was morose and brooding, but as soon as he stood in Oxford’s presence, he found himself warm with happiness. He couldn’t even be embarrassed about it because Oxford had that effect on everyone. Don’t go leaking any details before you put in your formal report. Melusine will have your head.

Pish tosh, said Oxford airily.

Ruthven’s eyes narrowed. They haven’t let you near the 1930s again, have they? Your vocabulary has gone a bit vintage.

It will wear off. Besides, I was in the 80s this time. Hung around with some terribly English writers in Egyptian cafes.

English writers abroad? That’s worse! It’s amazing you can still speak in full sentences. Ruthven paused. The 1980s? he added in a small, hopeful voice.

Yessss, said Oxford, looking like… well, the time traveller who got the cream.

His cat Nero cracked an eyelid open. Stop flirting and get on with it, he rumbled. Melusine hates it when we’re late to report in. She might cancel my shore leave.

Oxford blushed furiously, for no reason that Ruthven could guess at. Sorry, Nero, were we interrupting your vital napping plans?

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.

Tell me everything.

"Have you watched it?" Ruthven countered.

When would I have had time?

If it screened live while you were there…

Nah, I scanned it off a VHS tape I found lying around. Does it really use footage from the unaired pilot?

Fragments, Ruthven admitted. Cobbled together with a bunch of clips of a dying Lady Cradoc reminiscing with Bones the Butler about the good old days. Never mind that he wasn’t even in the pilot episode…

Oxford cheered. Screening party, yes? Tonight!

I haven’t checked the whole thing for grading errors, Ruthven protested.

Oxford leaned in. His eyes really were exceptionally blue. Screening party. Tonight.

As if Ruthven could say no to that face.

1 For sheer entertainment value, Ruthven had learned to watch Monterey and Lovelace first. If for no other reason than to mentally prepare himself for the truly astonishing anecdotes they were likely to be relaying in the pub all week.

2 Note for those born later than the 1990s: a clip show is an artefact of twentieth century television production in the pre-internet era, when TV was largely assumed to be ephemeral. This budget-friendly episode format traditionally involved a small number of cast members reminiscing about past events, as illustrated by repeated film clips from previous episodes. The tradition died out thanks to easy access media, when viewers were assumed to be binge-watching their favourite shows on a constant digital loop, and very much up-to-date on that one time someone did something amusing with a stuffed turkey, or a cream bun.

six

cramberleigh

In the twenty-fourth century, if you happened to be residing at Chronos College (one of three universities featuring an active time travel operation, built on space stations orbiting the Earth), the one thing you could be certain of was everyone you met was likely to be obsessed with a twentieth century TV show called Cramberleigh.

All episodes had been wiped from television archives in 1989, in a terrorist attack by a group calling themselves the Anachronauts. For many fans who were not born until centuries later, this was the seed of their obsession. No one would care as much if the episodes were easy to find.

Cramberleigh began as a period piece: an Edwardian drawing room family drama airing between 1965-1971. It followed the family of Sir Victor Wildegreen, a cranky patriarch and serial widower with an assortment of creepy children, doomed wives, charming step-children, and interfering elderly aunts.

Once every possible drop of melodrama had been wrung out of the suffragettes, the sinking of the Titanic, the War Years and the Spanish flu, Cramberleigh was reinvented as a quirky Roaring Twenties sci-fi show from 1972-1975, which included the Season With The Carnivorous Plants, the Season with the Invasion From Mars, the Season With the Vampires, and (most beloved of twenty-fourth century operatives) the Season with the Time Travellers.

The 1975 (Time Travellers) season featured such wonders as a baking Boudicca and a rakish Rasputin. It concluded with an explosion which rocked the Wildegreen household, apparently killing everyone. When Cramberleigh returned in 1976, a drastic reboot saw four survivors of the explosion thrown forward in time to the present day. They set themselves to solving murders, battling foreign spies and disarming killer robots until the show was finally cancelled in 1978.

The show was briefly revived in the 1980s gothic melodrama Tales from Cramberleigh (1982), a single anthology season of tele-movies featuring many of the original cast, set across a variety of time periods and cramming in every supernatural and historical drama trope you might imagine: demonic possession, ghost smugglers, werewolf suffragettes, portal travel through the multiverse, and a cyborg Queen Victoria.

Finally, between 1984-1986, there was the cheaply made and critically reviled (later reclaimed and ironically adored) final reboot: Return to Cramberleigh. In this version of the show, the most popular fan favourite characters were all alive again, trapped alongside their own modern-day descendants (each actor playing multiple roles), in the original manor, now submerged beneath the earth’s surface thanks to a freak timequake.

The budget was halved, the plots were impenetrable, and the 80s fashions were eye-watering. The whole thing came across as harshly over-lit experimental theatre done on the cheap in someone’s living room. The dialogue was arch and sarcastic enough to entertain a small core fandom… who themselves were also this version of the show’s worst critics.

Collecting and restoring lost episodes of Cramberleigh was a favourite hobby of time travellers, if their work should happen to take them to the relevant decades. (1969, 1978 and 1989 were sadly inaccessible thanks to Anachronaut-caused Events, but most of the Cramberleigh broadcast window of 1964-1977 and 1982-1986 were fair game.) ¹

There were still quite a few gaps left in the Chronos College collection of episodes. Every now and then, a traveller was able to smuggle a new piece of lost media back on to campus, where they found a hungry audience ready to consume the missing episode like the Ancient Romans hanging out for one more lion-eats-centurion water cooler moment.

Ruthven was a little taken aback when he first learned that nearly the entire student body at Chronos College was obsessed with the same obscure, centuries-old piece of dodgy costume drama that he had been fanboying over since he was a kid. He was used to Cramberleigh being his thing, shared only with the occasional fellow enthusiast on a vintage media forum.

He had not been prepared for the handsome and popular Oxford to befriend him on their first day by showering Ruthven in compliments about his Cousin Henry’s Terrible Fate enamel pin like that was a normal thing to display on your jumpsuit. He had not been prepared for every other student of their intake class to nod like they knew what Oxford was talking about.

Ruthven did not know how to like things that other people also liked. The whole concept was bewildering. But he didn’t know how to abandon Cramberleigh. So he fell into… being friends with the most popular student in his year, and having something in common with the entire student body.

Then, three years ago, Ruthven lost his cat and his ability to time travel in one terrible day. He was transferred to the Media Archives, which meant being unofficially in charge of the repository of lost-and-found episodes. It rebranded him as the resident Cramberleigh expert.

Without Cramberleigh, Ruthven might have become completely untethered from campus life, wrapping himself up in his misery while everyone else was off having adventures. But it was hard to be a complete loner when your sad little cave was constantly being interrupted by randoms who wanted to remind you how many episodes were left, to chat about whether more would ever be found, and to rant about how suspicious it was that no one had ever reclaimed even a single frame of Season 3. ²

Once you’d watched the Season with the Carnivorous Plants for the fourteenth time, you had to embrace your identity as a true fan. A diehard Cramberry. ³ Ruthven couldn’t roll his eyes in judgement at the obsessive tendencies of everyone around him, not with the number of facts he had personally memorised about long-dead British actors just because they had non-speaking roles in The Season with the Vampires.

He could, on occasion, roll his eyes in judgement at himself.

He was doing it right now.

Settle down, it’s just an old TV show.

Unaired footage of your favourite old TV show.

Which Oxford just presented to you like he’s a cat dropping a delicious dead mouse on your doorstep.

Maybe it’s OK to get a little excited.

1 It was generally assumed by experts that the Event in 1969 was due to the terrorists attempting to prevent the Moon Landing, or at least attempting to hide all actual evidence that there was a Moon Landing. Others theorised that it was because the Anachronauts wanted free rein to attend Woodstock without interruption.

2 Monterey’s conspiracy theory about the Mysteriously Missing Season 3 was thirty pages long in a double-spaced document. He had attempted to submit it as a chapter of his graduating thesis. At which point, the Board of Chronos College achieved their first ever unanimous vote in committee by banning Cramberleigh as an academic topic. When challenged by students, Professor Harpo of the Chronological History department threatened to put all classic British television under the same ban, and the protest was dropped. Pressure from the local chapter of the Blake’s 7 Appreciation Society was never proven.

3 Various alternative names for the Cramberleigh fandom had been mooted, adopted and discarded by fans over the years, including Cramberbitches, Cramberpeeps and Cramberlumberjacks. Ruthven would have quite liked Crambutlers, but it never caught on.

seven

unaired pilot episode

The trouble with being Oxford’s friend was that Oxford was friends with everyone. He attracted people like time travel attracted cats.

When Oxford threw a party, there were no limits.

To be fair, he did actually take physics into account with his party planning for this particular shindig, which necessitated a last-minute venue change from the dorms to Professor Mycroft’s rooms. Because of course, the professors all loved Oxford too. He and Monterey were both sons of Founders, and thus were treated by longer-serving staff members as something halfway between honorary nephews, and college mascots.

Professor Mycroft was a cheery, rotund sort of fellow, well-liked by the students. No one remembered a time when he had not been in residence in the Department of Practical History. ¹

Mycroft’s comfortable suite was heaving with students, professors, travellers and cats by the time Ruthven turned up to the viewing party with the chronocle safely stored in his jumpsuit pocket. ²

Rrrrrreally the unaired pilot? asked Lovelace, an Abyssinian short-hair whose notorious time travelling exploits had made her a local icon.

Ruthven’s cat, Aesop, had been good friends with Lovelace, whom she looked up to as something of a mentor. She always acted so casual in Lovelace’s stately presence, then squealed afterwards with Ruthven about how cool she was.

Damn, he missed Aesop so much.

Fragments, he said now, in response to Lovelace’s question. It’s a clip show, so it’s certainly not all of it, but it’s the only footage of the unaired pilot that we’re ever likely to see.

Good enough for me, sniffed the cat.

The humans had gone all out with Cramberleigh cosplay, aided and abetted by Fenella from Costume. ³

Ruthven had never spent much time with Fenella. The only thing he knew about her was that she had never been partnered with a cat. No tragic backstory: she simply had not been issued one upon graduation due to an administrative error currently in its fourth year and counting.

It wasn’t that he avoided her exactly, but it irritated Ruthven that everyone assumed they must be great friends because of their mutual lack of feline companionship.

If a physical description of Fenella would be helpful at this juncture, imagine an extremely petite young woman, with dark hair in a pixie cut, and unnaturally large eyes like someone who had fallen