Field notes from Roscommon Brecken: Amateur Biologist, Professional Time Traveler.

 Field notes from Roscommon Brecken: Amateur Biologist, Professional Time Traveler. 

Entry 1

Geographic Location: Amazon Rainforest 

Chronologic Location: January, 1825

I was unsurprised to discover today a new species of small, brightly colored frog who exhibits an extraordinary relationship with the time field. I say “unsurprised” only because I had come to this forest expecting to find something unknown and wonderous, but in truth the particular talent displayed by these jewel-like creatures has me utterly confounded. I had thought to find something like the well documented ability of hummingbirds, naked mole rats, cuttlefish and other time sensitive species who can relocate themselves with-in the field of time by either changing their vibrational frequency or converting the stream of time into particulates. 

These frogs do something quite different. 

When threatened, they are able to completely expunge themselves of time. This is of course a paradox. Time is the basic ingredient for existing. But somehow these frogs are actually ridding themselves of time completely so that it neither resonates through them nor is processed as a particle inside them. This should mean total annihilation for all matter involved. The frogs should “poof” out of being. Without either vibrational or particulated time giving them place in the universe, there should be no past, present or future version of their atoms extant. But these little frogs have found a way to subvert the laws of nature, vacating existence and then returning again apparently unchanged. The mechanism allowing for this impossibility is a mystery I will allow others to plumb. The question I am pursuing is why? Why would a frog ever have the need to absolve itself from the fabric of space and time? What evolutionary pressures would have caused such a skill to develop?  

Entry 2

Geographic Location: Natural History section of The Historian’s Hovel

Chronologic Location: Outside of time (null frequency)

I met with the Danaher twins at the Historian’s Hovel to present my findings from the Amazon and ask if they had encountered anything like it in their research. Feathers (this is the nickname Alastair has begun insisting on, due I presume, to his new cap) suggested I might be reacting to a toxin from the frog’s skin and merely hallucinating my results. I was, quite satisfyingly, able to coax my specimen into performing it’s paradoxical talent and, again to my satisfaction, Feathers found himself dumbstruck. Tabitha, as expected, was immediately concerned about the “how,” but I refused to let her take my specimen for dissection. She posited that the little creature could be extremely dangerous. Its ability to divorce time from matter could initiate a chain reaction and cause the dissolution of all things that rely on time for their organization I.E. the universe.

I nearly choked on my cup of time-tea. Moving forward, I will avoid prodding my frog to make it jerk in and out of existence. 

Entry 3

Geographic Location: Santa Cruz Mountains, California

Chronologic Location: June, 1972

A strange thing happened last night. I have been home a few weeks spending time with my dear Aoife and studying “the little bang”, as I have come to call my frog specimen. I built a tank for it, complete with everything it would have in its natural environment and it has seemed quite happy, feeding normally, chirruping at night, and thankfully, never feeling the need to execute it’s time severing ability. But yesterday evening it began to act erratically, first hopping around the enclosure as if it were being chased, then expunging time from itself repeatedly. It is difficult to describe what this looks like, and indeed it is not something you see as much as you cognize. It happens too fast to notice optically, but the brain is still able to track the frog from existing, then not existing, then existing again, in an odd, “deja vu” sort of thought blip. Aoife seemed to feel it happening even upstairs and she came down wondering what was wrong. I should have said something better than “possibly the end of the universe,” but the frog eventually calmed and so did Aoife. Afterwards, she mentioned to me that she thought she saw something in the tank with the frog. “A shadow” she said, “like a cat, or maybe more like a snake.” I told her there was nothing else in the tank, but she seemed disinclined to take my word for it.

Entry 4 

Geographic Location: Apalachicola River, Florida

Chronologic Location: April, 2113

While researching the time transitive characteristics of orb weaver silk in the swamps of Florida, I discovered a further confounding fact about my little bang frogs. I noticed that a certain species of rattlebox moth is always released from orb weaver’s webs. If an orb weaver catches a rattlebox moth, the spider approaches the entangled insect cautiously, probes it with their palps and then uses their fangs to cut the silk around the moth until it falls free. I soon learned that in their larval stage, rattlebox moths feed on the rattlebox plant, a weed which is known to be poisonous. These rattlebox larvae sequester the toxic alkaloids from the plant and when they are transformed, the built up toxins protect the adult moth from predation. I was reminded that many amazonian frogs also utilize defensive sequestration, and that I had not yet examined my specimen for the characteristic. To my surprise I found that the frog did indeed sequester a substance from its prey, but it was not toxins. Rather, it was time itself! Instead of extracting nutrients and energy from the insects they eat, they extracted the insect’s time. This process, horrifyingly, annihilates any past, present or future belonging to the insect while the frog slowly accumulates the extra time inside its own body! Imagine if a predator of this nature existed that was larger than a thumbnail!

Entry 5

Geographic Location: Time Distillery, Historian’s Hovel

Chronologic Location: Outside of time (null frequency)

Tabitha and Feathers were as intrigued as I by my new discovery. We rendezvoused at the time distillery and together we extracted a small amount of the sequestered time from my specimen. We discovered a few fascinating things. First, the sequestered time was of such good quality, that it could be distilled and then reconstituted into viewable mists. Of course, all there was to see were the somewhat mundane details of an insect’s day-to-day scrabbling in the leaf litter, but it made it clear that even though the insect’s molecules were annihilated by the extraction of their time, the time itself maintained the imprint of the insect’s life. 

The second thing we discovered was the possibility that the little bang frog is exceptionally old. The amount of sequestered time inside its body was equal to a dose that would be several hundred if not thousands of times more than a typical frog lifespan. My theory is that, once the frog reaches maturity, it stops eating “food” and starts eating time, which it somehow metabolizes to counteract the standard flow of the time field through its body, essentially freezing the aging process. The odd side effect of this is to create a detailed archive of all it’s victims’ lives, but I think it highly unlikely the frog is at all aware of this.

As fascinating as all this is, I can find no connection to the frog’s other extraordinary ability. Why would a frog that can ostensibly live forever develop the risky habit of momentary annihilation?

As a side note, Tabitha and Feathers have been involved in some bewildering research of their own. Their main concern, of course, is discovering who was behind the construction of the Historian’s Hovel, and how they were able to accomplish such a monumental endeavor in the erratic environment of the null frequency. Recently, this has led them to consider the properties of dark matter/energy in relationship to time. Dark matter and dark energy are the mysterious substances that account for 95 percent of mass in the universe. Unseeable and untouchable, it is truly the “great unknown.” It does not interact with any form of electromagnetic radiation, and if the initial result of the twins’ research holds, its interaction with the field of time may also be quite irregular.

Entry 6

Geographic Location: Amazon Rainforest

Chronographic Location: April 1825, April 1725, April 1625, April 1025

I have spent several weeks tracking down the precise age of my little bang specimen. This was possible because, like other small amazonian frogs, little bangs are highly territorial, defending a space of about three meters square for their entire lives. I visited the patch belonging to my specimen across several centuries, and found a frog with the same identifying markings there each time for 800 years, which supports my theory about their life cycle. Once I determine where they lay their eggs I will conduct further observation on the tadpoles and young adults to see if the rest of my hypothesis holds.

While in the Amazon, I again observed the strange behavior demonstrated by my specimen in his tank at home, though this time it was shared by several frogs inhabitating adjacent territories. First one frog began hopping about, zig zagging across its territory, then repeatedly expunging itself from time. As soon as that frog calmed, another in a neighboring territory would take up the same behavior. I cannot say exactly how long it continued, as it was too difficult to track the motions through the thick vegetation. I did not see any cats, snakes or other predators in the vicinity. 

Entry 7

Geographic Location: Amazon Rainforest

Chronographic Location: September, 1972

Aoife insists that she can see something chasing the frogs. I brought her along to help with my observations. She has a great dislike for vibrating in and out of the time field, so we chose to conduct this study in our native stream of time. There is still much to do here, the little bang frogs are slow to give their secrets, but Aoife will not stay. She actually used the word “dragons.” I told her she must have imagined them, perhaps

shadows from fern fronds or some such thing playing with her imagination. But she is obstinate. She even tried to point one out to me, describing in detail its cat-like movements and serpent-like strikes as it chased after a frog, but there was nothing there besides the little bang expunging itself. 

Entry 8

Geographic Location: Kenai Fjords, Alaska

Chronographic Location: July, 2002  

I am in Alaska, where Feathers has asked me to help with a study involving the rufous hummingbirds found here at the far end of their migration. These little creatures continue to amaze. Not only are they capable of vibrating themselves across a wide range of frequencies in the time field, they also fly more than 3500 miles each summer on wings less than 2in long! Our research, however, is concerned with their eyesight. As tetrachromats, their eyes have a fourth cone which allows them to see frequencies of light the color of which we can only imagine. Our work here has produced good evidence that they can also optically detect time frequencies, which provides a possible explanation for their ability to navigate in and out of the null frequency with such accuracy. Feathers is hoping to discover that, perhaps along with their other visual talents, they may also have a knack for detecting dark matter or dark energy. Testing has been difficult on that score because our reference frame is so limited. 

In the course of researching, however, I did come across a fact I had previously disregarded. There are some humans who are known to possess a fourth cone and who can indeed see things the rest of us cannot. My dear Aoife has always demonstrated a keen discernment of colors. I should have her tested for tetrachromacy. 

Entry 9

Geographic Location: Santa Cruz Mountains, California

Chronographic Location: January, 1973

A number of disconcerting things happened today. First, I received a letter from Tabitha. It was mostly confusing to me, a jumble of references to obsolete texts written in language too old for me to comprehend and accompanied by Tabitha’s own verbose interpretations that seemed to be hints at something dangerous. From what I could make out, she believes she found a warning from the ancient builders of the Hovel about looking too deep into “the unknown darkness,” and possibly a fragment of text that suggests “the darkness” can see much more of us than we can see of it. She seems to be using these passages to ascribe some sort of intelligence to the dark energy/matter she is studying.

The second odd thing that happened was the disappearance of my little bang frog. It seems to have escaped from its enclosure. I tore my study apart looking for it, but there was no sign. I have become somewhat attached to the little fellow, but I will have to resist the temptation to retrieve the same specimen from the past. Best to avoid complicated time field feedback, especially since the creature may already be flirting with the integrity of the universe.

The third strange thing involved Aoife. She confessed to me that she had been seeing her “dragons” with increasing frequency. I asked what they were doing. She said they would wander near the house, look through the windows and then move back into the forest. I asked how many there were. She said she did not know but that she had seen several of different sizes, some no larger than a kitten, others quite large. I asked what color they were. I assumed she would answer “black” because she had described them as shadow-like, but she did not. She thought for a moment, then said, “they are the color of memory.”

Later that night—

Aoife and I were both brought to wakefulness at the same moment in the deep of night. I realized instantly what had woken us. In my mind I could detect the faint “blip” “blip” of my little bang frog popping in and out of existence. So he wasn’t lost! I hurried down stairs into the study, but it soon became clear the “blips” were originating from outside. I threw on a pair of slippers, grabbed a flashlight and stepped into the darkness. The beam in my hand soon flashed across the brightly colored little amphibian who seemed to be in a frenzy. I rushed towards him, determined to return him to his comfortable tank, when a scream froze me. Aoife had come out on the porch. I turned my light on her. She did not shield her eyes from the beam and her pupils remained dilated, staring wide at the black behind me. “Ros, they're hunting it. Don’t touch them Ros.”

I turned the beam back on the frog. There was nothing else there and he was a valuable specimen. Foolishly, I ignored my wife and stooped to catch him. I am lucky now to be able to hold a pen in hand and record my observations. For an instant, I was consumed. I existed only as an imprint, swirling inside the beast with uncountable numbers of other things all lost to this world, all forgotten, all part of the great unknown. The creature was vast, it held infinity inside itself, larger than time, all of eternity occurring at once in a single present moment. Then, with a little blip, I was back, though my face was in the dirt. My left hand was closed gently around the little bang frog, to whom I believe I now owe my life.