Elementary Time Travel – EA. Vol. XXIII
Encyclopaedia Avalonia, Vol. XXIII …
The Reading Organisation for Research into Elementary Time Travel (R.O.R.E.T.T) is attached to the Faculty of Parapsychology in the University of Avalon (UoA). It is the only UoA-affiliated organisation to issue exam-results in advance of the actual exams, depressing though this is for some of the students.
In R.O.R.E.T.T’s own words, their research involves: “… the study of Precognition .. its practical uses for political purposes …”
Needless to say this research has attracted the attentions of MI5 and the like, particularly since the very existence of Avalonia is a politically sensitive issue for the UK government. However, all attempts to infiltrate R.O.R.E.T.T have so far failed, since the identity of the would-be infiltrators is known to members “ahead of time” as it were (or will be), before the agents themselves have even been chosen … and in one case even before the agent had been born.
The security services have struggled in vain to resolve this paradox, in one instance even lying to themselves about their own agent’s true identity in a desperate attempt to circumvent precognition. This might have worked, except that when the agent in question attempted to contact his masters they refused to accept his credentials, charged him with impersonating a government official and filed his report under “Deliberate Misinformation”.
R.O.R.E.T.T’s occasional seminars on “Psychic Ecology” are sought after with particular eagerness, with competition for places being especially keen amongst far-sighted environmentalists and visionary Greens. Indeed, seminar places are reserved so far ahead of any advance publicity that the seminar leader has given up actually choosing the seminar dates herself and merely goes along with the inevitable.
R.O.R.E.T.T has a sister organisation called R.O.R.A.T.T (the Reading Organisation for Research into Advanced Time Travel), but of this we do not now write further for reasons that will always have been obvious to some.
R.O.R.A.T.T members – and you know who you are, or know who you will be – can appreciate the subtle rationale for this discretion. Anyone else wishing to know more will need to enrol with R.O.R.E.T.T in the first instance (and R.O.R.A.T.T in the second instance), or else read the appropriate entries in Vol. XXIV of the Encyclopaedia Avalonia, should this ever be published.
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