Welcome back, readers!

It’s the year 2013 now and I’ve got another exciting (or perhaps just interesting) chapter in the Dr. Garlic story for you today. Dr. Typhon Garlic recently sent me some details on stuff he’s been doing lately. He had a chance to meet the mayor of Convergence Point, who gave Typhon a cowboy hat, an overview of the town’s illustrious history, and some little known facts about the place.

Now, before I continue, I would like to explain something that Dr. Garlic and I have discussed and seems to be true in most cases. As you may have read way back in this early post, Dr. Garlic has been traveling through the Aether during most of his adventures. Even when he adventured with Dr. Gene and Dan Dirtie, he was in fact traveling through the Aether.

Now you may ask, “How’s that? I ne’er read nothing ’bout Al being in the Aether! Weren’t all the places he went to located in the real world?” The answer is that, to the best of my knowledge, Dr. Gene’s adventures were indeed conducted within our “real world,” as I suppose we’d call it, but that several of those “real world” locations, certainly the ones he visited with Dr. Garlic, also exist in the Aether.

You see, while traveling together, Typhon, Al, and Dan were all at the same place. When Dr. Garlic left this combination Aether-“real world” area, he returned to the Aether. His friends, however, exited to the “real world.” Although in this early post I linked to a Wikipedia article defining the Aether as a classical element (which light supposedly traversed), the Aether is in fact another world, or another dimension apart from our own universe. The Aether intersects with our universe in many different places, a few of which Dr. Garlic has visited.

So what is different about this Convergence Point place, you ask? This town and the surrounding area converge not only with our universe and the Aether, but also nearly every other universe too! Pretty amazing, right? That is in fact the reason this town was given the name “Convergence Point”.

While discussing all these things, the distinguished mayor and Dr. Garlic wandered all about the town. They happened to be walking near the outside of town when Typhon spotted the same mild sandstorm that he’d seen on the road to town.

Noticing that it seemed to surround the town and its nearby vicinity, he questioned the mayor about it. “Ah, the whistling sands,” he said. “They obscure the boundaries of Convergence Point, preventing us locals from seeing people as they come and go, to and from their respective worlds. The transition as one comes here or leaves is really quite seamless; the whistling sands are like a fog, blocking out the sights and masking the sounds of one’s world.”

Furthermore, the passage of time at Convergence Point is not constrained to the passage of time in other worlds. Although this is rather hard for me to explain, since I barely understand it myself, I’ll try to make this as clear as possible.

Dr. Garlic entered the town on December 24th, 2012, our time. At Convergence Point, the date was December 24th, Year 148. (The founders of Convergence Point, understanding the uniqueness of their new town, started a new date system which is nearly the same as ours, except that Year 1 is the year Convergence Point was founded.)

Now if someone had come from December 24th, 2005, it would not necessarily have been December 24th, Year 141 in Convergence Point. It could have been Year 140, or even Year 49! In fact, the only certain thing about the two dates is that they’re on the same day. This means that, if I understand correctly, it’s quite possible to see someone from the past, or even the future of your own world at this incredible town!

Very little of how this actually works is understood, even by people like the mayor. For example, the mayor has no idea what happens if, say, someone stays past Leap Day at Convergence Point, when it’s not a leap year in their native time. In fact, the mayor simply said of Convergence Point and the other worlds, “Destiny links them together.”

I was still feeling confused at this point, so if you’re anything like me, maybe this diagram Dr. Garlic drew up will help you understand better what’s going on. Typhon based it on few recorded arrival dates the mayor gave him.

Anyway, all this complicated space-time manipulation stuff is making my head hurt. I’ll leave ya’ll to ponder the origins of Convergence Point until next time. Leave yer comments below, and thanks fer readin’!