The Ministry of Chronal Affairs is the state body, founded in 1889, that governs time travelers, chronometric artifacts and movement between eras, licensing travel with a “card” and pursuing those who travel without one.
| Type | Institution |
| Founded | 1889 |
| Spanish entry | Ministerio de Asuntos Crónicos |
Licensing and enforcement
Without the card a traveler is outside the law; not all Uchronic Guardians hold one. An answer “in chronal time” takes about a week. The Aeons, a time patrol, beat and torture unauthorized travelers. In Uchronic Paris the hierarchy includes the “chronal assassin,” also called the “war assassin.” At inns “chronal dogs… even the cats are hired” to detect drugs and suspicious activity. It intervenes across eras, as in Serbia in the future, where the companions were caught up in the difficulties it left.
Chronal clocks
It regulates chronal clocks, which “not only show time but can somehow manipulate it.” Two are known: the inherited one, “said to be the first,” founded around 1722 and passed through the ancestors of Swann by way of “Rousseau’s father”; and the Chronal Clock of Meteora, held by the company, which rests in the Aby Warburg Library.
Smuggling and faiths
Travelers “brought things from the future,” the traffic the card exists to prevent. In that field move Merle Bartok, a chronal traveler who posed as a druid as camouflage; the Chronal Sorcerer, one of whose names is Teófilo Teododetes; and yellow candles, signaling to the sorcerer that the Lady in Yellow’s plan succeeded. Beside the state, not within it, run Chronal Islam, a doctrine of uchrony the company does not profess, and the Chronal Christ, whose symbol is the clepsydra.
Conflicting accounts
- Sources say both “the Ministry” and “the Ministries”: one body with delegations, or several sharing the name.
Open questions
- No seat, building, named official, paperwork or insignia is known, nor which state, country or era it belongs to.
- What the card is, who issues it and how.
- Whether the Uchronic Guardians and the Aeons answer to it; whether the faiths of time are linked to it.
- Why the Meteora clock is in the library (deposit, concealment or custody).
- The first clock’s date is doubtful, and its chain to Swann’s ancestors does not close.