As a rising psychic senior I'm very interested in my future, and now I'm ready to see it for myself.

I've had enough of this "No Hope, it will change the timeline" or "No, Hope, you're not ready," or "No, Hope, you'll probably throw up and start hitting people."

I'm ready for it! And if they don't want to let me in to see it, my friends and I are ready to break in and take it.

Ok tonight's the night. Me, Astrid LaFlame, Grips Courtesy, and my bestie Sindra the Bee Tamer are breaking into the High Counselor's Time Sanctorum to seize our futures! Anybody else want to come along look me up!

But shhh keep it on the down low.

It's been four days and the children are still unconscious. It's a wonder their minds weren't completely blown, given the depths of their exposure. But my faith is growing that continued confinement in the temporal dysmorphia chambers will slowly ease them back to some kind of "recovery," though it's a given they'll never be the same.

As High Counselor and keeper of the Time Sanctorum, I can't help but feel partially responsible. I'm sure the security audit will be eviscerating. But really I'm just focused on these children and trying to get them well again.

mom made and the grand prize doughnuts hidden in a tree. On a fever and a teacher uses of ice cream in a cup my mother arrives to pick me in the gym in middle school yelling "fight fight fight."  I've never she's pushing her tongue into my by an eel. I'm giving the were surprised the alien ships didn't open there. I'd never seen a keg college career advisor looks at my a got floors and floors of a woman who wears too much mathematics. The officiant asks the words and I screaming and the baby finally comes each get condos. We're separated into are. My kids come to visit other like they know. The hospital keep beeping.  It's my fourth birthday, there's a scavenger hunt my was a six pack of powdered field day in first grade I have one of those little individual servings to put on my head until up. Three bullies are taunting me and all the other kids are been kissed on a date and mouth and it's like being attacked speech as salutatorian at Psyhigh. We fire or something. They just floated or a beer bong before. The grades and shakes her head. It's offices and I share one with perfume. I'm accepting the Keffin Prize for say "I do." My wife stops out. We sell the house and groups, based on how healthy we but they keep looking at each room is white, and the machines

"Hello Hope."

It was the High Counselor. I was so busted. Why did my head hurt so much?

"Because you looked directly into the raw time stream without appropriate protective measures," she said. "But you're going to be ok."

She patted my arm. Like she was my grandma.

"Protective measures?" I asked.

The High Counselor leaned closer and adjusted my pillow.

"PPE," she said. "There's a whole training you're supposed to go through, you know. There are real precautions. And you're supposed to use a cup."

"A cup?"

"Yes. A training cup. You make it yourself, then you dip it in the fountain. Everybody's cup is unique, just like your future."

"The fountain?"

"Yes. The fountain. You and your friends just stuck your faces right into it."

"Like sucking on a firehose," I said.

The High Counselor laughed. "Yes that's probably a good description of it."

"My friends?"

"They're getting better too. Just like you."

"Can I see them? Are they here?" I looked around the little room. It was like a room in the back of a church.

"Oh, you're not really here," she said. "You're in a temporal dysmorphia chamber. And I'm not really here either."

I was very sleepy.

"You rest," she said.

MINUTES FROM THE SPECIAL MEETING OF THE EXECUTIVE BOARD

███: According to the report, the kids slipped in through an open window. She says she might of left it open for her cats.

█ ██: Or to air the place out. She is the "High" Counselor.

(group chuckles)

███: In any case, we can now assume complete control of the facility. It's a hazard and she's negligent. Kids going into temporal fugues, parents to apologize to, out-of-court settlements to make. It's gonna cost us but it'll be worth it. She'll get disciplined and out of the way and we can put in some real security and lock it down right.

█████ ███: About damn time. We're lucky some kid didn't wipe out the next half century. All the investment we’ve put into these futures…. the construction, the logistics, the long range planning…

█ ██: The future doesn’t just make itself!

███: And who's going to build the next generation of workers, if not us?

█████ ███: Damn straight.

█ ██: And anything to keep the Dry Bone people out of the picture.

(the group is silent)

███: You're not supposed to mention them by name. And you keep doing it.

█ ██: Oh, yeah. Sorry.

"The whole contraption is horrific," I gasped.

With the help of my guide--a big black bird with long, luxurious plumes that never stopped flying--I'd made it up through the catwalks and scaffolding and could overlook the whole of human creation.

It stunk. It stunk like burning oil and diesel fumes. It stunk like rotting bodies.

"It is built to eat its children," my swirling bird friend said.

Usually you can only see what's around you. And what you see on the internet. And you have a fuzzy picture of what you think happened before, and a fuzzy picture of what you think might happen next.

But from up here, everything was crystal clear. 8K Ultra HD clear. Agonizingly, burningly clear. On fire with burning radiation of existence itself.

Slaves building pyramids down near the bottom. Soldiers clashing, ships full of slaves. Then huge metal gun tubes and exhaust pipes that spanned decades, grinding gears spitting out bodies, office windows and computer screens and still more slaves and people hanging off the sides and falling off.

"It's a huge, greasy, people eating machine," I said.

"And people making machine," said the bird.

Now that I was up above it, I didn't want to go back.

"We can change it," said the bird, doing loops in the air while I sat on the scaffold, looking out.

"We can blow it up," she said. "We can tear it down."

i hadn't ever noticed before, but all our individual moments gots little id codes on them!

i mean, there's lots to tell the time cells apart, like all the scenery :-p but if you know how to look for it, there's little clues woven in. that's how you know you're in the right one.

now, you're probably saying "sindra, isn't that creepy? like some mark of the beast level shit? bar code tats and all that?"

nah. not since i seen it in the TIMESTREAM (whoa!)

so, yeah, there is a whole lotta trickery in terms of how you wanna spend your time, and it's real easy to just buy it off the shelf and not even read the label. that stuff'll kill you. in the forever way.

but i'm talking free range, baby! i slipped out of the package and out of the whole dang supermarket. but even out here, there's time org, man. that's why they're all encoded. otherwise everything'd happen all at once and where's the fun in that?

"cawwwww!"

and there's my bestie, betsy the black bird. probably a crow.

"comin' betsy!"

MINUTES FROM THE SPECIAL MEETING OF THE EXECUTIVE BOARD

█████ ███: We had your assurances this was a slam dunk. What the hell?

███: These are just minor alterations in the stream. If you look at pages 32 through 38, you'll see the projected impacts of the changes are still within the tolerable--

█████ ███: --but how much more can we "tolerate" from these these kids mucking around?

█ ██: Mandela Effect, Butterfly Effect, Streisand Effect... the variables start piling up exponentially...

█████ ███: And why are the kids still in play? I thought she pulled them out right away. Why don't we have them ourselves?

███: Medical exemption. Still recovering in her temporal dysmorphia chambers. She says to pull them out now would have irreversible effects--

█████ ███: --I think that's already obvious--

███: --on the kids, and the Psymed board still recognizes her credentials. We're working on Psymed, but for now we still can't get our hands on the kids.

█ ██: On the bright side, it is just a handful of kids. The temporal density we've built up is really... dense. The "weight of history" and all that. Even with all the potential side effects, the numbers still say any changes they could possibly make will be reintegrated within a few years, tops.

███: Yes. That's in the conclusions on page 42.

█████ ███: Well... I suppose. We have laid down a lot infrastructure.

█ ██: Like racism. Try building that out!

(group chuckles)

███: Ok. You'll continue to get daily updates on any further alterations that show up in the temporal record. And we should have the High Counselor on ice in just a few more days. You know how the bureaucracy is at Admin.

"They don't seem to be making much progress," I said, peering into the scrying pool. I caught glimpses of @Grips Courtesy, @Astrid LaFlame, and @Sindra the Bee Tamer, each one a collection of tiny crystals, glittering like sugar on a swizzle stick.

"You can only see a small sampling of their moments from this perspective," @Temperance Fugit said. "And only the ones with good lighting twinkle like that."

Each of their "moments" seemed so mundane. Everyday stuff, like somebody was wearing a GoPro on their head.

"The arc of history is made up of many tiny moments," Temperance said. "Even when one is clearly consequential--like a bomb going off or a car crashing--it takes a whole bunch of smaller ones to set it up so it can happen."

I saw Grips trying to straighten out his life. I saw Astrid setting fire to a billboard on a highway. I saw Sindra planting pollinators,

"It just doesn't seem to make much of a difference," I said. "Each moment is so small."

"But now they're making them from an informed perspective," Temperance said. "They've seen the big picture. But by school policy, we're only allowed to administer the ritual using training cups."

"Again with the cups," I said.

"The cups are pre-made," she said. "Store bought. Approved by the Executive Board. Using the Standard Shapes."

"Standard Shapes?"

"They're patented," she said. "Think of them as molds. So everything that comes out of them--"

"--is preformed?" I asked.

"Exactly," Temperance answered. "Human capital as a s​​ervice."

I didn't know what that meant.

"We didn't use cups," I said.

"You're free range, now," she said. "And illegal."