"Your time is almost up, you know," @Temperance Fugit said.

I looked at her, aghast.

"Oh, no, not like that. I'm so sorry to have startled you!"

Time in the temporal dysmorphia chamber (or the back rooms of a church, which is what it felt like) didn't seem to go anywhere. I napped, and woke, and sometimes Temperance -- High Counselor of Time Sanctorum -- would be there. But the light through the little stained glass windows never changed.

Temperance was really sweet. She definitely didn't want to scare me, but for some reason I wasn't that scared anyway.

"It's because you really don't have any way to process this except as a dream. You're almost fully healed now, and once you leave it'll seem even more like a dream. Especially since none of it will have actually happened."

"You mean for all of us? @Grips Courtesy, @Astrid LaFlame, and @Sindra the Bee Tamer too?"

"That's right," she said in her kindly second grade teacher way. "I've decided the best way forward at this point is to nip the whole thing."

"Nip it?"

"Yes. I do it somewhat frequently, actually. The Executive Board doesn't even know it's something I can do. I'll bring us back to a stable point just before the branching and we'll be back to business as usual."

From what I'd seen from my time in the temporal dysmorphia chamber, that didn't really seem that great. In fact, it seemed terrible. I'd learned "business as usual" was frankly a lot like "hell." And getting worse.

"Yes, well, it is certainly a lot of work," she said, "managing the time stream. It took a quarter of a million years just to start painting on cave walls, you know."

I did not know. What was she even talking about?

"However, you'll each have a residual memory. Even clipping a divergent timestream leaves a trace. And that will continue to have ripples throughout your lives. In a good way. Remember, it's a long game, and just giving it a slight lean for a long time has a more permanent effect than some big one-off."

I really had no idea what she was trying to say.

"That's because you're already starting to re-coalesce, even though I haven't done the clipping yet. Like when you have a little indigestion before a big meal? You're sensitive that way. Maybe more so now...."

I was already back in my little cot in the little room. It smelled like old people. Temperance was tucking me in...

"You just close your eyes..."

"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."

"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.

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.

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.