I have a weird feeling about the next year.

As some students have noted, the Gears of Tomorrow are in need of a bit of a tune-up.

We'll be taking them off-line intermittently over the next month, where they will be properly serviced and upgraded by authorized and accredited horological technicians, horoscopical engineers, sacrificial estimators, Druids of Tinkery™, parts replacers, know-it-alls, eggheads, grease monkeys, snake handlers, and union members.

If you feel a slight disruption of service during this time, please do not clog up the emergency and non-emergency psychic hotlines, because we assure you any changes in your eigenstate will be temporary. More likely side effects include lost time, confusion, bright-color-seeing, and dyspepsia.

It's recommended that first-timers carry a sleep mask or bandana to use as a blindfold to spare yourself the horror of "what's behind the film" when the projector goes dark.

Repairs will be complete by December 21st. Otherwise, well, we're not sure.

Happy Solstice!


Sincerely,

A. Hazeltine
Student Activities Coordinator

Is it possible to get extra credit in psychic shop class if we volunteer to help, @Ms. Hazeltine? Like, as a volunteer/intern?

Oh absolutely, @Jaymie Fang, that sounds like a wonderful idea. I'm sure our team of highly trained professionals doing work so delicate that the slightest miscalculation could result in taking our entire timeline offline would love to have any number of novices running around and spilling their psychoactive boba drinks all over the controls.

But just how many students would be interested?

Sign-up sheet is on the bulletin board just outside my office door!


Sincerely,

A. Hazeltine
Student Activities Coordinator

It was first day of extra credit at the Time Engines for Psychic Shop Class and we got assigned to Foreman Rickles. He told us not to touch anything and @Fardambango made a crack about how he couldn't touch anything anyway so we got sent to the breakroom. The microwave was disgusting and the whole place smelled like fish.

@jason may kept saying he was going to barf on account of the smell and we didn't believe him, but then he woofed it right into the sink. We tried to wash it down but I don't know what he had for breakfast because there was some really weird stuff in there looked like curly spiders. @2Jax thought that was the coolest thing ever and scooped some up in a dirty coffee mug and took it back to the dorms.

Shop teacher says we still get extra credit because we're learning about what it's like to have jobs.

I’ve been an avid hobbyist in the Infothene scene, working on psychic muscle cars and pushing the limits of what information engines that size can do. But the Gears of Time make up the biggest information engine we know of. The Solar Wa. The Diamond Orrery. The Big Clang.

Infothence engines produce a byproduct. We call it Hawk Gas -- information that escapes from our eternal combustion systems. The chambers and pistons are just physical, after all, and Infothene is refined. But the Gears of Time are on a whole different level. They run on raw information and are made of materials that don't fully exist in our universe. There's parts of the engine you can't even touch with physical objects. That's where the engineering gets tricky, and is the main thing I'm learning about.

I think I had one of those outages that @Ms. Hazeltine was talking about? I was at the same Starbars @Wyatt Corn goes to and it was weirdly empty and I’m like “where is everybody?” and I wasn’t going to just make coffee myself I mean I don’t know how and wouldn’t it be illegal?

But then I turn around to leave and there's no windows or door. It's just a blank space. And I turn around again and it's more blank space. Total nothingness. Not white. Not black. Just true nothing you can't describe it because, I mean... words.

Then I started to see the other stuff. The indescribable, maddening, incomprehensibility of it all.

I probably passed out or something or the outage just passed and there I was laying on my back on the sorta greasy floor at the Starbars.

That's why I prefer independent businesses like the Spoonbender. They're more solid and less likely to disappear when reality turns off.

Did you take the Lozenge-A?

The one the people in the bunny suits were passing out in the lunchroom?

They say it's to help us with the increasing queasiness from the intermittent reality outages, but they didn't seem like school staff. They seemed really out of place, hopping around with those big floppy ears and cute little tails.

Oh! @Rikki Snarl you also experienced the Starbars incident? Glad to know I'm not the only one. But are you okay? It seems odd for a Starbars to turn into nothingness. I know a good intracorporeal psychologist that can help with hallucinations and reality breaks.
Oh! And where is this Spoonbender you mentioned?
I'd love to get my coffee from a place that actually has employees, Starbars just isn't cutting it for me anymore.
I went back a few days ago and it was still empty. Typical large corporations...

Oh yeah @Wyatt Corn it's the hyperreality of Starbars that makes them susceptible to even small stutters in the Time Fans. It's part of why the workers are striking. Starbars are like more than 78% hyperreal, and so it's a psychic health hazard. Psychic deterioration from repeated exposure.

Anyway yeah it sure doesn't feel like they've got the Solstice Engines all fixed up, does it? It's been clangy all day, then they take it offline and before you know it you forgot lunch and it's already dark. What are they gonna do if it's not repaired by Solstice? Which is, like, uh, Wednesday.

But there's Solstice Happy Hour at the Spoonbender -- specials on mushroom coffee and ayahuasca bubble tea! A bunker of reality in these hyperreal times. Ground floor of the Dinkeloo admin building underneath the deck.