The votes are in, and by a 60/40 margin we've discovered we're all still thirteen years old cursing at our crispy new "Choose Your Own Adventure" and flipping back and forth to more propitious forks in the ol' decision tree. So we're going to go back in time and undo our choice (appropriate given that the HeroMachine "undo" feature went live this week!), and pretend we said our Safe Word to get back to the Oradumbledoracle:
The secret word worked! You know that, because you are no longer where you were (or when you were!): you're in a dark tunnel. You have a feeling that it leads to the Cave of Time.
Also, you know the secret word worked because you're no longer cuffed. Ahem.
It's risky entering a tunnel when you can't be sure where it leads, but you're not going to turn back now. you have to stoop so low, it would almost be easier to get on your hands and knees and crawl.
You step on a smooth stone surface. This too seems familiar. Another step. The angle pitches forward; then you're sliding, too fast to stop yourself, falling into blackness.
Somewhere a voice is singing. As your eyes slowly adjust to the pale green light, you realize that you are once again in the chambers of the Oracle of Time. The thin, ghostlike figure you remember stops singing. He looks at you intently.
You an hardly find words, but, as if to answer your questino before you ask it, this strange man -- if he is a man -- says, "You have found the Oracle of Time."
"Don't you remember? We've met before," you say. I must be going around in circles. Can you help me get back to my own time?"
"Sometimes time goes around in circles," the Oracle says. "Some break out of the circle; some don't."
"How can I break out?"
"This, my child, is something you must learn for yourself."
"All right," you say doubtfully, and are about to ask another question when he says:
"To begin you must go to the future or the past. Which do you say it will be?"
I wonder, if we choose the future again, do we go to literally the exact same place and scene? Or will it be different now that we remember we were there already? I haven't looked ahead so I honestly don't know.
On the other hand, we haven't seen the past yet, so that might be interesting as well.
