You had me at 'Ox Bow Lake'" I sighed. Temporal Repair 202, the practical. "So we have this rift, right? And you're saying it's like God was dealing out the cards in a Cosmic Bridge Game, when this stupid 21st century chronoterrorist (I hate Chrono's) interrupted his deal."

My instructor nodded, pleased at least one of us had listened and remembered his tortuous analogies. He cleared his throat, "So, how does God carry on dealing so everyone still gets the cards they were 'meant' to get?"

We all looked at one another round the card table. We were stumped. Not one of us could recall the position of the last dealt card. Actually, this wasn't such a bad model after all. One error would result in disorder (literally in this case) for all. Then our tutor turned over the deck he'd been distributing clockwise, and started with himself dealt the cards to the right (backwards!) until they'd run out. Every card where it should have been with no need to breakdown the temporal schism at all. Genius. Now all we had to do was apply it…