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The scene resembled your most outrageous bookettes, but you believed that the girl whose holo had appeared in front of you was real - and really a telepath.
"Next year, Lottery will discover York," she said. You barely had a chance to smile in relief before she continued. "He will break rapidly under the strain of our work - unless you can use the information I'm sending you to help him.
"In fourteen years, you'll meet Mira." This time Amber herself smiled, and did not add a warning to her comment.
"The next telepath after that will be your own grandson, born this year. In my timeline, his telepathy is unreliable, and he will have a difficult life because of it. Of course you will celebrate him and what he can offer to the Hive," Amber said earnestly, "but the Hive must never be in the position of relying on his talents to avert disaster." She paused, the shadows in her eyes showing that she had lived through this situation, and been scarred. Perhaps, you speculated, this was even the inciting reason for her attempt to reach out through the decades to you. "If York survives, your grandson's path will be easier."
"All of our paths will be easier," you said, dazed at the speed by which Amber was alternating between good and bad news. Finally - a true telepathic descendant! You had hoped so much for that. And yet Amber was warning you that you should prepare to be disappointed in that hope.
You supposed you had eighteen years to figure out how to set the right balance between encouragement and restraint.
Amber nodded. "Yes. And in twenty-three years, if the timeline holds, you'll meet Olivia. Perhaps intervention in childhood will help her discover the facet of herself that allows her to defeat fragmentation. In my timeline, she survives her work, but her gifts are lost to the Hive."
You understood the importance of what Amber was saying to you directly, but you were struck by her implications. "Will I meet you?"
"No," Amber said. "In my timeline, our lives overlap; It would have been possible for us to pass at an interchange, or perhaps you handled a case that affected me. But we never became acquainted. Now, I'm afraid you won't have the chance."
You stared at her. "Because of this conversation?"
"Yes," Amber said simply. "If you can save York - and address certain other problems - you will change the future for the better, and it might not have a me in it I would recognize. I've made my peace with that. I've lost people who matter a great deal to me, Claire. But more than that, I fear losing the Hive. And I believe I've given you enough time to save it, both for those I love and those I could love, if I knew them."
You had to challenge that. "Is time travel such a solved problem, now?" You were strong in your faith. You believed that Amber's spirit - even if removed from life in the Hive by something stranger than death - would come back to the Hive in another form.
Amber laughed. "I could be wrong. It doesn't matter. I have to place my trust in you. Thank you, Claire. I know you'll do everything you can. You saved Celandine. You..." She shook her head, deciding against words she'd almost said. "Thank you," she repeated.
Perhaps you should have been thanking her. You weren't sure. You wouldn't be sure for decades - if then. You fell back on something you were much surer of - something you hoped would be a comfort to her. "The Hive is our world," you said.
She smiled, just before the holo disappeared. "And we are the Hive."