"It's so hard to believe Thaumatology grew out of Christianity," says Sumiko. "They're so different."

"Just because Claremont grew up Christian doesn't mean her faith grew out of Christianity," coughs Larissa.

"Still, it's interesting to wonder from a historical perspective how Thaumatology would be different if it had been founded by a former Hindu, for instance, instead of a former Quaker."

"I don't know enough about Hindus to guess," says Sumiko.

"Me neither, unfortunately. The sort of thing you learn in school isn't really the right sort of information to make that kind of prediction."

"And if you made it there'd be no way to tell if you were right," Sumiko says.

"Not without a time machine, no, not really. Which makes it hard to even lean on other people's predictions. Lots of pop history books have that problem, they say stuff about cause and effect and I have no way to verify which authors know know what they're talking about."

That weekend, the shooting range is happy to accept her presence as long as she has a guardian spotting her the whole time. It has Very Strict Rules that she is to Follow Without Fail Or Be Kicked Out.

The Berkshire County pinch squad leader, Marchessa Marks, wants to get on the phone with her sometime.

Margaret will Follow The Rules Without Fail. She's happy to talk to Marchessa Marks after patrol Monday evening, or earlier if they don't mind the chance that she'll have to drop the phone and fight a swarm mid-call.

That risk is fine with Marchessa, who has the same constraint!

So on Monday Margaret will sit in a corner of the truck with her cellphone instead of immediately starting her homework.

"Hello Ms Marks, this is Margaret Perry calling."

"Hi, Margaret. So you wanna join our pinch squad and see how your power does on the big 'uns?"

"That's right! I've fought big ones a couple times so far, but it's mostly newer swarms over here."

"Vanessa dropped me a line and says you're a precog, that sounds pretty useful. What've you got in mind for experiments?"

"First, I've got a danger sense that extends a bit farther than my swarm-sense proper, and can pick up on swarms a minute or two before they actually start. Then I've got a thing where whenever I'm in a fight or about to be, I can sense where everyone is going to go and what they're going to do before they do it." She describes the system her current squad has for tactical coordination. "I'm expecting that to be more useful for the big monsters than it is for new swarms, because there's only the one enemy to tell people about. I might also be able to get it to help with detection, if I can get it to foresee someone reporting that they found one, and then only having to go check that direction if they actually did. But my danger sense is probably the more useful thing on that front."

"Anything like that with a range limit isn't gonna be as useful as it sounds for finding monsters," says Marchessa. "Means you need to move around to cover much with it. Seeing calls coming would be great, though."

"The problem is that the one has a distance limit and the other has a time limit. It's long enough to be really useful in the middle of a fight where seconds matter, but a handful of extra seconds warning on a call coming in probably isn't much help."

"Ah, yeah, not usually. They like to say every second counts when they're talking about whether you should call 911 right away or finish your fries first but it really doesn't."

"Yeah. So I'm more useful once the fight's already started than I am in finding it.

I do have one other power, but unfortunately it isn't as reliable as the others. I sometimes get, I've been calling them prophecies, true statements coming out of my mouth that I have no way of knowing about. The problem is they only happen a few times a week and aren't always about monster locations. So while it's good to use them when they happen, it's not really something you could build a strategy around. I do have some ideas about how to get it to happen more often, though."

"What're your ideas?"

"It mostly seems to happen when I'm talking to someone else, and relate to whatever I'm talking about at the time. So if I sit around speculating with someone about where there might be a monster, I'm more likely to get a prophecy about it. And those are way less time- and distance-limited."

"If you only get a few a week that seems like it'd be awfully tedious to try to get them about monsters all the time."

"The monster ones are more useful than any of the other topics I tend to get a lot of, but I definitely get it if nobody wants to sit there while I talk about monsters. I can try just thinking about them a lot during shifts and see if that helps, too."

"I was thinking tedious for you, other people could take turns."

"Oh, in that case I'm up for some tedium at least until we find out how much it helps."

"Maybe you should hang out on swarmspotting forms."