How does this thing work?

"Is this, like, an actual time machine? I thought such things were impossible?"

"Um, kind of," Miho begins, seeing as this is her area of expertise. "The first thing you should know about time travel is that time itself flows like a river, in one continuous stream, from the dawn of the universe, to where we are now, to even further. The second thing you should know is that there are many different ways to build a time machine; in this instance, I've built a machine that will send you to a copy timeline."

"Copy timeline?"

"Let's stick with the 'time as a river' analogy a moment longer. Say you're standing next to a small but fast moving stream, and you hold a stick in the middle of the stream, separating the water. Well, the stream will naturally circle around the stick before coming back to rejoin the rest of the current."

"So, the time machine is the stick in this analogy?"

"Yes! You're catching on! Once activated, the machine will send you to a spot where the timestream is separated from ours; there, you can essentially do and bang whoever you want, and our own stream will be completely unaffected. In addition, the time machine also acts as a sort of anchor that you are connected to by a sort of cosmic stream. All you need to know about that though is that when we want to bring you back, all we have to do is activate the machine and it will automatically pull the string, bringing you home. The equivalent in that river analogy I mentioned a moment ago would be pulling the stick out of the stream."