About ten times faster than what you've previously done

As soon as you have a chance to step outside the office building, you take off down the highway as fast as you can, expertly avoiding cars and trucks when you can't stay off the road, feeling confident that you're moving so fast the drivers will barely see you. Before you realize it, you're already in the next town over and not even sweating yet.

At this point you remember this is still supposed to be your lunch break, and decide to take advantage of your speed to visit one of your all-time favorite restaurants that would normally take you hours to reach from home, and typically only visit on vacation when I feel like blowing a lot of cash on gas and real restaurant food.

You make it to the restaurant, several cities over from your current location, in a matter of seconds. The only problem is, your lunch hour is only 45 minutes, and food at this place can take almost an hour to make it to your table. Luckily, you're the only customer at the moment, since nobody really goes to a fancy restaurant during their lunch break, for the aforementioned reason.

The maitre looks at you up and down, wondering about your ears, but decides not to comment on it.

Maitre: "Table for one, madame?"

Sophie: "Yes please, thank you! Wow, I sure came at a good time, didn't I?"

You follow the maitre to whichever table they recommend, not feeling too picky about it yourself, and then wait for a waiter to come by with a menu and to take your drink order.

Sophie: "Hi! Can I get...um, you know what, just some water? Not sure my body can handle any caffeine or excess sugar right now, hehe."

You start looking over the menu.

Sophie: "Hmm, I wasn't planning to spend this much on lunch today...but hey, I'm saving money on gas, right? Screw it, I'm getting my usual."

You wait for the waiter to come back, and then order a chicken pot pie. This might be a long wait, but you'll hopefully be able to eat and return back to your work station in a matter of seconds if need be.

You nervously peer at the passing minutes on your watch, and keep thinking about the commotion in the kitchen, and how much you desire to just barge in and use your superspeed to cook the meal in record time. But you doubt that your meal would get done any faster - it needs to cook, after all. Also you wouldn't know how to prepare it.

Sophie: "Ugh, every second feels like hours now! I need to chill out."

Your speed has you feeling very antsy. Maybe there's a way for you to dial back and return to normal, at least temporarily.

You take a deep breath and focus on calming yourself, hoping you can get your mind to slow down at least a little, so you don't get bored to **** just from sitting and waiting for food to cook. You focus on clearing your mind. Meditating. You've never been much of a zen maniac, but you figure you can intuit how it works. You just breathe in and out and stop thinking about anything.

Soon your speed dials down, and you're experiencing the world at a normal pace once more. But this gets you thinking, does this work the other way too? It'd be mighty convenient for skipping to when your meal is ready.

You focus even more. You slow your breathing, and hear your heart rate continuously decelerate. Minutes seem to fly by in seconds. Suddenly, you're snapped back to attention as the waiter arrives with your plate.

Waiter: "Enjoy your meal, madam."

You jump up, and your eyes snap open.

Sophie: "Oh! Thank you, that didn't take long at all!"

Feeling like you only waited about a minute, you dig into your chicken pot pie. As you check your wristwatch to see how fast you'll need to wolf down this meal, you see to your perplexment that only five minutes has passed. The clock on the restaurant wall shows the same time.

Sophie: "Wait, what? Wow, I guess they really were fast...I thought for a second it was just me. This food sure doesn't taste like it was made in just a couple minutes..."

You keep eating and enjoying your food, but you're getting ideas. You look towards the waitress, still walking towards the kitchen.

Sophie: "(Can I only speed up and slow down myself, or can I do it to other things too?)"

As the waiter is walking away, you momentarily try to accelerate time relative to him. Indeed, for the shortest moment, it looks like he's in a sped up video. You try to look at your watch at the same time to discern whether time is moving differently elsewhere.

Then, as the waiter enters the kitchen and notices everyone else seemingly slowed down, he panics and runs out of the kitchen.

Sophie: "Oh crap! I think he noticed something weird is happening! Better undo it!"

You focus on restoring the waiter's time progression relative to everything else. Soon he looks around in bewilderment and calms down. Luckily, kitchen staff is full of crackheads, so he chalks this up to a bad and untimely acid flashback.

Sophie: "Guess that answers that question. I'll never have to wait for anything again!"

As you keep eating, you suddenly remember the cat tail that you've had this whole time.

Sophie: "Hmm...I'm sure this is useful for something too, right?"

You hand off your fork to your cat tail and start using it to eat your chicken pot pie instead of your hands. Your tail is prehensile, and quite deft. You try, and even manage to balance your fork over the tip without much effort - something which would've been prohibitively difficult for you even with hands just yesterday. Your transformation must've come equipped with super agility.

Then, as you inattentively flick your tail in the air from side to side, you momentarily feel like dragging something corporeal. In an instant, the restaurant has other patrons eating. They definitely weren't there before. Have you traveled in time?

No, you check your watch. It's still well within your lunch time. You then look down at your table and see that you're now eating a sirloin steak instead of a chicken pot pie, and also your dress has a different cut and coloring.

You don't quite realize it yet, but you've traveled sideways in time, into an alternative reality.

Sophie: "Wait...what's going on? Did I just...?"

Strange false memories flood out of your mind, confounding you. What the hell just happened? You reach out with your tail again to see if you can recreate it, and see if that has further effects on your memories or surroundings.

You swipe again into the same direction. Now you find yourself standing at a construction site, in a much fancier dress than before, with bejeweled rings adorning your fingers. Intuitively, you know that this will be the site of your company's new headquarters. An engineer stands beside you, pointing out the upcoming features of the building to you.

Engineer: "On the West side there, will be the helipad, and to balance it out is the infinity pool on the East side, as you wanted, miss."

Now the contrast is too stark. You can clearly tell that this wasn't the state of matter just moments ago when you swiped your tail. The engineer doesn't even notice your epiphany, and just assumes that you're in rapt admiration of the building work.

Sophie: "Uh...yes, of course! I'm sure this new headquarters will turn out wonderful with this design."

You smile to yourself; somehow, just by flicking your tail, you've transformed your entire life!

Sophie: "Hmm, what else can I make happen?"