TIME AND CALENDAR

The Kentyans, naturally, have developed their own system for keeping time and marking the passage of dates. Both the time system and the calendar are heavily based on eights, which is only natural considering that the Kentyans use a base-eight counting system. The Kentyan day, which is 24.72 Earth hours long, is divided into sixteen periods called psod, grouped into eight stapsod, "day periods" and eight kenepsod, "night period." Historically, the night, no matter how long, was grouped into eight kenepsod and the day was grouped into eight stapsod, so the actual length of these periods varied through the course of the year. The inventors of this system lived near the equator, where day and night is always roughly of equal length, so the variations in the length did not concern them. In more recent times, the psod was standardized to be one sixteenth of an astronomical day, but the old meanings remain in the fact that, for local time, the first of the stapsod starts with dawn on the vernal equinox. The end of the fourth one is local noon, and the end of the eighth one is dusk. Other times in the year, some of the stapsod extend to before dawn and after dusk, and at other times, some kenepsod occur in daylight. By modern definition, the fifth stapsod starts at noon and the fifth kenepsod starts at midnight.
        The psod is a long unit of time, roughly 1.545 Earth hours long, so it is broken down into two secondary units, the first being the makso, of which there are eight in a psod. Each makso is about 11.59 Earth minutes long. The makso is further divided into eight luts, with one luts being about 1.45 Earth minutes. In historical times, time-measuring devices were no more accurate than one luts, so the Kentyans did not subdivide their units any further, but in more modern times, the fractional luts, measurements in one-eighth luts, which is about 0.18 Earth minutes, or just under eleven seconds, are used. This fraction can also be broken down into eights as well, giving the taluts, each of which is about 1.35 seconds long. Therefore, an expression of time in digital form would be like "2S7353," which indicates the second stapsod, the seventh makso (they and all the others run from zero to seven), the third luts, the fifth loluts and the third taluts of the day. The last four digits can also be read as a single number, since it is a number in the Kentyan scheme.
        The calendar is a bit more complicated. Since the Kentyan day is 24.72 hours long, the Kentyan year has 327.76699 (approximately) Kentyan days in it. This would suggest three years of 328 days followed by one year of 327 days, with further adjustments as necessary. It is by coincidence that 328 evenly divides by eight, giving fourty-one. Thus, it should be of no surprise that the Kentyan calendar consists of eight divisions called galab, which are the equivalent of months. Since Kent has no natural satellite, it has no orbiting body to define a month. The galab was simply introduced to break down the year into smaller units. The new year starts on the vernal equinox, so roughly two galab occupy each season, and the first day of each odd-numbered galab is considered a festival day. The months are named after the seasons, prefixed with the numbers tse for the first month of the season and ka for the second month. Thus, for "winter," tsapongk, the first month is tsetsapongk and the second month is katsapongk. Every four years, New Year's Eve comes a day early, since the last day of katsapongk, the last day of the year, is eliminated in a "short year" to allow the calendar to catch up with the seasons.
        Each month has fourty-one days in it (except for the short month every four years), and fourty is another number that can be divided by eight. Thus, each month, starting with the second day, is divided into five week-like periods of eight days, called yuloks. The first day of each odd-numbered month (the ones starting with tse-) are festival days. The first day of tsebatsuk (the first month of spring) is New Year's Day, and celebrates the arrival of spring. The other days celebrate the arrival of each of the seasons, while the first day of the even-numbered months (the ones starting with ka-) are said to be "introspective" days, when things are shut down, when commerce and other activity becomes minimal, and which allows people to quietly contemplate what is going on in their lives at that point. The one exception to this is that there is no introspective day in katsapongk in short years, at least traditionally (in modern times, the first of the month, even though it is within the first yuloks is still a holiday).
        Naturally, the calendar must be occasionally modified, since the pattern of one short year in four would eventually cause the calendar to fall behind the seasons. In a hundred years, that would lead to 32,775 days, but over a hundred solar years, the number of days is actually 32,776.699. The Kentyans correct the calendar by not having a short year in the last year of a century (the short years are the ones when divided by four leave a remainder of three, so 6119, for example, is a short year). Other corrections are made on an intermittent basis according to astronomers now attached to the Council of Ambassadors. A pattern for further corrections beyond the century has never been established, although it is customary to have no short year in years ending in 51 when the century is odd-numbered, and the first and fourth centuries as well. Thus, over a thousand years, the number of days would be 327,767, compared to a thousand solar years of 327,766.99. That is fairly accurate.