time and date

So! It's been a long time since I wrote anything here, and as such, I decided it was long past time, so to speak, that I share a little bit more about the Quay, this time in a rather less formal manner. Recently, I've been working on the Quay ideas of time and date, and thought that it would make for an interesting, if slightly mathematical, view into daily Quay life. Of course, the usual disclaimer applies: All of this is highly subject to change, in particular any instances of the Quay language itself.

The Vines

Before I can even begin to discuss how Quay time is structured, I need to introduce you to the primary way in which they mark time, there in Quayaln where the sun doesn't reach. As mentioned in the Prolegomena, light-producing vines are the primary source of light in the City. These vines cover everything, clinging to the ice walls and ceilings of the homeland. Granted, they're not exactly natural.

The oldest ancestors of the vines which we have any record of were domesticated by the Majr for use in lighting the tunnels of their cliff-side homes. For the Majr, the vines were not a primary light source, as their civilization still had full access to the outdoors, and mostly used natural light. The vines were domesticated for religious uses, for the lighting of certain temples buried far within the rock, and it stands to reason that the Quay, in their role as semi-mystical servants, were able to sneak a few cuttings for their own use. At this point in time, the Quay still had a limited understanding of the nature of nanotechnology, and were able to engineer a derivative species of sorts: While the original vines were semi-carnivorous plants which used light to attract their prey, the Quay would soon engineer them to devote all of their energy towards producing the soft blue glow for which they are now known. They are now less than natural, each individual plant actually the result of symbiosis between nanotechnological and biological elements.

Their are many separate strains of light vines within Quayaln, and an entire section of Quay society is devoted to caring for and breeding them, maintaining the light cycle. Most vines have large, roughly triangular leaves with the stem directly in the middle; at night, the remnants of their old carnivorous nature causes the plants to fold the leaves in half and draw them closer to the stem. They flower rarely, but when they do the flowers come in two varieties depending on the gender of the plant: Some are large, heavy, orchid-like; the others are similar to small poppies, and grow plentifully all along the stem's length. The day/night cycle of the vines is biologically ingrained, but subject to some level of control by those skilled with the plants; those who are responsible for the vines, are responsible for Quay time. This ability is generally only used during the Quay new years celebration, which I'll talk about below.

The Day

Now that that's out of the way, on to the Quay day. When the first Modern Quay first built Quayaln, they were fresh from above ground, from the decades of the Second Exodus. They were also still in possession of much of their old technology, and still had access to accurate clocks. If these clocks still exist in Quayaln today they are hidden somewhere, out of the public view, but their effect remains: The Quay day, as measured by the vines, has strayed very little from the beginning of the Modern era until now, which in turn means that it is very close to the length of the day used by humans, roughly twenty-four of our hours. Now, I have yet to decide exactly when the Quay day begins with respect to the human clock, a decision that will likely rest on the exact coordinates of the Majr Empire and thus the time zone which the Quay lived in before the Second Exodus. So while I can't yet tell what time it is in Quayaln, I can help you get a sense for what it's like to live a day according to a Quay clock.

The Quay divide the day primarily into four portions, called kjaalisj (pronounced "kyaaleesh"), which translates, roughly, as "groupings." The four kjaalisj are called ngihööd ("Morning"), mjaadi ("Day"), saasjim ("Evening"), and käirp ("Night"). The translations are rather rough, but at least they give you a sense of the function of each kjaalisj: ngihööd and saasjim cover the periods of twilight, more or less, while mjaadi and käirp cover the period of light and dark.

Now! Each of the kjaalisj is in turn divided into seven parts called dulu (meaning, more or less, "divisions"), which are the Quay equivalent of hours. From here on in, the divisions are all strictly metrical: Each dulu has ten pjot, which each have ten pjot-mol ("small pjot"), and so on basically as far as you need (pjot-mol are the smallest unit in common use, even though they seem quite long by human standards, being nearly thirty seconds each).

How does this actually play out in day-to-day usage? Being used to the human system, it may seem a bit odd, at first, to have a time-keeping method in which no large emphasis is placed on sunrise and sunset, and in which "midday" and "midnight" actually fall in between hours. On the other hand, the system works quite well for Quayaln, as the vines take a fairly large amount of time to switch from full-light to full-dark, creating period of twilight very nearly as long as the kjaalisj call for. The Quay day begins with a heavy meal (often the largest of the day) occurring sometime within the first three dulu of ngihööd. The morning twilight is generally considered a time for personal work, with the major work-day of beginning sometime towards its end. The second meal of the day occurs around the start of mjaadi, and is usually a light one. The busiest times of the day are during late mjaadi and early saasjim, relaxing around the time of mid-saasjim. The final meal occurs right around this period, and sleep begins in the last few dulu before darkness sets in.

For any who are interested in seeing how this time-system feels, conversion to the human system is relatively simple, assuming you're willing to go by rough estimates: Each kjaalisj is exactly six hours long, with the first beginning at 3AM, the next at 9AM, then 3PM, then 9PM. Within this, each dulu works out to just over 50 minutes long, and thus each pjot to about five minutes. Really, just do a quick calculation of how many five-minute periods have passed since the beginning of the last kjaalisj mark, divide by ten (keeping the remainder), and you've got a rough Quay time equivalent. I write Quay times in a similar format to human times: Where I am, it's currently 10:55PM, which converts to käirp-2:3. (Oops! I suppose I should be asleep by now!)

The Date

Ignoring the fact that my sleep cycle is out of sync with the Quay time system (and, let's be honest, the human time system as well!), I'm going to dive in to the rather large topic of the Quay calendar. To those not accustomed to it, the Quay date system is a rather complex and unwieldy mechanism, comprised of several counts running simultaneously, most of them out of sync with the human notion of time structure. In the end, however, its just as accurate and just as useful as any human calendar, have the interesting property of being based on a very long cycle but encouraging relatively short term thinking.

The Quay calendar system was created by a team of First Generation designers, presumably out of a prior system likely inherited from the Majr (but possibly going back to the Royal Quay). It involves two counts, running simultaneously, called the xäil-naanais (where the x represents a German/Hebrew "ch" sound) and lhilhööd-naanais, which mean, more or less, the "archetype-cycle" and the "breathe-cycle".In colloquial Toquay, these are commonly referred to by the first part of the name, while the calendar itself be referred to as the njaanais, meaning "the cycles." The xäil is a cycle purely of numbers, and is often considered the more important of the two. The lhilhööd is a cycle of both numbers and proper names, and is often seen as subordinate. The Quay year begins when the two cycles line up, each on their first day; in between then, the two run independently and out of sync, with a few important connections.

The lhilhööd is a cycle of forty days, ten groups of four. Symbolically, the four days of the cycle represent the motion of breathing from which the cycle derives its name. The days of the cycle are named dumul ("that which rises"), lhoni ("that which is held"), kodi ("that which falls"), and säisjm ("rest"), and are usually numbered first through tenth depending on where they fall in the larger lhilhööd cycle. Socially, the lhilhööd serves a function similar to our weeks, being used to determine which days are spent primarily working or which resting, how much time is away on a trip, etc. In general, the Quay will usually devote an entire "breath" to any important project or event, the same way we might devote a weekend.

The larger of the two cycles is the xäil. Xäil itself is a slightly difficult word to translate, a term hailing from the religious traditions of the Quay. Here, I have translated it as "archetype," but it is actually closely related to the verb "to manifest," or "to be present." While this may seem rather distant from "archetype," the word has acquired very similar usage among the religious traditions of the Quay, which, in general, are a topic for another time. For now, let it suffice to say that the days of the xäil are numbered one through nine, giving one day to each non-zero digit, and that by extension, each is linked to a Quay deity. The nine-day cycle is repeated nine times, creating the eighty-one days of the full xäil-naanais. These eighty-one days are used similarly to human months, organizing Quay life on a larger scale than than the four-day breaths.

Now, the full calendar only really emerges when these two njaanais are used together. The eighty-one days of the xäil, times the forty days of the lhilhööd, yields a Quay year of 3240 days, the number of days between each synchronization of the cycles. Within this rather large time span, every day has a wholly unique identifier, the combination of lhilhööd and xäil.

Anyone used to the human system will quickly notice, of course, that there is no way to keep track of exactly how many times around the eighty-one or forty days have gone, unlike the numbering and naming of the Western months. Well, indeed, there actually is such a system, and it arises naturally from the combination of the njaanais: Each time the eighty-one days of the xäil have gone by, the next cycle begins one day later within the forty day lhilhööd cycle. That is, the first xäil begins on the first day of the lhilhööd, the next on the second day, the next on the third, and so on. Thus, when one needs to indentify a particular xäil within the year, one simply gives the lhilhööd day on which it started! In common usage, the number part of the lhilhööd is usually done away with, meaning that each xäil is associated with a breath-word, allowing one to refer quite easily to any xäil within four cycles of the current time, more than long enough for most any purpose.

All this brings us to the question of conversions. Unlike with the times of the day, I have indeed worked out the exact beginning and end dates of the current Quay year, allowing for complete conversions of Western dates to Quay dates. The current Quay year started on December 3rd, 1997, making today (November 22nd, 2005) 9.5/8säisjm. The numbers before the slash represent the xäil date, the larger digit coming first (i.e. tomorrow will be 9.6, not 1.5), while the part after the slash means that it is the eighth säisjm of the current lhilhööd-naanais. (Note that this is not necessarily the notation used by the Quay, only a system I've devised to record dates for myself.) There you have it!


The Five Days

One last important part of the yearly Quay calendar has been left out: The Quay new years celebration. In Quayaln, New Years is a five-day affair, and those five days are considered intercalary (i.e. they fall in between years and officially have no dates). These five days have been celebrated ever since the arrival of the First Generation at Quayaln. Having wandered for several decades in search of a home (or the means to create one), the First Generation spent the first two days after securing their safety remembering and mourning all that had died during the years of the Second Exodus, keeping Quayaln lit for the entire time. On the third day, the lights of Quayaln were allowed to slowly dim, and the Quay were silent as the twilight overtook their new home. Finally, darkness was allowed to fall, and was kept over the City for two whole days, during which the Quay celebrated their new home, their safety, and their future.

Today, the same pattern is observed: Two days are spent with the City fully lit, all Quay engaged in mourning and remembering the past. Silence is then held for a day of twilight, until celebrations overtake the City during the two days of night. This is perhaps the most important holiday of the Quay year, a truly quintessential Quayaln experience.

-lelandpaul
QD: 9.5/8säisjm