Kalendar
Molly passed her phone across to Harold. “Have you seen this? The idiots are going to make one single timezone around the whole world!”
Harold squinted to read from the screen, stabbing at the X to close pop-up video adverts and again to dismiss the full-page cookie warning. The text jumped around as adverts loaded, making him scroll up and down the page to find the news article.
“Well, at least we won’t have that Spring Forward, Fall Back time change nonsense. That just buggers everything up for a couple of weeks twice a year.”
“I know that. Just seems odd. It’ll be noon here, and noon in Australia, but it will be the middle of the day here, and the middle of the night there. How does that make sense?”
“I dare say people will keep sleeping at night time and working and stuff in the day time, just the numbers on the clock will be different. You tell me, how does it make sense for noon to be at a different time depending on where you live? That’s just a spinning-ball theory construct.”
Molly turned away, Harold didn’t see her roll her eyes. She could tell Harold was winding up for a flat-earth monologue. To distract him she turned on the television. A squat-faced politician with the look of a grey-haired schoolboy in gold-rimmed spectacles was inexplicably giving an interview while standing in torrential rain outside Parliament.
“Granted, we are bitterly disappointed that the Greenwich Prime Meridian will not be used to define the new Universal Time Zone. We still believe that we have the strongest case, based on the International ratification of 1884. It has been used worldwide since at least 1765.”
The camera cut to the interviewer. “Do we know yet where the new Prime Meridian will fall? How many hours different will Britain be from global time?”
The politician gave a pained smile. “Listen, you have to put aside these regressive solar-centric ideas. The time will be the time, will be the time. The whole world united for the first ‘time’ in history, if you’ll pardon the pun.”
“I’m going to have to press you on this, Minister. Just for the sake of understanding the scale of the transition, what will the adjustment be?”
“Ah, this is something I’m particularly proud of. There was as lot of contention over this point. Every country wanted to claim the Prime Meridian. It was utter, utter chaos. Finally, the British team proposed a rather insightful compromise.”
“And what was that compromise, Minister?”
“It was rather simple, when you think about it. We simply define a day as twenty three hours. The Prime Meridian effectively moves around the globe day by day over a twenty four day period. Every nation on Earth is on an equal footing. The important thing is that when it is 11:30am on Monday the 30th of June in New York, it is 11:30am on Monday the 30th of June in Brisbane. Successfully eliminating the confusion of what the date is on the other side of the world.”
“Thank you Minister.” The interviewer turned to the camera. “There you have it. A sweeping reform that we are assured will usher in a new age of prosperity through streamlined business processes. Back to you in the studio.”
Molly sat in stunned silence for a moment. “Twenty three hours in a day. Did you ever hear the like, Harry?”
Harold took off his glasses and polished them with the hem of his cardigan. “Oh yes, it all makes sense when you think about it. I daresay they’ll get rid of the hour from midnight to 1AM. Who starts counting at zero anyway?”
Six months later, Molly and Harold sat in the pub at 5PM on July 1st. The streets outside were crowded with commuters, buses jostling on the roads with a stream of cars heading home after work. The sky was black, a bright full moon looming large just above the city skyline.
There was chatter in the pub about the imminent broadcast. Some big news was promised. Molly looked around the strained haggard faces. She fervently hoped that the government was going to announce its withdrawal from the global time zone. The twice yearly time change had been eliminated, replaced with a daily adjustment as the whole world awoke an hour earlier every day.
Molly grumbled “They said we’d carry on like before. Get up the same time as we used to, only the numbers on the clock were supposed to change, not whether we got to see daylight or not that day.”
Harold sipped his beer. “They know what they’re doing, love. What’s the point of the Universal Time Zone if you can’t send an email and expect someone to be there to read it wherever they are? That’s modern business for you. Time is key. Speed is essential.”
“You’re just saying what they told you on the telly last night. And that silly chat site you’re always on.”
Harold looked hurt. “Only saying what makes sense, love. No need to get snippy.”
Molly shook her head. “I ain’t arguing. Completely unrelated, when’s the last time you didn’t feel bone-weary all the time?”
Harold didn’t answer. He picked up his beer and turned away from her, watching a small crowd gathering outside the pub. There seemed to have been a minor traffic accident across the road. There were a lot of those, recently.
The landlord switched all the TVs to a news channel, and turned up the sound. The conversations slowly came to a halt as people turned their attention to the Minister, formally suited and sitting behind a desk, directly addressing the camera.
Holly muttered “Come on you daft twonk, grow some balls, put an end to this madness.”
A badly placed studio light reflected from the Minister’s glasses giving him a robotic, soulless look. “I would personally like to thank the people of Britain for their patience and commitment to Britain’s place in the international community during this period of adjustment. I will be the first to admit that there have been some teethng problems, but I am happy to confirm that projections show that within a year Britain will show a massive GDP boost that will more than offset the current deficit from the adoption of the UTZ.”
Molly’s grip tightened around her glass.
The Minister continued. “Further analysis has shown that slight adjustments are needed to make the UTZ less disruptive to the people of the World.
“Firstly, the arbitrary month-length system is out of step with the UTZ. The failed legacy system has always been confusing with its thirty days, thirty one, twenty eight or twenty nine days in a month. From tomorrow, the world will be switching to a fixed month length of twenty four days. This coincides with the cycle that synchronises the time of day with solar noon. For Britain, the day of synchronicity will be on the fourth of every month. To accommodate this change, tomorrow will be the 15th day of the 7th month.
“We will also be adopting a fifteen-month year, giving 360 days per year. There is broad international agreement that we will adjust the year to maintain parity with the Solar year, following some grumbling from the Boffins. Therefore there will be a five day holiday, known worldwide as the Fiesta between the 24th day of the 15th month and the first day of the first month of the next year. The leap day will be maintained, adding a sixth day to the Fiesta every fourth year.”
“Please note that from tomorrow, and through to the end of the year we will be operating a 25 hour day to recover the seven and a half days that were lost in the beginning of the year because of the 23 hour days. There’s an easy way to remember this: ‘Spring Forward with 23 hour days, Fall Back with 25’.
There was a pause while the Minister turned to accept a sheet of paper handed to him. As he scanned its contents, Molly became aware of a rising hubbub of muttering around the pub.
The landlord yelled “Oy! Keep it down!” as the Minister addressed the camera again. “Well, this is a little unexpected, but seems to make perfect sense. Given the twenty-four day months, it has been decided to reduce the week to six days. Since Friday, Saturday, and Sunday are important to many religions, it has been decided to eliminate Mondays. Well, as I say, rather unexpected but I can’t imagine too many people will be affected by eliminating a day from the week. It will make it much easier to determine whether it is going to be dark or light on any given day.
“I’d like to finish by again thanking the British public for their massive support for this international initiative. I would also like to voice my appreciation for the police and armed forces that have maintained public order during the entirely unrelated illegal protests and acts of violence over the past half year. Thank you, and goodnight.”
There was an incoherent yell. With a crash, the Minister’s smiling face splintered into a spiders web of cracked glass and misfiring screen shards.
The landlord looked aghast at Molly, who stood shaking after throwing her beer glass at the TV. Slowly he picked up a heavy pint glass, turned to another television. The Minister’s grinning face was a backdrop to an earnest discussion. The landlord launched the tankard towards the screen. After a moment of silence, the customers followed him out into the growing mob in the dark streets of London.