Text Notification/Report #1

[verinumeri]

Attention: Hadriel Residents
Subject: Additional Phone Applications

Please find attached two additional applications for the phones:

[1] Clock. I have spent the last 26 days timing the light intensify and de-intensify periods. Despite the imprecision of my tools (and the impediment of the fog for that period), I am 92.58% confident that the current settings are accurate. I observed 17 hours of light, 7 of dark. The light intensifies and de-intensifies at apparently the same time each day. The days are not getting longer or shorter, which is perhaps unsurprising, given the light does not imitate the movements of the/a sun. As such, I have set the clock such that light intensify ('sunrise') begins at 04:30 and light de-intensify ('sunset') begins at 21:30. I will continue to monitor and make updates as necessary.
Other features: Timer, Stopwatch, Alarm.

[2] Pedometer. The hardware of these phones contains composite sensors enabling step detection and counting, as reliant on the accelerometer. This 'app' when active will do as its title suggests: count your steps. It will also calculate distance traveled. That feature has been less accurate in testing, but suffices for an approximation. You may reset and/or save a record of both as you like. If you download the clock, it will reset each day at 00:00 and keep a record of the previous day's activity, with the number of days stored theoretically limitless.

Both applications permit user choice between constant background service and activity on selection alone. Obviously I recommend the former for the clock in particular, but it will sync via the network upon opening should you choose the latter and close then open it.

Final notes: If you have no use for either or both, then do not download them. There is no need to comment to that effect.

Admittedly, the daily reset and recording of steps and distance may be especially frivolous. I doubt any of you are on a fitness track. I added it because such applications tend to have that feature and for organization's sake. You may also turn that off. If for whatever daft reason you want that, but not the clock, too bad. I could do it, but at that point, you might as well download the clock.

Please do comment if you have any serious suggestions.

[ Attached: | ]


[ ooc: Posts/permissions re: clock app (note certain idiosyncrasies re: the alarm and time format), pedometer ]

Comments

[verinumeri]

I may be projecting my world's standards, especially the traditional sort, onto your world. It's your decision, then. I do agree that most young boys are particularly unbearable.

[ It would shock no one that he'd had a difficult social time as a child.

He's not offended by the suggestion that he's the damsel in distress, specifically. He's scandalized by the entire analogy. ]

We would be completely ridiculous with dragons. No, the only thing our romance needs is to be kept private.

[whichend]

No, I don't think you're projecting all that much. I don't think anyone besides my lady mother ever expected me to find a "boyfriend," not truly.

You're ridiculous anyway. Dragons are at least impressive.

1/2

[verinumeri]

[ You're ridiculous anyway. ]

[verinumeri]

I may have yet. My surprise was in reaction to two factors: (1) that you would have multiple 'boyfriends'; and (2) that you would at your age, which in many parts of my world is young for it.

I'll grant we made an inadvertent (on my part) spectacle, but it's still rude to say, Miss Arya.

[whichend]

In mine, it is not so uncommon. I might already be engaged to be married.

It's not so bad to be ridiculous. It means you're still yourself.

1/3

[verinumeri]

[verinumeri]

[ He'd protest the idea that to be ridiculous is to be himself, but he vaguely remembers a vivid dream of wrestling with Newton in kaiju guts, a dream as vivid as that he shared with Miss Arya.

And so.

He does not.

Besides. It's oddly sweet, wise. ]

[verinumeri]

I shouldn't project our values, but I do think it's young. You cannot be thirteen?

That didn't read like an apology [ the limitations of tone in text is this: he is now in jest ] but it did a better job.

[whichend]

I think I'm two-and-ten, but I don't know for certain.

It wasn't an apology. It was a fact, which is better.

[verinumeri]

Yes, too young. When you were taken here, about how many days would you have had until your birthday in your world? Does your world go by a 365 day calendar? How many days have you been here?

Agreed.

[whichend]

I didn't know what the day was. The last time I knew for certain what day it was, I was nine, and living in King's Landing. I think it has been three years since then. I was born in the spring.

Bruce thinks that new people come once a month. I came with the first group, and your group is the ninth, so I think I have been here for nine months. But that is just a guess.

[verinumeri]

[ Three years. The implications are disquieting. The text at least keeps his expression from broadcasting or his tone from giving him away. ]

Was it spring when you were taken from there and brought here? Can you speak to how many days were in your year?

Yes, Dr. Banner speculated it was June, our sixth month. In three days, if the Door opens, that will further support his theory. That would make it summer now by our calendar.

[whichend]

Winter had just begun. The first snows were falling in the Riverlands.

I don't know exactly how many days. Only maesters know that, and girls can't become maesters.

Your seasons come monthly? Ours can last years and years.

[verinumeri]

What is a maester? I'll presume some level of education and teaching, if they're the only one with the knowledge of the days. Why can't girls become maesters?

I suppose that's a daft question. Your world does the absurdly young marriages and medieval wars and the like, and your notion of romance had to do with singing and hair brushing, so I suppose there are rigid gender roles. However, I'll tell you, Miss Arya, there is nothing about a woman's mind that makes her any less suited for that sort of thing.

[ Hard not to get a bit impassioned, when women like Dr. Lightcap and Ranger Mori were essential to the war. ]

Not that any of that helps me sort your age. If you'd years of spring, then how did you know you were nine? You must have had some way of marking it?

Yes, we divvy them by threes, though it doesn't always match the location. Curious about your seasons. It may be something in the tilt of your planet.

[whichend]

Tha maesters are scholars trained in the Citadel and will often advise the lords and ladies of great houses. They are said to be the sharpest minds in all of the Seven Kingdoms. Women cannot become maesters because that's the rule.

I know that. It's the old men in the citadel who don't know that.

[ distantly, Arya remembers a girl telling her father that she'd be the High Septon, only for her father to chuckle and tell her she could marry the High Septon, as if that was just as good. ]

The citadel maesters would declare the year's beginning and year's end. I think they chart it by watching the stars. They change, you know, throughout the year and then go back to the same once the year is done. It typically takes two-and-ten moons, I think. Perhaps a little more.

Your seasons don't match your locations? That doesn't make sense. You could have terribly hot winters that way.

[verinumeri]

I suppose it's always been like that. The real madness of it is, they lose out on a terrible lot. There are all sorts of contributions women might bring, but holding fast to that sort of thinking means humanity as a whole loses out.

Yes, it's much the same for us. Twelve months and measuring by the stars, but in fact, though the stars do travel, it's the Earth's movement that causes that effect. How early in the year was your birthday, then?

It's more that there are locations where they'll say they have Winter, Spring, Summer, and Autumn, but the temperatures do not change much. It might be more a wet and dry season, and though it's warmer or colder otherwise, it never snows.

[whichend]

It's mad, but they want it that way. That's why I taught myself to hold a sword and shoot a bow and arrow. They don't get to decide what I know and what I don't.

In the later part of the year, a couple moons after halfway, I think.

There's snow almost all the time, where I'm from, except during the hottest of summers.

[verinumeri]

Likely, you could teach yourself about the stars, too. I suppose a bow and arrow have a more immediate appeal and utility.

Counting the second moon? If halfway's the sixth, or what we call June, seventh is July, eighth August, ninth September. How many moons had it been when you came here? Going by the day would be more accurate, but keeping to the month would be simpler.

There are places like that, too. You'll be close to a Pole, North or South.

[whichend]

I should have taught myself more about the stars. For directions. I've gotten lost trying to follow a river, but stars rarely fail.

Between eight and ten, I would guess. I wasn't able to see the moon for quite some time.

I'm from the North. I knew that already.

[verinumeri]

Perhaps if you return, you may yet be able to. Here, of course, you couldn't even with the inclination.

So it may have been about or a month or two after your birthday, by the month in your world, when you were then taken here?

Of course.

[ Attempting to also pinpoint a time by the season doesn't seem a useful exercise, though he considers it long enough to dismiss it. ]

Did you come at the same time as Dr. Banner?

[whichend]

I'm not going back.

[ She wants to make that clear. She doesn't want the Door to send her back because it thinks she wants to go. ]

That could be right.

I did. He was one of the first people I met here.

[verinumeri]

[ Ah.

If she were to say so, he'd doubt the Door operated like that -- but. Ah. His world's hardly a guarantee of safety, or he'd wonder...

but, Dr. Banner had been with the first group, just as she had said she'd been. A needless confirmation. ]

He's speculated that the days here are mimicking ours, rather, the months. Twelve months with days that correspond to a calendar on my Earth. As it should be the seventh soon, next month would be the eighth month, should the pattern hold, so that might technically hold the day.

It might be best to go by that, rather than attempt accuracy, as I don't know if your planet marks birthdays by 365 day periods, and we can't be more exact with your time. That said, if it was two months after your birthday, and you'll have been here for about ten months next month anyway, it actually aligns rather nicely.

One way or another, you may be thirteen next month.

[whichend]

[ Arya doesn't exactly follow the calculation -- and if she's being honest, she doesn't really care about the calendar. Which is why Gottlieb's conclusion is a little startling. ]

That feels likely.

[ Arya doesn't really know what to say. She hasn't celebrated a name day in years, and she hasn't acted her age in years. On the other hand, it's rather nice to know how old she is, and Arya is still proud for surviving another year. She'll never not be. ]