human
What are our seconds, minutes, hours, and weeks after all? he queried.
gpt
They are only arbitrary and meaningless divisions of time, which we have found necessary because we have a very meagre heavenly clockwork; but here they have a very elaborate one. Our day is a rational period based on the Sun's revolution. Here they have seen fit to give up the Sun-day to simplify matters and stick to a Moon-day. Their two contrary moons furnish a rational, if rather intricate, method of telling the time at night. They are best understood by imagining them to represent the two hands of a clock. The smaller moon is what may be called a 'week hand,' completing its revolution in five and a half Sun-days; which they have for convenience divided into six Moon-days of twenty-two hours each. The larger moon makes two complete revolutions in a day, just as the hour hand of a clock does; and it really makes but little difference that it travels around the dial in an opposite direction to that of the 'week hand,' or that they both gain two hours a day on the Sun. These are mere details, that one gets used to in the end.
human
Doctor, you argue like the old farmer I used to know, who stuck to the clock handed down by his grandfather, and maintained that no new-fangled arrangement kept as good time. It was true that the striking apparatus had long ago failed to agree with the hands; and the hands themselves, owing to the accumulated inaccuracies of years, no longer denoted the real time; nevertheless, whenever it struck seven he could always be sure that the hands were pointing to a quarter-past twelve, and it was then just twenty-two minutes to three. This was something he could depend upon with a certainty which quite compensated for the annoyance of incessant calculations and mental corrections.
gpt
Pray leave joking aside and consider the wonderful nightly clockwork here, which makes automatic time-keepers unnecessary. This accommodating inner moon, within the brief space of five hours, goes through the phases of a thin crescent, first quarter, and just as it approaches fulness it submits to a total eclipse, followed by a waning quarter, then the reverse crescent of an old moon, and finally it sets where the Sun must soon rise. It is a wonderful heavenly clock, which is never obscured by clouds, and turns its face toward every one alike.
human
Yes, but one must remember that this hurrying moon gains two hours a day on the Sun, and therefore goes through her performance that much earlier each night. Besides, she is capable of rising twice in the same night occasionally.
gpt
Those are mere details that one learns to allow for. Moreover, consider the convenience of being able to tell the day of the week by the smaller moon. If it is just risen, we know we are on the eve of the first day of the week; if it is high or eclipsed, it must be the second day; and if it is sinking in the west, it is the third day----
human
But for the last half of the week it is not seen at all, and one is free to guess which day it is, I interrupted.
gpt
Then no two days of the week begin at the same hour. The first day begins with sunrise, the second two hours before sunrise, the third four hours before, and the fourth at midnight, and so on--two hours earlier each day till the week ends, when they throw in a whole night for good measure and begin the next week at sunrise again!
human
Yes, that arrangement is made necessary because their Moon-day will not agree with their Sun-day in any other manner. But it is rather remarkable that the two moons agree with each other so well, the larger one making twelve revolutions while the smaller makes one, so that at the end of every week they both rise together, but on opposite sides of the horizon, which is the signal for that night to be disregarded in the count. The next week begins on the following morning, the first rising of the larger moon being disregarded, and her second rising being the one reckoned from.