Story for the Day: Daylight Savings Time

There are very few things in the world I hate more than Daylight Savings Time. It is the grand lie of time, the scourge of science, the blight on biological understanding, and since we are now approaching the longest night of the year, it is quite safe to say that no matter what time we think it is, it still becomes dark far too early. Most of the continents do not observe Daylight Savings Time because they have never found cause for saving energy they do not need. The sun is enough for them-- unless we are talking about Sesterna:

“No! Stop this moment!” Bartleby cried, holding his hat to his head as he leapt about in angry agitation. “I have been standing here these five minutes waiting for my slice. What are you doing, giving him cake before me?”

Rannig shifted the plates and seemed thoughtful. “I don’t think it’s been five minutes, Bartleby.”

“Oh, hang your timekeeping! I will not be dictated to by a juvenile giant defrauded of the capacity to tie his shoes.”

Rannig glanced down at his feet. “But I don’t even wear shoes when I’m on the ship, Bartleby.”

“Precisely. Give me my cake.”

“But, Bartleby, the plate with the biggest slice is on the bottom.”

“Well, why did you put it there when I was the first one to approach you for a slice?”

“Just how it happened,” Rannig shrugged. “I cut it first, and since I cut the rest, it ended up bein’ on the bottom when I stacked the plates.”

“Then it is being crushed! Release your to fingers here and let the plate to me. It will be positively inedible, if left on the bottom any longer. Here, I will put my hand on the bottom—yes, that’s it—and now, you release your fingers—oh, what is it you want?” Bartleby snuffed, flouting at Panza, who was coming toward them. “Go back to your bow and stay there, if you will. I don’t want you breathing all over my plate.”

“I’m just coming for my piece,” sand Panza, with an unassuming air. He took his plate from the top of the stack, lifted the small slice of cake to his lips, but then stopped, and looking with smiling earnestness, he said, “Why would you be having cake at this time of day?”

Bartleby’s face floddered. “What do you mean at this time of day? A man can have cake whenever he likes. I am not five years old and needing to ask a parent’s permission to eat cake before luncheon. I can have cake whenever there is cake to be had! It is my right as an adult to choose what I eat when I like.”

“I just thought,” said Panza, in a careless accent, “knowing how sensible you are, that you wouldn’t approve of having cake at ten in the morning.”

“It is not ten in the morning. It is eleven.”

“It is ten here.”

Bartleby’s brows bristled. “What do you mean ten here? It is not ten here or anywhere! It is eleven!”

“It is ten-- or have you forgotten, old man?”

“Forgotten what?”

“Sesterna changes its clocks at this time of the year.”

The lirks about the corners of Panza’s mouth deepened,  Bartleby’s eyes narrowed, and the ship was silent. The water lapped against the sides of the hull, a plate clinked uncomfortably, someone’s fork clanged against the deck. There was a scuffling sound, vigilant stares went round, all watching the old man, whose mouth was beginning to gather to one corner and revolt against itself. The silent unquietness of anticipation prevailed, Bartleby’s left eye shrunk whilst the right widened, and anyone still near Panza and the old man began skulking away. The din of Rannig’s heavy tread pervaded the silence as he scuttled to the opposite side of the deck, and under the fremescence of fearful silence, Brogan could be heard in a voice just articulate, saying to himself, “…Told you not to rile him.”

Bartleby’s jowels warbled. “See, here-- what is all this cagmaggery about clocks?”

“Sesterna moves the hour to keep an extra hour of sunlight in the evening,” said Panza, his lips wreathed in a satisfied smile.

“Moves an hour—!“ Bartleby wrenched and looked pained. “Fah! There is no added sunlight in the evening—a man cannot add or subtract sunlight! Time keeping is arbitrary! If they move an hour from the end of the day to the beginning, they are not moving the sun—By my hat, what shambolic—you!” pointing at Panza. “You are Sesternese--”

“By heritage, but Lucentian by birth—“

“You have still got Sesternese in you-- you do not keep all this hokum about moving clocks.”

Panza shirked a shoulder. “When in Sesterna…” said he, with affected unconcern, and then, having roused the old man’s consternation, he turned and walked away, highly gratified in the knowledge of his having been the instigator of the perpetual succession of solitary debate, and even more contented in having got his slice of cake before his rival.

“A man cannot change time!” Bartleby snarled, in a fever of anger. “Time is constant for us—it is relative when talking about moving at certain speeds and so forth—but it is constant for us! We exist within it, it moves around us, we do not move around it! Nonsense to change a clock! Shifting an hour backward or forward does not change anything! A man does not gain by the practice-- he is only lying to himself about what time it is! If the Sesternese enforce this as a means of leighstery for the purpose of saving a candle here and there, they are not saving anything, for what they take away in the evening they will only use in the morning when they wake up to find it is still dark outside—NONSENSE! SHALLOW-PATED AND ILL-MANAGED CONSERVATIONISM AS EVER I SAW! GAH!” He pulled off his spectacles and snuffed, and after turning about in a circle and simmering to himself, he returned his spectacles, and continued. “Move the hands of a clock in any direction, and the universe will not care about it! The luminaries do not care about clocks! They govern themselves! Moving the hands on an inanimate object and saying you have changed time is as much fee-faw-fum as a child playing house and claiming it has grown up-- but people will think anything and make believe they are in control of the universe without even the base understanding of how scientific principles and unisersal forces operate!”

In this style, Bartleby went on, unchecked and unimpeded by anything, excepting his need to fetch breath, ranting on the gross inconstancies of man’s understanding, pronouncing  his denunciations on Sesterna’s scientific illiteracy, raving about celestial bodies and revolutions, and Panza was sitting idly by, lounging languidly against the foremast and eating his cake with all the blithesome affectation that his complacence could afford.