Day 3.5

He held the [Flint Axe] out to Rittan and tried to mentally push away the paranoid thoughts of being murdered with his own axe.

“Thank you,” Rittan said, smiling.

August nodded, watching the many-armed humanoid turn, and he directed his own thoughts back to the digging he’d have to return to—almost immediately, he lost track of those thoughts as Rittan started working. August watched the limbs all move in perfect unison, none getting in the way of the others and each with their own task.

Two of them went for branches on the ground, pulling them up to lean against the larger logs and lining them up to see how much longer one of them was. A third hand pressed against the two branches hard to stop them from moving. A fourth held the [Flint Axe] by the back end of the flint rather than the handle.

Either in an attempt to avoid breaking the makeshift handle, or he simply possessed the strength necessary to use the larger flint blade without it. Two nonchalant strikes from the [Flint Axe] was enough to brunt through the end of the branch, reducing it to the same size as the smaller piece.

Rittan reached for the next, without even looking back.

“I’m suddenly feeling incredibly insecure,” August said, bemused. “Rittan, I’m almost certain that one piece would have taken me ten minutes at least.”

“I apologize—” Rittan said genuinely.

“Don’t apologize for that, man,” August said, bending down to scratch Ladybug’s fur as she came to a stop beside him. “It was mostly a joke anyway; I know you said the Voithos was designed for strength and endurance, but I’m curious—were the Gaian people as strong as you?”

“Unfortunately not,” Rittan said, smiling once more. “I believe the Voithos were the first successful organic labour force, and we were designed to help with those more physically taxing tasks.”

August was having trouble wrapping his head around that, partially because his own society was nowhere near that level of biological manipulation and secondly because it was such a strange path to take to solve the labour issue.

“Did they not have machines to lift things?” August said, burying the shovel back into the dirt. “Why did they move straight into playing god when they could have designed a forklift?”

Rittan looked confused for a second before nodding.

“Machinery were the first things the Gaian people conquered,” Rittan admitted, “But one of the predecessor machine races became corrupted and almost destroyed Hekaton before they were successfully decommissioned.”

There was that word again—decommissioned—the same one Rittan had used to describe what had happened to him. As if killing a sentient race of beings was the equivalent of tossing out old hardware in favour of something new.

“Machine Races?” August said, stumped. “Were they able to think like you and I do?”

“The Magnus were incredibly intelligent, but I do not believe they were designed with sapience in mind,” Rittan said, sounding hesitant. “August, please understand that I am simply repeating the things I’ve heard throughout my assignment; I do not possess an extensive knowledge on these topics.”

He’d mentioned ‘Hekaton’ multiple times at this point, with an no doubt unconscious expectation that August would know what he was talking about.

“Hey, speculation is better than anything I have access to,” August pointed out. “Alright, so they made a race of almost-thinking machines, which then turned on them, and they had to switch to organic labour instead—What is a Hekaton?”

Rittan paused for a moment, hand hovering over the quickly growing pile of rendered branches.

“I—Hekaton is the centre point for Gaian society, and by far the largest city in the world,” Rittan said, standing upright for a moment and looking into the sky. “It’s located on the continent of Solarvorn.”

Rittan waved a hand slowly across the sky to indicate something of great size.

“How many people live in Hekaton?” August wondered.

“I believe it was approaching one billion at the time when I was decommissioned,” Rittan said, scrunching his face up in thought. “It was rising steadily each year, so depending on how much time has passed, it may have changed.”

August stopped tying the vine for a moment to try and comprehend that number of people in a city. He wasn’t certain on the exact number, but the largest of the cities back home wasn’t even close to a hundred million people.

“One billion in a city?” August said, turning to look up at him. “You don’t mean a country?

“Most definitely a city,” Rittan smiled.

How was that even possible? The logistics of it were incomprehensible to him—how could you even feed that many people in one place? They’d need one billion meals a day at a minimum, and from what Rittan had been saying, this place was thriving.

August pictured a Sadapple tree in every yard and a billion people cringing with each bite. Even if they’d figure that how somehow, that wasn’t even taking into account the water needs of that many people or the power generation requirements to keep a city that size running in the first place.

“Big city, many people—I’ll take your word for it,” August said, giving up on the problem immediately in favour of returning to his task. “Hey, you said you didn’t know how much time had passed—the year is currently 304 AC.”

Once again, Rittan paused.

“304 AC? I don’t recognize that format,” Rittan admitted, “Is that the current date on Earth?”

“Uh—that’s definitely not an earth date,” August said, feeling like he was falling down the rabbit hole further with each question. “We do use letters like that, but I don’t recognize ‘AC.’”

Rittan scrunched his brow in thought before responding.

“My last day on Gaia was; 2364 IV, 321st Day.” Rittan said, “‘AC’ may refer to the new age? Perhaps they changed formats?”

Last day in Gaia, ergo; the day he’d been killed—August couldn’t help but wonder how Rittan had felt on that day.

“Three-hundred and twenty-first day?” August said, “You guys count it out like that every time? Don’t you have months?”

“I’m not sure what a month is,” Rittan said apologetically.

August was starting to feel like ripping his own hair out—the two worlds were remarkably similar, possessed the same language, called objects the same names and yet they had these incredibly bizarre differences.

“A month is roughly thirty days; it’s a way to categorize periods of time,” August stumbled through the explanation, having never had to explain something like that before. “There are twelve months in a year, and each has a different name.”

“Twelve months? With thirty days in each?” Rittan said, “That only accounts for a small portion of the year—what about the rest?”

Twelve months was only a small portion of the year? He finished tying off the last of the left side uprights and then sat back on the ground, mentally exhausted with all these strange revelations.

“How many days are in a year, Rittan?” August said weakly.

“There are nine-hundred and ninety-nine days in a year,” Rittan said, staking the [Wooden Shovel] into the ground once more.

Which was only three times as many as he was used to.

“Wouldn’t that make everyone younger than they actually are?” August said, confused, “Well, not from your perspective, I guess, but I’m twenty-two back home, but if I thirded that, I’d be what, eight? Nine? I hate everything about that.”

August scrunched his face up at the thought—were there old men with long beards walking around saying they were twenty years old?

“What’s the average life expectancy for a Gaian?” August muttered, barely even listening at this point. “A third of ours would be thirty?—Are we in the god damn middle ages now?”

“I’m afraid I can’t relate to your issue here,” Rittan said amused, “It all seems very normal to me.”