Time flies!

Life 32, year 51. Finally, I can find some time and access the SIN to continue writing some of my memories. I can hardly believe, more than one year has passed since the last time! Time really flies. The truth is, nothing special has happened during this last year. In addition, I have had lots of work.

Fortunately for me, the official year adopted in the whole Xáng Grouping of Stellar Systems (where I live at present, in Sector 6) has a length similar to that of the year in Mother (a.k.a. Jyna, my earth of origin in the Taurus Grouping, Sector 3), at least when measuring it in local proper time—if one uses pulses of the synchronous galactic system there may appear distortions coming from irregularities in the æther. And I say that such a coincidence is fortunate for me, simply because, thanks to it, I can keep on measuring my lives in years (as I have always done) without the need of further mental calculations.

When I arrived here, almost two lives ago, I found it quite shocking that the same official year is used on every planet in the Xáng Grouping. I thought the duration of one year would be fixed according to each planet's orbital period. For example, the year in Jyna has a different duration from the year in any other planet in the Taurus Grouping. But it seems there is something special about Xáng, related to its cosmic past of very orderly formation, and its being located on the exact Galactic Plane, that causes that almost all the planets (or, at least, the most important habitable ones) rotate without any inclination relative to their orbits. At least that is what I heard. When a planet's axis of rotation has no inclination, there is no seasonal weather or any other important indication of the point of the orbit where the planet is, thus making the duration of the orbital period, or of the year, unimportant. Anyway, the Xángian official year is actually based on the orbital period of certain planet, the revered Tsal Hlªg.

As I said, this last year has been quite exhausting for me, due to lots of hard work and horrible interstellar traffic jams. Jams are one of the characteristic things of the Grung Stellar Cluster, where a large fraction of the Xáng Grouping's population concentrates. Even a short-distance capsule ride can seem eternal in Grung. Unfortunately, I live quite far from the center. From the center of the cluster, I mean. Every month I need to cover about 20 parsec to reach my workplace, in the Raxtewee system. It may sound like a reasonable distance, but the traffic is so congested that the æther streams literally collapse. Some months it takes more than two days to arrive there. And the same on the way back. And this commute (usually) implies connecting a ride on collective capsule with a stretch on convoy, since I don't have personal capsule.

To top it all, this year I had to work even during the month of Saor and part of Atidty. My body is not up to this sort of things any more. But this is the way things are in Sector 6: even when I am less than two years apart from the end of my life, I must continue working. And, of course, I must start working again right at the start of my new life. In the Taurus Grouping, as well as (probably) in all Sector 3, it is customary to have, say, one or two free years before the transmigration (to finalize preparations) and as much again after it (to properly settle the memory in the new body). But here they find that crazy.

Anyway, although I am feeling old and exhausted, I can also feel comforted to think that, in a couple of years, I will be young again. Then, I hope that hard work and endless traffic jams will be more bearable in a body matured just about fifteen years.