Imagine a world
with time sectors. I could be walking a group of visiting friends around and
saying: “So this whole bit is 8 o’clock, and that over there is 08:10.” You
could move freely around the kingdom, as long as it was clockwise. For a
newcomer that’d be tricky, as the times shift constantly, but the locals would
all but have the rhythm in their bones. There’d also be the dreaded Turners,
people who travelled anti-clockwise and thus caused disturbances and
time-loops, some of which they used to their advantages in, say, a robbery.
Also, moving/travelling would be in turns of turning things, mostly. You can’t
really keep track of your direction all the time. See, one would always stir
their coffee clockwise, walk around the block clockwise, and even their houses
would be designed with spirals so you’d always walk clockwise. There would be
silly religions – The Left-To-Righters (Uppers) and the Right-To-Lefters
(Downers), always quarreling what was the right way to smear butter on bread or
place cobblestones while constructing a road. These religions are most
prominent in the city sectors.
How much one
complied to these rules didn’t matter much in some places (positioned slums),
but in others, (Sacred places), where the particular spot connected to one or
both of the two towers, it’d matter a whole lot. It could define whether or not
there would be a time loop that week.
Now, the two
towers are actually a single, well, spike that runs through the whole planet,
two visible towers emerging at each end. It’s constructed of fitted crystal
slabs which contain the energy of time, which control the time-shifts of the
planet. Inside the actual spike there are long, colourful sheets of silk,
forever swirling around and also having the function of containing the energy,
as well as creating a very beautiful sight. Spectators come form as far away as
neighboring planets to admire it.
The time–shifts
occur once every 3 days/months, carrying a feel of time brought from the previous
sector. There are 9 sectors all in all, sort of. It goes like this:
·
Sectors
1, 2 and 3 are the most orderly and controlled, known for their wealth and
strict time rules.
·
Sector
4 is mostly known for it’s prosperous farms, open fields and good-natured
inhabitants.
·
Sector
5 is considered kind of quirky, (hippie, experimental), not a respectable place
in the eyes of the people of sectors 1-3.
·
Sector
6 is largely forests and forest people. That includes fairies and faeries, moon
deer and Shortlings.
·
Sectors
7&8 are called The Lost Sectors, because they are not defined amongst
themselves, and mostly consist of wastelands, deserts and wilderness. It is
believed that nothing except the most terrible things can survive there.
·
Sector
9 is where the Palace is, a place for far-off and insignificant royalty. There
are also lots of ruins, lots of memories of times that were better and worse, lots
of forgotten history records. People who wander off while visiting have a
tendency to return dazed, with no memory of their whereabouts at the time, or
not to return at all. (Since sector 1 is so close to 9, it carries a slight
reputation of unpredictability.)
(In ancient
times, there were 12 sectors – a perfect timepiece. Some things happened, and
one of the towers was critically damaged, and there was much chaos before our
heroes managed to repair the affected areas enough for people to live at least
coherently, and only forwards in time. Improvements to those repairs continued
to form the system that controls the functions of planet Tempus today. The
system is flawed, but it works, and serves its purpose.)
The time shifts also
bring with them any weather characteristics that they might have acquired while
turning over the rest of the planet. (The time sectors are also the atmosphere
of the planet.) Sector 6 tends to have shitty weather, which, in this position,
is fortunate, because it passes over the wastelands and calms down before
reaching the more populated sectors, also watering the Umnge forests –(dense
and impenetrable, naturally riddled with danger.)
