Early Epoch Metric-10 Measures
Retems, Margs, and other virtual measurements.
The early Community derived a system of measures from the OSI decimal metric system. In order to differentiate between virtual quantities and physical quantities, the name of each base unit was simply reversed in spelling, with the standard metric-10 nomenclature then applied. For example, a virtual meter would be referred to as a retem, a virtual kilometer a kiloretem, and so on. Virtual weights were likewise inverted (margs instead of grams), as were temperatures (eergeds instead of degrees), volumes (retils instead of liters), and so on.
Circadians and Diei
Because subjective time differs from objective time for each person, based on their performance of their personal Node, the complexity of the environ and software they are running, and the complexity of their own minds, Kyle devised two "quick and dirty" sets of units.
Subjective time is measured in circadians, where one circadian is one subjective "day" or 24-hour period. Subdivisions were derived from standard metric-10 nomenclature. Decicircadians ("decis") are one tenth of a circadian and analogous to hours. Millicircadians ("millis") are one thousandth of a circadian, analogous to minutes, and microcircadians ("micros") are one millionth of a circadian and analogous to seconds.
Objective time is measured in Diei (singular, Dies), the latin word for "day". One dies is defined as precisely 1/30 of a Terrestrial day. The size of this unit was chosen because people running on first generation autonomous Nodes experienced roughly thirty circadians per day. In retrospect the Community could have continued to use hours, minutes, and seconds to measure objective time, as they did when offloaded in the Physical, but by the time second generation Nodes were common, and diei no longer coincided with circadians, the measure had become standard. It also helped differentiate between time scales experienced in the Virtual versus those spent offline in the Physical.
Dates
Dates in the early Community were measured in Diei and expressed in metric-10 format in the following form (analogous old-world terminology is in parenthesis, and only serves as a very rough guide):
k.DDD-d:mm:uuu new Epoch
where k=kilodiei ("years"), DDD=diei ("days"), d=decidiei ("hours"), mm=millidiei ("minutes"), and uuu=microdiei ("seconds").
These analogous times ("years", etc.) are to be taken with a grain of salt. By the time second generation Nodes were in use, there were six circadians ("days") in a dies. "Dekas" (10-circadian "weeks"), "decis" (metric-10 "hours"), "millis" (metric-10 "minutes") and "micros" (metric-10 "seconds") all referred to circadians, not diei, for the very reason that diei diverged more and more from circadians as time went on. Still, when it comes to reading metric-10 new Epoch dates, these flawed analogies can help.
1.592-3:75:500 new Epoch
gives you the exact date as 1.592 kilodiei (the 592nd "day" of the 1st "year" at gen-one speeds) and the time (in metric-10 units) as 3:75:500. Of course, by the time generation three Nodes were in use, a singlie dies contained two dekacircadians, or "dekas" (metric-10 "weeks") of subjective experience.
