He shouldn’t. Because I’m not even done whining yet. “So how long is the work day? Ten hours?
“Fourteen.”
“Fourteen! So I get six hours off a night? That’s criminal!” Again, he holds his tongue as I continue my freakout. “Ten-day weeks and twenty-hour days! The timekeeping here is confusing and complete bullshit!”
“Our timekeeping is very simple, Pie. It’s all based on tens.”
“Well, there are supposed to be twenty-four hours in a day and I should only have to work eight!”
Tarq guffaws. “Eight. That’s a good one.” Then he stops laughing and looks at me. “You’re serious?”
“Yes, I’m serious! Eight hours in a work day, Tarq. Eight out of twenty-four. Five days in a workweek. Five out of seven. What you people are doing here is… slavery!”
There, I said it.
“Twenty-four,” he says. “That’s a weird number.”
“Not really. Twelve hours on the clock face, twenty-four in the day. It goes around twice. Twelve is a perfectly normal way to count things. It’s divisible by lots of numbers. Threes, and fours, and twos.”
His eyes roll up a little, like he’s doing mental math. “Yeah, but that system breaks down pretty quick.”
“Not to mention sixes,” I add.
He frowns. “Oh. I get it. You’re on a hex system.”
“I guess. Who cares? Not the point. The point is—”
He puts up a hand to shut me up. “Stop, OK? If you want to work eight hours a day, then… fine. I won’t tell anyone.”
And I find this to be an odd answer. He won’t tell anyone? Who would care if he let me go home early? Isn’t he my boss?
“But the five-day workweek, Pie? No. I can’t do anything for you there. It’s eight days out of ten. It’s law.”
Yes. This is definitely something I need to ask questions about. The law? There is a minimum workday law? That’s weird, right?
But before I can start asking questions, Tarq says, “This hex system your world is based on. Now that is very interesting. Your world must be overflowing with magic.”
“No.” I snort. “It’s not. It’s actually very mundane and boring. We don’t have magic. Like at all. We have science.”
“Science is powerful magic.”
“Yeah. But it’s not magic. It’s just logic.”
“Right. I’ve heard of it.”
“What do you mean you’ve heard of it?”
“There are parts of Vinca that do the logic. But…” He pauses for a few too seconds too long. Like his mind is a whirlwind of ideas. “Anyway,” he says. “We can talk about what that means later. You’re telling me that your world does not believe in magical science?”
“Well.” I shrug. He’s throwing me with these terms. Magical science? It’s one or the other, isn’t it? “There are people in my world who claim to do magic. I see them on Insta with their crystals and shit.”
“I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
“Right. Instagram. It’s a… a… a place online—do you have the internet here?”
“Internet?”
“You know. Computers and shit. That big invisible realm that holds all the world’s data in some fucking imaginary ‘cloud.’ The World Wide Web? Does anyone call it that anymore? You know what I never understood? Why do people say interwebs? I don’t get it. It’s so freaking pretentious. I’ll find you on the interwebs. Just say internet, ya freak. Am I right?”