"That's just cosmetic, though, right?"

"Yeah. If there's easy stuff you need me to do, I can give it a shot, but I have absolutely no practice with large-scale architecture."

"Probably safer to get someone who builds walls for a living do it, then."

"I'd say so, yeah. Sorry I can't be of more help."

"You are of ludicrous amounts of help. It would be preposterous to expect you to also be a stonemason."

He snickers, a little. "I try to be helpful, it's true. Alas, I am not all-powerful."

"Wouldn't that be nice? Omnipotence. I'd like it for my birthday."

"That's a difficult gift to get! You have good taste, but I'm not sure I can acquire it for you."

"Bah. I'll have to do with getting herbs and books and another year of my phone contract like always."

He snickers. "I'll have to try and get you something different from those for your birthday, then. Whenever it is. I don't even know how your years work, I now realize."

"My birthday is September thirteenth. There are twelve months in a year, September being the ninth, and most months have thirty or thirty-one days in them but February gets shortchanged - twenty-eight, except every four years it gets an extra to correct for inexactitude in the approximation of the solar cycle."

"... That is really confusing. Why do different months have a different number of days? That seems strange. I wasn't expecting them to have the same number of days we do, but - no consistency?"

"I do not know the history of the calendar. The months aren't precisely mapped onto moon phases in the solar calendar, anyway, they're just called that."

"Huh. Well, now I'm proud of Kystle's system because it's consistent."

"Good for Kystle. How does it cooperate with New Kystle?"

"Well. We seem to have made the collective decision to just ignore New Kystle's year and day time frame, and just keep using what we've used before. Since uh - no seasons, no days, and therefore years don't matter much in terms of anything but measurement. It's easier just to use a system that we know works rather than making a new one and trying to convince everyone to use it. Maybe we'll come up with something better, eventually."

"Makes sense."

"Also no one wanted to nix the two weeks of nonstop partying, despite how I tried to convince them," he deadpans.

Isabella giggles. "I hope essential services are somehow kept running during this time at least?"

"Yeah, but a little more drunkenly than usual."

"That sounds like a potential problem for the medics. Or whatever passes for medics what with the stuffing dead rats in people, so perhaps it doesn't make so much difference after all."

He snickers. "Pretty much. I mean, it's kind of like a festival with lots of parties all the time going on, but - you get the idea. I'm still trying to fix healing and anything medical. I will make that happen."

"Good. You know, I'm starting to wonder if what you need might be immigration. Competent healthy people with expertise in various tech and infrastructure."

"Hmmmm. I think that would help, but it seems wise to get a stable system up before I start adding in more people from somewhere else into the mix. Why," he teases, "Did you decide to forsake the pocket library and join the place with two moons?"

"I think I am looking at a multiresidential existence, in all likelihood. Although now I'm wondering if you can run cable through a portal and get Internet in New Kystle."