That's strange their fast way for traveling between star systems uses teleportation. They do have another way but it's much slower. How did they travel such long distance where she comes from?

They have hyperdrive ships! She's read about how they work, it's very cool. There's another dimension of reality called hyperspace where the laws of physics don't work quite the same way, and you can shift a ship into it and then it can go faster than light! Not arbitrarily fast, though, just very very fast, and gravity also works differently there and it's much more dangerous, so hyperdrive ships travel on certain paths where they know they won't get too close to any gravity wells, which means they're much faster in parts of the galaxy with fewer stars!

That's very interesting the more science focused people would probably understand better what that means. Maybe the Nomai know about hyperspace... It isn't a question they knew to ask.

Asking sounds like a good idea! She might remember enough of what she read to help them figure it out, too.

Halite expect that will be helpful. They send a message to someone on the topic. She might have another visitor tomorrow all the people who specialize in this stuff are pretty busy right now.

That's fine, she's not in a rush. She could try to write it down, it'd be good practice with the new language and that way if they're too busy to get to her for a while she won't forget.

That sounds useful. Halite also reminds her that she wanted to spend time trying to get better at using the Force they don't want to crowd that out of her schedule since she's said it's important to her.

That's sweet of them but this is fun and the Force will be there when she gets back to it. She's used to having a schedule where she's around people and doing classwork things during the day and has more time to herself for things like Force work at night, and that works pretty well for her, she'll probably keep doing it like that.

They're happy to keep up the discussion then. Through one of the skylights she might notice it's getting dark again.

Uh? How long was she asleep?

She was asleep for three quarters of a day night cycle. Also known as 75 intervals. Molybdenite the person with the staff was surprised but they expected that some of it was her taking time alone.

...okay, she's pretty sure she didn't sleep for three quarters of the length of day she's used to, that really only happens if she's very sick, so their days must be different? If she slept a normal amount of time that's eight hours and the days she's used to are a little less than twenty-four hours. If eight hours is three quarters of their day, that's... uh... ...eight over three... two and two thirds... times four is eight and eight thirds... ...ten and two thirds? hours? So their days are less than half the length of hers at home.

That sounds very possible and if she's used to longer days it would explains why she slept for so much longer than they were expecting. An interval is a somewhat more convenient unit. It's made of 100 moments, each moment is about this long (around 4 seconds). That might help.

Humans use seconds, which are like this, and minutes, which are sixty of those, that'd make an interval (math math math) around seven minutes, or a little less? Which seems like a reasonable duration to track, yep. And that means (math math math math) about nine intervals to a human hour or two hundred sixteen to a human day. (It's pretty obvious that she likes math.)

Halite isn't quite as big as fan of math but it's a useful thing to know especially when working with computers and building things. It's a cool point that both of their time keeping systems are built on the length of a day on a particular planet. And the Owlks are the same they even made the spaceship they built simulate the light and dark cycle from their home. Their day is about three times the length of the Hearthian day, so one and a half times Deskyl's. The Nomai used to keep time that way too but they don't anymore.

Huh. It seems sensible to her to base a time system on your planet's day; if everything fits neatly it's easier to figure things out. Her planet's day was a little less than 24 hours and that made it kind of awkward - all the clocks would go up to 23:48 and then have to skip forward, and things like that. (Of course most people never had a problem with it since they were always asleep then.) Human spaceships just use a 24 hour day and that makes it much easier for them.

Circling back around, what are droids? They sounded like something she considered an important technology.

Yeah, droids are - like if a computer was a person, almost? They aren't people, they'll say that if you ask, but they can do all the same kinds of work a person can do and they're never too tired or not in the mood. Where she's from they had all the kids live together and droids take care of them, for example, and droids did most of the work on the town's farms.

That sounds... very strange for several reasons. The idea of something that can do anything a person can but isn't actually a person isn't the kind of thing Halite would have thought could exist before. Also, the idea that people wouldn't be around to help raise hatchlings seems a little sad. How do hatchlings learn who does what in the community if they mostly don't meet people?

They do meet people! Most kids' parents come by at least sometimes and a lot of kids spend time at their parents' houses, and a fair number of grownups come to hang out with the kids and teach classes or do crafts or play games or whatever. And of course the kids get to spend a lot of time with each other and learn how to get along and work together, so they'll be better at it when they're grown; that's the main advantage of the system.

Anyway, yeah, droids are a little weird if you're not used to them? She used to worry that they were people and nobody was being nice enough to them, but she talked to them and they said they weren't and that it was good for people to have them do all the work so the people didn't have to.

Interesting so she knows who her parents are. Their species mostly uses communal spawning so Halite doesn't actually know who their parents are. Hatchlings are raised by the whole settlement. It's cool that her people do things in a similar way.

As for droids Halite says they look forward to meeting them one day but that they don't expect Hearthians to make anything like that. People are already a little uncomfortable with how hands off some of the Nomai based technology they use is and that's still controlled by a person.

That is pretty neat! And she's more comfortable having some choice in her caretakers, so that'll work well for her if they want to do it that way - she's going to be a kid for another six or seven human years, it occurs to her that that might be different like the days are, and she's eleven now; human years are 360 human days.

Droids are - well, she liked them, but if they don't have them here she'll just have to get used to that. She does like being able to have machines do things for her, though, and not just because she's so clumsy with her hands.

That sounds at least in the same ballpark as how long a Hearthian is considered a hatchling. Maybe a couple of her years longer. They'll keep helping her as long as she needs help regardless of how long that takes. That's what being in a community means.

As for having machines do things for her, maybe she'll learn to use one of these staffs they're building now. Most people who use them only scratch the surface of what they're capable of They're a combination of Owlk and Nomai technology.

That sounds like it might be fun! What kinds of things do they do, what's it like to use one?

She's already been on the receiving end of the communication feature. Using it is a little like that but there's a lot more options available. The other main part derived from Owlks technology is a scanning feature it lets you pull information about something near you into your mind. Most people find that overwhelming but the people able to use it can do amazing things like figuring out what's broken in a complicated piece of technology or actually understanding more of how the hazard plant works.

The Nomai part of things combines really well with that because it can repair things or transform them. Most of this building was made using that function. The ceramic building material is one of the easiest things to make. The fabrics they're making her new clothes out of are also produced using these staffs. You need really good focus or a very precise plan to make anything complicated though.

Most people write up a plan on a computer and transfer it to the staff rather than using the mental interface.