Monday April 9, 2001
Book 1: The Tub of Happiness — Big Haunted Battleship
The concept of a “day” is a little confusing once you start plying the interstellar byways with wormgates. An industry the size of Sol’s Gross System Product (GSP) has sprung up based on the need for automatic negotiated synchronization of timepieces, and calendars are a mess. Earth’s calendar is particularly sloppy, especially since First Contact (as defined by the landing date of the wormgate keepers in Brazil), occurred on February 29th, 2068. From that day forward Terran authorities decreed that Earth needed to be able to show proper respect and celebrate that anniversary every year (rather than one year in four), so February was granted 30 days, one of which came from October, dealing a near-fatal blow to Halloween. The day-trading continued, as jealous month after jealous month strove to avoid being shorted, and the ultimate victim was the concept of the weekend. Fortunately, it had already died in the early 21st century, so all that remained to be done was rename a few days and send everyone back to work.

At any rate, our story has jumped around just a little bit, If it helps to think of time in terms of “days,” in between yesterday’s strip and today’s we’ve gone from early Twoday to just post-biscuit on Sevensday, June 32, 3096.

Transcript

Narrator: A day or so earlier...
Ennesby: Hey, everybody. I'm back.
Breya: Where's Tagon?
Ennesby: He's bringing our new warship home through the wormgate system.
Breya: He didn't go over budget, did he?
Ennesby: No, not at all. He got an unbelievable amount of warship for the money you gave him.
Breya: I sense a 'but' coming on, ennesby.
Ennesby: There is no 'but.' It's got weaponry galore, an enormous annie-plant, its very own evil ghost, four huge launch bays, and lots of room for us to carry stuff.
Breya: Go back to the part about the evil ghost, please.