Those are some of the ways we measure temperature, but what about time? Microsoft SQL Server represents time as the number of days since January 1st, 1900, the birth of the first relevant century. Unix systems represent time as the number of milliseconds since January 1st, 1970, traditionally considered to be the birth of Unix. And on the calendar system we all use, time is measured from the birth of Jesus.

There has to be some kind of zero point for time. We can set it to a point that's easy to remember, or to a point that works out well for storing time digitally. We can set it to a point that has some special significance for people, like the birth of Jesus was to Christians.

On the other hand, the zero point could be set to a moment that wasn't just significant to people, but significant to time itself. The birth of the universe, for example.

Tuck had mentioned a creation date that the Mayan calendar was based on. I now found myself wondering if this date was more than just an arbitrary point in time.

Could it have been deliberately chosen as a fundamental property of the universal timeline? Is it the basis for an absolute time scale, rather than merely a relative one? Could the Mayan calendar be for time what the Kelvin scale is for temperature?

Apparently I had drifted off in thought for too long, because Tuck was pretending to wake me with smelling salts. "Jack? Jack? You okay there? Come back to me, Jack."

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