- [x] Set timer for 20 minutes - [x] Start writing The ice storm dropped in September, a thick glaze of glass over every surface. The ice glistened on the top of leaves, branches, flowers, and fruit, twice as thick on the top as the bottom of each surface. It was sunny and cold, then as the sun hit the ice a mist rose slightly, hanging low above the valleys. The landscape looked like the sea had been frozen in time, stuck in a moment of beautiful catastrophe. An inverted view of each scene refracted in each drop, suspended for ever, so it felt. September was way too early for ice. They hadn't even harvested much of the years food yet. On X10171, Planet Dirth as the locals called it, the dirthers had aligned the seasons with the northern hemisphere on the origin home, planet earth. But a year on Dirth was 600 days, so each season was 150 days, and each day was the equivalent of 37 earth hours. The summers were punishingly long, and the winters depressingly short, but the crisp cool nights and moderate days of spring and fall became expected, due to the length of each season. At this point, most people on Dirth had been born there. They were used to the days and nights, three twelve-plus-hour shifts made up each day in the always open emergency services brigade. This kept twenty-four hours for tilling the land and farming, sleeping twice, hobbies, and whatever else someone did during with their free time. Mbastion loved reading more than anything. e Mbastion read when he should be working, cooking, farming, playing, everything. He loved the escape he got. He loved the return to other times, other places, the historical fictions that told of the adventures people might have had. He loved the future imagined by so many people. He loved the future imagined by those with power, those without power, those who had risen, those who had fallen. He loved reading broadly about the past and future, because it made the past less certain and the future more possible. When Mbastion gazed across the frozen moment in time left unmovable by the ice, it was the first time that he felt he knew what was coming. Starvation, hardship, stealing, crimes, Dirthercides. He was going to be busy, as a new member of the emergency response services squad, the loss of a local crop, too late in the season to get a new launch of food, was going to be personally, professionally, and systemically devastating. So, he poured another cup of hot water over the dried fungi that resembled coffee, and contained enough caffeine for the whole 37-hour day, blew across the steam, took a sip, and went back to his book.