The 13.5 Lives of Captain Bluebear by Walter Moers

Author:Walter Moers [Moers, Walter]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction
Publisher: Vintage Digital
Published: 2013-03-29T13:00:00+00:00

One day the tornado changed its rotational direction.

There was a sudden hush. The roaring and creaking died away. The others merely looked up for a moment and then went on with their daily routine, but I, who was experiencing this phenomenon for the first time, took careful note of what happened. Nothing happened, strictly speaking, until the roaring and creaking began again. Roughly a minute’s absolute silence had elapsed in the interim.

Eternal Tornado, The [cont.]. It is assumed that the tornado comes to a complete standstill for the few moments it takes to change its rotational direction [during which the temporal vacuum briefly fills up with time]. This would be the only juncture at which anyone situated inside the tornado [and that, as already mentioned in passing, would mean that he possessed the IQ of a lugworm] could leave it in relative safety. He would have precisely one minute in which to burrow through the tornado wall and make good his escape. During that minute the focal mass of the time inside the tornado’s wall changes, flowing backwards at twice the normal speed for sixty seconds. This signifies that, if the wall were penetrated during that period, the ageing process to which those entering the tornado are subjected would be reversed. This is only a hypothesis, however, and has yet to be confirmed by practical experimentation.

This encyclopedia article had scarcely faded from my mind’s eye when the tornado got under way again. Another of Nightingale’s priceless gems of information! Had he told me a few minutes earlier I could have escaped from the tornado! There would be another chance in a year’s time, but how would I know when the year was up? The very thought of Nightingale made me seethe with fury.

From the

‘Encyclopedia of Marvels, Life Forms and Other Phenomena of Zamonia and its Environs’

by Professor Abdullah Nightingale

Zamonian Year, The. The standard Zamonian year is precisely one day shorter than the years on other continents. Time in Zamonia flows somewhat faster because of the greater incidence of dimensional hiatuses, gaining almost exactly twenty-four hours in a full year. This means that a Zamonian year lasts 364 days, or 8736 hours, or 524,160 minutes, or – to be absolutely precise – 31,449,600 seconds.

Aha, so a Zamonian year lasted exactly 31,449,600 seconds – that was intensely interesting! These eternally nonsensical or belated encyclopedia articles were beginning to get on my nerves. I would have given anything to banish them from my head. I now knew how many seconds there were in a year on the Zamonian mainland – seconds which, thanks not least to the encyclopedia, I would never see again.

One moment …

There were precisely 31,449,600 seconds in a Zamonian year. 31,449,600 seconds until the next tornado standstill.

Approximately three minutes had elapsed since the last standstill, or 180 seconds. That made, er …

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