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db48x 4 days ago

> "megaseconds" and "gigaseconds" rather than days/years.

More like weeks and decades. Arranging to meet someone in a megasecond is like meeting them on the weekend; a megasecond is ~11.5 Earth days. A kilosecond is short enough to be used for moment–to–moment planning. They’re about a quarter of an hour each so they’re good for scheduling work tasks, scheduling time to meet people for a meal, etc etc.

Gigaseconds are more rarely used, since each one is ~32 Earth years.

Diaspora by Greg Egan has some fun with this too. The main character is a software emulation; called a citizen rather than a flesher. Most emulations live at a subjective rate 800× faster than the flesher normal. The second chapter is three flesher days after the first but 256 megatau, or ~8 years, have passed for the main characters. The fourth chapter is two thirds of a teratau later, over 20k subjective years. For the fleshers of Earth a mere 21 years have passed. The main character has actually forgotten the events of the third chapter; one of his friends brings it up and he has to search his archived memories to figure out what his friend is talking about.