Kyeo nods. "What year is it?"

"2776, counting from Rome."

"From who? That doesn't sound like the Earth calendar I remember."

"Uh, from Rome. What do you remember?"

"I don't remember what they're counting from but they hadn't gotten to 2776 yet!"

" - well that's weird. I think everywhere counts back to Rome."

"I guess I could have the numbers confused."

Shrug. "How does Ibyabek count?"

"From the Glorious Revolution, and in Ibyabekan years."

"Oh right, planets move different speeds. You know, I knew that but I never really thought about it. How long is an Ibyabekan year?"

"Longer than an Earth one by about sixty percent, but I don't remember the more precise conversion factor since sixty percent is good enough to convert ages and so on."

"Man. That makes me want kids, you know? Thinking about other planets for us to colonize. I could be a space mechanic and my kids could be homesteaders. Claim themselves some land on Mars."

"They could! I don't know how far off the technology is from here."

"People did go to the Moon. There was this great speech, Kennedy was like, 'this is objectively a stupid use of resources, but we're rich, so we can do it, and the other countries will try to do it to show us up, but they're poorer, so they'll fail'. And then we did it. Really showed them."

"What does being rich have to do with it? Either you've invented the rocket or you haven't."

"Well, I think at the time no one had, but we were able to invent it faster because we were richer and could spend more on it and put more people on it and stuff."

"In a society without money if a project is important enough to do at all you can just put however many people on it will be useful."

" - huh. I guess we can't do that."

"It's going to take me a long time to get used to."

"Sorry, man. Maybe someday we'll end money too."

"I hope so!"

"So, what was Ibyabek like?" Bill at work asks him during a lull.

"Nobody used money! I didn't pay for my clothes, or my bed, or my education, or my food, or my medicine, it was all provided. Everyone had something productive to do for the People without having to fear for their basic necessities if their work is interrupted."

"Did that all rely on cool future technology? I think right now there just wouldn't be enough to go around."

"Enough of what?"