Well, friends, my plan to determine the longitude of Sunset Valley will succeed or fail in the next several hours.
Here is the issue: to reckon longitude requires an accurate clock, and Sim time does not track Outer World time very well. A breakthrough came recently when I discovered — via Internet, so I know it’s true, because computers don’t make errors — that the End Of the World will come tomorrow.
Key to the whole project is the time that it will come: 6pm local time wherever you are! The plan is that it will start near New Zealand and roll around the planet like one of those MoveOn protest vigils. It is said that everyone will notice it. So, it will furnish the reliable time base that I need.
My experimental procedure will be:
- Notice any cataclysms that afflict Sunset Valley during this day.
- When I detect one, check this world time zone list to find places where the time is then about 6 pm.
- Estimate Sunset Valley’s longitude as within one time zone (15 degrees) of those places.
By combining that estimate with a few other known facts — such as that we’re on the western shore of some land-mass, hence the lovely view that gives the town its name — I hope to get a pretty good idea of where we are.
I will share this information with you all as soon as I have it!
That’s assuming that you’ll be here to read it, i.e. you’re not leaving the planet along with that fellow who did the predicting. I confess I feel uncomfortable that this Judgment Day chatter seems to involve so little actual judgment. It’s being pitched like a “you win all the jellybeans if you guess how many are in the jar” contest, which strikes me as sort of slapdash theology no matter how carefully the guy has calculated the number of jellybeans. Of course I will not be going with him tomorrow. First, Sims aren’t, as far as I know, invited. Second, he’s so insufferable already that if he turns out to be right, can you imagine what he’ll be like to deal with? I won’t like to be anywhere around him. Third, I have this experiment to conduct.