The Core is, to understate bordering on absurdity, an odd place in comparison to your garden variety terrestrial volume. The peculiarity of its various gravitational conundrums, non- or even actively anti-Euclidean spatial contortions, and its localized extensions of metaphysical hyperobjects[1] prove bewildering to new arrivals. Even native-born Core dwellers usually come from an evolutionary history tuned to a rule-regular timeline with altogether more predictable spatial relations, to say nothing of downright unruly ontology. As a result, disorientation, anxiety, and sleepless fatigue are not uncommon in one’s first exposure to the Core’s environs.
We note first exposure because this disorientation is well documented and addressed in settled areas of the Core. As any DOWN rep will tell you: wrenching away without being able to tell which way is down on too-few-hours sleep is a recipe for disaster. As such Mechanics are fastidious observants of basic wellness habits, and visitors notice that if a Mechanic is going to badger you about anything, it’s sleep, hydration, sleep again, and close-toed footwear. Embodiment being what it is in the Core[2] there is no one fix for resolving natural sleep patterns. This is not helped by the unpredictable celestial phenomena which occasionally intersect The Pillars due to ILB splorting activities. To that end Mechs deploy a host of strategies to aid in sleep hygiene and coordination. Critical to the larger system is the CountDown, a 24-hour array of averaged exotic clocks stored in DownTown’s faintly irradiated Institute of Atypical Horology.
The CountDown is used for basic scheduling needs, and also plays a role in the localized Circadian Norm Zones found in most Core settlements. The exact construction of these areas varies from place to place, but the purpose remains generally the same: a space indexed to the clock that provides the requisite sensory input for resident’s consciousness bearing substrates such that their minds achieve a cycle conducive to health. The nuts and bolts of pulling this off repeatedly in a population where primates, cetaceans, corvids, cephalopods, and various NHPs live side by side is an endless project. Indeed, an old joke in the Core is that few lose more sleep than the liaisons between DOWN and the IAH. It is, however, due to their tireless efforts that anyone in the Core gets consistent shuteye[3] at all.
[1] At least two of which are named Jeremy and have opinions about Blockchain, one of which can only express itself through dance. [2] A never-ending riot of bleeding edge corporeal anarchy that has driven more than one would-be taxonomist to take up pottery meditation instead. [3] Insert equivalent idiom for relevant EM spectrum sensor-analogue here.
