So I’ve been thinking about the time system in the ENCOM system…

The Tron wiki pretty much ONLY talks about the time system as it applies on the New Grid.

(Saying that a millicycle is about eight hours, a cycle is about a year, and that time on the Grid is about a fiftieth of a year in the User world).

But that would make a microcycle about half a minute in Grid time.

Which doesn’t make sense with Ram talking about being stuck in the cells for 200 microcycles. He says it like he’s been there weeks or months, at least. Not hours or less.

So, in my writing (which is set in the Encom system) I tend to treat an Encom microcycle as a day.

But while working on my latest story, I had reason to wonder what exactly an ENCOM year is, then.

And I think I’ve figured it out.

ENCOM programs are made to interact regularly with the User world. So, their time system would be connected much more closely to User time.

So, I suspect an ENCOM “cycle” is equivalent to a year in User time.

And a millicycle should be a thousandth of that, and a microcycle a millionth.

So for ENCOM programs, if a microcycle is a day, then a cycle is like a million days (and a millicycle is like a thousand days).

That would mean (if I’m doing my math right, which is not certain, lol) one ENCOM cycle is like over two thousand years for a program.

Now, a program would have very different feelings about time from a User. Since programs are meant to interact with Users, they’re probably okay with waiting a couple thousand years for something a User would wait one year for (as long as that wait is within typical expected function for the program).

But I think, from now on, if I want to write about a period of time that’s more like a year for an ENCOM program, I’m gonna say maybe… a quarter-millicycle.