Challenge #02344-F154: A Reason for the Season
Due to the Fact, that tomorrow is the 1st of May (Tag der Arbeit) and subsequently free of Work for me, this Prompt came into Existence:
How would free days be regulated in Space? Different Countries and Cultures have different Holidays/Offdays and Rules. How would Ship humans deal with it? How their Alien Crewmate?
(Sorry for my Bad English, im working on it ) -- Anon Guest
[AN: Never apologise for bad English, Nonny. English is a terrible language that beats up other languages for useful lexicon, then abominates it into unrecognizability. It has a spelling system so convoluted we have contests to see who's the best at it. It's a terrible tongue. Never should have made it the Lingua Franca]
When travelling through Galactic Alliance territory, it is wise to key into the Calendar of Events, as both fair warning and a kind of map to know which commercial ventures are most likely to be open and on what days. Every agrarian culture has harvest festivals co-inciding with their autumn, but each planet has a different autumn. Allied civilisations with close ties tend to synchronise their festivals. Either so they all party together, or so they can keep their shared businesses open.
All festivals are generally synchronised to the calendar of their home planet. This means that even the most regular holidays can appear to be erratic when placed in the Galactic Standard Calendar.
When five or more festival type holidays line up in close succession, the risk of Silly Season increases. The Humans love a party and when there are multiple ones, the risk increases of all Humans likelihood of continuing the party to the point of ridiculousness. Security forces rate festival intersections according to their likelihood of starting off a Silly Season.
It was a great risk, since Silly Seasons had Humans disregarding usual safety conventions in favour of anything they thought of as fun, or funny at the time. Security are on full alert to protect those more vulnerable to Human avenues of 'fun'. There are, of course, more sombre parties, ceremonies, and holidays. Those are not at risk of starting a Silly Season.
Which was why it was such a shock when six memento mori type celebrations co-incided, the station Humans went, for want of better words, do-lally. The sombre mood of the ceremonies should have kept the Humans under relative control, but apparently, too much seriousness can encourage Humans to be silly.
Too much seriousness, or too much alcohol.
The securicam recordings show the Humans gathering and trying to be respectful, waiting for the latest parade to pass. Which they did with much serious success. One of the Humans in the group took a deep breath, threw back their head, and yelled, "FLAKK! THIS!"
That was how that particular Silly Season started. Xenoanthropologists attempting to unriddle this phenomenon can only guess that Humans are also vulnerable to boredom and may need excitement to survive.
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / kirstypargeter]
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