Chapter 7. 三つの月

The sun had set. Three crescent moons hung low upon the blazing horizon.

/Please I don't want to talk about cosmology or time./

Takumi was going to stay at the tavern until he could find housing. Shinta invited him to enjoy dinner with his family. Shinta proudly showed him the kotatsu that he had built on his own. "炬燵は素晴らしい発明品だ。"　Takumi couldn't agree more. They had a kind of meat stew, a kind of bread similar to a Turkish loaf and some salad for dinner. The taste was alien and refreshing. Shinta talked about his work and life in general in Ado Becas Lonpro.

/Told you, the author is not very creative... with food. Circumstances prevented him from having fancy food. As the author has not finished setting up, we will not go into details what Shinta said./

After dinner, Takumi walked on to the balcony. It was chilly. The streets were lit with orbs of silver light. He gazed upon the moons outside the window. He realised that he was still alive in an alien world after a hectic day. He had had no connection and yet he was well-fed and well-sheltered. He felt grateful to Shinta and all the kind people in this town that made settling down easy for him. He shed some tears. Warmth rose inside him. He wanted to capture this fleeting moment of melancholy happiness. He took out the tablet and pen he got with his vouchers from a store close to the city hall and started to paint the window enveloping the three moons over a shimmering town.

/Ideally I should supply a picture here. Well, painted something, but not ideal. This town is huge.../

Just then he felt heavy. The gravity bent him towards the floor. What Shinta said about universal constants suddenly started to make sense. Ado Becas Lonpro was governed by a different set of universal constants. It was not clear if it lay in a different universe from the one that contains Earth. It could be that on a very large scale the universal constants actually vary slightly in one universe. A traveller from another world brought with him/her some fabric of the universe which was then gradually eroded away. At the half-life point, the traveller might start to notice the effect.