Quick Quarter, Delay District

[sythyry]

I am considering making two unusual districts in the perhaps-to-be-made city. Let's call them Fast Town and Slow Town --- no, the Quick Quarter and the Delay District. The Slow Slum, I hope, is not appropriate.

In the Quick Quarter, time runs nine times faster than outside. One could enter it after breakfast in the regular world, enjoy a full day's worth of whatevers, sleep it off, and leave it at lunchtime in the regular world. Or, one could spend a year in there writing a book, and only the month of Trandary would pass in the regular world. I expect this to be popular with many sorts of people, such as vacationers; we will need to have excellent recreations available within, among other things.

In the Delay District, it runs nine times slower than in normal reality. I don't expect this to be as popular as the Quick Quarter, but if one is working in the Quick Quarter and one does not want to age unduly, one must spend some time in the Delay District.

I could also produce a Quite Quick Quarter and a Doubly Delayed District, eighty-one times faster and slower, for those occasions in which one needs to do a year's worth of work in three days, or ... well, the main use I have thought of is, to wait out an unpleasant term painlessly, such as a statute of limitations, or wait for a rich relative to die. Or, perhaps, if one is under a curse fatal in eighty-one hours, one could go there and hope that the relevant wizards and healers (me, I suppose) could work out a cure in a year -- but this is quite unlikely, since most curses go by days (viz. dawns in the real world) and not by hours.

As far as I know, no other city has such amenities, though certain rooms in certain wizards' manses or ducal palaces work that way. Most people rarely if ever get to have access to time manipulation.

How might you take advantage of one or more of these regions?

What sorts of amenities should we provide in them?

What perils and troubles and problems might arise from them?

Comments

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

Some people might want to live in the doubly delayed district so they can see what the future is like.

[bloofox.livejournal.com]

That was the first thing that came to my mind when I heard about the delay district.

On the other hand, if you're in a skilled or intellectual trade it would likely be rather troubling to have the rest of the world have ten years to advance the state of the art while you were taking a nap. So perhaps the Delay District would make an excellent site for a prison, if you wanted to be really nasty.

On the third hand, if you wait a couple hundred years and don't die from culture shop, you might be able to make a living again lecturing on important historical events (you'd just have to make sure to enter it right after (not before) one.)

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

You just have to come out once a week (i.e. every couple of years), buy a bunch of books and then use the intervening time to bone up on advances in your field.

Also, you'd best read Krugman's 1978 paper The Theory of Instellar Trade. His discussion of how relativistic time dilation would impact trade would seem to be applicable here, although there is still an outstanding question of how the discount rate would be affected.

[aryllian]

Oh, I think "life as it was lived before [important turning point]" could be popular too.

[rowyn]

The problem I see with living in the Delay District is that things like rent are going to be based on passage of time in the real world, and your income is (probably) going to be based on work you do at whatever speed you live at. The landowners in the Doubly Delayed District *probably* aren't going to want to rent rooms at 1/81th the cost of rental space in the real world. Although Sythyry's making all the land so maybe zie will, who knows? Or you could try getting by on hotel rooms, which can be rented by the (perceptual) night. Hotel rooms in the Quite Quick District might be comparatively cheap, for that matter.

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

Hence my preceding comment about having to figure out what the affect on the discount rate would be.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

The city will own those districts! They are clearly going to need careful treatment anyhow. I think that the city will get the admission fees, and some citizens will make a living seeing to the needs of the people living there. Or that seems like a natural way to arrange it, anyhow.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Of course, we don't provide round trips...