The calendar

Structure

Hope uses the International Fixed Calendar, a real Earth proposal that was never adopted on Earth due to the disruption of reorganizing established months, but which passed easily on Hope. The administrative logic was irresistible to a capitalism-optimized society: equal months, predictable quarters, no ambiguity about how many days a month contains. Finance departments lobbied for it, so it quickly passed when business wasn’t as big as it is today.

Date structure

A Hope year is 308 days. The discovery that Hope’s orbital period was shorter than Earth’s was confirmed early in the settlement period, but the specific figure of 308 came later, almost by accident. 308 divides neatly into 11 months of exactly 28 days. This is either a remarkable coincidence or an administrative rounding that nobody has officially questioned since Year 12.

Each month is 28 days. Every month begins on the same day of the week. Calendars are completely regular. Quarterly deadlines fall on the same dates every quarter. The work calendar in the game always looks the same shape month to month.

The missing month

Since a year is 308 days, 12 Earth months doesn’t fit, but 11 fit perfectly. So, at the same time as scientists discovered how many days were in a year, they decided to get rid of a month, arbitrarily. The story says that one scientist has their birthday in January, liked the “September → October → November → December”, had family birthdays in February, May and June. So it only left March and April, and April was decided for removal at the result of the flip of a coin.

Most inhabitants of Hope know April existed in Earth’s calendar as a general cultural fact: it appears in old literature, old songs, old idioms imported from the archives. The most common reaction on learning this is “but why April??” followed by a moment of thought, followed by “I guess it just didn’t fit,” followed by moving on entirely, because there is rent to pay and the train is in four minutes.

Gameplay implications

The work calendar shows this system. File deadlines, meeting schedules, and the game’s date display all use Hope months and days. Year 325, Month 7 (July), Day 14 is a complete date. The regularity of 28-day months makes the calendar feel slightly off to Earth-familiar players. Quarters end on day 28 of March, June, September, and December without exception. That slight wrongness is correct.