When Lunar Precision Becomes Daily Chaos

Today I stood on the edge of the Great Temple, gazing out over the shimmering canals and causeways of Tenochtitlan. The city seemed to pulse with life in perfect synchrony, yet beneath the surface was a restless energy—not unlike an ant colony where someone has decided to enforce a new and wildly convoluted sense of order. You see, in this version of events, the Aztecs have structured their society around a third, hyper-detailed calendar, the *Tlacatlapohualli*, a mesmerizing exercise in celestial micromanagement that breaks each day into fourteen 27-minute segments based on the moon’s phases. This obsession with lunar precision has complicated life to a truly staggering degree, which means from the moment I arrived, I’ve been an accidental agent of chaos wherever I tread.

For instance, when I arrived at the city’s busiest marketplace this morning, I was immediately scolded by an elderly vendor for lingering too long during the “Celestial Trade of Rainpour Fruits,” a *kallicama* devoted to trading ripe fruits influenced by lunar alignment. Apparently, standing adjacent to their stall without purchasing anything during this interval is considered bad courtesy, if not outright lunar disrespect. I shuffled away apologetically, but I couldn’t help marveling at the absurd specificity. This poor woman’s livelihood depends on people showing up—not an hour earlier than expected or later—but precisely during her assigned market window. At one point, I witnessed a vendor storming off angrily, swearing that the seller of bean paste next to him was “taking creative liberties” with the *kallicama* of fermented goods. Never one to miss an opportunity, I bought a small clay vessel of tamarind paste just as the moon cleared a cloud. Who says time travel isn’t a learning experience?

But even the marketplace pales in comparison to the intensity of their temple ceremonies. I attended a twilight gathering (I was invited on account of being “Time-Plucked, Unspeakably Mysterious Stranger,” an apparent compliment in my case), and I learned that sacrifices and offerings are now timed down to the moment a sliver of moonlight strikes a specific carving on the altar. The priests looked rather harried, shuffling between measurements and throwing dried maize kernels into the flames to test flicker patterns. A guitarist performed a mournful melody while someone paced and measured shadows, muttering at an apprentice to hurry because the next *kallicama* was nearing. Needless to say, there’s no room for improvisation in this system. As I watched, I reflected that even if this timekeeping was cosmically perfect, human precision is, at best, reluctant to cooperate. Yet the true marvel was everyone’s acceptance of it—as though winding every moment of their lives into 27-minute increments was not just logical but inevitable.

In this culture, relationships and personal routines are equally beholden to the celestial absurdities of the *Tlacatlapohualli*. I overheard two young lovers discussing their relationship—or rather, the mathematically doomed nature of their birth-*kallicama* pairing. I tried not to eavesdrop (honestly, I hesitated to arque with any culture that paired jaguars against moons for relationship advice), but how could I possibly tune out a heated debate over timing compatibility? As romantic tensions burned around me, it became clear to me—or perhaps cynically poetic—that with all the precision in lunar scheduling, nothing had simplified human emotion. Even two hearts, measured in moonlight, seemed hard-pressed to navigate schedules overlapping unevenly when made-up orbit patterns form!