Light at the end of the baktun

Someone said the world ended last Saturday. Oh well, I was away. Apparently there are still some Mayans around who do that sort of thing - they were so into fortune-telling that they needed to have some built-in pre-scheduled catastrophe. Yes, this would be End-of-the-World Number Five for them. Doom, doom. It's sort of like Invader Zim and GIR singing the Doom song, or like those drums that the Fellowship heard still beating in Moria after - uh - afterwards.

Well, during my research for my Saga I decided to look briefly into the Maya Long Count - it's funny - and I found that one of the interpretations comes out to have the end of the baktun on December 23, 2015, which fits in very well with something in my adventure. Of course, as you may expect, the world doesn't end for our heroes... but I must not spoil it for you.

And so, this episode of my Saga is called "13.0.0.0.0" from the Maya Long Count when the current baktun ends. A baktun is 20*20*18*20 = 144000 days or about 400 years - no, not exactly, of course, since they didn't believe in intercalation. For the Mayans the "end-of-the-world" thing comes around every so often - the only wheel they had were imaginary ones like this, and I think this one will be end-of-the-world number five, but who's counting! That sort of periodic Doom is sort of like good old Y2K, the famous computer-disabling comet that hit back around the start of 2000, or 2001 if you don't believe in zero. Of course I had a Whole Bulb of Garlic on my computer, so by the magic of the internet, we were safe. Yeah, that makes two or three end-of-the-worlds for me already! Wow. But let us get back to my story.

This episode "13.0.0.0.0" is Part X in From Darkness Into Light, the volume in my Saga covering the years from the fall of 2013 until Christmas of 2016 - that is when Something Happens. No; not the end of the world. (hee hee) It's rather the start of something - something exciting.

And speaking of exciting stuff, here is the latest prime palindrome found by my busy little computer...

11064077077046011

But that's not the end of the world either; we know there are always more primes, though I don't know whether or not there will be more prime palindromes. I'll leave that for you to work out.

And if you decide you can't wait for my book to come out locally, you can always drive down to Quayment and ask at any bookstore. They'll have it.