Shout out to people who need a little longer to figure out the time

Shout out to people who can't do "quick" maths in their head

Shout out to people who need to use a calculator for even "simple" maths

Shout out to people who need others to read number a for them

Shout out to people who cry over maths and numbers

Shout out to people who say the wrong numbers when reading or talking about prices and the time of day

Shout out to people who can't read charts and graphs

Shout out to people who get confused with mathematical concepts

Shout out to people who can't read music because it seems mathematical to them

Shout out to people who's maths struggles limit them

I just love writing a fic that relies on an understanding of how the time flows different between the Beach and the real-world. NOT.

Goddamn it’s hard to conceptualise. And for some reason, I decided to figure out what the actual time different is.

So I drew a little diagram to help myself out (so I made it look nice and decided to share it all with you too).

I could be wrong, but this is my interpretation of how it might work. 

I used pointy shapes cause it was easier to conceptualise, and it is in no way to scale because it's not possible for me to accurately represent that (you'll find out why in a minute).

So basically time moves much much faster on the Beach. We also know this because when Sam gets sucked into that vortex, he feels like he's gone for hours but everyone says he only disappeared for a few seconds.

DISCLAIMER

This is all conjecture based on what we know about Heartman's time spent searching for his wife and child. It could be completely wrong. We don't know the exact amount of time he spend on the Beach each visit (I use a hypothetical number below), and we also don't know ecatly how time 'feels' like it's running on the Beach. All we know is that it feels much, much longer. It might not work like this AT ALL, we just don't know (or I've misinterpreted it, in which case, tell me, i won't be offended). Also, my understanding could just be completely wrong - it happens. It's possible that trying to find a formula for figuring it out just doesn't work at all. Maybe time comes in waves and is't consitent, mayne it doesnt feel like much longer, hyst a little bit. Who knows (maybe Kojima lol. Or maybe not?) It hurts my brain to imagine it.

so now, it's maths time ( ꩜ᯅ꩜;) 

Keep in mind that I'm not great at maths (some things like the number of minutes in a month etc, were googled, so they're 100% accurate). If you think I'm incorrect, I won't be offended, cause it's more than possible haha. I hate maths.

OKAY

To start, here's two facts that we need to know. In the real-world (including ours):

1 month = 43,800 minutes 11 months = 481,801 minutes

We'll be using Heartman as the basis for this.

So here's what we know for certain about Heartman's trips to the Beach:

Every 21 minutes, he spends 3 real-world minutes on the Beach.

That adds up to 60 cycles a day. 3 real-world hours (180 minutes) a day spent on the Beach.

He tells Sam that up until that point, he's done that 218,549 times (although that's not relevant to finding out how long Higgs has been on the Beach for)

We also know that when Higgs tells Sam (at the end of DS2) that he's been trapped there for "tens of thousands of years", it's been 11 months since the end of DS1, when he was left on the Beach.

What we don't know:

How long "tens of thousands of years" is (that's what we're about to figure out). Heartman says that during those 3 real-world minutes, he spends "months at a time" on the Beach searching for his wife and daughter, but we don't know how long that actually is.

Now, for the sake of coming to some sort of prediction for how long Higgs has been trapped there, we need to decide what "months at a time" is.

So for the sake of being able to do some math, we're gonna say it's:

3 months (obviously this is a guess, don't come at me, but we needed a number for this maths to work)

So here comes the math, based on the hypothesis that:

3 real-world minutes = 3 Beach months or simplified: 1 real-world minute = 1 Beach month

There are 43,800 minutes in 1 real-world month.

Which means:

1 real-world minute = 43,800 Beach minutes

Now if we use our fact from before about how many minutes are in 11 months (the real-world amount of time Higgs has been stuck on the Beach), then:

481,801 x 43,800 = 21,102,883,800 minutes on the Beach 

Which in years, is:

40,150 years 40,150 years

40,150 years spent alone on the Beach.

I mean, I'd probably go insane after that long too. I'd probably to insane after just 11 months trapped on the Beach.

Our poor baby boy.

BONUS

If you want to know how long Heartman spent looking for his wife and child, using the same 3 month hypothesis as above: 54,637.25 years.

ANOTHER BONUS

The reason I figured this out was cause of my "Don't Worry Darlin'" fic. And just in case you were interested, if you were to visit Higgs every 24 hours, and say you slept for 8 hours a night, that means you got to spend 40 years together, but when you woke? Well, you'd be only be gone for 24 hours, but Higgs would be left alone for 120 years in between each of your visits. So, maybe it's fair enough he decided to keep you there with him (also spending 40 years together at a time is just insane wtf)

It hurts my brain to imagine this being real, like how hard it would be to spend like one minute in the real-world and roughly three months on the Beach.

But regardless,

credit: the heir to the house of prince by elph13 on ao3