Golf Ball was hard at work down at her Underground Factory, as she usually was.
There are many mysteries to unravel, many secrets of the universe to figure out and decode, regardless of how much the cast of the Battle for Dream Island wants to ignore it, no matter how much CloudYAY wants to ignore her benevolent and wise guidance. The very competition that they are fighting on is itself one such case: how on Earth did this squabble, which has lasted over a decade and has essentially dominated their entire life, come to be? The Announcer started it, falling from the sky and declaring that a landform is up for grabs, but when and why did he get that idea? Even after he descended from the havens once more and graciously explained more of the details, the subject is still evaded, still taunting everyone from its high place, still out of reach. Such torment! GB can *somewhat* get the others ignoring all the other things, but *this*? The one thing that should interest them, the one thing that has a noticeable, incredible impact on their lives, and they just brush it aside like it's nothing, perfectly content to live obliviously with their naive beliefs? It was just completely absurd. Completely ridiculous. If it hadn't been for her being roped into this nonsense herself, she should've left them all behind 2,763 years ago. But no. For just a moment, she was a bozo-brain bossy-bot, and she was unwittingly dragged into the disputes of the dumb. And now, progress and the future must lie in wait, languishing as these fools continue to
Golf Ball was working on a distraction.
It seems counterintuitive at first glance; indeed, when her *associate* Tennis Ball first suggested the idea a little while back after struggling mightily with some experiment, she didn't quite get it herself. But give it a little thought, unlike the others, and one can find that it makes much more sense. *Obviously* one would want to make massive strides in science and technology as fast as one can, paving the way for a better tomorrow as soon as possible. But you can't do that under stress, you can't do that under anger. Try as Golf Ball might to not cave and crack, emotional can still get the best of her at times. And emotions cause imperfections, and imperfections cause *disaster* in the long run. They lay all sorts of traps and pitfalls that are invisible to the untrained eye, perhaps won't even reveal themselves for the foreseeable future. But once they do, it can be *catastrophic*. As horrific a thought as it may have been, working all the time was not the most ideal option; GB had to maintain a regular pace, ensuring that she was taking breaks to balance out her hard work and dedication. She must ensure that her efforts are 100%, perfect and pure. She must set an example for the others, in the unlikely event that they *finally* rise from their slumber and realize the horrors of their very existence.
Today, Golf Ball's distraction is her recent fixation on the passage of time.
Time is this strange, near-illusory thing. It's one that nobody quite seems to fully grasp, not even herself. She looks at a clock, works for what feels like only five minutes, then looks back only to find out that five *hours* have passed. All the textbooks she has read on the topic indicate that the (best guesses according to the scientific minds of some distant past point towards the possibility that the) universe is billions of years old, and has countless more years left in reserve, and yet she feels like she doesn't have enough time at all to finish *one* thing she's doing, let alone her entire itinerary.
Now, she wasn't trying to pin down just exactly how much time has passed since the conception of the cosmos, or anything of the sort; to research such things would be a fool's errand, unlikely to result in anything of note, and even if it did, the average person likely wouldn't care about it a single bit. Instead, she was focusing on an oft-overlooked detail.
The year, as everyone probably knows, is 2024. It's a simple enough observation to make, assuming that you have a near-perfect recollection of every single thing that has happened ever (locally, anyway; unfortunately, Golf Ball still wasn't omniscient), and extensive records verifying and codifying those findings. From there, it's quite easy to figure out that it has been a little over a decade since the start of the Battle for Dream Island, which was all the way back in 2010. A nice, round number, now that she gave it more than 2.763 seconds of thought. Perhaps a bit *too* perfect, actually; having done the calculations and research into historical records, not only did the BFDI start in 2010, but it started on the very first day of 2010, on January 1st. Why, of *all* possible days, did the Announcer choose to make his appearance on such a (subjectively) perfect day, even though the perfection of it all would be lost on everyone? For that matter, why does every episode of the competition going forward, at least under the speaker box's tenure, release exactly on the first day of each month?
