60s novelette or novella

[TomMazanec]

OK this will be a challenge, but you guys have surprised me before

All I can remember is that the protagonist is from our time or near future, who goes centuries ahead (cryonics? Time machine?) and has a conversation something like this:
Downtimer: What year is it?
Uptimer: 3146, or in your reckoning 3142.
Downtimer: I could guess a whole different date, but why just four years?
Uptimer: The Theocracy held that Jesus was born in your 4 BC, and by the time the Theocracy yoke (I remember he used that word) was overthrown everybody had gotten used to the new style.

 

[Orcadian]

OK this will be a challenge, but you guys have surprised me before

All I can remember is that the protagonist is from our time or near future, who goes centuries ahead (cryonics? Time machine?) and has a conversation something like this:
Downtimer: What year is it?
Uptimer: 3146, or in your reckoning 3142.
Downtimer: I could guess a whole different date, but why just four years?
Uptimer: The Theocracy held that Jesus was born in your 4 BC, and by the time the Theocracy yoke (I remember he used that word) was overthrown everybody had gotten used to the new style.

This is Brass Man by Neal Asher. Remarkably, the text is online: You books. Neal Asher. Brass Man.

 

[Bick]

OK this will be a challenge, but you guys have surprised me before

All I can remember is that the protagonist is from our time or near future, who goes centuries ahead (cryonics? Time machine?) and has a conversation something like this:
Downtimer: What year is it?
Uptimer: 3146, or in your reckoning 3142.
Downtimer: I could guess a whole different date, but why just four years?
Uptimer: The Theocracy held that Jesus was born in your 4 BC, and by the time the Theocracy yoke (I remember he used that word) was overthrown everybody had gotten used to the new style.

The interesting thing with this are the illogical statements you recall in the story - if the theocratic tradition of Christ's birth had been dropped due to a secular overthrowing of that tradition, then why reset the calendar to coincide with Christ's actual birth, which reinstalls the Christian basis of the year, the very thing you've just thrown out? Why not just maintain the same year reckoning and say it was actually based on some secular event that occurred in 1AD? Also, the 'Theocracy' doesn't hold that Jesus was born in 4 BC, as stated, historians do. All in all, its a logical mess.

 

[TomMazanec]

It is ‘yoke’ I am sure of, not Theocracy. I think it was shorter than that too, and earlier. Maybe some other story used the same gag?

 

[Orcadian]

This is Brass Man by Neal Asher. Remarkably, the text is online: You books. Neal Asher. Brass Man.

@TomMazanec Did you see this reply from last Thursday?

 

[TomMazanec]

Orcadian, yes I saw it. Forgive me for contradicting someone so helpful but I am as sure as I can be with a fallible memory that the story i am thinking of is both shorter and earlier than the one you linked (but thanks for the link anyway).