I am enjoying a return to writing and hopefully will have opportunity to stretch my creative needs more often. Thank you for your interested and for accepting the sporadic nature of the updates on this site.
Weather When Requested
“That’s impossible!”
A slow grin crept onto the face of Cecil Leach, a climate scientist and hobbyist inventor. Mostly a homebody, he occasionally liked to hang out in coffee shops and people-watch. Lost in his own world, typing away on his laptop, he was startled by the quizzical proddings of a young woman that, even at first glance, appeared to be his polar opposite.
Eden Teller had a bright streak of green in her wild hair, unapologetic horn rimmed glasses and she seems to be wearing every conceivable colour at once. She had an infectious smile and evidently harboured no hesitation in walking up to a complete stranger, mid work-flow, and asking:
“What are you working on?”
“A way to control the weather.” Cecil responded, with barely a glance away from his screen.
“You mean predict the weather, right?”
“The most accurate way to predict something, is to manipulate the outcome yourself” he said smugly, finally looking away from his computer to greet his interrogator, mesmerized in an instant by her green eyes, his normally focused mind drifted.
“That’s impossible!”
“I always know I am on to something truly fascinating when someone tells me that.” He felt uncharacteristically comfortable talking to her. “You see, I enjoy making small inventions as a hobby but mere incremental change has never interested me.”
Uninvited, Eden sat down next to him, a little closer than he expected. She looked directly into his eyes, interest peaked. “What does that mean?”
“Often when someone tries to describe something they have created they define it by unwittingly admitting that the core idea is derivative. They say “It’s like facebook but for cats”. It becomes immediately evident that they do not have an original idea, they have a tweak.”
“I thought there were no more original ideas left.”
“There is a trove of untapped original ideas hidden right before our eyes but they are hidden behind one word, Impossible”.
“I had like… plans for this afternoon, I think they were just cancelled. You have my undivided attention, please go on. Where are these… ideas?”
“In old books.”
“In old books?
“In old books.
“What?!”
Cecil had polished this speech over time but this was his first opportunity to actually vocalize it to another human being. He was excited and hoped he wouldn’t forget any of the carefully crafted segments of the dialog.
“The concept of science fiction has existed for as long as people have told stories although it didn’t always bear that name. The imagined worlds however were not always spaceships and alien planets. There was a time that growing your own food was a fantasy, or sailing the seas, the idea of flight or even the banality of present day motor vehicle traffic is something that centuries ago would be considered science fiction.
We have advanced as a civilization, inventing things to make our lives easier and simpler and in the process made our lives more difficult and complex. We have fulfilled the prophecy of these old stories, we have become the beings of fantasy, but we haven’t invented everything they imagined for us.
You see as a writer you aren’t constrained by silly limits like what is possible, you can simply come up with a technology that your story needs and give it one line of simple dialog about how it works without really explaining it and the reader’s mind will fill in the blanks. Stories are a collaborative process between the teller and the tellee. With the constraint of things needing to be possible removed, authors have come up with truly astounding inventions.
Tales of fantasy have been told by campfire for several millenia, I only wish I had access to some of those untapped ideas. The surviving fantasies are trapped in old books, forgotten by time save for collectors and historians. We now have access to technology and knowledge like no society ever before. What I do is catalogue those seemingly impossible ideas and try to break down what it would take to make them a reality.
Some are still impossible, but only until other technology advances, you see impossible is a term with an expiration date. This is not my first such invention, some of the others would break your mind, but the world may not yet be ready for them. This however, the ability to control the weather, that has real and present applications that the world needs. That is not a tweak on a previous technology, it is a truly original idea, bourne of a mind that admittedly is not my own but more importantly, was not held back by silly things like reality.
I am actually a climate scientist, professionally, so when I came upon this idea I was uniquely qualified to judge if impossible had expired yet. It is time, we have the technology, we can build it, honestly I am surprised it hasn’t already been done but people just assume it can’t be done.
Imagine, watering crops from the sky, bringing much needed water inland using the clouds to carry it instead of pipes, scheduling gorgeous sunny days so you could plan accordingly and more importantly, using the most powerful water filtration system to truly convert sea water trapped in the oceans into clean, potable water falling from the sky for everyone to collect and drink and live. How could I not share this idea with the world?”
“Wait, so you really mean that you can manipulate the weather and like make it rain on command? How would that even work? How could you be sure you weren’t making things worse?”
“Ok, you have a lot of questions, that’s good, questions help route out problems in the design. Let’s go over them one at a time.”
Afternoon turned to evening and in turn, to night and as the coffee shop was closing up, Cecil and Eden were still smiling through a back-and-forth that was quickly progressing beyond professional curiosity into something else.
Eden and Cecil, soon starting a more romantic relationship together but her dread fascination for his project only grew with time. She used her considerable experience in activist circles to tackle the job of changing people’s minds and helping the world understand why this was a good thing.
Concept work and creativity was Cecil’s strong suit, however this was much larger scale than any of his previous inventions. In time he was forced to seek outside investors to produce weather stations. These compact buildings worked with a network of other devices. Some generated wind in specified paths, some created water vapour from lakes and oceans, some catalysed cloud formations into rain at prescribed locations, some diffused and diverted more natural weather to unused land, protecting urban and agricultural environments.
Weather control started in the UK alone but the demand grew quickly for a global expansion. His business partners were happy to foot the bill for the expansion, seeing the obvious economic benefits of this technology. The cost however of such an expansion would mean quite a bit more money. The three businessmen that had invested in Weather When Requested, his company, each acted independently and respectively owned 15% of the company for their help. If they were to fund this expansion they asked that their individual shares be bumped up to 20% each, leaving Cecil with 40% of his company. Still the largest shareholder but no longer 55%.
Ultimately the necessity of the funds they provide made his decision for him and he agreed to give up 15% of the company to fund the global expansion. The following years where smooth, Weather When Requested progressed from country to country, in a unified front, taming the increasingly wild weather patterns into obedient climate systems that promoted ideal food production and ensured safe and idyllic living conditions for growing urban populations.
Eventually Weather When Requested found themselves responsible for the totality of climate control, globally. Polar ice-caps were preserved, angry winds were diverted to cancel eachother out, fresh clean potable water fell where requested. In time proprietary technology advanced and with it accuracy. Farmers could stand on their front porch, in the sun and watch a calculated amount of rain fall on their crops. Stark lines defining the border of the growing field. City water reservoirs were topped up from the sky. Clouds ushered water inland to create livable oases in the midst of desert lands.
Money could of course be made as well, more accurate and well timed water distribution would expend more company resources and as such incur a subscription cost to the end user. Farmers were more than happy to pay what was asked for guaranteed, pure rainwater and custom growing conditions in their fields. The increased yields more than compensated them for the fees. Cities payed good money for idyllic weather during peak tourist seasons and it was easy to see the return on investment.
Not everyone could afford the services of Weather When Requested but they kept unpaid areas in comfortable, temperate conditions, still protecting them from the worst that weather could offer. People saw the obvious nefarious possibilities of the technology and there were many requests to create negative weather but these were promptly rejected by Cecil and as he was still the largest shareholder his decisions were never outvoted.
Eden and Cecil had moved into a gorgeous custom home that incorporated nature into its design. There were areas of the house designed based on different climate zones. Their kitchen was arctic white and steel, the library was rich wood and rainforest green, the living room emulated the mental headspace of a sandy beach. They could tour the world from the comfort of their home. They were enjoying a glass of wine and some engaging after dinner conversation when suddenly the power went out. Immersed in the inky black, sounds became even more obvious but the room seemed devoid of noise as well.
The shock of light returning from such complete darkness caused Eden and Cecil to close and rub their eyes. When focus returned they found a man standing before them in their living room. He was a compact man, somewhat short with a healthy energy. Black cloth draped over his frame made it hard to define his edges but his face was visible and clean shaven. He spoke with a comfort and command that conflicted with his obvious youthfulness.
“Good day. I am Wilhelm James, you have likely never heard of me, I prefer things that way. I prefer to preserve privacy and as such rarely do these sorts of dealings in person. Your ideas and technology was so revolutionary that I felt you deserved the rare opportunity to hear this from my own mouth. You are no longer needed. You will retain profits from the 40% share that you own in Weather When Requested which I am happy to report will soon spike quite dramatically. Your creative and business contributions however will henceforth will be severed.”
“You can’t do that, who they hell do you think you are?!” Cecil began to rise from the sofa, as he did well dressed men in suits with earpieces stepped out from every conceivable corner and cranny in their home. Looking around in amazement at the sheer number of them, Cecil was stunned to silence and sat back down. Without any hint of a menacing tone, seemingly unphased by Cecil’s outburst and the show of force by his security team, Wilhelm continued.
“I should explain, you are under the understanding that you have three independent business partners that each own 20% of your company. I own those men and they have been acting as my puppets until the time was right. Here we are, reality check, I own 60% of Weather When Requested making me the majority shareholder, my first act is to make your partnership a silent one. You did a good thing, you should be proud, you revolutionized the weather and made the world a better place. Your contributions on this front are now over. I will continue your efforts but my interest is more about control than money or altruistic weather protection. You have given me the ultimate extortion tool, if one of my companies is met with opposition I can level the playing field, literally. I can now convert any land into a scorched earth wasteland with the press of a button, I can send violent storms to destroy factories or deny entire countries water if they chose to stand in my way.
You won’t see me again. You won’t see any obvious news about the change in leadership and policy, you will however see subscription fees going up and profits climbing. The rest will happen where I prefer to live… In the shadows.”
With that the room once again was plunged into darkness. Eden and Cecil were left in that terrifying silence.
Multiversal Yarns 