An Unpredictable Forecast

Sitting at the kitchen table, you open the newspaper to the weather section. Today’s forecast: Cloudy with some scattered showers.

“That’s not too bad,” you think to yourself. When you first arrived in this city, you were unsure of the amount of rain, but since living here for a few years, you have grown to appreciate it for what it is. Finishing off the last of your coffee and dry toast, you fold the newspaper and head to your room to get ready for the day. Lining the walls are your dressers, full of shirts, pants, socks, and of course, your costumes and wigs. You haven’t needed to experiment with the latter recently. You picked one when you moved here, and it became the basis for your existence in this town. Everyone here knew you as “the student.” You were accepted into the university here and did not ever plan on leaving. There was so much to know, and you had nothing but time.

You begin to get dressed into your normal duds, selecting the proper wig, and putting on your glasses. You don’t really need them, of course, but you initially had thought that they would really sell the part, and now that everyone knew you wore them, you had to continue the façade. Looking at your watch, you realize that your routine this morning is taking a little longer than usual. You decide to catch the news while you fix your wig and brush your teeth. You walk over to the archaic TV set in the corner of the room and switch the big bulky button to the ON position. You crouch down in front of the TV for a moment as the picture slowly reveals itself on the screen. Remembering the time, you stand up, walk quickly to the bathroom and begin to brush your teeth.

“I must remember to bring an umbrella today,” you think, as you move the toothbrush methodically in your mouth. You bring back your focus to see yourself in the mirror and notice the toothpaste-thick drool dripping down the side of your mouth.

“Oops. I guess this task is one that I still need to fully focus on,” you think. You spit, rinse, and then smile at yourself in the mirror. You will have to remember to practice this task until it becomes more like first nature to you. You would hate to have someone stay over and find you out over something as silly as uncontrolled saliva. Straightening up, you head back to your room to brush your wig and listen to the news. As you approach the room, you hear an unfamiliar hum.

“That’s strange… the Morning Show with Beth and Dale should be on right now… where are they?” you wonder, as you enter the room. You stare at the screen, and what you see is confusing. Instead of the familiar faces you are used to, you see a rainbow collection of thick vertical stripes on the screen, and some white text in the middle that you can’t quite make out. If this TV is broken, again, you are going to have some words with the technician down the road. He promised that the TV had another year or two! You move closer to the TV to smack the top of it (as you have seen many a person do on the shows and movies you have watched), but now that you are directly in front of the small screen, you can make out the words:

THIS IS NOT A TEST. A GLOBAL STATE OF EMERGENCY IS IN EFFECT.

PLEASE STAND BY FOR FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS.

“What? What does that mean?” you wonder. You hear a crash outside, seemingly close to your house, and you jump. Having blocked all the windows in your room for privacy reasons, you run out to the kitchen, where there is a large bay window. You will get to the bottom of this.

You stop short when you see what caused the crash. In your garden is a meteorite the size of a heifer. A moment after your shock subsides, you inch closer to the window.

“Well, this does not seem normal…” you think to yourself, trying to make some sense of what you see. Almost immediately after that thought, you see a flash of light and feel the house shake. You can see two more meteorites land in the field out past your house. The house shakes again. Even more are coming now, burning bright as they hurtle through the sky. You can hear the hum in your bedroom stop, and voices now begin to talk rapidly. You can just make out bits and pieces from your position in the kitchen: “…meteorites…raining fire… global flooding… stay inside…”

You slouch your shoulders, defeated.

“Damn.” You say aloud, using your voice for the first time this morning. You thought you had more time. “Well, I guess it’s time to move on.”

You walk nonchalantly to your room, grab a duffle bag from the closet and begin packing up your costumes and wigs. You head to the kitchen and move to grab a bag of coffee but stop yourself short.

“No, I can’t take that. I can’t blow my cover due to my inexplicable love for this brown liquid.” Although you know it’s the right decision to leave it behind, you feel your heart sink. You will definitely miss coffee.

Having packed all of your original belongings, amidst the intermittent shaking of the house, you head outside to the shed. You almost take an umbrella as you walk out the door and smile to yourself. You think to yourself, not for the first time, how wrong the weather forecast had been. “Although,” you think, amidst a chuckle, “one could argue that these are, indeed scattered ‘showers,’ just more of the… fire persuasion.”

You leave the house and walk carefully to the shed, dodging around the meteorites, which are still giving off an intense heat. You open up the door and set down your duffle bag. Inside you see it, still there where you left it: a dusty cylinder, big enough to fit about two and a half humans. It seemed a lot bigger when you arrived here, those few years ago. You brush the dust off of a small panel in the side and bite your finger until you taste blood. You allow a few drops to drip onto the panel, and the cylinder begins to hum and glow. The top of the cylinder slowly opens, and you pick up your duffle bag and toss it in. You climb in after it and see the familiar array of screens and buttons in front of you. The top of the cylinder closes, and you are effectively sealed in now. You swipe your finger on a few of the screens, and the cylinder begins to lift. You type in coordinates and then begin to remove your wig and costume. You won’t need these ones anymore, where you’re headed. It’s going to be another long journey, but that just gives you enough time to learn about the new culture that you’re heading to, prior to your arrival.

You think about how you’ll miss the people that you met here, and the food and drinks you had the privilege of experiencing. In particular, the coffee – the true nectar of the gods, in your opinion. You hope that the next planet will have something similar.