The Last Meteorologist

I walked through the large glass doors, the peeling KLVC Las Vegas stencil now barely visible. I was greeted by a blast of hot air and the overpowering scent of industrial grade candles and sweat. I paused in the entryway, allowing my eyes to adjust to the gloom. Like any commercial building, the National Environmental Responsibility Agency (the agency created when NASA was dismantled and their scientists re-tasked with solving the impending climate disaster) had retrofitted the radio station with solar panels and a micro wind farm on the roof. We probably would have had enough electricity to power the lights and the air conditioner, but management decided we couldn’t afford to waste precious electricity on such frivolities as air conditioning. Instead we diverted all power to boosting our broadcast signal.

So I went from sweating outside, to sweating inside.

“Morning, Gerald,” a voice called across the lobby. I could barely make out a faint human shape behind the reception desk.

“Good morning, Suzzy. Looks like we’re in for a scorcher today.”

The receptionist laughed sardonically. “Yesterday you predicted it would snow today.”

She was right, instead of the snow I predicted, we were enjoying a beautiful sunny day at one hundred and fifteen degrees. “Well, meteorology isn’t an exact science,” I replied with a smile I didn’t mean. 

It bothered me how inexact weather prediction was now. I mean it was inexact before the Luna Mortem, but now it was downright impossible. One day brought sunshine and tropical warmth, the next a deadly snowstorm, followed by torrential rains and hurricane force winds. All of it out of control and unpredictable. 

I trudged up the dark stairwell, pining for the old days when my biggest focus was how to account for the effects of climate change on weather patterns. We had been so singularly focused on that endeavor that we failed to notice two massive meteors that had been pulled off course as they passed Jupiter. Instead of beginning a wide orbit around the gas giant as scientists had predicted fifty years before, they were slingshot around the planet right towards us. And because we’d dismantled NASA, thinking it more prudent to refocus our energy on Earth rather than star travel, no one was prepared to deal with such a cataclysmic event. 

The first meteor slammed into the Eastern United States and Canada on March 3rd, 2075. The force of the impact through the earth’s axis and knocked the planet out of its orbital pattern, which in turn brought all of the artificial satellites that made our lives easier came raining down on top of us. The moon would have helped stabilize us and we would have eventually recovered if the second meteor hadn’t smashed into the dark side of the moon. Unable to maintain its orbit around us, the moon plummeted to earth on April 19th, wiping out all of Europe and part of Western Asia. The survivors began referring to these two events as the Luna Mortem.

With a new orbit and no moon, the oceans and the weather became utterly unpredictable. My fellow meteorologists spent the better part of a year trying to redevelop our understanding of weather. Most of them gave up and quit after that first year. Some made it two years before giving up. Now, three years on, I’m the last known meteorologist, and I don’t know how much more of this I can take. 

I took the stairs to the roof where my weather instruments sat purring and whirring in the sweltering heat. I was momentarily blinded by the sunlight, my eyes straining at the sudden shift from light to dark to light again. I glanced at my watch. 3:21am, good, I still had nearly two and a half hours before I would have to go live with my first weather prediction. 

After a quick inspection of all the instruments, I headed back down to my office below to begin analyzing the data they provided. I compared todays readouts with those from the past three years. It was a fruitless, thankless work.

I was startled out of my analysis by a knock at the door. “Hey, Gerald, Carl wants to see you before you go on air.”

“What does he want?” The question came out with more disdain than I had intended. 

Benji just laughed. “You must be under the delusion that sports reporters still matter these days. They don’t tell me anything actually useful.” I felt a little guilty, I had been so focused on how hard my job was, I forgot that others had it worse. Since everyone was focused on surviving, few had time to play, let alone worry about sports. Benji turned the conversation to the only thing people ever wanted to talk to me about. “How’s the weather looking today? Where’s the snow you promised?” 

I groaned. “Probably in Tahiti. Apparently my planetary rotation model was off several degrees, leaving us with nothing but extra sun and sweltering heat.”

“Tough luck. Are we ever going to get some new satellites up there to build a better model of our rotation?”

“I doubt it. SpaceX and Blue Origin tried launching one last week, but, as with all the others, it couldn’t maintain an orbit longer than ten minutes.”

“They’ll figure it one day soon, I’m sure.” With that, he turned and walked down the hall. I couldn’t understand how Benji was always so optimistic, I’d been crushed too many times by dreams of one day getting my hands on satellite data to be optimistic.

I sighed and stood up. No time like the present to face the constantly angry station manager.

“What are we paying you for?” Carl asked in way of a greeting as soon as I knocked on his door.

“I’m sorry?”

“Everyday you make some crazy weather prediction, and everyday you’re proven wrong. So tell me, what are we paying you for?”

“You’re paying me for the publicity of having the last known meteorologist.”

“Bah, that may have worked last year, but this year our numbers continue to plummet. How am I supposed to keep this station in business if I have to pay you to make crap up?”

This was a familiar argument, one we had every quarter when financial reports were submitted; although why we still submitted the reports was beyond me. It wasn’t like there was a Wall Street or the SEC to keep track of those kinds of things, those entities had collapsed with the rest of the federal government when the first meteor struck.

I sat in one of the chairs opposite him. “Are you going to fire me?”

“Gerald, there are a lot of things I’d like to do, and firing you is at the top of that list. But no, that’s not why I called you in. You’ve clearly been useless and unsuccessful working here by yourself. It’s time you take on an intern to review your work.”

“Where are you going to find an intern interested in a dead industry?” I scoffed.

“My niece, for some idiotic reason I don’t understand, has decided she wants to predict the unpredictable.”

I was caught off guard by his request. Taking on an assistant could be useful, I immediately thought of a number of tasks I would gladly give up to her. But in the same moment, I had accepted my loneliness in the industry. I had come to terms with the knowledge that once I left, there would be no one left to analyze the weather patterns.

“You don’t really have a choice in the matter. She starts this afternoon. I expect you to show her the ropes and treat her like an equal. Dismissed.”

I returned to my office, wondering what on earth I was going to say to this new intern. Training this girl would mean passing on the torch of this once noble profession, but what was the point? I hadn’t made headway in three years, what hope did this inexperienced girl have at figuring it out?

Turns out she had the most important ingredient for success: a perspective unbiased by the past.

As promised, the girl arrived that afternoon. She introduced herself as Ami Merriweather.

“That’s a surprisingly appropriate name,” I mused.

“Oh yes, that’s why I wanted to join you. I’ve always felt like I was called to track the weather.”

“We are experts at tracking, but utter failures at predicting.”

“Surely there must be a way.”

I didn’t bother to tell her of the countless theories of our new weather I had proven wrong. I didn’t tell her that the only reason I still worked here was out of a masochistic level of stubbornness that didn’t let me give up. Instead of telling her any of that, I decided to take her up in the weather balloon to gauge the wind and observe the cloud patterns.

My stomach gave a familiar lurch as we lifted off the roof. The balloon was tethered to the radio broadcasting antennas, so we wouldn’t blow off course, but that didn’t help my fear of heights. I silently mourned the loss of satellites for the umpteenth time as we slowly drifted up into the air.

I distracted myself by teaching Ami how to read the altimeter and wind speed gauges. She was fascinated by everything, and her enthusiasm was infections. I began to remember how I’d felt when I’d started my career thirty years ago. 

The tether pulled tight once we were about half a mile off the ground. The basket gave a sickening lurch as Ami jumped from one side to the other, trying to absorb the view in every direction. 

“If you stand still for a moment, I’ll set up the telescope so we can see the clouds forming along the horizon.”

“This is absolutely incredible Mr. Chang. I feel like I can see around the whole world. And you get to come up here every day?”

I didn’t want to admit that I rarely came up in the balloon because I was afraid of heights, and because of that fear I had proven to myself that the balloon didn’t really provide any useful information. Instead of a direct answer, I replied, “You can take the balloon up as often as you like.” 

I pulled the telescope out of its case and set it up in the middle of the basket. I pointed it north, opposite the now setting sun. Along the horizon I could just make out a few clouds merging together in a tower like structure. I motioned for Ami to take a look. “What do you see?”

“Uh, looks like a cloud?”

“Yes, but what kind of cloud?”

She studied the cloud through the telescope again. “A tall cloud?”

I groaned, Ami was an upbeat and optimistic, but she knew absolutely nothing about weather. “That cloud structure is called cumulonimbus, and generally means a thunderstorm.”

“Oh, like in that super old Pixar movie, Up!” She exclaimed. “Like when they’re flying the house to South America and they fly straight into the cumulonimbus cloud!” 

“Sure, just like that.” I actually had no idea what she was talking about. “Now look to the east and the west.” 

She spun the telescope around and gazed out one direction, then the other. “What am I looking for?”

“Do you see any other cumulonimbus clouds?”

“No.”

I could tell with my naked eye that there was nothing worth paying attention to in either direction. I tapped a button on the side of the telescope. Ami gasped as the view was suddenly overlaid with a range of purples and greens.

“What just happened?”

“You’re seeing air pressure combined with wind speed and direction. You should see a few arrows gliding across the view, that’ll tell you which direction the winds are blowing. Green is lighter air pressure, purple is heavy.”

“Is it bad if it’s all purple?”

“You mean if it’s all green?”

“No, I mean everything is purple.”

I grabbed the telescope from her and gazed through. Given the relatively clear skies, I had expected much more green, but as she said, there were only a couple thin splotches of green across a canvas of deep purple. I scanned the horizon in all directions. The high pressure systems were all moving north towards the growing cumulonimbus cloud.

“That’s odd…” I tapped another button and reviewed several other metrics the telescope could read. The storm was moving toward us at an unbelievably fast pace. I’d never seen a system move that fast. Five minutes ago it had been on the very fringes of the horizon, visible only through the telescope. Now it loomed ahead of us, clearly visible with the naked eye.

“What is it?” Ami asked.

“That is a major storm system.” I tried to keep my the concern out of my voice. “We need to get down. Now.”

She turned to face the storm, worry etched in her face. In those few minutes it had drawn even closer, grown even larger, and looked even more menacing. The wind began blow and bluster around us, pitching the balloon one way, then the other. I was grateful for the tether keeping us anchored to the radio station. I collapsed the telescope and placed it carefully back in the box and stowed everything away.

Once secured, I began turning the tether crank to reel us back in. Three revolutions in and the wind picked up, blowing the balloon up and to the side. The crank flew out of my hands and I fell back. The balloon jerked as the rope pulled taut. Ami, who up to that point was still standing, lurched and tipped over the edge of the basket.

She let out a scream as she tightened her grip on the rope connecting the basket to the balloon, her last lifeline before plummeting to her death.

“No!” I forced myself to my feet and lurched towards her. I grabbed her wrist, then leaned out to grab her other hand. She was still screaming. She flailed her other arm, trying to reach me, but it was no use. I couldn’t reach down far enough.

I momentarily let go of her wrist still holding onto the rope. She screamed even louder. I reached down and clamped both hands around her upper arm and heaved. I managed to lift her a few inches, but my fear as I looked down made me even weaker. “Please, no!” I wailed, all while Ami kept screaming “Help!”

I could do this, I had to do this! I heaved once more, this time she came high enough to throw her other hand around the rim of the basket. Good enough, I thought. I grabbed both her hands and dragged her back into the basket.

Breathing heavily, we lay motionless on the floor for several long moments, appreciating the fact that we were both alive.

A moment later, the wind died. It completely stopped.

“Oh no,” this scared me far more than the storm had. I looked out at the sky around us. It had turned a dark greenish gray color. “Oh no oh no oh no!” I jumped to the crank and began turning as fast as I could. Now that the wind had died down, it was easier, but I knew this wouldn’t last long. I kept glancing back towards the storm, waiting and watching for the inevitable.

“What’s happening?” Ami wailed.

“Tornado,” is all I said.

The silence was suddenly broken by what sounded like a freight train. A moment later, the winds returned in full force. I jammed the lock on the crank so we wouldn’t blow farther off course. I could see the funnel of the tornado beginning to form within the cumulonimbus cloud.

“How do we get down?” Ami asked, on the verge of tears. I too was on the verge of tears.

“Time to drop like a stone." I reached out and grabbed the rip cord. The gas holding us up began escaping out a flap at the top of the balloon, but it wasn’t fast enough.

“Grab that cord and pull!” I yelled.

Ami hesitated.

“NOW!”

She jumped to her feet and yanked on the cord. We immediately began plunging towards the earth. We were floating some fifty yards away from the roof of the radio station and one hundred and fifty yards above the ground, but I didn’t care, I just wanted to get to the ground. It didn’t matter where it landed.

We hit the ground hard, the tether pulled taut at the last second, dumping us onto a grassy field. I grabbed Ami’s hand and dragged her away, racing towards the radio station. “Run! Run! Run!” 

The radio station wasn’t designed to withstand a tornado, but the basement would be better than standing out in the open. The tornado behind us had finally touched the ground, its narrowest point must be over a mile wide. Dirt and debris churned and blew in the air. 

I didn’t breath until we were tucked down in the basement with the other fifty station employees.

“That tornado came out of nowhere!” Someone shouted when they saw me.

“Couldn’t predict that, eh?” Another jabbed.

“How many times do I have to tell you?” I said. “Meteorology isn’t an exact science, not anymore.”