She woke up with a start. Damn, she
thought. Forgot to turn off the e-mail alarm again. Luckily not
one drop of her single malt spilled. She cast a spell over her
glass, and returned the single cube to its original frozen state.
Oh well, time for work, she thought.
She turned on her monitor, automatically downloaded the mail,
pressed print and delete with a practiced hand. The MAC OS really
made this simple. Sure enough, it was exactly what she had feared.
An Urgent e-mail from Gaia. That woman never slept.
TO: Mother of Weather and storms
FROM: GAIA
RE: Work requirements and statistical
analysis of pending storms
______________
Look, you lazy little piece of mostly
water, if you think that a little blizzard in Canada, or this
so-called el Nino is enough to get your comp time and vacation
time approved, you have a big surprise coming. Now, get to work.
Immediately!
end of message
Ok, time to pull up the System 9.5
"IamAMinorGod" program, version 6.9, to access her
statistical storm database. She always suspected that Gaia had
a worm in place which reviewed the same facts. She pondered,
and found that yes, indeed, Chicago had gone without any major
weather for at least several winters. Well, that had to change.
She pushed the mouse to snow, then
added 10, no, 17, no 35 mph winds. A bit of lake effect, some
ice, heavy water laden clouds, low pressure, and voila, a ready
made storm.
As she peered through her bifocals,
she noted that the new mayor tried to salt the roads. HA! She
had gotten rid of at least one mayor who could not cope with
her. Did this little pipsqueak really think that those little
salt trucks could compete with HER? Naw. She accessed the program's
"Will" applet, a Steve Jobs special. "Will"
was a artificial intelligence program that did your will once
you explained what you wanted. She briefly told the program what
to look for, and sure enough, behind every salt truck appeared
a mini snow tornado, directing the salt to the illegally parked
cars (which started to rust at once). She hated cars parked on
the road.
Power? no, she played with that in
Canada just a bit too much. So instead, she worked on the new
lights on Michigan Avenue.
Traffic? already snarled. Well into
midnight. Cold? No, keep it at a managable 15 as a low. What
else? Well, this new mayor was not so stupid to guarantee that
every road would be cleared. Hmmm. What to do, what to do??
Food? no, too damaging.
Sports? Basketball? No, this was Mike's
last year, and despite what she thought of the gold dust eddies,
he deserved another championship.
Accidents? YES! but no fatalities.
NEWS ITEM!!.
Chicago recorded a record 12,734 auto
fender benders in a three hour period with a freak blizzard that
covered the city with a wet, wild white snow. No one was hurt,
but auto insurers were complaining of major headaches and paperwork
to complete. Expert climatologists first talked about el Nino,
until the viewers laughed them off the screen. Finally, they
agreed that the weather god was a mean spirited bitch.
And with that, and a selfsatisfied
smirk, SHE sipped her scotch, put her MAC to rest and went back
to sleep, happy with a job well done.
.........Robert A. Kezelis.........
