The Weather Engineer

The rain had been pouring down for the past four hours, pounding and vibrating against the metal ceiling of the lab, the noise as deafening as nails on a chalkboard. She couldn't focus, so she decided to pack up and do it at the hotel, hoping it would be much quieter there.

She slipped the chemical-filled bottles and the small metal locket into her bag along with some goggles and a few measuring cups. Walking towards the exit, she slipped the lab coat off, holding it in the same hand as the bag, and tossed it on a hook near the door.

The rain hit the car windows, fogging the view of the road. She could feel the wheels slipping slightly on the road, but didn’t think much of it. As she passed a deep pothole she could almost be certain that the car had been airborne for less than a second, landing back uncontrollably on the pavement. The windows shattered from the force of the drop, momentum making her thrash her head against the steering wheel as the car headed straight for a tree. The airbag popped up as the driver's door crushed into her side, trapping her between the two.

She wasn't sure how long had passed, now lightly hearing the sirens gradually getting closer as she shut her eyes.

———————————————————

He unbuckled his seatbelt, ripped open the door and rushed towards the accident.

It had been reported that the woman had crashed into a tree, driving in the rain after hitting a pothole. As he rushed towards the misfortune, he noticed how the car door had crushed in on itself, most likely causing much damage to the driver, maybe even killing her. The firefighters ran alongside him, heading forward with the machine-powered saw, likely using it to untrap her.

She had been found deceased from blood loss. He had been instructed to inspect the car for any additional information and give any items found to the police department.

While scouring the car, he found a small bag, carrying an array of lab instruments and strangely enough, a small heart locket. It had seemed that a glass bottle had been filled with a large amount of pink/magenta liquid that had spilled over all the items giving the heart locket tangled on a pair of goggles an eerie glow.

He looked around to make sure no one saw him and took the locket and shoved it in his pocket, having a strong feeling in his gut that it had some special meaning, other than what it looked like. Clearing his thoughts, he took the bag, and handed it to the chief.

“This is all I found. We should contact the city to fix that pothole before it causes any more casualties.”

The chief shot him a cold look as he said, “I'm not an idiot, I can manage, now do your job! Make yourself useful!”

He backed away and pretended to keep searching the car, counting the minutes until his shift ended.

He rushed home, impatient to check the context of the seemingly random locket. As he walked to his desk, he noticed how the glow it had earlier was gone. Feeding his curiosity, he inspected the metal hollow heart with a bolt engraved in the middle; a small clasp hooking onto the other side, holding the locket shut.

Reaching his desk, he delicately pried the clasp open, surprised when the pink/magenta chemical oozed out. He had remembered it as a liquid - but maybe he was wrong. Helping the substance out with a pencil, he poured it onto a napkin previously draped over his desk.

In the very bottom, inside the locket was a small compartment, holding a tiny folded paper. Pulling the edges apart carefully, he unfolded the paper and looked at the complicated diagram drawn on it, cluttered with measurements and numbers followed along with small sketches of what looked like tornadoes, rainstorms, snowstorms, and most detailed of all, a wave witch he figured was a tsunami, beside a tall building, along with other weather conditions.

He craved knowledge on the intent and meaning of the locket and strange depictions of weather disasters, but what could he do? He wasn't a scientist, or an engineer, or a mathematician, or even a... breaking his line of thought, he heard a window breaking followed by a scream. Kicking his chair back, he ran towards the origin of the sound, - his living room.

His wife was standing in front of the shattered window, eyes as big as golf balls staring at something on the carpeted floor. Snapping his focus away from his wife, he saw something white, flying through the other window, the size of a soccer ball, giving him a jump scare.

“Are you hurt?” He asked, rushing towards his wife, still stunned.

“I-I’m f-fine…” - she whispered, now coming into view of what she’d been looking at, it was a big ball of ice, hail, the size of his head, slightly melting next to the heater.

Looking out the broken window, he could see more ice plummeting from the sky. Grabbing his wife's arm, he rushed her down the building stairs, heading for the parking garage, mostly underground, which would prevent any hail from possibly hitting them.

“Stay here,” he ordered his wife. He rushed back up the stairs, helping people from their condos to the parking lot making sure no one would get hurt.

When he finished clearing the three floors with the help of some people, he headed back to his apartment and took some food from the cupboard along with some blankets and, not as important, the locket. He just couldn't help himself, and it made him a little guilty, but it wouldn’t cause any harm…

They all waited in the parking lot for what seemed like hours, still hearing the banging of the hail against the tile floor in the lobby. No one could get service downstairs, so once in a while, someone would go into the lobby with their phones to check the situation and news of other countries. Every time the person would come back with info of a new disaster happening in other countries until it all piled up.

It was his turn to go up. Nervously, he scaled the steps and perched himself on the last step, just getting enough service to get a new disaster alert. But this one was here, coming to Florida! A gigantic tsunami heading right at them at 900 kilometres per hour. News all over the place on how it could be the biggest tsunami ever!

Panic took over his body, knowing they wouldn't be able to do anything about it in time. He shoved all the panic off of his face and headed back down. Everyone stared at him as he stood there, motionless.

“SO?!?!?!?” Someone called out from the back of the group.

Lowering his hands to his sides he told them what he’d seen and how the wave had been reported to be taller than the tallest skyscraper in their city. Many of them started crying, but he just sat in the corner, leaning against a car, contemplating the locket that wrapped around his hand, inspecting the slight scratches from the glass that had shattered during the accident he found it in.

The woman had been a weather engineer- whatever that meant anyways.

How could you engineer weather? He asked himself… or maybe she found ways of causing weather. Then it dawned on him, the locket had been the cause of this.

That explained all of the drawings, diagrams, and measurements. It had all been laid out for him, and he couldn't figure it out. He didn't know how to reverse it, or how it worked, the paper didn’t have any words, but the dang locket had been the reason for all of this and he’d been hoarding it instead of handing it in! Or maybe he just was not accepting the fact that he was about to die- and tried to blame it on a stupid necklace.

Someone must’ve seen the worry on his face, since a man came towards him, crouched, and asked,

“What's wrong?”

“ I know maybe delivering that all of us are about to . . . “ the man paused, before he could continue he interrupted “No. It isn't that… would it be stupid if a chemical being put in a little machine could cause horrible weather?”

The man looked utterly confused at his question, yet still gave him a civilized answer.

“Well, it depends, maybe the device was some sort of communication to another device that if a certain weight or mass was put inside it could set something off… but why would someone make such a device?”

This made sense, if it came from the locket itself, it would be causing some kind of very strong earthquake somehow and he would know that the locket would be shaking and vibrating very intensely. Some machine must’ve been put in the sea shifting the Tectonic plates and causing the massive tsunami.

But again, to the last part of the man's sentence- with his own added thoughts.

“Why would someone make such a… a doomsday device? Might as well blow up the earth if you’re about to cause so much damage to humanity!”

He was still processing this as the man stood up and told him how water had now started leaking from the staircase. Someone had overheard him and pointed it out to everyone down there. In panic, everyone started rushing up the stairs.

He knew there was no point in doing so, had they not heard him when he said it was taller than a skyscraper? If anyone went on the roof, they would get crushed or swept away with so much momentum that all the air would escape from their lungs and they would drown.

For him, down in this parking lot, his obvious doom would be drowning. But he didn't want to think about it, so he shut his eyes and crushed the locket in his hand, feeling the hinges break and separate the two halves. The chain tangled on itself, breaking the hoop that connected it to the newly broken locket.

He dropped it beside him and crossed his legs, scaring himself at how calm he had been about all of this. Then he heard the screaming close by, the splash of the smaller waves on the tsunami crashing on itself, trapping his building in between two waves and pulling the building out of the ground.

And so, he knew that this was the end.