One Weird Day

Weather Forecast - Part 5

--- 2050, June ---

And back to the weather.

"The typhoon raging now in Haiti and surrounding areas will peak at eight in the morning. About two hundred houses will be destroyed and all means of communication will be damaged in many areas. Among those who choose not to be evacuated or to move to a shelter, twelve will die."

To tell the truth, it's already too late for them to change their minds. Besides, many of them have already been cut off from the world and can't even hear what I'm saying.

In the past, when the program lasted half an hour, it consisted mostly of questions and answers. At first it was hard for me to choose predictions by myself—after all, there were natural and man-made disasters, crimes, accidents happening in every country in the world all the time. How could I choose what to tell about, what to prevent? Even if I decided to make predictions twenty four hours a day, I still wouldn't be able to cover even the smallest bit of what was happening on the planet. I was lost, trying to pick the most important events.

My instinctive choice was to cover incidents that affected many people at once, but even then the decisions remained subjective. A huge scandal broke out, for example, when two trains collided in India; while the number of injured was large, only three people were killed, so to my way of thinking, this wasn't a very significant accident, and I didn't mention it the day before. I was constantly accused of being biased, of mentioning some areas more often than others, of neglecting third world countries, of having racist preferences. When I prevented acts of terrorism, the press began to argue whether it was ethical for me to interfere with the struggle for independence in countries I had nothing to do with. When terrorists did strike, accusations of cruelty and indifference poured in.

It was impossible to please everyone. I understood that quickly enough, and cynicism began to replace my initial enthusiasm. I announced that I would only devote a few minutes of the program to predictions of my choosing, and the rest of the time I would answer questions from the audience.

It turned out that so many people had questions that the network crashed immediately, and questions had to be delivered the old-fashioned way, in paper envelopes.

Out of millions of letters, a few hundred were randomly chosen each night and brought into the studio in a huge non-transparent bag from which I pulled out ten-fifteen letters to go through during the show. Each letter had to contain one question, no more than three lines long, written in English (which also led to some criticism about limiting the rights of those who don't know English). If I opened a letter and saw more than three lines, it went straight to the trash for deviating from the format.

People were presented with a unique opportunity to receive answers to any kind of question, but the majority of letters concentrated on obtaining information relevant only to the writers themselves. People wanted to find relatives they had lost touch with years ago, to find out why their father had left home, or who stole the mail from their mailbox every day. Some asked when would they get married and to whom. Teenagers asked which profession would suit them best, how would their parents react if they came out, whether they should have an abortion or keep the baby. Sometimes I even received housekeeping questions which could be answered by a simple Internet search.

A few months after I started answering the questions, renowned psychologists and sociologists began to publish books, trying to analyze why people, given the opportunity to find out about any secrets of the universe, preferred to ask about trifles. What did it say about our civilization? Are we that superficial?

Sometimes I did come across interesting letters. People wanted to know what triggered the extinction of dinosaurs, how the earth was formed, who erected the huge sculptures on Easter Island, whether aliens really existed and visited our planet. Such questions were more interesting and more difficult. I answered some of them, refusing to answer others, knowing that the truth could lead to serious collective shock. Each such refusal inspired a new wave of speculations regarding the limits of my knowledge.

The only question I couldn't answer was the one that Eric had asked. Did God exist? I had asked this question and received an answer but couldn't understand it. It was like trying to read an encyclopedia in an unfamiliar language. The information was there, but I couldn't put it into words or even into recognizable images in my mind. I couldn't say yes or no. I thought the answer was probably "yes," but this "yes" was extremely far away from anything that traditional religions taught.

I answered questions for about half a year when a letter from a Mexican woman called Johanna arrived. Her question took up only one line. She wanted to know when the end of the world would take place.

Sure enough, she wasn't asking about the end of the universe; it was the end of the world as we knew it that was important to her. I was surprised that I had never thought about it myself. I concentrated and received the answer.

The date and time shocked me, even though, by that time, I had acquired such a thick skin that few things could affect me. I expected a cosmic scale but received a specific date awaiting us in just a few years. I looked at the camera, contemplating whether I should answer or not. It was clear that if people learned that their time on earth was limited, whole mankind would descend into anarchy. But, on the other hand, why did that matter if they were doomed anyway? Should I tell the truth and allow them to spend their remaining time as they chose, or leave them a few more years of blissful ignorance?

I refused to answer, adding only that we had enough time. The next day, the newspapers made a sensation out of it—it turned out that I had touched my nose while answering, and in body language this signifies that a person is lying. One newspaper even ran a "Did she scratch her nose?" headline on its front page.

It seemed absurd. I was tired of the questions, the headlines, the knowledge. The following evening I announced that the program was going to be cut from half an hour to five minutes, and I wasn't going to answer any more questions.

Since then the program has existed in its five-minute format, and I have stopped reading newspapers and listening to whatever they say about me on the news.

But now, with less than twenty hours left, didn't they have a right to know?

"And, finally, the main item for today."

I had my doubts until the very last moment. It was, perhaps, the most difficult decision I ever had to make.

TO BE CONTINUED...