The Climate Gone trilogy (see entries for April and May) originally appeared in agitadoras.com, April to June 14 issues respectively. Check out www.agitadoras.com
As before, you're
never quite sure what kind of weather to expect when you're stepping
outside, especially not in this transitional season towards summer.
Will it be warm, cold, dry, dripping, sunny, cloudy, overcast, harsh,
mellow, windy or still? But different from when the weather still was
made by what we with a mixture of fondness and awe would call the
elements, these days when the elements have turned into the ones from
the periodic table our choice has been severely restricted to a mere
handful of standardised rain/sun types with a few funky mix-ups. As
if we have changed back the pantone disc for a box of crayons.
The subterranean
traveller that particular morning was offered scattered rainclouds
under a high milky sky with plenty of sun shining through. He noticed
how under the clouds temperatures rapidly went down a wholly ten
degrees and then shot back up in the next stroke of sunshine. It made
him want to evade the rain ever so fervently, nothing but danger
coming from the skies these days. Not that he longed for the hot
spells either. The air would get very dry and dusty under those hazy
curtains, with airplanes further up busy spraying the remaining
holes. The air had got so dirty it came to notably hurt his lungs and
skin and bones. He recognised his fellow sufferers in growing
numbers. Some days he did wish for rain, as dirty as it be. Tap water
now also had begun to stink after half an hour standing, a feat best
avoided when maintaining a pleasant atmosphere in the flat.
People walking the
streets from having nothing else to do, spending only dimes. The
shopkeepers are losing their smile. Nobody talks about the surreal
weather, though it clearly affects everybody. Nobody talks about the
government either, though it clearly aims to hurt the majority. The
climate has been fully artificial since late January when the massive
daily spraying campaign began, going into its fifth month soon. How
much longer were they supposed to hang on? Would there be relieve
after summer or was this meant to continue for the rest of ever?
Questions people rather not dealt with when their money problems were
scarcely solved.
Neus Eddict this
time round firmly believed the aliens were doing it to us and it were
not going to end good, the traveller carefully dodging the subject.
How are the plants?
They suffer from
chlorophyll shortage. Can you imagine, the sun has already lost
twenty percent of her strength. They've made the air so fucking dirty
the plants can't even get green. How's that for a climate change?
There are no
climates any longer, just weather types, the subterranean mixed in.
This crazy thing is the same everywhere you go. Hot sunshine, cold
rain and those off-limits ice winds, everybody has them.
Why must they
destroy everything, asked Neus, why can't they just let it rot? We're
not going anywhere, in the state we're in.
They
had been called to the ballot box once again, this time by Europe. In
Spain the race was nationalised and cut down to the usual two
unsightly figures, offering law and crackdown the one and utterly
nothing the other. Just being there apparently was regarded the
alternative approach. Where the traveller lived there was the added
bonus of the lately somewhat withering campaign for independence, a
concept contraire to Europe's devouring manners. Now Ukraine had been
taken, snatched from under the nose of Russia. Power was handed to a
bunch of nazi warriors whom the talking heads of their countries
quite shamelessly referred to as well-behaved liberals. They soon
enough started taking liberties against their compatriots; like when
in 1936 the war got going here, the subterranean speculated. It also
looked a lot like Libya counting. All over the place the war machine
was creating havoc. Everybody were losing from it.
A couple appeared,
introduced to the subterranean as Poma Carne de los Bítel and
Adamán. The woman was a soft spoken friend who automatically joined
in with prevailing beliefs and inviting the traveller to embed, the
man looking like he was going to want to outsmart him with unfunny
witticisms.
Neus showed some
clips with HAARP action, explaining how the jetstream was botched by
laying chemical high pressure zones at the right altitude, causing
those unseasonal temperatures, and then pointed upwards. The sky was
now a metallic light blue with creamy, evenly sized clouds, much like
the sky over Springfield, USA. It's the same everywhere, she said,
there are no climates any longer.
Adamán is
suffering terribly from these surreal skies, Poma Carne announced,
sharing hands with Neus. He is losing his thoughts and can't
concentrate, getting this empty head feeling.
Empty head?
And just this week
he's been chased by lightning.
We had a mean
storm, we're from the mountains, Adamán duly served up. I was
returning from a neighbouring farm with eggs and cheese. Really nice
weather, perhaps a few clouds, when suddenly one cloud grew a lot
bigger and closed in on me. It started raining from just that cloud,
I could see sunny patches further downhill. And then it struck
several times, from that lonely cloud above my head, always very near
though it never touched me. I looked up and I thought, what if
there's a machine inside that cloud, and I got very scared.
The subterranean
smugly smiled at the other's celebrated fear. Had you given them
reason to distrust you?
Maybe I was just
the odd one out, Adamán offered.
The
traveller, lacking kindness here: maybe you happened to be on a
similar route as the storm.
The weather
surreal, nazism hailed, elections that nobody seemed to care much
about, politicians telling their lies without the public listening:
EU is Dead. And the skies keep filling and bodies start to respond
with stress related illnesses and fatigue.
But it wasn't true.
Or so they said.
The subterranean
traveller shared a smile with Poma Carne, who looked much younger
than she probably was. She had beautiful hips, he noticed, round and
firm, as was her smile, and she seemed to want to show him some more
of herself. The traveller now feeling the heat of Adamán's downfall,
who was he to give the last push when he didn't even know these
people?
It was not hip to
be aware of the other and it certainly brought little gains in the
economic reality, yet the desire to be good was irresistible in what
looked to be the dying moments of Earth's atmosphere. The traveller
didn't want to go out shagging around, is what he meant. He wanted to
go out on his back, conscious and comfortable. When he was young they
would never bother to be good, with very few people realising where
it all were heading for of course. Now the least they could do was
repent their foolishness. In the end the only thing they were ever
going to be able to take out of this planet was consciousness. Why
would one want to interrupt such a process when not feeling
personally attracted?
As always, why the
damage?
The subterranean
traveller must leave it here.
For weather
updates, check out the HAARP report
