by S.E. Denny
Fri, Apr 20, 10:52 AM (20 minutes ago)
Dear Archer,
When we first started this project, it was just you and me standing around your parent’s garage playing at being engineers. All the greats start that way: Bill Gates and Allen, Jobs, Wozniak, and Wayne. There must be something about the liminal space that makes it ground zero for game-changing inventions.
Do you remember why we wanted to create a Weather Machine in the first place? We thought of it during that drought our summer back home from college. Your mother got heatstroke working too long in her garden and the forests were burning with so little humidity in the air. Everyone was talking about the end of days, losing their heads up in a panic about global warming.
You said, “wouldn’t it be great if we could just make it rain?” and I agreed. That’s when we got started with the diagrams on a paper plate that had leftover ketchup on it and went from there.
As we worked, we’d always talk about what we’d do if we could make this weather machine a reality: bring water to the driest deserts, warmth to Canada, and help refreeze the icecaps. We’d make sure your mother’s plants didn’t ever die and the forest grew strong. There wasn’t going to be an environmental disaster ever again.
Five years poor and a whole lot of sleepless nights later we finally had our prototype. The drought had ended by then so we decided to go a step further than rain and gave that desert we lived in its first-ever snow flurry. School got out that day and the local weatherman was tearing his hair out trying to figure out where all the ice had come from. I remember you got this funny look on your face when I chucked the first snowball at your face. As soon as I realized that was your first proper experience with snow, I was gonna make it my mission for you to have as much fun as possible before the snow melted. It was your mom who asked me what the rush was about and I think that’s when it finally hit me that if we wanted it to snow again, we had that power.
A few more freak weather situations, courtesy of us, happened before Amplitude Tech finally took notice. That gave us a decision: we could let the government put regulations on our machine or let them and their lawyer help commercialize our God controller with a pretty paycheck to boot. You wanted to keep our invention as private as we could. I, on the other hand, was tired and greedy. After five years with barely any sleep and barely a dollar to my name, I was ready to make something off those spent years.
We fought, but you eventually agreed to the deal as long as we both had jobs at Amplitude. They sent me to work on production and fine-tuning while you were promoted to the big leagues to help promote the machine with our world-saving angle. I was jealous, you hadn’t wanted it. We stopped talking when you started wearing a suit instead of khakis.
I should have realized our first day there you were right. Amplitude had no interest in how our weather machine could help the world, that was just the sales pitch. All the regulations we’d put in place to prevent malfunctions, the protective metal casings, it was all replaced with cheap plastic and warning labels. Even the design we’d spent years perfecting for max efficiency was altered so the machine ‘looked nice’. After all that, now I’m hearing the military is taking an interest, wanting to know how a weather machine can be used as a weapon.
We wanted to help the world and yeah, I was hoping to make a little money on the side, but not at the cost of human life. Then there’s the scale of all this. I’ve run the numbers and talked to some experts. Our machine can control God, but that doesn’t mean God won’t fight back. I don’t think even Noah and his ark would survive the outcome of our hubris.
My hubris. You never wanted any of this.
Archer, I know you and I aren’t talking. Hell, I don’t know if you still consider us friends, but you’re the only one up top that I can trust with this. The release of Amplitude Tech’s first patented Weather Machine is next year. I’ve decided I won’t be at Amplitude when that happens, but I’ll probably be fired before it becomes my choice given what I’ve attached to this email.
Someone will notice the data leak eventually and it’ll be traced back to me. All I need is someone up top to put it on the internet, call the NOAA, WMO, whoever you need to to get this information to the public. Everything included concerns the safety of operating the Weather Machine and the harm it could do to the environment. Nothing can be traced back to you, I’ve made sure of that.
I hope that together we can change the world one last time and that this time I won’t screw it up.
Good luck.
Your friend, always,
Dillard
Fri, Jul 21, 12:23 PM (2 mins ago)
Dear Mr. Wang,
Please make sure this email and all attachments are wiped from the system.
Thanks.
Archer
Category: Featured, Short Story, SNHU Student