Climate Gone
Jan Hamminga
surreal isms under a surreal sky
for weather updates, check out the HAARP report
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 less 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 for 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 weren't 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-headed feeling.
Empty headed?
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 have 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.
