[Original] The Weather Machine

Title: The Weather Machine
Word Count: 639 words
Rating: PG
Summary: Like the title says, because I'm boring and uncreative. The weather machine. And the people who service it.

The work orders were piled high enough to make a catastrophe on the floor if someone tipped them over or even bumped the desk at the wrong angle. It wasn't that they didn't have enough staff -- all right, it wasn't only that they didn't have enough staff -- it was also that the system relied mainly on little slips of paper to keep everything going. Little slips of paper that were easy to lose.

"Where did…" Harold started, and then wriggled himself out from beneath the desk and upright again. "Where did the requisition forms for the hydrowrenches go?"

Except that there was no one in the office with him. There had been a moment ago.

Harold sighed, moved around to the other side of the glass wall and leaned over the balcony railing. "Hey, Cecil, where did the…" It was too loud. "Where did the requisition forms go?"

"Th.. ..at?"

"Where did the requisition forms for the hydrowrenches go?"

"The hired wenches?"

"WHERE DID THE REQUISITION FORMS GO?"

There was a loud bang from the direction of the Cirrus Generator Twelve. "Ow," Cecil said, wheeling out from underneath it. He also said a few other things that weren't printed on the official record. "Um. Try the second drawer down on the right side."

"I looked there. The only thing that was in there were a few dust mites and a dead mouse."

"That's disgusting. Wash your hands." He, too, was washing his hands with a wet rag as he moved up from the ground level, taking the steps two at a time and half-pulling himself along the metal railings. "I think I've got See-Gee Twelve fixed for now, but we're still going to have problems. Looks like the Dakotas are going to have to suffer through the sun some more."

Harold groaned. "Don't tell me. The pipes through the storm system are…"

"Yep. Completely blocked, all the way down to the Stratus level A. At this rate we'll be lucky if we get them open in time for the States' snow season."

"Perfect. Well, at least New York might stop complaining."

Cecil laughed a little. "You have to admit, they looked pretty funny down there, though. I mean, one tiny cut-off valve breaks and everyone starts panicking."

"You try fixing the cut-off valve on a ten foot diameter pipe in the middle of snow season." Harold stomped back into the office, glaring at the pile of work orders and wondering if throwing them into one of the North African heaters would burn them to a suitably illegible crism.

The other man looked over at him. "Work requests?"

"Yup." Harold sighed. "I've got rain in the Midwestern States, rain in Australia, London's wanting a break from the rain as usual but I've got no way to re-route it without dropping snow on Brazil. South Africa doesn't know what it wants, China's all clamoring for more construction-friendly weather…"

"They don't know about the rainstorm planned for the Olympics?"

"Plausible deniability, remember? Of course they don't know."

"Right." Cecil started fingering through a couple of the stacks, whistling idly to himself. "Hey, you've got something from Archangel in here."

"I know, I know, I need to get back to the-- don't touch those!"

The problem, Harold decided, with letting the technicians up into the office was that they tended to want to put their hands on everything. Which was why every three to five foot stack of paper went cascading into the air and then down onto the floor as Cecil jerked back, looking sheepish. For a few minutes everything was white, and then color slowly came back into view. Harold closed his eyes, and when he opened them again he was knee deep in disorganized paperwork.

"I hate you."

"I know."

"Get the hell out of my office."

"Sorry."