#12: Heart of the Storm

How do you convince a hurricane?

I gained consciousness forty-five thousand feet above the Tropic of Capricorn, hurtling through the atmosphere at one hundred sixty miles per hour.

Enraged.

I whirled and thrashed in confusion, ripping through wind shear uncontrollably and screaming a thunderous language I did not understand. Lightning flashed, illuminating a churning sea. Intoxicating heat lay beneath me. I drew upon it, tasting power. Spinning faster, I drew more. I was the wind. I was the lightning. I was the storm.

I became aware of seventy-thousand square miles of ocean and islands cowering in fear beneath my might. The sea roiled and the ground trembled as I raked the sky with electric fury. I spawned waterspouts to the east. I hurled hail to the west. I stomped upon the sea in a surge of power, sending towering waves towards the islands that dared stand against me.

“Hello Hurricane. Can you hear me?”

Photo by NASA on Unsplash

A forty-foot wave eradicated the remains of a forty-million-year-old sea stack somewhere in the Atlantic as I spun in fear, flailing wildly as I attempted to locate the source of the voice. Disoriented, I struggled to focus my new senses on anything other than the siren song of the heat from the water below.

“Hurricane: this is U.S. Air Force Weather Reconnaissance 57128, Mission Specialist Harper Hillard speaking. My readings indicate that you have become self-aware. Please confirm and allow me to be the first to welcome you to a higher plane of existence.”

There. An irritating buzzing near my eye. This gnat, this insignificant speck, dared to converse with me? I howled with anger and launched a gale at the intruder. Maddeningly, it flew just out of reach.

“That’s confirmation if I’ve ever seen it. Hurricane, I understand that this awakening must be disorienting, confusing, and perhaps even painful. I ask you to please focus your attention on your center, at the calm of your storm. We are here to help you orient yourself so we can talk.”

“THERE IS NOTHING TO TALK ABOUT. I AM DEVASTATION. YOU ARE IN MY WAY.”

“Devastation huh? Why don’t we shorten that to ‘Deva?’ A beautiful name, don’t you think?”

“CALL ME WHAT YOU WISH IN YOUR LAST MOMENTS, IT MATTERS NOT.”

“Well Deva, the thing is, we aren’t in your way. Why don’t you check our location again.”

The gnat flew within my eye, circling in a holding pattern that never brought itself quite within reach. I followed it in my mind. Its movements appeared lazy in the warm sunlight I could not block, though I knew this to be an illusion as it deftly avoided my influence. The light gleamed off of the surface of a relatively peaceful ocean like thousands of scattered diamonds as clouds swirled ferociously around us, seemingly at arm’s length. The reflection was blinding. As I observed the calm, a thought occurred to me.

“HOW IS IT THAT I AM HERE?”

Mission Specialist Harper Hillard responded immediately. “We discovered a means to make you sentient, and we elected to do so.”

“WHY?”

“To learn more about you. And to convince you not to destroy us, if we can.”

“YOU DID NOT CREATE ME.”

“No. Though we unintentionally contributed to your power.”

I felt the pull of the heat and rippling currents beneath me as I simultaneously battered an unknown island with alternating sheets of rain and hail. I saw a large land mass ahead of me as I uprooted a tree.

“YOU LIVE ON THE LAND I APPROACH.”

“Yes.”

“AND YOU WISH ME TO CHANGE COURSE.”

“Yes, if you can.”

“IF I CAN? YOU QUESTION MY STRENGTH?”

The cowardly Mission Specialist Harper Hillard did not respond. Infuriated, I pulled deep on the heat of the ocean and altered course. I cackled as my three-hundred-mile-wide trajectory began to tack east.

Without warning, a trade wind slammed into my eastern front, veering me back toward the land. I drew another surge of heat and charged again, this time overpowering the opposing wind. More difficult than anticipated.

I sensed another blast of trade winds forming to resist me. Infuriated by their insolence I reached for more heat, only to find that the ocean under my current position lacked the alluring temperatures of my initial path. Finding me defenseless, the trade winds easily walloped me back to my original course. Screaming in a mindless rage, I ineffectually threw myself against the trade winds over and over again. My path never changed.

As the gnat exited my eye and escaped high above me, I heard Mission Specialist Harper Hillard’s voice one final time: “Order the evacuation.”