Ted and his parents were eating a peaceful dinner together when inspiration struck.
"I don't know what we'll do if we don't get some rain soon," Leslie complained. She stabbed angrily at her kale.
Grant nodded, looking morose. "It's bad enough that Big Agriculture gets an unfair advantage with their pesticides and their wasteful irrigation and their GMOs and their science-based farm practices."
"Don't get me started," Leslie muttered, but the dark look on her face meant that it was too late. She took a deep breath.
"What can we do about it?" Ted asked, eager to head off his mother's rant.
"Nothing," Leslie grumbled.
Grant speared a tofu cube. "Unless you know a way to control the weather."
That was the moment that the idea smacked Ted in the back of the head like a thunderbolt. He drained the last of his wheatgrass juice and pushed his chair back from the table. "May I be excused?"
Leslie and Grant, absorbed in a discussion about corn resilience, just nodded.
Ted bounded up the stairs and began gathering what he needed. His chemistry set. Meteorology texts. An extra-large package of emergency gum.
Chewing solemnly, he was soon jotting notes and drawing up blueprints.
The sun was rising the next morning by the time Ted finished, but he was too excited to feel tired. "I've done it!" he breathed, eyes wide. "I invented a weather machine!"
It was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen. There were interlocking gears all over it, a hand crank, blinking lights that didn't do anything useful but looked cool, and a dizzying number of random switches. However, the most important part was a single button labeled "on." Ted pressed it.
Nothing happened.
No lightning flashed. No thunder rumbled. No rainstorms erupted. The sun continued to shine, the temperature stayed the same, and the wind maintained the same speed. Ted checked the barometer and saw that it was holding steady. All signs pointed to a flop.
"Alas, the weather stayed the same;
My machine failed to my great shame!"
Ted put a hand to his mouth in surprise. He had never broken out in song before, but the lyrics and melody had flowed out of him without any conscious thought. In fact, he could swear he'd heard music playing as he sang.
"What has caused me to sing a song?
Could my device have gone all wrong?"
The more he thought about it, the more obvious it seemed. Somehow his machine, instead of controlling the weather, was causing him to sing involuntarily. His disappointment didn't last long, though. He slowly grinned as he realized that singing in public would easily make him stand out.
"Goodbye to anonymity;
Behold my new ability!"
He strode out of the house, ready to show off his newfound skill at improvisational singing. He was pleased to find that many of his neighbors were already outside, until he heard it.
"...Here on this same old mooooorning in the 'burbs!"
His good mood plummeted. Everyone else was also singing, which meant that he had no chance of standing out after all.
"Son of a stockbroker," he swore, then went back inside to get ready for school.
By the time the big pep rally started that morning, Ted had forgotten about his malfunctioning weather machine. He was trying to decide whether the point of the rally was to bore the students, making the football game seem more exciting in contrast, or to teach the students how to convincingly feign enthusiasm. He had just settled on the former when Ms. Li interrupted the event.
"Excuse me! Everybody, simmer down. Calm down. Calm down!" The principal seemed even more agitated than usual, which was impressive. "That little hurricane advisory has been upgraded to a hurricane warning!"
"Are we all going to die?" asked that blond boy who always had an even harder time being remembered than Ted did.
"Not on school property!" Ms. Li declared. "You're all to go home."
Ted began to make his way to the exit as directed but stopped when everyone in the room began singing. The music reminded him of his failed weather machine, but now he wondered if it had really been a failure. Did she say...hurricane?
The rest of the school was crooning a cheerful tune about the hypothetical obliteration of Lawndale as Ted ran out of the school and headed for home as fast as he could.
Ted's parents were in front of the house when he arrived, but too absorbed in their transcendental meditation session to notice that their son was home from school early. Ted was in too big a hurry to stop and greet them, and anyway, they were always a little grumpy if anyone interrupted their pursuit of total enlightenment. He went straight up to his room and grabbed the weather machine.
"There weren't even any rainstorms in the forecast until this morning," he muttered, examining the device with growing panic. "Now, out of nowhere, a hurricane is coming? This can't be a coincidence." He looked out his window to see clouds moving in and became frantic. "Oh, why didn't I include an 'off' switch?" he moaned. "In hindsight, it seems obvious."
He tried pushing the "on" button again, just in case, but nothing changed. He started turning the crank, but the clouds only grew darker and more ominous. Next he jabbed at random switches in hopes of finding the right one.
Instead, the clouds turned purple. The wind blew straight up in the air. A thick fog filled Ted's bedroom. An invisible philharmonic orchestra blasted music through the whole house. He kept hitting switches until everything went back to normal, but the hurricane still seemed to be building outside. The lights on the machine were blinking more rapidly and urgently than ever.
Ted sighed as rain began to pour. His parents ran inside for shelter, and from his room he could hear their voices rise.
"Down with all social stratification
And chasing instant gratification.
We have had it with these corporations
And now we will make our confrontations!"
The wind picked up, and soon it was shaking the house. Ted looked out the window again and saw trees bending over. Smaller branches were breaking off and flying away in the wind.
"Will we succumb to life as consumers?
We'd rather be infested with tumors!
Evil, deceitful, and unethical,
We declare your actions heretical!"
Ted hopelessly punched a few buttons at random, but the flashing lights didn't change. The storm still raged outside.
"Society's focused on possessions,
But we are prepared to start aggressions.
To everyone who tramples human rights,
Be warned that on you we have set our sights!"
The rain was coming down so thick now that Ted couldn't even see anything outside anymore. He could still hear the wind howling so hard he wanted to cover his ears.
"Feel free to mock our staunch activism
As we extinguish your barbarism.
Your deeds have worsened inequality
We'll bear witness to your fatality!"
The sound of the wind was drowning out almost everything else, but his parents were practically shrieking their song in order to be heard above it.
"While you destroy the world's environment,
Revenge awaits for your entitlement.
So go ahead and push your corporate greed.
We are marching now to make you all bleed!"
"This is all my fault!" Ted whimpered, shutting his eyes as the tears came. "I caused this storm, and now it's going to kill us all! I'm going to die without ever having found out what a Ho-Ho is!"
"Stop spreading poverty and pollution
If you wish to avoid your execution.
Want to break the people's backs with labor?
You'll be mutilated with a saber!"
Suddenly enraged by his own powerlessness, Ted reared back and kicked the weather machine as hard as he could. It slammed against the wall of his room and landed on the floor, lying on its side. From that angle Ted noticed a switch he'd missed in his earlier attempts.
HURRICANE: Y/N
The switch was set to "Y." He chuckled. "Oh, silly me!" He reached out and flipped it to "N."
The rain abruptly ceased. The wind came to a standstill. The sun shone brightly. A rainbow spread across the sky. Ted went downstairs, where Grant and Leslie's ode to violent revolution was running into trouble.
"And we'll impale their heads on...on...wait, what were we talking about again?" Leslie asked, trailing off in mid-lyric.
Grant scratched his head. "I'm not--hey, look at the corn!"
Ted's parents raced outside to see the results of the hurricane. Several stalks had blown away, but those that remained glistened with the moisture left by the brief but heavy rainfall.
"Take that, Big Ag!" Leslie cheered, dancing a brief jig with Grant.
Ted trailed behind them and saw that some of his neighbors had also come outside. They were standing in a row, arms linked. "It's morning, morning, morning in the 'burbs!" They stood there for a few seconds, huge grins on their faces, before separating and heading back inside as though nothing had happened.
While his parents inspected the corn, Ted sighed. Everything seemed so quiet and bland now that the singing had ended. He looked up toward his room, where the weather machine still sat. "Do I dare?" he murmured, turning the idea over in his mind. Then he shook his head. "No, I mustn't. It's far too dangerous to toy with forces of nature like that, even if the songs were entertaining."
As he went back in the house and climbed the stairs, a hint of a smile played on his lips. But maybe someday....