Unwanted Power

You Were There

On Tuesday, after the family returned home, Heather sent an outline of all her proposed changes to Shikha for approval. The proposal had been completed for a while before Bill, Heather, and Cristine left for San Francisco. Heather was slow-rolling her technical output to make it look like it was the top priority of her unenhanced self.

What Heather sent to Shikha was only a project proposal with high-level details. The detailed changes to the code base kept being revised as Heather got better and better at in-depth code analysis via the leverage her computers gave her. Refactoring the code was turning into an ever-widening rewrite. Heather had to decide between solid updates that would really help the code and whether she could, as a single human, really have been able to do all of this. Heather hides behind her corporation for many of her projects, but she knows these people. They know her.

Shikha called Heather less than an hour later after the project outline was submitted.

"Heather! You were there when all that weird stuff happened!" Shikha said excitedly.

"I heard about it on the news." Heather admitted. She tried to not sound too lackadaisical. Heather had intimate knowledge of the event. It would not do to have it even remotely come across as if she knew about it.

"You didn't hear the rumbles? See the dancing light? See the ocean freeze?" Shikha asked.

"No. We spent most of our tourist time away from where all that supposedly happened." Heather said. "You know how San Fran is: Italian food in North Beach? All kinds of food along the piers. Lots of Chocolate? Sea Lions. Shopping. All the things we did are on the other side of the city. On the Bay side of it. Opposite from where all that is supposed to have happened."

"Supposedly? Heather! It's all over the news!" Shikha sounded like she thought Heather is being dense.

"Shika? Come on. Get real. What's all over the news, exactly? Which channel? One right-wing nutjob says in worked-up tones we are being invaded from another world!! That's why liberals love science! To call in the ice-creating space invaders! Oh, my god! The liberals won! We are all doomed! Another channel, albeit one less motivated to invoke fear for sales, is openly puzzled. They report there was an earthquake, but also? There wasn't one? Global seismographs say there was a big one. The ones next to San Fran say there wasn't? I was there. At Pier 39, I would have noticed an earthquake. There is a historical sign there that says the pier is built on a landfill. The area, including the pier, would drop into the water if the big one came. How you can tell if an earthquake happened: Pier 39 is gone. Worlds biggest practical seismograph. Guess what? It's still there. The Sea Lions are lying about on the docks like nothing is happening. Some on-the-scene reports say some people saw a bouncing light. Or: maybe it was zooming. Or: maybe it was a hovering light. It was white! No: Blue! No, it was yellow, and you are all dumb! Other people didn't see the light. Some say that they got the sun in their eyes? Which one is it? One person said their boat was frozen in the water. Naturally, they went for a walk on the ice. Suddenly their boat wasn't frozen? Which of those things? The only thing I know for sure is that it looks like an iceberg appeared offshore of the city. No one knows how it got there. I saw helicopter pictures of that. That is real."

"Well, OK, true, but Heather! An iceberg!" Shikha persisted.

"I admit: it's weird. The talking heads on the news reported that samples of the ice show frozen Pacific water. Do you know why San Francisco is so cold? The currents there are from the Arctic and flow down the Pacific coastline. Why is it so hard to believe some ice from the Arctic floated down south? Global warming is breaking up ice all over the place. This is just one of those differences between climate and weather. The world is getting warmer, so there is more ice floating around." Heather asserted.