Dark Cloud

The skies had been raining for 9 months. Elen traced her fingers against the window and eyed the murky abyss. The downpour was tremendous; gushing like buckets of water and streaming across the glass pane. The dams had burst. The crops were dead. Sigourney sat in the corner with a grey cup of hot chocolate placed between her palms. The fireplace crackled beside her.

'It's a modern day Noah's ark,' said Elen.

Sigourney looked up.

'Who's Noah?' she said.

The embers made shadows dance wildly across her face; her body immersed in a soft, sinking auburn sofa.  

'Never mind, I just miss the old summer.'

Elen released one foot from her slipper and brushed her bare sole against the wooden floor. She shot her foot back into the slipper as if she were hopping out of a cold pool.

'I miss it too,' said Sigourney with an idle stare. She had placed her cup on the floor to cool down and was now watching a video on her phone. 'But it's what the people want.'

Elen crept over to the fireplace. She placed her hands through a rippling wave of warmth.

'Who votes for it to rain everyday for 9 months?'

Sigourney shrugged.

'Oh, I don't know, voters?'

'Sweet sister,' muttered Elen cynically. 'Was that really a question? Do voters vote? Maybe you got the good looks, maybe I got the good brain.'

Elen retrieved her coat from the cupboard. She swapped her slippers for boots and then pulled the black hood over her lifeless hair.  

'My hair has lost all its colour since this darkness,' she complained. 'And my skin.' She padded her face miserably. 

Sigourney was still looking at her phone; her eyes reflected the screen like little square stamps. 'Oh, same.'

'I'm getting some milk. Do you want any?'

Her question was met with silence. Elen opened the door and the room erupted with flashes of lightning and a flurry of water.

'Close the door, the weather's horrible.'

As she trudged through the pathways, the rain hammered at her face and ached at her cheeks. Her hair broke free from the hood and danced wildly in the storm. The roads were overflowing with water and rushed up to her ankles; cold swelling in and around her socks. There was nobody in the vicinity until she reached the village; but even then, it was remote - civilians rushing from door to door, keeping out of nature's harsh summer afternoon. The village had been battered by the 9 months of rain. It had crumbled. The village was once vibrant and now a derelict ghost town. One shop was open.     

'Excuse me,' said an old woman as Elen wandered through the shop aisles. 'Can I interest you in some information about next week's referendum?'

The shop's searing lights blinked from above.

Elen looked at the woman, holding a leaflet in her timid hand. Her deep wrinkles lifted across her face to reveal a hearty smile. Her white hair beamed under the lighting. 

'I know what I'm voting for,' said Elen. 'Some warmth.'

'Actually, it's about tomorrow's protest,' corrected the elderly woman. 'Something is wrong with the cloud.'

Elen looked back up and paused, reflecting on the woman's choice of words. 'Oh, you're part of the resistance.'

'We don't call ourselves that. It implies we're fighting the people's vote.'

Elen glanced across at the shop door and momentarily watched the hazy fall of rain.

'So, what are you fighting?'

The woman pushed the leaflet into Elen's pale hand. 'My husband worked on the cloud when it was installed 9 months ago. Costs were cut during the production and now we believe it is misreading the votes. Or being manipulated. It's going to keep on getting colder. And it will rain harder.'

'I worked on the cloud too,' said Elen. She looked longingly through the woman. 'A long time back.'

'Then you'll know that something is wrong with it.'

Elen shook her head. 'But the government did an investigation. There's nothing wrong with the cloud. I want to think something is wrong too but it's hard to believe.'

'Every day we vote for the weather and everyday it gets colder. Don't you think that's odd?'

Elen listened patiently.

'This referendum is dangerous. The government is abolishing the daily votes. You vote everyday and nothing changes. The next vote will last for years. Who wants the same weather for that long? There'd be no going back.'

'I think we're all going to vote for normal weather again,' she said coolly. Elen folded the leaflet into a small rectangle and slid it safely into her coat pocket. 'Thank you though.'

Elen walked through the murky abyss on her journey back home as the woman's voice echoed in her mind. Deep down Elen knew something was wrong too, but to admit it would be to remind herself of losing her place on the development of the cloud. It would be to revisit the failures.

She detoured from her usual route and clambered up pathways away from the village; into a forest drowning under the onslaught. She walked upwards. The trek was long. She reached a quiet building which loomed into the sky and stepped inside to the reception.

'Good to see you again,' said a man in a dark blazer and white shirt. He was only a few years older than Elen. 'Have you come to see me again?'

'Not you, just the cloud,' she grinned.

'You come here every week to see the cloud on the same days that I'm working. Coincidence.'

She nodded and then looked up to the hallway.

'Is it still ok for me to see it?' she said.

'You know it's currently for viewings.'

'Please, for me.'

The man took a deep breath and then stepped away from his desk.

'Ok, Elen. Quickly though. I don't want anyone to see that I'm sneaking you in.'

He ushered her towards a large glass elevator which then shot up into the sky. The greenery below turned into a distant smudge, the wind whipped the at the lift's outer case.

'Here we are,' said the man after a few moments.

The doors opened and they walked out through a long corridor. The hallway was plastered with paintings and blue prints of the cloud from its development: the grand machine which would let humans decide on the weather. They arrived at the balcony and looked up into the sky.

'I can't believe I used to work on it,' she said, gazing into the cloud.

It was a large machine which marked the sky like a black web. It dwarfed the villages below, bellowing out roars of thunder and illuminating flashes of light from within it.

'It's a beauty, isn't it.' he smiled.

She pondered for a while and then looked down. She could make out faint figures below who had gathered outside to take pictures. Some were on their phones and she presumed that some were voting for tomorrow's weather.

'Do you think it's broken?' she said after a while.

'The cloud?'

'It rains so much'

'Because people are voting for rain,' he responded blankly.

'And soon we will make a vote for permanent weather. What if everyone votes for more rain and then changes our mind? Why should we stick with it?’

'You know why,' he said looking at her. 'The cloud can't take daily votes anymore. We have to make a decision. We vote for permanent weather, for the sake of the cloud.'

A cold wind blasted at the pair and they both shivered.

'I don't know why people keep voting for rain,' she uttered.

'Democracy, Elen. You should accept it.'

They stared at the cloud until she grew cold.

-    

When she got home, Elen placed the milk into the kitchen fridge and then retreated back towards the large living room's window.

'Who'd have thought it,' she rambled to herself. 'A big cloud in the sky that controls the weather. We all get to decide and still no one's happy.'

'I never vote anyway,' drolled her sister. 'It's not like it makes a difference.'

'Maybe that's why it keeps on raining,' said Elen. 'Everyone that wants the rain votes for it. Everyone that wants warmth thinks it won't make a difference. You should vote.'

Sigourney paid no attention, scrolling through a queue of videos lined up for the day.

'I remember working on the cloud,' reminisced Elen dreamily, opening up the leaflet from the old woman. 'It was such a good idea. And then suddenly I wasn't good enough. Replaced by better technicians. The code was really good. I don't think there was room for error.'

She stopped to look at the grand, wooden interior her house. The job had paid her well. It had helped to pay for the house. 

'And at least this house helps look after us from the harsh weather,' she said thoughtfully.

She looked down and read the information and the sensational claims plastered across the flashy flyer: The Cloud is broken! The code is vulnerable!

'And all of these protestors,' she continued. 'Moaning about democracy being broken. They only think it's broken when they don't get what they want. Sigourney, are you listening to me?'

Sigourney hadn't moved from the sofa. The videos from her phone blared out against the claps of rain and thunder.

'What are you watching?'

The fire breathed quietly in its grove. The grey sky smothered the window.

A commentator was critiquing the state of society. 'We're all like sheep.' Ranted the commentator. A pixelated young woman with short blonde hair. 'You think you know what you want, but we mimic our surroundings. You see a lot of other people tell you that they love the rain and then you vote for the rain too. You don't even like rain! You're conditioned what to do, what to feel, what to think. You follow the herd. We're all sheep walking off of the cliff. This is democracy hijacked-'

The video stopped. 'Some girl who used to do beauty vlogs,' replied Sigourney. 'She used to be good but now all she does is moan about politics.' Her eyes rolled. 

Elen fell into a somber silence. The leaflet shivered in her shaking hand from the cold. The vlogger's voice churned in her ears like clay pottery. 'Democracy hijacked.' she said to herself quietly.

-

The next morning Elen returned to the village; the worn leaflet flapping in the glacial wind as it directed her to the protest. The rain drenched her lashes. A meeting had gathered in a nearby hall.

'They will drown us all out!' boomed a voice.

She walked into the building and a saw congregation of people crammed across the brightly lit room. The audience cheered at the figure in front. Elen recognised the voice and looked up to the stage; it was the elderly woman who had given her the leaflet. Elen held her phone at the woman and the facial recognition device picked up her history: Leader of the resistance, an historic criminal conviction for trying to bring down the cloud.

'I knew I recognised her from somewhere,' she uttered to herself.

'When I was a young girl, we had hot summers and cold winters.' The voice reverberated on the microphone. 'Now we have cold rain for winter, cold rain for summer - and this is the will of the people? Who are these people? Show me those people!'

Applause and cheers once again. Elen stood amongst the crowd; watching, listening, shaking off the cold droplets of water from her hair.

'Does it surprise you?' she continued. 'That our country's richest people are CEOs who supplied gas to our homes, or the establishments who manufacture heaters, or coats, or people with vendettas against farmers? Does it surprise you that natural produce cannot survive and that we are spending more and more money on manufactured garbage for food? Does it surprise you that you don't meet anyone who likes the rain and yet that's all we get? Does anything surprise you anymore?'  

Elen applauded. The crowd cheered.

'Traitor.' shouted a voice from the distance.

The crowd turned around; a man with a soaking hoody had cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted at the stage. 'You are meddling with democracy!' he shouted.

A few jeers were hurdled in his direction but the woman on stage commanded her direction back. 'Let us not be distracted by those who disagree with our cause, let us not undermine the freedom of democracy, but let us question what is going wrong!'

The applause was washed out with further shouts from the opposing members of the audience.

'Criminal! Lock her up, lock her up!'

The crowd descended into chants and screams - the woman on the podium was quickly ushered off by a security guard as the atmosphere darkened. Before she could get out herself, Elen held her phone up at the pro-rain protestors. The screen picked up their faces on her recognition system and after saving a few, she left the hall as it broke out into a riot.

She stepped into the grey wash of rain as people started spilling out of the building. There were cries and screams as fist fights broke out between opposing political mobs. Someone pulled out a gun and fired it randomly into the distance. Everyone ran. 

When she got home, Sigourney was nestled by the fireplace as usual.

'Where have you been?' she said looking up.

'I went to see something,' replied Elen, hanging up her coat. Her ears were ringing with the sound of the gun. 

Sigourney's phone was playing out a political speech. 'There are some countries which barely get any rainfall at all. This country needs it. Vote for more rain on the referendum!'

'You can't be serious,' said Elen.

Sigourney was reading some of the comments that had been published under the video.

'A lot of people agree with the guy,' she said thoughtfully. 'He makes some good points.'

'Sigourney you don't even like rain!'

The video was still playing. 'Make sure you do the right thing!'

Elen flopped by the window and watched beads of rain race down the glass. Every droplet was heading towards its demise on the ledge.

'Did you go to that crook's protest?' asked Sigourney.

'How did you know?'

'I noticed you had a leaflet from the resistance.'

'She's not a crook.'

'She has a criminal conviction.'

Elen looked through her phone and picked out the faces from the facial recognition application. Every record returned the same address. Their details were skeletal.

'There were some pro-rain voters at the protest,' said Elen eventually. 'And there's something unusual about their records.'

'What?'

'Well, information on a civilian is free, right? If someone sees me down the street, they can know my name, address, whatever. They just scan my face. Easy.'

'And?'  

She pressed the phone up to her sister's face. 'Nothing.'

Elen was right. The records were bare.

'Maybe it's an error,' suggested Sigourney.

'It's a sign that something is wrong.'

Elen retrieved her coat. She shook down the rain and wrapped the damp attire around her skeletal frame.

'Where are you going?'

'To the address of these pro-rain activists. I need to find out what's going on.'

Sigourney made a heavy sigh and pulled herself from the sofa. 'Hold on, I'll come with you.'

The two sisters only had to venture a couple of miles from the main town. The voters had been local; and according to the data lived in a warehouse. Trees rocked in the wind and a boreal gust swept at their bodies.

'There,' shouted Elen through the howls. She pointed a finger to a large grey building in the distance. As they wandered up, they noticed that the security pods were empty and that the CCTV units had been destroyed in the weather. No one was monitoring the area.

'It's locked,' said Sigourney as they reached an electronic lock.

Elen looked at the pin pad mechanically. 'It's old. It should be easy to hack into. I worked with this stuff during my course on the cloud.'

She started pressing digits into the panel and stopping to think how to open the door. Sigourney folded her arms and shivered in the rain.

'Hurry up,' she moaned.

There was a loud clicking sound and the metal doors opened up.

'I did it!' she beamed.

As the metal cages unfolded, the pair walked into a large empty room. Automatic lights clinked on around them, beaming down on them like a stage spotlight. Their footsteps echoed like distant drops in an empty chamber.

The room was a large, silver dome, wide and empty like the inside of a shell. There was an oily, rubber smell in the air.

'There's nothing here,' drolled Sigourney after a while.

They paced around the large, metallic room; their eyes straining to adjust under the sudden blast of light. 

'There is, look.'

Each side of the wall had glass pods build into them. They were tall like large beakers, big enough to fit a body in. When Ellen approached, she realized that was exactly what it was. Tall glass containers with grey, blurry humanoid figures behind the panels.

'There are people in these pods!' she screamed, darting backwards.

Elen took sharp breaths and regained composure. 

'It's like a stand up coffin,' shuddered Sigourney.

'I recognize them,' said Elen slowly. She pressed her face against the glass and looked at the sleeping faces. Her eyes then drifted down towards an individual label stuck to each door. An old, distorted barcode could be seen on each one.

'What is it?'

Elen stepped backwards and looked at the bodies with a concerned face. 'They're bots. The pro-rain voters I saw are not real people. They're robots.'

'I thought bots were illegal.'

'Well someone is sending them out. I didn't get a chance to talk with them. If I had have spoken with them, I would have known. They're not good for much apart from shouting a few catchphrases. They're basic machines.'

'So there,' said Sigourney, throwing her arms by her side. 'What now? Robots don't vote. What has your big investigation made you decide now?'

'They can't vote,' agreed Elen, 'but they can have a very good online presence. Sister, no one cares about this village. And yet someone is sending bots out to disrupt our referendum. Imagine what their online presence must be like. I wonder how many more there are in the country.' 

'I want to go home,' huffed Sigourney.

'Don't you see the importance of this?'

Sigourney stopped to think. 'You're telling me that robots are convincing me how to vote.'

Elen nodded.

'Nobody tells me how to think,' she said defiantly.

The pair stood still for a few moments until they heard the sound of a vehicle driving around outside in the rain. Heavy footsteps approached the entrance. The pods suddenly whirled and lights appeared blinking under the barcodes. Air hissed out of machines and the glass doors started to open.

'They're waking up!' shouted Elen.

The lights erupted above them and the figures stumbled out of their containers. The fleshy faces were illuminated by an array of mechanical lights from behind the fake skin.

‘Let’s get out of here!’  

 They darted for the exit and rushed out into the cold. A security guard had emerged from a car; standing by the side of the building and activating lights from a separate control panel in the rain. He caught glance of them; two figures in the hazy distance who had raced away before he could do anything.

As the girls raced through the onslaught of rain, Elen was shouting to herself.

‘I’m joining that protest. I’m joining that protest.’

-

The greying leader from the resistance held Elen a sign.

'These are neon signs. They'll light up even in this darkness,' she advised.

Elen held a light carboard square in her hands and held it up to the black clouds. The letters lit up in a bright sparkling neon shade. 

'The amount of people showing their support..' uttered Elen, 'this is positive, right?'

'This protest will show the government that we don't want this weather, and that we don't want a referendum to decide on the same weather. This is very positive.'

The pair were hooded and wrapped up to shield them from the harsh cold rain upon them that morning. The protest was ready to start and Elen felt fiercely determined to rally alongside the crowds. Journalists from around the country had appeared to document the spectacle. There was the feeling of dramatic energy in the air.

Bolts of lightning snapped in the sky. The protest started off with hundreds of people chanting through a devised route of several miles into the city center. The leader of the resistance stood at the front of her pack, a speaker phone pressed to her mouth as she shouted against the yells behind her.

'Stop the referendum!' cried Elen, battling the rain.

Elen trudged through the mud. As the wind bit at her face, she suddenly caught eyes with a familiar face in front of the crowd. The pro-referendum bot. He stood at the side of the front, watching her with mechanical eyes. His jet black hair swished in the wind; he stood ominously, placed across the corner like a shadow. Another lash of wind made Elen shield her eyes and he was gone.

'The people want their summer back!' declared the leader of the resistance.

Elen continued to walk a few steps further and quietly mediated on how many bots may be present. She looked at the cameras; the bodies in front of her. Maybe the journalists were bots too. Was there any way to tell? Her mind fell into a lifeless lull. She thought about how tired her arms were from holding the sign up; and then it happened. An explosion ripped through the crowd. Grey gas swept in the wind and smothered the resistance. People scrambled for cover, tripping over and diving into nearby shelter. Elen's lungs scorched with a summer's heat and she collapsed onto the floor. She coughed violently as the card she was holding danced wildly into the wind. Heavy shoes trampled her skinny body. The sound of gun shots bounced across nearby. With her eyes squeezed shut, Elen pressed her cut hands against the mud and lifted herself up. She felt elbows and arms knocking at her but she managed to sustain balance, wobbling against the commotion. The mud was awash with blood. As she regained balance, there was another flash of white light; searing at her eyes, followed by a violent force of wind which threw her back. The protest was over. 

- 

It was a week after the protest; and Elen was sat by her bed watching the rain drizzle from the charcoal night sky. She felt the bruises across her face and chest. Her rasp breaths were a reminder of the week before her. She knew that she was fortunate to be alive. She opened up her phone, registered her fingerprint on the referendum scanner of the screen and then made the vote: old style British weather. She felt her stomach sink when she reflected upon her efforts to campaign vigorously with the resistance in the days after her discovery. It had felt too little, too late. She took a deep breath and went to sleep, hopeful that rays of light would wake her up in the morning. Instead, she awoke to roars of thunder; the sound of rain was beating down on her window. Streaks of lightning whipped through the sky. It was morning. She wept like the weather.

Elen stood by the tower in the black morning. She walked through to the main entrance and saw the man by the reception.

‘Can we talk?’

‘For you, Elen. Of course.’

‘Can we see the cloud again?’

He hesitated. ‘If you must.’

‘That’s it, I guess.’ She said as they arrived to the edge of the bridge.

The rain whipped against the wind. The dark cloud raged above the city.

‘I’ve done some research,’ said the man. ‘There were no bots who hacked the election. The voters were real people.’

‘How could people vote for bad weather?’

‘Perhaps they were influenced,’ he said thoughtfully.

‘Then it’s wrong!’ she said furiously. ‘The referendum was a sham.’

‘It’s hard,’ he said. ‘How can you explain to someone that they were manipulated? That their votes were founded on influence? People don’t want to accept that.’

‘They didn’t know what they were voting for.’

‘Didn’t they?’ He paused. ‘I don’t know, Elen. I don’t know.’

Both figures stood quietly, watching the dark cloud electrify the sky with flashes of lightning. The wind howled in agony.

-

'Good morning, Sigourney,' moped Elen as she walked back into her house. She slammed the door shut and hung up her coat.  

Sigourney was back in her usual place. Her phone played out a political speech.

'A victory for us here on the referendum,' cheered a politician. 'Rain to help prosper our economy. What a fantastic morning this is.'

Elen threw herself onto the sofa.

'What's wrong?'

'I voted for old style British weather and we just got heavier rain,' sighed Elen.

'Oh well.'

Sigourney got up from her chair and looked gracefully at the front garden, drowning in pools of torrid water.

'I voted for more rain,' she said finally.

'What?'

Elen jumped up.

'I voted for more rain.'

'Sigourney, why?'

Sigourney sighed and closed the curtains. The room plunged into a darker shade of black. She scratched the back of her hair and her eyes glossed over in a distant daze.

'I don't know,' she said dismissively.

Elen stepped forward, shaking with frustration.

‘Don’t be angry,’ said Sigourney.

'We have to live in the shadows of the cloud because of people like you and you don't know why you even voted for it?'

Sigourney hesitated.

'You don't like rain. Why did you vote for it? There must be an explanation.'

Sigourney bit her lip. She spoke with a sudden force and conviction.

'I voted for it because it was the right thing to do. It was my choice, you can't change my mind on that.'

Elen said nothing. Her mouth hung ajar.

'Don't look at me like that.'

'I don't understand you.' Said Elen, shaking her head in disbelief. ‘The right thing to do?’

'I don't get you either,' she snapped. 'You're always moaning about the cloud. And you're always so righteous. If you really believe in democracy, you'll let me vote how I want to vote.'

'You don't like this weather though.'

'It was my choice.' Said Sigourney.

Elen looked at her sister blankly.

 'It was my decision!' Her voice sounded like it was pleading for reassurance. Then there was a brief pause. The sound of rain gushed from outside. Both sisters stood looking at each other, a mysterious force of confusion torn between them. 'My decision.'