Chapter 22 22. Tornado

Usually, this orchid blooms when the southwest monsoon blows, but right now she is ahead of the monsoon.When John Razasinhe was admiring all kinds of wonderful pink and lavender flowers in the greenhouse, he remembered that when he watched the first buds bloom last year, he caught up with a downpour and because of this, he was in the greenhouse. Trapped for half an hour. Razasinghe glanced worriedly at the sky: No, he doesn't need to be afraid of rain today.It's a wonderful sunny day.High in the sky, there were a few faint clouds floating, which made the scorching heat a little less.But what is this?It's really puzzling...

Razasinghe had never seen anything like it.Almost directly above his head, the long bands of clouds lined up, changed shape by the whirling perturbation.Apparently it was a violent little whirlwind not more than a few kilometers wide in all, but it reminded Razasinghe of something else entirely—the hole a knot made in a planed plank. .To get a better view of this rare aerial spectacle, Razasinghe left his beloved greenhouse and went outside.Now he could see the whirlwind moving slowly through the air, for swirls in the clouds indicated its whereabouts. It is not difficult to imagine that this is a man-made tornado that fell from the sky, and it plowed a channel in the clouds.Even Raza Singh, who understands the basic principles of weather control, did not expect that the control technology could achieve such a high degree of accuracy.But he is also proud to be aware that, forty years ago, he had done his part in this achievement.Convincing the superpowers to give up and hand them over to the global weather service is not an easy task.However, if we use a very broad metaphor here, it is that the last batch of swords were finally forged into plow tools.Now, lasers, once a threat to human existence, shoot their own beams at carefully selected parts of the atmosphere, or designated spots in deserted regions of the planet.It is true that even compared with the power of the weakest whirlwind, the energy of a laser is insignificant, but the energy possessed by a stone that causes an avalanche, or a neutron that starts a chain reaction, is relatively insignificant. So what?

Razasinghe is not versed in the technical details; he knows only that there is an enormous network of weather satellites that control it, and computers that store complete models of the Earth's atmosphere, oceans, and land surface .When Razasinha saw the tiny whirlwind move westward towards its intended goal and finally disappear behind the beautiful palm grove within the walls of the fort around Elysium, he felt like a primitive man— —a primitive man who gazes with mystical terror at the wonders of advanced technology. Then, he raised his eyes and looked up at the place where the man-made heaven was built.And there, high in the sky, meteorologists, invisible to him, were racing around the globe.

"Wonderful!" he murmured, "but I want you to have an unmistakable understanding of what you are doing."

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