The Weatherman

        It was the end of the world, this time for real.  The Earth was getting hotter each day; people were already dying of heatstroke and dehydration, even in the middle of winter.  Everyone had ideas, opinions, predictions, but no one had answers until one day when the temperature suddenly dropped, and a week of the most beautiful weather followed.  Once the week was done, it was even hotter than it had been before.
        Suddenly everyone was talking about a scientist, a man who previously few had known about and even fewer had cared about.  Now every news network, every paper, even every person on the street, all they could talk about was the scientist and his marvelous machine.
         The entire world watched on the television as he met with some of the world’s most important political leaders.  He invited them to his laboratory, he showed them his machine, and how it scanned his brainwaves to somehow control the world’s climate.  He invited them to try it themselves, and none could make it work.  Then he made his demands.
         The world watched in horror and then simple shock.  He didn’t ask for money, he didn’t ask for power or luxury.  He asked for blood.  He wanted a temple built, atop a stone pyramid to dwarf the greatest in Egypt, and he wanted an enormous basin, filled with the blood of human sacrifices.  He wanted it placed in downtown Washington D.C.
         Every man who was meeting him was disgusted and mortified.  Some cursed him, some threw tantrums, and others simply stood and left.  He said he would wait, and that they could show themselves out.
         Within minutes the army arrived, and they took the man away in handcuffs, secured his machine, and established a fortress around it to ensure its safety.  The scientist smiled and said he could wait.
         Three months went by, and the greatest scientists in the world could not make the machine work.  They tortured and interrogated the machine’s maker, and he told them all he knew, but still they could not make it work, nor could they build another like it.  They threatened the scientist with death if he did not work it himself and return the planet to normal, and he politely refused.  He had stated his price, he said, and he could wait for them to pay it.
         By the time four months had passed, the death toll was in the tens of millions and climbing higher ever day.  Even the most stoic politicians began to contemplate which butcher’s bill was higher in the end.
         On the fifth month they released the scientist and told him he would have his temple, and he would have his blood.  Construction began in the sweltering heat; monuments were torn down and their materials used, there was no time to move them.  The likelihood of one of the construction workers dying from exposure within the first three weeks of employment approached eighty percent.
         In the seventh month the work was done; a magnificent temple stood high atop what had once been the nation’s capital; the politicians had mostly packed up and moved to Philadelphia by then.  The scientist stood with his machine at the edge of the basin, bigger than an Olympic swimming pool and bone dry.  A man, a death-row inmate slated for execution anyways, was dragged up the long stairway to the temple.  He was pushed to his knees at the edge of the basin, and his throat was cut, letting his blood flow out into the basin.  It made a pitifully small puddle, but the scientist nodded.  The machine next to him whirred and clicked, the air grew cooler, and the enormous crowd gathered breathed a sigh of relief; it was far from the idyllic weather from when the machine had first turned on, but it was a breath of hope.  More convicts were brought to the pool and bled, and the weather grew cooler.
         It wasn’t long before they ran out of death row convicts to appease the scientist.  Whenever they started to waffle and slow the constant sacrifices of blood, the air grew hotter and dryer.  The pool was fed twenty four hours a day, and the scientist stood and watched at all times.  Soon the regular convicts were being shipped in from around the country and around the world, and people began to wonder where the sacrifices would come from when the prisons ran dry.
         The pool glistened and churned with blood, nearly to the edge but never seeming to quite fill, there was ever room for more.  A lottery, they decided, was the fairest method.  People across the world were each given their own numbers, and numbers were chosen at random.  No one who was important had their number chosen randomly, of course.  Most whose numbers were called ran though, and all the convicts were gone now.
         Much of the militaries were reassigned, told to bring in those that were evading the lottery.  As more months went by, the lottery became a farce; it was far easier, after all, to go out and collect whoever was nearest and least defensible, and then assign each a called number.  Soon they didn’t even bother with the numbers.
         The scientist was guarded day and night by the world’s most elite bodyguards.  Countless assassination attempts had been foiled without getting close, until one of those elites could bear no more and turned his gun on the scientist himself.  He fired only one shot before he was gunned down by his comrades, but that one bullet found the scientist’s heart and tore it apart.  He fell to the ground, and the perpetual crowd around the basin didn’t know whether to cheer or wail.
         The world had forgotten though, the true nature of blood and the true value of its shedding.  We had all thought in terms of belief, of worship, but it was blood that truly made gods.
         The scientist stood up, and looked around at the suddenly silent crowd.  Without a word, for his chest was torn open and his lungs were pierced, he picked up the body of the fallen guard and carried it to the edge of the pyramid.  He tore the guard’s throat open with his hand, and let it bleed out down the stepped sides.  Then he stood again, walked into the basin itself, and emerged whole.  His torn and bloodied clothes showed unmarked flesh beneath, and he returned to stand at the edge of the pool.  He gestured for the next sacrifice to step forward.
         By and large, the world continues to move on now.  Fewer go to have their blood taken than were dying from the heat, and the weather is now as close to ideal as you could imagine.  The farmers’ crops thrive even, despite how rarely it rains.  There hasn’t been a war in two years now, not since the temple was built; when one nearly started a few months back, the weather again turned hot and dry, and peace was quickly and publicly brokered.
         The strangest thing though, is the scientist’s machine.  It hasn’t turned on in almost a year and a half.