The Rain Knows Inequality

At the mountaintop weather observatory, I was gazing at rainfall data from across the country. Three thousand meters above sea level. Here, the phrase “above the clouds” is literally true. Below spread a white sea, and the lights of the city remained sunk beneath it even at night. Machines tirelessly convert a sky that belongs to no one into numbers. Wind speed, atmospheric pressure, humidity. The world is recorded—ordered, endless, and yet without meaning.

I noticed the anomaly at the end of May. A strange pattern had surfaced on the national rainfall distribution map. Rain clouds avoid terrain. That was common knowledge. Unable to cross mountains, they carry water evaporated from the sea and let it fall upon the mountainsides. For thirty years—the whole time I’d been at this observatory—that had been the truth.

But that day’s map was different. The rain was not avoiding the mountains. The rain was avoiding income.

I stared at the screen. I cross-referenced the regions where it wasn’t raining against statistical data. They matched. The neighborhoods with the highest real estate prices had not been touched by a single drop of rain in six months. Conversely, the regions with shrinking populations, the towns lined with empty houses, the districts with high rates of non-regular employment—all of them were being drenched in obvious excess. Day by day, the precision increased. What began as a vague bias now traced the boundaries of city blocks with the accuracy of a single street.

I considered whether I should report the data to someone. I considered it, and stopped. Who would believe it? And even if they did, who would be glad? Those with villas on the hills would drink their wine under dry skies this winter too. Those living in the valley towns would be left to live alongside mold. Reporting it would change nothing. Machines simply record. That was all this profession amounted to.

Between night shifts, I had a habit of browsing the news on my smartphone. High school students in Paris were pouring into the streets. They were protesting something. I didn’t feel like reading the translated article. Their voices seemed to reach no one, just like the numbers on my screen. But unlike me, they were raising their voices. Which was right—to raise your voice, or to keep recording? I didn’t know.

With the onset of summer, the bias ceased to be “weather” and became “climate.” The dry towns would be dry forever; the wet towns would rot. Someone at the Meteorological Agency would eventually write a paper on it. The causal relationship would be cloaked in the words “not yet understood.” Meteorologists around the world must have been observing the same phenomenon, with the same silence. No one can be the first voice. The first voice cannot speak until the anomaly has been confirmed not to be an error.

From the observatory window, I looked down at the nighttime sea of clouds. The moon was out. The sea of clouds reflected its light unfairly. The bright parts, the dark parts with no visible bottom, and the boundary between them coincided perfectly with the network of roads etched into the earth below. Did the city’s lights draw the boundary, the clouds obeying? Or did the clouds draw the boundary, dividing people according to where they lived?

It was beautiful. Realizing this, I hated myself a little. I had expected the world to split this way. Wages freezing, land being seized, small angers replaced by consumption—as if it had all been scheduled, the rain began its sorting. Capitalism had reached even the clouds. This was not the scenery of defeat. It was the scenery of completion. Seen from a mountaintop, every ending looks like a fulfillment.

In early September, a typhoon approached. A large, slow-moving typhoon. I sat down before the instruments. The storm’s edge traced the usual boundary exactly. Over the dry towns, the typhoon weakened; over the wet towns, it strengthened. The wind avoided wealth; the rain gathered poverty. The data was perfect, and there was no resisting it. I kept recording. I had decided this was my way of raising my voice.

At dawn, after the typhoon had passed, the sea of clouds had cleared. In the morning sun, only the boundary remained. Its edge trimmed geometrically straight, a single wall of cloud stretched in a line, as if to cap the sky above the dry towns. It looked like a wall that would never break. But weather, however orderly it may appear, always carries a faint disturbance within. For thirty years, I have pursued only that disturbance.

The numbers on the screen had begun to show fluctuations that should have been impossible. Inside the wall of clouds, something was quietly swirling. As one who records, I could do nothing but keep watching. But the high school students in Paris, or someone in a mold-smelling room watching the news, might be noticing the same swirl. How many people in this world have noticed? And what do those who notice do?

On the mountaintop, the wind had stopped. Beyond the wall of clouds, I thought I could faintly hear the sound of something beginning to crumble. I kept recording. The quiet revolution, not yet become rain, continues to spin inside the wall.