Kurita was, by any measure, an unlucky man. Three years at the Meteorological Bureau of Planet Garanta-4, and not a single hint of a promotion.
Garanta-4 was split cleanly down the middle: the left half eternally sunny, the right half eternally overcast. The planet didn’t rotate, so the sunny side stayed bright and the cloudy side stayed dim — always, without exception. The residents had long since made their peace with it. People on the sunny side bragged that they’d never owned an umbrella. People on the cloudy side had been complaining about their laundry for thirty years.
The Bureau had one building on each side — the Sunny Bureau and the Cloudy Bureau — connected by a single shared wall.
Kurita worked in the Sunny Bureau. His job was simple. Every morning at eight, he broadcast: Today’s weather is sunny. Sunny skies are expected tomorrow as well. That was it. In three years, not a word of the script had changed. He suspected no one actually listened.
“Chief, about the budget—”
One afternoon, Kurita caught his supervisor, Saji, in the corridor.
“Hm?” Saji didn’t look up. He made that face every time Kurita opened his mouth.
“I’ve been working on a proposal. If we merged our bureau with the Cloudy Bureau and cut the staff in half—”
“Those guys are out the door by nine every night,” Saji said. “Because of the work. Same as us, really.”
“Right, so — if we added one broadcast unit, one person could run both forecasts. Same shift hours, nothing changes on that end.”
“Could work,” Saji admitted. “And the extra people?”
“Handled through natural attrition…”
“I retire next year,” Saji said. “So I’d be the attrition.”
Kurita went quiet. He had somehow managed to forget that his boss was due to leave.
“I’ll think about it,” Saji said, and turned back to his paperwork.
The following week, Kurita came back with a written proposal. Saji had a strange look on his face.
“Tourism office called.”
“The tourism office?”
“Apparently Garanta-4 is getting more visitors. People are tired of weather changing on them wherever they go. Here, it doesn’t.”
”…Right,” said Kurita.
“Sunny side is selling an umbrella-free guarantee tour. Cloudy side is doing a no-sunburn guarantee tour. Travel agencies have started packaging both. The tourism office wants to run ads with us — something like officially certified weather guarantees.”
“A weather guarantee,” Kurita said. “Though the weather was never going to change anyway.”
“That’s the thing,” Saji said. “But they want the Bureau’s endorsement. A signed document that says sunny skies are guaranteed every day. Gives us a presence, they said.”
He paused. “They also said they want more staff. A joint appointment with our bureau — something called Weather Guarantee Officer.”
Kurita looked down at the reduction proposal in his hands.
“Go ahead and draft the headcount request,” Saji said, and turned away.
Kurita walked back to his desk and fed the reduction proposal into the shredder without much thought. He pulled up the staffing request form. The first field read: Number of positions:
It had been a very long three years. But apparently, somewhere along the way, Kurita had ended up on the shortlist for advancement.
The next morning’s broadcast script had one new line: Today’s weather is sunny. Weather guarantee in effect — no need to worry.
This story is set on a fictional planet. The premise — one side permanently sunny, the other permanently overcast — is inspired by real planets in our universe whose rotation has been locked in place by the gravitational pull of their host star.