The Idiot from Corporate
Story 8 for the 52 Stories in 52 Weeks Challenge
He never saw it coming.
I’m a paleoclimatologist who studies evidence of climate changes in the fossil record. Even though I was looking way back in time, I was the one who was given the gift of seeing in the future.
When it came to predicting where the next disastrous flood or hurricane would hit, my accuracy was 100%. With that kind of record, everyone listened to ‘Stormy Bill’. I was at the top of the heap and was making money hand over fist with my video channel.
Eventually, I predicted that the melting of the ice caps would lead to problems other than climate change and flooding. I had seen irrefutable evidence in core samples that our disasters were just beginning. But when I tried to raise the alarm, people laughed at me. The media and government discredited me and claimed I was promoting a hoax. My viewership dropped off my YouTube channel, and everyone pulled their ads. Overnight, my new nickname ‘Silly Billy’ ran in all the major papers around the world.
That’s why I agreed to my current job for a hotel chain, and I had flown out to Louisiana to talk to the company reps preparing for the grand opening of a new resort on the coast.
