The Blacktip Times

The heart of Blacktip Island inventor Antonio Fletcher’s Rainmaker-3000 weather modification engine, unveiled this week, designed to attract rain to the small Caribbean island. (photo courtesy of Isiwal)

A Blacktip Island jack-of-all-trades this week created a device he claims can change regional weather patterns to bring more rain to the island.

“Blacktip’s a small land mass, y’know. Don’t attract many rain clouds,” Antonio Fletcher said. “Now, with cisterns and water tanks running dry, we need rain more that ever. Me, I got tired of seeing them clouds passing us by, or raining out on the sea. So I built me a giant heater to raise temps over the island and pull moisture in from the air.

“The Rainmaker-3000’ll let us turn on the rain like we’re turning on a faucet,” Fletcher said. “We can fill our cisterns anytime we want, then turn it off and go back to a nice sunny day. I’m surprised nobody thought of it before.”

Some in the community questioned whether the device would work.

“‘Tonio’s sharp and all, and I don’t doubt his handiwork, but I’ll need to see this gizmo actually work before I believe it,” Lucille Ray said. “We’ve built bonfires before to try to build heat and attract rain, but it didn’t do a thing. Neither did catapulting salt and silver iodide into the sky. I want to believe, but I need proof.”

Others questioned the morality of using the device.

“My concern is how his machine will impact climate on a larger scale,” Tiperon University-Blacktip ethic professor Fanny Bottoms said. “There’s a limited amount of moisture in the atmosphere. If we attract rain here, will someone somewhere else go without? Would full cisterns on Blacktip mean a drought on Tiperon?

“And what if people on other islands start using devices like this,” Bottoms said. “It could start a Caribbean rain war. Potentially, we’d have a situation where rain clouds are zig-zagging from island to island, and dumping most of their rain in the sea.”

Island business leaders opposed Fletcher’s invention.

“Only way to create enough heat to form clouds is to pave over the island,” Blacktip Island Chamber of Commerce president Whitey Bottoms said. “We been saying that for years. And trying to get it done. The Granola-crunchers keep blocking us in court, though. This what’s-it of ‘Tonio’s is an obstacle to progress, plain and simple, if folks get caught up in the hype.”

Fletcher was unaffected by the criticism.

“Rain wars are just what we need,” he said. “Tiperon hogs all the rain right now. Time for them to feel the shoe on the other foot. And if anybody slaps together a competing Rainmaker, we’ll build a better one. Ain’t afraid to take on anybody head-to-head.

“Working on a anti-Rainmaker, too, to turn loose on anybody who messes with us,” Fletcher said. “Gonna see if it’ll work at killing hurricanes, too, which I reckon it will.”