Sal glanced again at the weather report one of the meteorologists e-mailed him that was marked urgent. It had not changed the last dozen or so times he read it. A storm predicted for Fargo, North Dakota would bring one of the worst hailstorms ever recorded within hours. It mentioned possible baseball sized hail.

            The website Sal worked for, WeatherDeathDuel.Com, never gave out betting spreads for hailstorms. Hailstorms were too sporadic, not quite as routine as cat 6 hurricanes that battered the south and east coasts or the years long wildfires out west. The way the site worked was Sal, or another oddsmaker, would set the over/under on the number of deaths a predicted storm would cause and bettors, who workers in the company called “degenerates” or “degens” for short, placed their wages. There were many ways for degens to make money on the site. The contest “Closest to the Pin” was won by whomever correctly came the closest to guessing the number of deaths from a storm and was the most popular on the site. There were head-to-head games where bettors could face off against each other for months-long matches in categories such as Tornados and Blizzards. Another popular contest was to predict how much of the Antarctica ice shelf would slough off into the ocean that week.

            Roger, the founder of the site, kept an office on the same floor as the oddsmakers and all decisions on which contests to run went through him. Sal knocked on his door and walked in without waiting for a response, which was WDD oddsmaker code for I have something that needs to be decided right now. He handed the report to Roger.

            Roger scratched his chin and his eyes grew wide as he read. “Did you run the geos?”

            “1,000,000 people in the combined statistical area. Half of that refugees from the Gulf states living in tent shelters.”

            Roger whistled through his teeth. “Did you run historicals on hailstorms?” 

            “One left 246 dead in India in the 19th century.”

            “Too old of data to be reliable. What was the worst event for the area?”

            Sal stared out at Lake Michigan. This one stat he knew without having to look it up.

            “A flood in 2026 took out over 600 people.”

            “What’s the information ecosystem?”

            “All local news are owned by the conglomerate so that’s covered. Spotty internet, given the influx of people.”

            “Let’s set it at 300 and watch the degens go nuts. We’ll run it as a special and a Closest to the Pin.”

            Sal cleared this throat. “Do you think we should maybe send out a warning? I mean, refugees, Roger. Haven’t they been through enough?”

            “That would be tampering, Sal. WDD does not meddle,” Roger said. He used the acronym when referring to the site as it gave him room for the mental gymnastics it took to run such a place. “Besides, we cannot be accused of fixing matches.”

            Sal looked at his shoes.

            “I get it. Fargo was your hometown, but there isn’t anything we can do here.”

            Sal had not visited in the years that had passed since his parents’ drowning during one of the once-a-century floods of the Red River that became once-a-year floods. His sister Ava still lived there, but she stopped speaking to him after he took the job at WDD. He missed their sarcastic exchanges, their sibling give-and-take.

            Roger placed a fatherly hand on Sal’s shoulder. “We’re all going to eat it eventually due to the weather. Might as well make a buck or two before we do.”

            He returned to his desk and coded in the numbers for the Fargo Hailstorm Special into the system, and the appearance on the site was immediate. He sent off the requisite form to marketing to let them know of the contest so they could do their social media push that degens in the safe zones could place their bets. Sal leaned back in his chair and watched the number of entrants to the special tick up from zero to several hundred within minutes. WDD.com capped the number of entries at a number pre-determined by the site’s actuaries.

            Sal pushed back from his desk and took the elevator down to the old Weather Channel’s floor. Roger made enough money from the site its first year to buy the channel and then mothballed it. The Channel’s empty studio spaces provided plenty of hidden nooks that Sal could hide in to have a quick smoke without reprimand. Sal pulled out a pack of Parliaments and stared at his phone.

            He had no news apps on his device as he did not care to be reminded when he got a betting line correct. He had the same mobile games everyone else played to numb themselves to the onslaught of increasingly bad news. The southern states had nearly emptied out, with its people moving to the interior of the country, jockeying for living space with refugees from other places escaping extreme heat, famine, water shortages, and the resulting wars of those afflictions. East Coast cities became North American Venices with boat clogged canals overtaking subway systems as the main mode of transportation. The western states seemed to be perpetually on fire. Humanity was moving inland, circling the drain.

            Sal opened his contacts and paused on Ava’s name. He typed a message to her, not sure if her number still worked or if she had not blocked him.

            -Big one heading your way. Biblical sized hail. Stay inside.

            Little three dots that denoted she was replying popped up immediately.

            -Well, it should be a nice windfall for you and your shitty little website.

            -Not my website. I just work here.

            -What did the concentration camp guard say to the war crimes judge?

            Sal pocketed his phone and exhaled a curl of smoke that rose towards the dark studio lights.