1245: 10-Day Forecast

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10-Day Forecast

Title text: Oh, definitely not; they don't have Amazon Prime.

Explanation

The 10-day forecast is a prediction of the weather extending 10 days into the future (with the accuracy decreasing exponentially). However, when Cueball checks the forecast for his local area, it apparently predicts progressively extreme lightning storms, a plague of insects which appear to be locusts, what appears to be The Rapture, and the appearance of the anti-Christ. Upon the anti-Christ (or perhaps Woden or Mothra) appearing, the forecast falls into static and nothingness with the day stuck on Tuesday, meaning that the world has ended.

When asked about this, Megan casually explains that Cueball put a minus (-) sign in front of his ZIP code. A ZIP code is a numeric postal code used in the United States, but many more countries use similar systems. As ZIP codes are tied to a geographic location, it is also often used to specify a local region for the purposes of weather reports.

Many computer systems that let the user write in a number only work with certain numbers (such as positive numbers). Numbers the system is not designed to work with, such as negative numbers, may lead to errors or unpredictable behavior (or, more often, the system will just refuse to proceed until you input a valid number). When this happens with the number of a video game level, it can result in data of another type being loaded, creating a level with a corrupted or physically-impossible landscape; this is sometimes known as a "Minus World".

Megan states that you get this result for any negative zip code. This may be an error deliberately put in by the programmers creating the system, to freak out any people who make a mistake.

Cueball, on the other hand reacts as if this negative zip code actually represents an actual geographical location, or a real-life Minus World, and that the weather forecaster is indeed showing an accurate forecast for the (corrupted) area. Since Megan stated that the forecast is always like that for these zip code Cueball expresses that he would never move there.

In the title text, Megan agrees with Cueball's desire not to move to that ZIP code area, the punchline being that her reason isn't to avoid the apocalypse, but to retain access to Amazon Prime, which shows that her priorities are amusingly bizarre. The service Amazon Prime is provided by Amazon, where the user pays a flat annual fee and in exchange they get access a number of "enhanced" Amazon services, including free two-day shipping, free access to a library of streaming videos, and the ability to borrow books.

Later, a Five-Day Forecast was also made into a comic.

Transcript

[Cueball sits behind a computer desk when Megan calls to him.]

Megan (off-panel): Is it going to rain this weekend? I have a thing.

Cueball: Lemme check.

*type type*

Cueball: ...Uhh. What?

[A caption is written above ten small panels in two rows. In each panel is an indication of the weather. Below each panel a label tells which day it is referring too.]

Your 10-day forecast:

[A yellow sun.]

Today

[Two gray clouds in front of the sun.]

Tomorrow

[Thunderstorms, with three gray clouds and a single lightning bolt.]

Friday

[Extreme thunderstorms with many large gray clouds and seven lightning bolts]

Saturday

[A swarm of insects, with one large black one close by and seven others close enough to discern details. The rest of the swarm is grayed out and just shown as small dots behind these other eight insects.]

Sunday

[Images of distorted people with very long legs. One Megan, one Cueball and someone in the background.]

Monday

[A humanoid figure with two large horns or a winged helmet silhouetted against a bleak red background. The ground beneath the figure is black.]

Tuesday

[Grey static]

Tuesday

[Black screen]

Tuesday

[Black screen]

Tuesday

[Megan has entered the panel and stands behind Cueball looking at his laptop over his shoulder. She points to the screen. Cueball holds his hand to his chest.]

Megan: ...Oh! You typed a minus sign in the ZIP code. The negative ZIP codes are all like that.

Cueball: Let's never move there.