The Museum of Unfinished Weather

About

The museum keeps unsettled weather: a forecast that was issued and never spent. Forty-one cases hold rain that did not arrive, gales that moderated, a heatwave of August 1994 that turned out to be a warm week. A forecast that happened is not kept, and nobody has ever been able to explain the collection to a school group. The oldest vial, 1975.318, was issued at 09:12, amended twice, and withdrawn at 19:40 on 3 October 1975; the storm never came, the case has never been opened, and on the museum's fiftieth anniversary night the condensate on the inside of the glass is running the wrong way. Under a 1979 charter a vial is closed by a single continuous spoken account in the hand of one living witness, and the record holds one account and cannot be amended into two. An archivist may not attest, may not witness an attestation, and may not countersign one, so the person who has done the night's work for fourteen years is the only one of the four who can make her account the permanent one, provided somebody first finds the tin of 1976 interviews and she is willing to break the founding rule. Over 5 choice menus the reader chooses how the night is run, how the case is opened, whether the town is warned, what happens to the two accounts the charter will not use, and which of three mutually exclusive memories of one night becomes the permanent record. All 324 paths reach one of 4 endings and a shared coda, where the museum's printed accession card for 1975.318 is shown as it will read in that route for ever.

Cast

• I Imani Sackville-Rowe no portrait yet
• D Dov Rennick no portrait yet
• M Marguerite Oyelaran no portrait yet
• C Cass Wray no portrait yet
• H Halvard Ferriday no portrait yet
• W Winnifred Quaye no portrait yet