But Freddie’s weather obsession went way beyond just being a hobby.

    He wasn’t just a kid who wanted to have a little fun by having a home weather station in his bedroom. It went way deeper than that.
   
    He actually possessed a very special, secret, power.    
   
    Freddie McBain had the spooky ability to predict what the weather was going to do with amazing accuracy.
   
    All he had to do was sit down and concentrate and an ever-changing stream of weather information would enter his head. Like the landing page of a website opening up. It was if the weather existed deep inside him, crazy though that sounded. He had his own private Meteorological Office on tap, situated slap bang in the middle of his brain.
    
    Tomorrow? Bright with sunny showers. Thursday? Overcast and grey. Saturday? Raining cats and dogs. You sure?  Wait and see. His mother, Lizzie, had christened his pronouncements: ‘The Daily Freddie Weather Bulletin’.
   
    If the BBC had known about it his ability to ‘read’ the weather and get it right every time, they would have snapped him up, pronto, in time for their next weather report, no doubt about it.
   
    Why was this? Where did the freaky talent come from? He didn’t have a clue, to be honest.
   
    But special powers, as everyone knows, have their downsides as well as their upsides.  (see Spiderman 1 & 2 for further details.)

    When he thought about it, he found the whole thing a bit scary.

    Like he was blessed. Or maybe cursed.  Having a talent no one else shared often made him feel quite lonely.

    And being able to predict the weather? It didn't compare to leaping tall buildings at a single bound, did it?

    Even he had to admit it was a bit geeky.

    This amazing intuition weather-wise had first shown itself when he was six years old.  Lizzie was about to hang some washing out when he began tugging on her skirt, looked up at her and shook his head from side to side doubtfully.
   
    Shortly afterwards, it began to rain. In answer to her surprised expression, he said, “Nice tomorrow.”  And it was.  Bright and sunny, without a cloud in the sky. After this had happened several times, Lizzie sat Freddie down and said to him: “You know when you tell me if it’s going to be sunny or rainy, Fred?  Does it make you feel funny or anything? ”

    “Tingles,” he’d replied, pointing to his tummy, “in here,” and, after thinking about it for a moment, added:  “The sun and the rain and the clouds are my friends aren’t they?”
   
    “Yes, sweetpea, that’s right,” she’d said, brushing his fringe from his eyes and hugging him to her, “but let’s keep it our little secret, shall we? No need to tell anyone about it.  Okay?”
   
    He’d nodded, not really understanding, and then run off to splash about in some puddles, one of his favourite pastimes.

    After that, Lizzie never talked about it much. Which struck Freddie as odd. Who wouldn’t want to talk about such a curious thing?
   
    But, mindful of her warning, he’d always kept it to himself.  As a result, he’d had a lot of fun. One of his favourite occupations was making bets with Cap about whether or not the weather was going to be okay for skateboarding. Of course, he always won. Which really wound Cap up. He hated losing money.
   
    As he’d grown older, though, he’d come to question the ability more.
   
    Could it be put to more serious use?  Of course, he could never just phone up the NOAA or some other international weather organisation and offer them his services.  For one thing, he was a kid from Essex. They wouldn’t take anything he said seriously. Also, it might blow his cover. But surely there was something he could do without giving himself away?
    
    The answer came to him when he was watching a documentary about freak weather. Some very odd things had been happening lately. There had been tornadoes in Leeds. Flash floods in Cornwall and pretty much across the whole south-east of England. Recently, the whole country had been baking under scorching heatwaves. And when people weren’t being roasted, there were being deluged in ceaseless rainstorms. People had been taken completely by surprise. In extreme cases, they’d been killed.

    Of course, they were all partly the result of the most dramatic meteorological phenomena of modern times.

    Global warming.

    The world’s climate was changing dramatically.  The weather was becoming increasingly chaotic and unpredictable. And the systems currently used to forecast the weather were having a hard time keeping up.  
    
    What if Freddie could invent a new computer system capable of predicting the weather with 100% accuracy?
   
    There was a need for such a system now, more than ever.
   
    Of course, meteorologists had been trying to crack this problem for years.  The methods they used were highly sophisticated. But, still, they seemed to get their predictions wrong as many times as they got them right.

    Freddie’s system would have an advantage. His affinity with the weather would be transferred directly into the program. Making it unique - and infallible.

    He had to admit he wasn’t entirely sure how this might happen. Organic programming – giving a computer a human quality – was a bit of an unknown quantity, except maybe in science fiction. But he was hopeful that, since he’d be writing the coding, a bit of his brain and his heart would naturally find its way into it.  His knowledge and emotions would become components, like any other parts of a computer. He would become a ghost, floating about in the circuitry, invisible, but  ever-vigilant. Whenever someone used the program, they would unknowingly be opening up Freddie's mind, maybe even his soul ...
   
    It was the perfect solution.
   
    After all, there had always been a human element in predicting the weather. The weather was partly an emotional thing. It couldn’t be observed or analysed only by rational means.  If you could completely integrate human intuition with scientific techniques in this way, it would transform meteorology overnight.
   
    There was another important advantage to such a program. It meant that future generations could benefit from Freddie’s unique talent, long after he’d gone.

    What would he call it? A memorable name was very important.  Eventually, he came up with Sentinel. It meant a soldier keeping a close guard.  It seemed appropriate. With the planet under daily threat from extreme weather, it certainly needed something to keep a constant watch over it.  

    Sentinel was still in its pilot stages. Functional, but not fully there yet. A few weird glitches still had to be ironed out.  During trial runs, Sentinel had detected a typhoon in his wardrobe and a blizzard in the bathroom.  It wasn’t going to be easy.
 
    But he was getting there. And he needed to hurry. Because, a week ago, he’d discovered something that had completely shaken him to his core. Something he’d come to believe wasn’t possible.

    His predictive ability wasn’t infallible.

    It had always worked before, no problem.

    But then the killer hurricane had come out of nowhere and burst his bubble.   

    When he tried to see what it was going to do, all he got was a blank.

    A big nothing floating about inside his brain.  It was weird – and very worrying. No matter how he concentrated, he couldn’t get a fix on the hurricane. Nor could he work out why. It was as if the killer was using a jamming device or something.  But that, he told himself, was plainly ridiculous.  It was just a hurricane.

    But, once he got over the initial shock, he adapted fast. Fortunately, he had all the back-up he needed. Satellite pictures. NOAA projections. Data from every corner of the globe streaming straight into his bedroom. True, it meant that he had to work round the clock. But he had no choice.

    It was vitally important to keep track of the hurricane – day and night. If the killer continued to grow, people would be desperately seeking shelter. Whole towns might have to be evacuated. Along the US coastline from Texas to Maine, they’d be preparing themselves for his arrival as best they could. Living in daily fear. Terrified of what might happen if he struck.  Not knowing if their homes would be left standing. Or blown away.  But Freddie knew that, no matter how good their preparations, someone somewhere would be killed.

    It was inevitable.

    Hurricanes didn’t just shatter buildings, they destroyed lives.

    In future, if he managed to get Sentinel up and running properly, Freddie could potentially save hundreds, thousands, of people.

    Now, that would be a totally cool achievement.

    Cooler, even, than doing his first successful Ollie.