CV9ap - X414a

The year is 2049. The day is September 1st. Labor day.

Incidentally, his wife went into labor today. Everything went well. They had a baby girl.

And they were faced with the unenviable task of picking a name for their daughter. After a lot of brainstorming, they settled on CV9ap-X414a, with a small 'a'.

They chose the name because it was a unique name. A name that meant business. How many people called CV9ap would you not take seriously? They know that she would thank them for the wonderful name that they had blessed her with.

There was a catergory 5 hurricane which was forecast to hit the city that day. He had caught the forecast early in the morning, so he was prepared. He took an umbrella out of his bag and shielded little CV9ap from the 300kmph wind gust. He was quite proud of his paternal instincts.

As the author of this improbable sketch, I can perceive a certain puzzlement; a certain confusion amongst my readers. If I continue on these lines, I run the risk of sounding like a raving lunatic. So perhaps I should clear the air and make the circumstances a little more comprehensible. Shed some light, if you get my drift.

The planet has heated up thanks to human emissions (and bovine flatulence). This increase in enthalpy of the planet has created all sorts of problems. It has created more intense summers. Warmer oceans. And warmer oceans imply more intense hurricanes. And more intense hurricanes mean more death and destruction.

The real problem was not created by the hurricanes. But it was created by America's hurricane warning center. In a land with a finite number of first (and last) names, giving hurricanes people's names (and then "retiring" the deadly ones) created a rather unique problem: a shortage of first names. If you had a baby in 2006, then you would call her anything but Kartina and Rita. 2009 depleted Gustav, Fay, Hanna and Ike from the name pool. By 2015, almost all western names were out. No more Jack. No more Rob. No more Dick. No more Andrew - or Dmitri.

And with more hurricanes, the number of ineligible names started to increase exponentially with time. By 2030, even Indian names such as Vikram and Ravi were taboo.

This crisis was not without resistance. The committee to rescue names (CRN) was formed - and attempted to stop hurricanes on their tracks by dropping nuclear bombs on their path. This turned out to be a particularly ill conceived idea - because these bombs heated up the water all the more, creating the world's first catergory six storm. Saffir and Simpson were really spinning in their graves.

Attempts were made by parents at using more exotic names - any word that sounded phonetically correct was used as a name. But this scheme failed too. Here's a scenario why:

Mother: Oh wow! I am so happy to see that we have had a son. Let's see what we should call him. Let me mix some random phonetic syllables in my mind. Ah. Let us call him "purugu".

Dad: Nice. Purugu sounds nice.

Telugu Guy (appears from nowhere): You might want to reconsider that. In my native tongue, "purugu" means insect. Nothing aganist those little critters - but do you really want to call your son that?

Dad: Aw. Let's try "Kamina" instead,

You get the drift. With the world becoming more of a melting pot, one just could not find any pronounceable word which did not imply something demeaning in some language or was not a killer Hurricane.

As you can see, the only way out was to use alpha numerics. And one fine day, CV9ap-X414a became the leader of the free world. She became the president of the planet. (By 2049, all countries coalesced into one large union).

Oh. And umbrellas are a lot stronger in 2049. They can withstand category sixes with ease. Though catergory 7s (created by CRN by using a hydrogen bomb on a hurricane) are a whole different ball game.