The Weathermonger

“You must understand that the only phenomenon we have actually been able to observe over England during the last five years has been the weather. Most Western powers—France, America, Russia, Germany—have sent agents in to your island, but very few have returned. Those who did return brought no useful information, except that the island was now fragmented into a series of rural communities, united by a common hostility to machines of any sort, and by a tendency to try to return to the modes of living and thought that characterized the Dark Ages. The agents themselves say that they felt similar urges and were tempted to stay too ...

“So you are doubly interesting to us, Mr. linker. First, because you explain the English weather pattern. And secondly, because you appear to be genuinely immune to the machine phobia which affects anyone who sets foot in England. You seem to be the first convincing case in the twenty million people who have left England.”