He did not ask for this assignment, did not particularly want it, and the enforced separation from his wife is wearing him down, making him grouchy and on edge.
Ah, spring! Tasha's favorite season, the time of year they'd met and courted.
He remembers soft gentle rain, and her laughter as they'd splashed through puddles on their way across base, before he'd been re-assigned to the space station.
Before the government's financial troubles which had led to his being stuck here for the past 11 months without company, and without relief. Without his wife.
He sighs again, frustrated and angry.
He glances into the telescope, and the sight that meets his eyes, causes his heart to constrict with emotion. The greening of the planet's continents is readily apparent, even from this altitude.
His gaze slides to the compu screen beside him, which monitors the views from various global weather satellites, and the scene is confirmed. Spring has sprung back home.
An alarm goes off, on a console nearby, and after a quick scan, he makes the necessary adjustments. He is a competent worker, and proud of the job he does, despite the tedious hours spent in the lonely, weightless isolation of the station. He knows, when he finally returns to Earth, that he will be a hero to his countrymen. That his record-breaking stay aboard the station will make him famous world-wide, that the Earth itself will reap the benefits of his having been here, doing his job as only a weatherman could.
He smiles the odd grin of weightlessness, and continues with his work, a thought dawning on him. Without him, the spring rains would never come. And without him, the flowers so cherished by his lovely wife would not bloom. Stuck here in this orbiting collection of scientific equipment, it is his job to control the weather for the entire planet.
Long ago, natural rains had ceased to fall, weather patterns had ceased to flow. Long ago, man had taken command of his world's weather, and with it, it's destiny. There are no longer any droughts or floods or famines, and people like Uri are the reason why.
So today, he will make it rain. A soft gentle sprinkle to make the flowers grow, and soon his wife will smile at the blooms. And though his lonely heart aches with desire to share that scene, he is comforted by the hope that these April showers will bring her May flowers.
