Editing 1245: 10-Day Forecast

{{comic
| number    = 1245
| date      = July 31, 2013
| title     = 10-Day Forecast
| image     = 10 day forecast.png
| titletext = Oh, definitely not; they don't have Amazon Prime.
}}

==Explanation==
A 10-day forecast is a prediction of the weather extending 10 days into the future. Due to the chaotic nature of weather systems, the accuracy of forecasts decreases drastically the further ahead you try to predict.

When [[Cueball]] checks the next few days of forecast for his local area, it starts off with the typical {{w|Category:Weather icons|symbol}} indicating normal sunny weather for 'today' (which would be a Wednesday, the comic's original day of publication), but subsequent days' predictions show:
* Cloudy weather 'tomorrow',
* Lightning and then ''extreme'' lightning storms over the next couple of days,
* A plague of locust-like insects, for Sunday, in a departure from actual weather,
* What appears to be {{w|Rapture|The Rapture}}, or some sort of {{tvtropes|BodyHorror|distorting transformation}} of people,
* On Tuesday, the arrival of a demonic-looking silhouette with horns (or some sort of extravagant {{w|winged helmet}}) on the horizon, under an ominously dark red sky,
* In the 'days' after the arrival of this creature (perhaps the {{w|Antichrist}} or one of the gods/heralds of some similar event such as {{w|Ragnarök}}), the forecast first falls into static and then for the last two days show a black nothingness, with the name of each such day still stuck on Tuesday, implying that the world (and possibly time) as we know it has ended.

When asked about this, [[Megan]] casually explains that Cueball put a minus (-) sign in front of his ZIP code. A {{w|Zone Improvement Plan|ZIP code}} is a numeric postal code used in the United States. As ZIP codes are tied to a geographic location, it is also often used as an easy way for people to specify their location for the purposes of accessing locally-specific information such as weather reports.

Many computer systems that allow the user to enter a number have a range of applicability, such as only positive numbers of a certain length. If the user enters a number that doesn't make sense, then the system must somehow deal with this number. Common ways to do this are to simply disallow the user from entering invalid data (such as any character that is not an actual numeric digit), or to return an error condition if the entered 'number' is not in its master database. However, if the system is somehow set up to accept an unanticipated numberic value, it may still attempt to use it unexpected way. This can result in unpredictable or erroneous behavior, such as accessing or overwriting unintended locations in memory or producing unplanned {{w|Minecraft#Generation|data artefacts}}.

When this kind of anomaly occurs in video games, particular older ones such as those on the {{w|Nintendo Entertainment System}}, it can result in levels being created from arbitrary data, producing a corrupted, physically-impossible (yet sometimes playable) level; this is popularly known as a "{{tvtropes|MinusWorld|Minus World}}". Because the level can be reproduced by using a particular invalid value, it is in some sense true to say that the level "exists" within the game, even though it was not intended.

In the comic, the joke is that somehow, "minus zipcodes" do exist, and do correspond to physical locations &mdash; but, by analogy with Minus Worlds in video games, are bizarre and incomprehensible places compared to the regular zip codes.

In the title text, Megan agrees with Cueball's desire not to move to that ZIP code area. The punchline being that her reason isn't to avoid the impending apocalypse, but to retain access to {{w|Amazon Prime}}, which shows that her priorities are amusingly bizarre. The service Amazon Prime is provided by {{w|Amazon.com|Amazon}}, where the user pays a flat annual fee and in exchange they got access a number of "enhanced" Amazon services that, at the time of publication, included free two-day shipping, free access to a selected library of streaming videos and the ability to 'borrow' e-books on a monthly basis, all of which may have been restricted to only certain geographic regions (for various legal and/or physical shipping reasons, such as for various particularly remote/overseas markets that weren't easily served). Since then, there have been many more {{w|Fulfillment house|fulfillment centres}} established, across the US and worldwide, and it has at various points expanded into other services such as food delivery and boxless access to computer games. {{w|Amazon Prime Video}} is now perhaps most prominent worldwide as a semi-independent {{w|Amazon MGM Studios|film and television studio}} and video-on-demand streaming service, which is generally available to the ''entire'' world except for a single-digit<!-- currently 9, but futureproofing this... so long as it doesn't actually rise due to adverse politics! --> number of countries (whether or not this would also have started to 'allow' negative ZIPs to

Later, a [[1606: Five-Day Forecast|Five-Day Forecast]] was also made into a comic.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball sits behind a computer desk when Megan calls to him.]
:Megan (off-panel): Is it going to rain this weekend? I have a thing.
:Cueball: Lemme check.
:<small>*type type*</small>
:Cueball: ...Uhh. What?

:[A caption is written above ten small panels in two rows. In each panel is an indication of the weather. Below each panel a label tells which day it is referring too.]
:'''Your 10-day forecast:'''
:[A yellow sun.] 
:Today
:[Two gray clouds in front of the sun.] 
:Tomorrow
:[Thunderstorms, with three gray clouds and a single lightning bolt.]
:Friday 
:[Extreme thunderstorms with many large gray clouds and seven lightning bolts]
:Saturday 
:[A swarm of insects, with one large black one close by and seven others close enough to discern details. The rest of the swarm is grayed out and just shown as small dots behind these other eight insects.]
:Sunday 
:[Images of distorted people with very long legs. One Megan, one Cueball and someone in the background.]
:Monday 
:[A humanoid figure with two large horns or a winged helmet silhouetted against a bleak red background. The ground beneath the figure is black.]
:Tuesday 
:[Grey static]
:Tuesday 
:[Black screen]
:Tuesday 
:[Black screen]
:Tuesday

:[Megan has entered the panel and stands behind Cueball looking at his laptop over his shoulder. She points to the screen. Cueball holds his hand to his chest.]
:Megan: ...Oh! You typed a minus sign in the ZIP code. The negative ZIP codes are all like that.
:Cueball: Let's ''never'' move there.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Weather]]
[[Category:Comics with lowercase text]]
[[Category:Demons]]