The wet

The veranda boards were sweating.

Not metaphorically. Proper tropical sweat. The kind that makes the timber tacky under your bare feet and turns a cold beer warm in the time it takes to complain about it. Out over the Whitsundays the sky had that bruised green look that says cyclone, not maybe, not someday — just a slow, rotational certainty building somewhere beyond the horizon.

“Pressure’s dropping,” said Dave, who always said that when the air got thick. “You can feel it in your fillings.”

“Mate, you can feel anything in your fillings,” Anna said. “You once blamed La Niña for your dodgy knee.”

On the little portable radio, someone was replaying the cricket highlights. Or lowlights. Australia had just lost to Zimbabwe in the T-20.

“Can’t believe it,” Dave muttered. “Zimbabwe.”

“It’s T-20,” Anna said. “It’s basically algorithm cricket. A few overs of chaos and an influencer haircut.”

Marcin took a slow pull from his can. “High-speed greed in a low-buffer system,” he said.

They all looked at him.

“What?” he shrugged. “We were talking about it before the cricket.”

Pete leaned back in the old wicker chair and watched a palm frond whip sideways in a gust. “It’s not greed that’s new,” he said. “It’s the speed. Virgil had it right two thousand years ago.”

“Oh here we go,” Dave said. “Latin in the wet season.”

Pete ignored him. “Fama. Rumour. ‘No evil swifter.’ And she grows stronger as she goes. Covered in eyes and tongues and ears. Flying at night and by day.”

“Sounds like Twitter,” Anna said.

“Exactly,” Pete said. “Information as a winged thing. Gathers amplitude the further it travels. Used to be rumours moved at walking pace. Now they travel at fibre-optic speed.”

Marcin nodded. “And damping hasn’t kept up.”

Anna rolled her eyes. “Can we not turn the cyclone into a systems theory lecture?”

But she smiled when she said it.

The radio cut to politics. Angus Taylor had just taken the Liberal leadership from Susan Ley.

“See?” Dave said. “Rotation.”

“That’s not rotation,” Anna said. “That’s musical chairs with worse music.”

Pete watched the horizon. “It’s all the same pattern,” he said quietly. “Europe writes rules. China builds factories. Australia argues about who gets to hold the megaphone.”

“Angus versus Susan isn’t exactly geopolitics,” Dave said.

“No,” Pete agreed. “But it’s signal. When surplus is high, politics can afford theatre. When buffers thin, the theatre gets sharper.”

“Buffers,” Anna repeated. “You and your buffers.”

“Think about it,” Pete said. “Energy surplus. Infrastructure still young. Nature forgiving. Institutions trusted. That’s a high-buffer system. You can have a bit of greed, a bit of nonsense, a few bad calls — and it absorbs it.”

“And now?” Marcin asked.

“Now more of the surplus goes to maintenance. Power grids aging. Water systems leaking. Soil tighter. Insurance premiums through the roof because cyclones don’t read modelling assumptions.”

A gust rattled the tin roof hard enough to interrupt him.

Dave looked out at the sea, which had gone from postcard blue to churned pewter. “So what’s the shortest stave?” he said.

“Ah,” Marcin smiled. “Liebig.”

“Who’s Liebig?” Anna asked.

“Old chemist,” Pete said. “Growth is limited by the scarcest factor. Nitrogen in soil, say.”

“So fertilise it,” Dave said.

“We did,” Pete said. “Fossil-fuel nitrogen. Boosted yields. Also boosted emissions, runoff, plastic production, ocean load. You fix one variable, you load another.”

“And you can’t count them all,” Anna said. “Butterflies.”

“Exactly,” Pete said. “The field’s moving. It’s not one limit. It’s buffering capacity. When that drops, prediction drops. And when prediction drops, stress rises.”

The radio crackled again. A commentator was joking about “known knowns.”

“Ah yes,” Dave laughed. “The known knowns. The known unknowns. The unknown unknowns.”

“And the unknown knowns,” Marcin added. “The things everyone feels but no one says.”

“Like?” Anna asked.

Pete looked at the sky again. “Like the sense that nature’s not a backdrop anymore. It’s an active variable. That the old assumption of endless slack might not hold.”

“You sound like a prophet,” Dave said.

“Profets don’t drink mid-strength,” Anna said.

Pete grinned. “Not a prophet. Just an engineer who reads in the wet season.”

They sat in silence for a moment, the only sound the low growl of wind pushing in from the Coral Sea.

“You know what gets me?” Anna said finally. “It’s not that people are greedy. That’s ancient. It’s that it feels like everything’s monetised. Attention. Outrage. Even virtue.”

“High-speed greed,” Marcin said softly.

“In a low-buffer system,” Pete finished.

Dave took another sip. “So what? We all become monks?”

“No,” Pete said. “It’s not about less. It’s about where the surplus goes. If the last of the high net energy is spent on vanity projects and attention farms, the beams rot. If it’s spent on grids, water, soil, education — the house stands when the wind picks up.”

“Bærebjelker før pynt,” Marcin said.

“Speak English,” Dave said.

“Beams before decoration,” Anna translated.

The cricket highlights replayed again — a Zimbabwean batsman lofting another improbable six into the crowd.

“Maybe that’s it,” Dave said. “Too much T-20. Not enough test match.”

“Test match assumes time,” Anna said. “Four-year cycles don’t like time.”

“China thinks in 2049,” Pete said. “We think to the next headline.”

“And yet,” Marcin said, “they still depend on the same physics.”

“Everyone does,” Pete said. “Energy in, entropy out. Maintain the pattern or it shifts.”

The first heavy drops hit the veranda roof like thrown coins.

Anna stood and pulled the outdoor cushions under cover. “You know what the real stress is?” she said. “Not collapse. Not evil. It’s the feeling that the damping’s gone. That every little thing turns into a storm.”

“Rumour with wings,” Dave said.

“And strength gained in motion,” Pete added.

They watched the rain sheet sideways across the water.

“So what’s the play?” Dave asked. “Tell the truth? That buffers are thinning?”

“Yes,” Pete said. “Because truth stabilises. It doesn’t excite markets. It doesn’t trend. But it lowers amplitude.”

“Lower amplitude,” Anna said. “You’re hopeless.”

“Better than higher amplitude with no damping,” he shot back.

Another gust bent the palms nearly horizontal.

“High-speed greed,” Marcin said again, almost to himself. “In a low-buffer system.”

“And social media?” Anna asked.

“Acceleration,” Pete said. “Information without friction. Rumour doesn’t walk anymore. It flies.”

“And grows stronger as it goes,” Dave finished.

The lights flickered once.

“Known known,” Anna said.

“Storm’s coming,” Marcin replied.

“Known unknown,” Dave added. “How bad.”

“Unknown unknown,” Pete said. “What breaks first.”

They fell quiet.

Out beyond the reef, the cyclone kept turning, indifferent to leadership spills, cricket scores, and the monetisation of outrage.

Finally Anna spoke. “You know what I’d vote for?”

“What?” Dave asked.

“Less noise. More beams.”

Pete raised his can. “Stability.”

Marcin clinked his against it. “Amplitude.”

Dave shook his head but lifted his beer anyway. “Steve Smith.”

They drank as the rain thickened and the wind found its rhythm.

Rumour flew somewhere overhead, gathering strength in the storm, but down on the veranda the conversation had slowed — and for a moment at least, damping was winning.