You are a feeble creature kept in captivity in an exploitive environment and used for the cheap entertainment of others.

But enough about the algorithms. Happy Groundhog Day.

IMAGINE: you are a modern day Pithia, tasked with foretelling the future while not having the freedom to choose your own. You have been yanked from your den, thrust into the harsh light of an unsafe sky, and your reactions to this abuse shall define the hopes of the populace.

Whatever shall you do?

Perhaps you will clench your claws and scream.
Alert the world to the violence you observe. Perhaps, you will triumph over your troubles.

Perhaps you will retreat to your den and learn the art of lock-picking so that in the next year, the gate to your prison will be opened and you will no longer be available for exploitation.
Play the long game to winning your freedom.

Perhaps you admit in the silent core of your heart that you observe a shadow not drawn by light, but instead, by the encroaching doom that the unseasonable and dangerous warmth warns you of, and you will merely sigh.
There is always next year—for now.

Perhaps you will writhe and snap and urinate with pure and wholesome fury, and speaking in a human voice non one suspected you to possess, you shall bellow, “REFER TO THE SCIENTISTS AND NOT THE HAUNTED FOOL YOU DARE TO CLENCH WITH YOUR FEEBLY ARMORED HANDS.”
I mean, why not, at this point.

Perhaps you chose this moment to leap from your oppressors’ clutches and flee into the countryside, where you know you will find solace with your wild kin, hissing over your fleshy shoulder as you depart, “NO GRID CAN CONTAIN ME!”
Your friends are waiting to be met!

Perhaps you entirely refuse to play the game of shadows. Perhaps you dare to go limp as the camera pans to you, playing dead until the horrors of your seemingly ended life are broadcast across the world, ending the farce that is your cruel captivity.
Look upon me, ye mighty, and despair.

Perhaps you have spent the last year on a self-imposed training schedule and are prepared, finally, to flex the insightful meteorological skills nobody ever really thought you had, and you speak the truth about the weather.
”Yeah, that’s my shadow and it’s not going away for a long time. You must short all of the insurance companies.”

Perhaps as your handler’s grip around your spine tightens, you will forgive his cruelty and the cruelty of the whole, fetid world, and you will look him in the eye—fragile entity to fragile entity—and earn your freedom via his contrition and pity.
Because you know that evil can only be dissolved with love.

Perhaps you take this yearly opportunity to birth your slippery, fragile young into the waiting hands of a stunned man in a top hat, showing the world that you are part of a greater, non-sterile ecosystem, and of a grander, more natural scheme, as are we all.
After all, your true name was never Phil.

Perhaps you reach your paws out for the cursed cobranding effort you always knew was coming, seizing in your claws a BAJA BLAST ZERO CALORIE POP TART, and then consuming the carcinogenic pastry with performative glee, for this is the transaction you know you must perform in order to not be immediately euthanized and replaced with one of your children in this perverse circus of a holiday.
You are, after all, ravenous for the approval of your captors.