SFU president Andrew Petter seems to have his eyes turned upwards, as his gondola dream now unites with another secret passion project that, quite literally, aspires to reach the sky as its limit. While sleuthing around in the closed Highland Pub to investigate claims of a SFSS penthouse, National Peakographic stumbled upon the prototype for the Weather Controller 1965.
When the discovery was brought to the attention of Petter during Senate, it was revealed that the gadget was SFU’s latest attempt to engage the world. The machine, and the 1,964 preceding prototypes, has cost SFU an estimated total of over $600 million.
“We’ve been hyping up how we’re going to engage the world for so long,” commented Petter. “We had to make this work, or we’d risk sounding like a cheap slogan.” Senate members testified that each failed prototype, and subsequent increasing panic on Petter’s part, was to blame for the slow but sure increase in student tuition for the past decade.
Following the discovery, National Peakographic was able to sit down with the lead SFU engineers and scientists involved in the project to understand the mechanics of the machine. They explained that the final product was envisioned to solve “that pesky climate change problem” by altering weather patterns around the globe.
The Weather Controller was estimated to be completed by 2011, just in time for Petter’s one-year anniversary, but seven years later the machine is still demonstrating bugs in functionality.
“We originally planned to hand over control of the completed machine to the student in a new SFSS Board of Directors position we intended to create, VP Global,” lamented Petter. “The machine would’ve marked the triumph of SFU over UBC once and for all. But no matter the sum of student dollars that go into funding it, the machine keeps producing unintentional effects.”
The current bug that the innovation team is dealing with is extreme precipitation. Turns out the discovery of this machine goes a long way towards explaining the heavy snowfall that routinely catches university administration off guard.
The unpredictable weather patterns have called into question SFU’s preparedness measures, condemning it as an institution that is simply ineffective in dealing with routine winter weather. In the past, extreme snowfalls have forced administration to shut down campus with almost zero notice.
Petter had previously commented that “there’s really never any indication that we will be experiencing significant snowfall until it happens. No weather reports or warnings.” The discovery of the machine justifies SFU’s delayed responses to winter weather, as the phenomenon has been proven to be completely unexpected and unnatural.
With this mystery solved, National Peakographic boldly decided to ask if Petter had any other secret projects hidden in seemingly abandoned SFU locations. He vaguely hinted at the possibility of a slide going down the mountain, which would function as a quick escape plan in case of a leak from the Kinder Morgan pipeline that will soon be running through the mountain.
“You can rest assured,” he added, “that SFU is putting its students dollars to finding effective and engaging solutions to the problems we face today.”
“SFU will triumph over UBC, and the world, yet.”
