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Sometimes, out of seemingly nowhere, it rains.
You can only ever tell that it's raining when you happen to notice that the white noise of the ocean surging and crashing against the metal foundation of the apartment building has gained a harmonious descant of raindrops pattering against the roof and windows. You have never witnessed the start of a storm before. You only become aware of them when they are already in full force.
Most of the time, it is just rain. When wind joins in and the drops fall diagonally outside the windows, and the ocean starts dancing with hills and valleys, crawling deceivingly quickly far under your feet, past the cement and metal... then you know that this is what would be called a storm.
You've looked it up. There isn't enough land for really astounding storms to form anymore. The kind that made people on Earth a few centuries ago fear that some faceless, omnipotent Creator deity was about to destroy the world. The worst you ever get are a few lightning storms every so often. Sometimes, a bolt of lightning would even hit the building you live in. (You can't even really think of it as your home.) You can tell because the lights go dim, and then bright. You're not sure how Dave managed to make this building impervious to all natural disasters, especially considering the century he lived in, but reverse-engineering the electrical dampening had been the start of your first experiments with building a fully-self-sustaining robot.
You notice a flash of light in the dim distance, and a few seconds later, you hear a crackling rumble. Just under five seconds. You shift your focus to the screen of your shades and wait for another flash. You time how long it takes for the thunder to reach you... 4.87 seconds. Another flash... another boom. 4.62 seconds.
The storm is coming closer.
You open the door to the roof access stairs and you climb them all the way to the top. 4.13 seconds now. You step out onto the rain-soaked roof, sneakers making sticky sounds against the concrete. 3.61 seconds.
You sit down beside the hulking carcass of a ventilation shaft entrance, its fans long since rusted into uselessness. Rainwater falls down the metal sides in uneven sheets and onto your shoulders, sinking into the fabric of your shirt. Your hair and the knees of your jeans slowly get wetter and wetter as you sit in the rain. 2.16 seconds.
You watch the sky. 1.54 seconds. It's bright enough to make you blink. Another one hits, more toward the left. 1.01 seconds. It makes your ears ring slightly. Nothing you've never dealt with before.
You look straight up at the sky. You can see some tendrils of light crawling across the clouds like the raindrops that snake their way across the flat plane of your glasses. Random directions, random lengths. Pure chaos.
A flash of lightning reaches out and snaps loudly against the radio tower. The wires it is attached to shepherd the bolt straight down the side of the building, along the metal supports, and into the ocean far beneath you.
You are perfectly safe. In the middle of chaos, rage, unpredictability, danger, and uncertainty, you are protected.
Your name is Dirk Strider, and sometimes, thunderstorms make you feel like you aren't so alone.