Climatic Calamity (part 5)

Well, in episode 4 the climatic calamity began. Now see how it worsens. Not a good time to be an earplug!

Talking of married couples: former Father Superior, Frank Tonsils joined his young wife – former nun, munitions worker, and owner of the defunct Time Shard Museum of Future Technology – Buttox Tonsils (nee Barkingwell), and her best friends – the former monks, Zak Bravado and Bolah Googly – as they stepped out of their farmhouse to survey the frozen ground…

“This is gonna cut into our profit margins.” They heard Frank mutter to himself. “And how am I gonna pull my wheelbarrow back up the mountain from the marshaling yards on the plain below?” He added. “The rope will be all slippery!”

Elsewhere earplugs of every hue, shape, and size were being inconvenienced by the apparent onset of sudden winter…

With insufficient armoured personnel carriers available, many were forced to walk to lower climes, where they prayed the chill air would be warmer. But if they had only known that the situation was no better at lower altitude…

…they might have saved themselves the effort, and, instead, dug themselves snow caves. In fact earplugs were flooding from all over towards the perceived sanctuary that Lemon Stone offered…

The four monks that manned the watchtower at the head of the gorge could only watch impotently as swarms of earplugs passed by…

“Flipping heck,” one of them bellowed, “all that revenue that we’re missing out on. Are you sure that door is frozen solid? We could be asking ten Pluggentos per pass to enter the citadel. Within hours we could be rich beyond the dreams of avarice!”

“Shut up,” one of his colleagues grumbled, “and put another log on the stove.”

Because of its close proximity to the museum, Ciudad de Droxford was almost invisible in the whiteout. The palms trees that grew all around the city had withered and were frozen solid in multiple layers of ream ice…

The streets, themselves, were liberally coated in a sheet of ice. Only the brave or foolhardy ventured on to them…

The situation was no better at the museum itself…

…though the fascists and mariachi bands continued to struggle through their twin conventions in the Age of Stone…

Meanwhile, the caretaker of the Age of Stone – Susan the amorphous blob from the future – looked up at the sky. Snow was unheard of in her era: she was fascinated. Those hammering upon the ‘castle’ door were less entranced: they just wanted to get inside…