The Earplugs Come Home

The Earplug Adventures began life on this blog – right back in 2014. So I think it only right that (following their dismal showing in their own blog) they should return here: the home of earplug fiction. Henceforth all the stuff that appeared on the accursed failed blog will (as if like magic) reappear in these hallowed cyber-pages. Stuff like this…

Following uncounted millennia in suspended animation, a newly-formed ocean reanimates ancient aquatic earplugs upon Mars. Here Arthur and Millicent find their way to the surface for the first time. From Haunted Mars Volume Two. Fascinating factoid: The bubbly surface of the new ocean is actually semi-melted sound deadening material. The earplugs aren’t embedded in it; instead they have had their bottom halves excised – giving the impression that they are partially submerged. Well that’s the idea anyway. Did it work?

 

Earplug Adventures: The Veil of Shytar (part 25)

Rightly or wrongly, I figured that the sheer length of some of these extracts (rather than engaging readers) might be putting them off. Maybe they might stay with a thirty-second read, rather than spend a minute or so trying to make sense of my humour and writing style. So today’s episode shouldn’t have anyone looking at their wrist watch and sighing tetchily. Read on…

What the young earplugs heard as they walked between great mounds of edible detritus and empty food canisters in the basement of the Hotel Augustus Pronk, was the story of how Pronk had forced his way into the Veil by means of wire cutters; the subsequent accident that marooned him there; and the Veil’s willingness to create an environment in which he could live in relative comfort.

Bubbles was incredulous. “So the Veil made all this for you?” She said. “Whatever you need, it supplies?”

“Yup, pretty much.” Pronk replied. “I don’t stand there and ask for something: it’s not like that. I guess it reads my mind or something. It knows what I want, and does its best to give me that. It can’t give me a new spaceship or anything: but it can create a reality that suits me. I always wanted to live by the sea and walk beneath an open sky. Of course I couldn’t do either on Worstworld. That’s part of the reason why I ran out on the wife and kids to find a new world. I just wanted space and fresh air. But it has been a rather lonely existence. It’s nice to see you kids. Do you have a space ship to carry you home again?”

“We do.” Bubbles replied. “Do you have something to protect you from the vacuum of space? If so, we can take you home.”

By now they had passed from the basement of the hotel into a brief corridor…

“Kids,” Pronk said as they became aware of a strange mauve being standing in the corridor, “meet Mister Mauve. Please note that he casts no shadow. When I first encountered him I thought he was a hallucination. I mean – he casts no shadow: obviously he must be a product of my imagination. I treated him as such, until one day, when I accidentally spilt some hot coffee over him, he got really angry and punched me in the mouth. Since then I’ve treated him with a modicum of respect – though it’s hard to respect someone who punches you in the mouth. I got my own back though: I shoved his head down the toilet and pulled the flush cord. He follows me almost everywhere – except the toilet of course.”

“Did the Veil create him?” Barclay inquired.

“I don’t know.” Pronk answered, “He wouldn’t say.”

Pronk suddenly changed the subject:

“Hey, would you like a cup of coffee at Augie’s Bar?”

Both terrestrial earplugs were gasping for a coffee. “Please,” they said as one.

They didn’t have to wait long. The very next corner carried them into the bar. A bar that looked very familiar to them…

“Mister Pronk,” Bubbles squealed with a mixture of astonishment and delight, “you’ve got your very own Café Puke!”

Pronk seemed a little surprised at the view…

“I do, don’t I? When I got up this morning, this was Augie’s Bar. What the heck is the Café Puke?”

“Get us a glass of Crappachino,” Barclay said cheerfully, “and we’ll tell you all about it.”

Pronk wasn’t familiar with the barista’s equipment in a Café Puke outlet, but he managed to produce a Crappachino and an Iron Lungo…

“Oh, Mister Pronk,” Bubbles exclaimed, “how did you know I wanted an Iron Lungo?”

“I didn’t.” Pronk answered, “The Veil did. The Veil also knew you would feel more at home in a Café Puke. Ergo, we find ourselves in a Café Puke. But it’s still mauve – like Augie’s Bar.”

“And Mister Mauve.” Barclay noted.

“My favourite colour.” Pronk confirmed Barclay’s fledgling hypothesis.

“Then the Veil knows why we’re here?” Barclay continued.

“Odds-on, I’d say.” Pronk replied. “Why are you here?”

“To save Worstworld.” Mister Mauve spoke from the other end of the café.

Pronk turned an eye on the mauve apparition. “You gonna do it?”

Mister Mauve spent several seconds considering this. “Are we going to place ourselves at risk, to save a bunch of silicon life-forms who are too stupid to get up and leave?” He said.

“I think that’s what I said.” Pronk replied.

Mauve sighed audibly. “I suppose that’s why we’re here.” He said in a complaining tone that put Barclay’s to shame. “And that stupid star is about to go nova after all. Finish your coffees first though: I want to wash up the glasses before Armageddon.”

© Paul Trevor Nolan 2022

Too short? Just right? Let me know.

For the Cafe Puke scene I saved time and energy by using a pre-existing set. A re-lighting, some furniture  moved around, and hey presto! Only the barista’s counter top is new.

Climatic Calamity (part 10)

Anyone expecting a well thought out tale that reflects the likely problems that the world will need to deal with in the face of increasingly rapid global climate change must be very disappointed in this very silly tale. Well all I can say to that is…shit, this is an Earplug Adventure: when have I ever taken anything seriously. It’s all a giggle. On with episode ten…

Moments later, after a brief farewell, the would-be saviours of the museum were on their way…

“What are we doing, Erronious?” Hellfire whispered. “Have you taken leave of your senses? Have your pants slipped up the crack between your buttocks?”

“No.” Erronious hissed back through the side of his mouth. “Celestino has a greater gift than he imagines: that snotty-yellow earplug has allowed me to see what I really am. We’re gonna do this, Hell. No more pea farming for us: we’re gonna become bone afide heroes.”

A short while later, having successfully negotiated the red and green tunnels, Erronious and Hellfire found themselves, once more inside the tunnel directly behind the shepherd’s hut…

“There,” Erronious grumbled, “I told you those sky lanterns were rubbish. The top has obviously snapped off under the weight of snow, and now the weather is inside with us. We can’t get to the hut; we’ll have to go out via the broken lantern.”

As a result of this departure, the two chums, now slightly disorientated, stood somewhere above the hut…

“So which direction do we go?” Hellfire asked.

“We need transportation.” Erronious answered. “All the pea farmers would have moved to lower altitude: we’ll find their vehicles down there.”

Fifteen minutes later, and beneath a huge overhang of compacted snow, they discovered a tracked vehicle…

“The keys are in the ignition, Erronious.” Hellfire said from the driving seat. “And the power pack is half full.”

“No good.” Erronious replied. “We’re exposed to the weather on this. Let’s try further down.”

So they did; and they found a small tractor unit outside the pea processing plant: but it presented the same problem…

And it only had one seat. So they tried again…

“Ah, this is better,” Hellfire said with a frozen smile, “An armoured personnel carrier. I’ll drive: you take the command position.”

Once aboard, Erronious wasn’t entirely certain he liked the command position: protection from the wind was minimal. But since he couldn’t drive, he could hardly argue against Hellfire’s logic…

Very quickly they were upon their way…

In his youth, Hellfire had once been conscripted into a rag-tag mercenary army. Driving the armoured personnel carrier came as second nature to him. Through chattering teeth Erronious heard him call from the driver’s seat:

“Do you want me to fire the stubby forward cannon, Erronious? The heat from the barrel might warm you up a bit.”

“No!” Erronious shouted urgently. He then explained his reason: “We can’t see what we’re shooting at in this blizzard. In any case, we’ve started going downhill again.”

The decline to the plain that would take them to the Museum of Future Technology was long and arduous…

Further, once they had attained level ground, they discovered earplugs who had decided to attempt a walk to the assumed safety of either La Ciudad de Droxford, or the museum…

“By the Saint of All Earplugs,” Erronious boomed in the near silence of perpetual snowfall, “are you complete twonks?”

Twonks, or not, the three earplugs were hugely relieved when Hellfire said:

“Get on board. It’s a bit cramped; but it beats standing around out here.”

© Paul Trevor Nolan 2022

So, they’re on their way. What a huge task before them. They’re hardly the Earplug Brothers: do you think they have it in them to save the museum? Return for episode 11 to find out.

Climatic Calamity (part 8)

Could this be the episode in which the earplugs manage to turn the tide? Let’s find out, shall we? Read on…

Meanwhile, many kilometres distant, Erronious and Hellfire had finally found an abandoned shepherd’s hut, inside which they quickly took shelter…

“Do you have any of those oaty biscuit bars in your back pocket?” Hellfire inquired. “All this trudging about the mountain side has made me really hungry.”

“I do.” Erronious replied as he stood, warming ever so slightly now that he was out of the wind. “But you can’t have them. You know what you’re like after a meal: you’ll only want to visit the toilet.”

“What’s wrong with visiting the toilet?” Hellfire asked in a complaining tone.

The reply came instantaneously: “This hut doesn’t have one.”

But what it did have was a hexagonal tunnel that led into the hillside. Naturally the twosome investigated…

“Oh look, Erronious,” Hellfire cried out, “this tunnel has one of those roof-mounted sky lanterns that allow the daylight to be reflected down a polished shaft where it illuminates part of a building that would otherwise be cloaked in shadow.”

“Yeah, very nice.” Erronious grumbled as his gaze shifted in the direction of the sky lantern’s opening. “But what happens when a winter storm breaks it off? I’ll tell you: the weather will get in and render this place uninhabitable. I think they’re absolute rubbish: I hate ‘em with a passion. Now let’s see where this tunnel leads us – before it’s too late, and we get entombed in ice and snow.”

Meanwhile, at the Museum of Future Technology, the sky was becoming darker. Someone sent a flare up to see just how dark…

Someone in the Age of Stone exhibit had another idea. In an attempt to shield the side of the ‘castle’ that faced away from the prevailing winds, he, or she, had a team erect a huge glass barrier that had been hanging around the store for years, but had no obvious use. Now it did…

It gave limited, but sufficient protection for the more religious earplugs amongst the crowd to make their way out of the back door, where they could quickly trudge across a playing field to pray for salvation at the giant concrete toadstool icon…

Barry Dirtbox and his End Cap scullery maid, Fanny Hardcore were the first to arrive.

“Dear Giant Concrete Toadstool,” Barry said solemnly, “I’m really fed up with this snow. And Fanny, here, has got chilblains. Please make it go away.”

“And make me more attractive.” Fanny added. “If you’ve got the time, of course.”

“Yes.” Barry nodded vigorously. “But the snow gets priority, right?”

Elsewhere, inside the breached carapace of the Museum of Future Technology…

…the weather had transformed the Wide Blue Yonder into an ice sheet to rival any at the planet’s poles.

Whilst former female weightlifters, Mandy and Candy enjoyed their unplanned skating session immensely; Poncho Warmonger wore his usual miserable expression and wished he’d stayed at home with a good book and a hot water bottle.

As much fun as it was for some earplugs, other – more responsible earplugs – took upon themselves to mount tracked or hover vehicles and search for anyone in need of help…

They assumed, as almost everyone did, that the Nul-Space power generator had more than enough capacity to heat and light the museum through a protracted winter or mini ice-age. In essence they were correct. But what they hadn’t taken into account was the frozen canal that supplied the generator with coolant. Already engineers had been forced to reduce the amount of power asked of the wondrous device. Even as the hover chariots roamed the open areas of the museum in search of hapless earplugs who were too stupid to find shelter, engineers were dampening the energy transfer nodes all across the vast structure…

“Oh flip,” one engineer cried as the transfer node went to turquoise alert, “that means we’ll have to cut the power even more!”

This quickly became apparent to everyone with access to a window when the museum’s navigation and landing lights were extinguished…

…and the lights dimmed in the Café Puke outlets…

Not that either the Baristas or their clientele gave a hoot: they’d been adding extra brandy to every mug of café cortado for the last hour and a half and were well their way to inebriation and sliding beneath the melamine-topped café tables in a drunken haze.

Meanwhile, inside the mountainside, the tunnel down which Erronious Bosche and Hellfire McWilliams explored opened onto a subterranean cavern that glowed with an aerie, pea-like green light…

“Now this I didn’t expect.” Erronious said as they both stopped to take in the view. “I wonder how this got here. Some of the marks in the walls show the characteristic jagged edges of a pick axe or similar rock-hewing implement.”

© Paul Trevor Nolan 2022

Okay, maybe that discovery didn’t quite live up to expectations; but it’s what they find there that will turn the aforementioned tide. You just wait and see – in episode 9!