The Interstellar Tea Machine - a Downloadable Short Story
Here's a new short story for you to download and enjoy. It might make you think about having a mug of tea...
The Interstellar Tea Machine
When Commander Twonket of the Zaponian Empire trades a cooling fan for a 1976 Goblin teasmade, he firmly believes he has unlocked the secret to rapid interstellar travel. Back on the planet Zap, Senior Engineer Zorvax transforms the humble clockwork appliance into the Zorvax-7 Chrono-Infuser, attempting to harness the "Brew-Continuum" to power their star-ships. There is just one problem: to make the jump, they need a stable thermodynamic anchor back on Earth.
Enter Jack Smith, a Peak District tour guide whose primary ambition in life is to do as little as humanly possible. When Zorvax infiltrates Jack's damp, miserable hiking expedition up Long Pike, a localized reality-swap accidentally exchanges a vital piece of Zaponian spaceship hardware for a tourist's egg-and-cress sandwich. To save the alien fleet from a mayonnaise-based temporal disaster, a high-stakes interstellar treaty must be negotiated in a local pub using the universe's most stable currency: a large pork pie and a packet of dry roasted peanuts.