Randolf Descente's Ice Cave
Senior Descente only had an ice cave to begin with because he was directly descended from Thor Heyerdahl and received as his legacy Heyerdahl's little-known and unpublished diary of his raft trip to Antarctica. He searched the cave upside and down, evicting the vagabonds and getting new drapes. After a month of digging, he found the wormhole. It was under a boulder, and rapidly sucked anything within inches, which, of course, elongated to miles of hyper space inter-dimensional toilette paper. Descente was thankful and beholden to his descendant for never needing to buy rolls. But there was more. Occasionally the wormhole would spit out strange metal bits. They looked like parts of something, though he knew not what. He started keeping them in a scrap-box from which he would draw for creative projects. A mobile, and 5 refrigerator magnets later, he got the note.
Etched on a piece of the surprisingly sturdy metal was a plea from the other side of the wormhole. The writing had been stretched thin, but was legible. "Meet me for ice cream at six. Will be wearing orange tutu."
Senior Descente hadn't eaten since the ice ox 2 weeks earlier, and the reference to the orange tutu led him inexorably to cheesepuffs, and a special ice cave room where cheese puffs overflowed. Frozen, of course. He lost five teeth munching on them, and now he couldn't chew his canned food. He was stranded on the tundra, toothless, with the chopper a week away. No he wasn't, Terry, that's absurder than absurd, he was still in the cave, still in the cheese puff room to be exact, munching on cheese puffs. They were cheez puffs from somewhere else, from the other side of the worm hole, a trap set to snare Descente. He tied the hyperspace interdimensional toilet paper around his midriff and set off for town. He didn't know where the ice cream parlor was, but this way he couldn't get lost. "Get lost," the stranger shouted as Descente approached the ice cream parlor. He was undaunted but he paused. This was it, he would finally meet the mysterious stranger who communicated by hole-mail. Time seemed to slow - somewhere an ice-dog barked. Did he want to know? Would it change how he felt about his mobile? Were the refrigerator magnets just an idle phase or worse, someone else's property?
There was only one way to find out. He stepped through the doorway.
