[Ed. - for the uninitiated, click here, here and here]

The cracked asphalt bubbled and congealed in the heat as I trudged down State Highway 1. Six long years had passed since the seas began to boil; five since the night of the Parliamentary Fatwah. Three since my wife and family were taken by the Mongol horde. Limping into the shade of a crumbling public toilet, I dropped my pack and wept.

Yes, the earth was warming. Our international coalition of thousands of scientists had seen that. But in our arrogance we had sought to turn back the tide, casting off the trappings of civilization when we should have embraced them.

On hands and knees I looked to the sky, cursing the day we invented Earth Hour.

It began innocently enough: leaving cars parked in the garage, switching off lightbulbs (although ironically the extravagant candelabras we used in their place actually created more emissions). But it was not enough: before long we were cycling, using public transport, purchasing secondhand appliances and growing our own vegetables. Earth Hour became a weekly ritual, then daily. Great pyres of espresso machines and iPod speaker docks burned until the smoke blacked out the sun.

Some tried to warn us. It was a lie, they said, and anyway Science could save us; science put out fires and dammed the rivers. But we scorned their wisdom. We mocked their television appearances and drove them from our halls of learning.

Gleefully we returned to our lives in the Shire. And when the Islamocommunists came, we were completely unprepared.

It had been a trick all along. Global “warming” had been nothing more than a series of normal fluctuations in the earth’s temperature, but in our haste to reject our first-world lifestyle we had created that which we most feared. The blazing trash heaps that choked the cities with smog had triggered an actual climate change, and the swarthy Soviet masterminds quickly moved into their endgame.

I had escaped their hemp whips and recycled chains, but for how long?

My shameful reverie was interrupted by a low thrumming sound, almost unrecognisable after all these years. I ducked into a toilet stall, crouching and shuddering in terror. Whether it was a commissar or an islamobiker or a Mongol Mob rider, I was done running. I curled into a foetal position, the cool concrete against my face, and waited for the end.

The door swung open. A man towered over me, clad in a volcanologist’s bodysuit. A metallic blue ’72 Corvette Stingray purred behind him, the key still in the ignition.

Through the darkened visor I could make out nothing more than a wry Cheshire grin. He reached out a hand gloved in black rubber and hauled me to my feet.

“I’m Rick Giles, bitch,” he said. “Get in.”