Musings from the Bunker

In the year 2013, Microminiatures, the small computer company from Stone, Staffordshire responsible for the creation of ice cream chimes and their various motors and parts goes under. Their file for bankruptcy sites economic pressures as well as the increasing social pressures relating to the misuse of their devices, particularly the ‘Any old scrap iron’ sound loop and the Grampian Horn.

Due to the distinct analogue nature of the sound these devices produced they have of course in the time since 2013 started to degrade, causing the once happy tunes to descend slowly but surely into a muddy cacophony of noise, with no parts to fix them. The maddening drone soon replaced the once familiar sounds of the ice cream man in popular culture. The exact date is not known when the ice cream men started to wear the hoods.

I shudder and light another cigarette; it's cold down in the bunker, but my guide offers me no blankets, no heat... Just a god's eye view to the end of existence. With an unsteady hand he clicks the mouse, bringing up once again the video feed to the world long since denied to us.

The van is roaming down the street, its hooded inhabitant trembling slightly as waves of fear emanating from the enthralled roadside children gather chaotically on the subsonic airways that surround his super chilled wagon. He can see reflected in their eyes the grim murals that don his home, the relics of a bygone age... Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck. Characters that once bought joy now converted into icons of fear by him and his brother’s sheer existence. A wicked smile plays across his fudgesicle plump lips and he leans back into the belly of the machine, cranking the volume on his archaic device letting the blistering drone emanate louder still from the dust coated speakers, feeling the unchained maddening wrath of corroded analogue blister his lungs. Bowing his head low, he turns a corner and whispers a silent prayer to AIR RAID... his lord, his master... his god.

Credited to Ben Jeffery