Item Seed: Ozone Pills.

…You know, I should just write this up as a short story. After reading more about ozone, of course.

Ozone Pills

Ah, Mad Science. It’s like regular science, only the explosions are judged by their aesthetics. Or pyrotechnics. Or possibly their ability to dissolve sand. And so it goes with Ozone Pills. These particular bio-metaphysical pills were designed by Doctor Archibald Harriman Cheverly-Button, Baronet of Woodly-on-the-Avon. As you may have guessed, the good doctor was called mad at university, and he spent the rest of his very long life proving them right. The man was an admittedly inspired chemist, but: he had the bad habit of never checking secondary effects.

For example: at one point in his career, Dr. Cheverly-Button naturally formed a liaison with a mysterious Dark Lady who was, of course, a vampire. Naturally, he wished to be able to promenade with his new lady-love through Kew Gardens… only, preferably, without her bursting into flames. So the doctor flipped through his chemistry journals, read of the discovery of ozone’s chemical properties.

Doing some quick-and-dirty vivisection of some handy, distinctly lower-crust vampires, Cheverly-Button found that, indeed, ozone seemed to block the tithonic rays that were so dangerous to that peculiar species’ well-being. From there it was simply a matter of creating a pill that would release beneficial ozone molecules into the vampire’s ‘blood stream’ on a regular basis. That this would be fatal to a regular human was irrelevant; how can one kill that which is already dead?

Dr. Cheverly-Button’s vampiric paramour was at first dubious, but when his demonstration showed her that vampiric bats, rats, and Irishmen could withstand the sun while under the influence of these pills, she tried one herself. It worked! One pill would last about a day, and with no side-effects except a certain mild ozone smell. Which was a triviality, given that ozone was associated with health and well-being anyway.

Naturally, the vampire lover then proceeded to kidnap Dr. Cheverly-Button and bring him to the Vampire King of London, who then demanded that the doctor make enough pills to allow his entire bloodsucking clan free access to the daylight. While quite wroth about this shabby treatment, Cheverly-Button preferred laboratory drudgery to exsanguination, so he industrialized the process. Soon, the vampires had all they needed to stride across the daylight and take control of London! And after that, the world!

The Vampire of London gathered his minions together to fly upon Parliament as one, of course (more theatrical that way). At his waved command, the horde of vampires took their pills, waited a moment for the effects to take hold, transformed into mist… and then promptly exploded, because ozone is explosively unstable at high concentrations when subjected to sudden jumps of temperature and the presence of regular oxygen. Which is to say, pretty much when it’s in the body of a vampire that just transformed into a body of mist. Rather terminally, in these cases.

Now Dr. Cheverly-Button may have indeed dined out on telling this story and its outcome for the rest of his life, but: he had no idea at all that this was going to happen. If he had, he might not have had to wait a day or two before the few surviving renfields remembered to check the vaults for any stray Masters that might have escaped the blast. None had, but igoring for a Mad Scientist is roughly the same kind of job, so that worked out.

As for the pills? Eventually, some men from the War Office Intelligence Department stopped by to gently but inexorably acquire Dr. Cheverly-Button’s notes and sample Ozone Pills. And possibly some boffins have been making them ever since. England has been remarkably free of visible vampiric infestations since then; very possibly this is the reason. Or perhaps nosferatu simply don’t like the smell of the place now…

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