I hope we have now seen the last of this purple

As previously reported the pigmented attacks on New Babbage were defeated
after a combined assault by the New Babbage navy and an ad-hoc group
of New Babbage citizens. And now, as the ship lays stricken in the port
still leaking its foul cargo into the sea, the city is faced with the
challenge of removing the visible stains left by the onslaught.

I write this evening to report on some degree of success. I had been
pondering upon the matter of paint removal at length, faced with the
undesirable task of scrubbing my properties clean of the purple stain.
Yet it is to a pair of young urchins that I must assign the credit for
what has come to pass.

“I quite loiked that there purpal”,
remarked a grubby faced young girl, as the pair passed me by. I was
knelt by my doorstep with a jar of dilute acid, removing the paint. “It
were all summery and noice, loike the weffer ‘as bin”. Her companion,
looked up at the sky, and nodded, a little look of puzzlement upon his
face.

“Oi don’ know wots goin’ on wiv it all. Never know’d the Sun to shine ‘ere.”, he remarked, “Ois not seen no rain since Mundy”.

And they were right. The sun never shines here, not like this, the ever
present smog had thinned, the boilers and furnaces of the city had run
low, either sealed with paint or their owners distracted by the
bombardment. The skies had cleared and no rains had fallen.

It so happens that I have recently been studying a work of scientific
literature by a Mr Robert Angus Smith, published a few years ago, in
1852, but recently brought to our venerable library. In his work Mr
Smith showed the relationship of atmospheric pollution to the Ph of the
precipitation, something he termed “acid rain”.

I looked down at
the jar of acid in my hand as the idea struck me. Within a few minutes I
was running across the city to my factory, a sorry sight, itself, all
daubed in mauve. My factory is responsible for the production of much of
the fresh air pumped into the tunnels of the vernian sea. Air sucked in
from the atmosphere and scrubbed clean by the complicated mechanism
within. the idea was simple enough and within a few hours the necessary
adjustments were in place.

I threw the lever that re-engaged the drive to the large fans above my
head. Fans that would now run backwards. The air scrubber had become the
polluter. pushing vast amounts of concentrated soot and filth back inot
the air, within minutes a dark cloud was forming above my property,
soon it was spreading across the city, blotting out the sun.
Temperatures dropped and in answer to our wishes the skies clouds cooled
and rain fell opnce more upon the city. In hindsight, perhaps I should
have warned people to stay inside as testing the rain with a little
litmus showed it to be considerbaly more acidic than regular rain. It
was not long before the paint began to fall away, washed off and
dissolved by the downpour.

I sat back and watched the rain fall,
smiling to myself as little by little my beloved city returned back to
its rusty brown hues.

——————————————————————
Thank you to all who helped with this event and the little stories weaved around it.
The vendors (bombs) placed around the city were succesful and at the time
of collection had registered over 18,000 Linden dollars (including a
special matching donation from a generous Steampunk).

Thank you to everyone, for having a little fun with this.