Little crazy child 2: It be our duty as fair and balanced correspondents to burn witches at the stake and then dance around the pyre on the six o’clock news. And verily, something stinks.
Pugh: Perhaps it is only the porridge that gets up thy nostrils?
Little crazy child 1: Answer me this. There has been a terrible storm. Do you deny that it was man-made climate change?
Little crazy child 2: Or do you speak of natural causes?
Pugh: I am waiting on evidence.
Little crazy child 1: Witch!
Little crazy child 2: Total witch!
Pugh: Well, no, of course, climate change is real, I’m just saying that sometimes storms are just things nature throws at us.
Little crazy child 1: You’ll burn for this!
Little crazy child 2: To be precise, we’ll burn you for this!
Pugh: Oh, my! Little crazy children are jangling the keys of the kingdom, and common vengeance writes the law!
Little crazy child 1: Burn her!
Little crazy child 2: And remove her scalp!
ACT 2 SCENE 1
Setting: A small bare chapel. An orange glow shines at the window. There is a pulpit and a wooden pew. As the curtain rises we see Reverend Christopher Luxon throwing a vial of holy water over the charred and trembling figure of Maureen Pugh.
Reverend Luxon: Repent!
Pugh: Climate change caused the cyclone!
Reverend Luxon: Repent!
Pugh: Climate change caused the cyclone!
Reverend Luxon: Repent!
Pugh: Yeah, okay, I have. Quit with the holy water. I ask you, Reverend, what have we come to that a body can’t speak its mind?
Reverend Luxon: We are only what we always were, but naked now.
Pugh: What?
Reverend Luxon: It’s election year.
Pugh: Climate change caused the cyclone!
Reverend Luxon: Repent!
ACT 3 SCENE 1
Setting: A small bare courtroom. A rope swings from a gallows and an orange glow shines through the window. As the curtain rises we see the Grand Vizier and Oracle of the Planet, His Most High Sovereign James Shaw, confer with governors Chris Hipkins and Grant Robertson.
Shaw: The devil is loose in Salem! But we burnt her at the stake.
Hipkins: Righto.
Robertson: Okay.
Shaw: We burn a hot fire here; it melts down all concealment.
Hipkins: Yeah anyway.
Robertson: We’ve got work to do.
Shaw: A fire, a fire is burning! I hear the boot of Lucifer, I see his filthy face!
Hipkins: Must dash.
Robertson: Bye for now.
Exit Hipkins, Robertson. Enter Pugh.
Shaw: Oh, hello. Sorry about all the fuss. How are you feeling?
Pugh: You know what this place is like. I’ll live.
Shaw: Grab a bite to eat?
Pugh: There’s porridge at mine.
Shaw: I’ll light the stove.
