The only reason Alex had come on this trip in the first place was the chance to see snow for the first time in his life. But since snowflakes operated according to some kind of contract whereby they didn’t have to show up once the temperature headed below zero, the entire trip seemed pointless from his lovely vantage point at–he peered at the clock–3.37 am. Great.

Now that he was awake, he was aware that his blankets were pitifully inadequate at picking up the slack from possibly the most useless “radiators” (he refused to dignify them by removing the quotation marks) in the history of heating solutions; radiators which, against all decency, the cheapskate bastard hotel owner had elected to install nevertheless, leaving the room to achieve a determined equilibrium with the temperature outside.