Granted, a packet of tea is sent back to Purple Ink when she was young. She had never had tea before, but since some literally just appeared in her lap, she decided to try it, and found she really liked it. So she started drinking tea, eventually leading to the tea shortage that caused this whole situation. To make matters worse, the mole people use the chaotic temporal energy resulting from the bootstrap paradox we've created to power actual spaceships which they use to ascend to Venus and build their floating sky-fortresses there, thus becoming the Venusian Tea Tyrants they were formerly only disguised as.
As it happens, I ordered some new tea for myself a few days before Christmas, and then a friend gave me some as a present, so now I have a surfeit of tea (true story

). I wish that my box of
40 Marks and Spencer Christmas Spiced Tea Bags could somehow be used to save us all from the Venusian Tea Tyrants.