Socks, and other terrestrial objects.

It was one of those days which was alternately sunny and overcast, but always a little humid. The laundry was hanging out all day, but when I brought it in at suppertime the waist bands of the jeans were still a little damp feeling. Suzie was a constant visitor on the deck as well, and has found a favourite spot to lie in, under a rug I bought from a neighbour’s garage sale for $5 which I plan to lay on the deck (if it falls apart after one season, I’m not too concerned; it did, after all, only cost $5); but it makes such a perfect little shady corner for the cat, draped over the railing and a chair as it, that I’m loath to change it.

While I was hanging out the laundry, I was thinking of a science fiction premise I’ve been hashing around for years, ever since our days in Ann Arbor when we used to take three weeks’ worth of wash (i.e. everything we owned) to Mr. Stadium to launder in two (whites and darks) Texas-size washers. They were huge. No guff. During the extraction cycle they spun around so quickly, I imagined a vortex opening up in the space/time continuum, drawing in errant socks and other small clothes that would get separated from the bulk of the wash clinging to the sides of the drums.

My premise centered on the idea that if socks could vanish into another dimension, courtesy of a Texas-size washer-induced worm hole, then it’s quite plausible that an alien could come through the other way. The protagonist would reach into the machine and pull out something that didn’t resemble in any shape or form an article of clothing. It would be even more interesting if it were still alive.

Well, I could never get any farther than that with my idea; but today, hanging socks, it came to me that if things can disappear from our universe, they must appear in another, and the story should be told from the point of view of the alien who witnesses the sporadic formation of this particular worm hole (for only one Texas-size washer would produce the right frequencies to enable this phenomenon) and is the confused recipient of all those socks. I scribbled an opening sentence or three down on the back of an envelope, and now I have somewhere to start from.

Otherwise, the copying proceeds apace. I just finished measure 93 of the fourth movement (with a probable 100 plus measures to go). The end is in sight; a long way off, but still in sight.

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