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Spin Cycle by Norma Posy
Sunday, March 9, 2014
Rated "G" by the Author.
Socks lost in the laundry finally explained.
SPIN CYCLE
On an otherwise unremarkable Saturday afternoon, Mary Merkle of Oshkosh Wisconsin, hearing her washing machine stop, put the gin bottle down, pushed her Pomeranian off her lap, lit a cigarette, and flipped-flopped her feet to the garage, her body following, if not willingly, at least obediently.
Tossed unceremoniously from washing machine to dryer, one item followed another. Two size 36DD bras, several muumuu dresses bearing outrageously flowered motifs, a couple of work shirts belonging to her sometimes boyfriend, one brown sock, and then . . .
“Where the hell is the other sock?” Mary asked into the cosmos, there being no one else in her immediate acoustic environment. Then, “What the hell is this?”
Mary Merkle held it up. Made of some unfamiliar silvery material, it appeared to be a robe with ten sleeves.
* * *
Across the galaxy, Mifflix Blitzflig, middle sex of its trisexed race, happened to be similarly occupied.
Waving three of its ten tentacles in puzzlement and extending its third eye on its extensible stalk for a better look, Mifflix paused while transferring items of apparel from washer to dryer.
“What the hell is this,” it asked, holding up Mary Merkle’s missing brown sock. “And where the hell is my silver gown?”
But we are getting ahead of our story.
* * *
On a planet whose name only matters to it’s inhabitants, midway between Mary Merkle and Mifflix Blitzflig, Oscar looked at a panel meter and dutifully recorded “17 milliamperes” into his laboratory notebook, then chewed thoughtfully on his suffering pencil.
Sparks flew between two golden orbs atop the machine, and green fluids bubbled through its plumbing.
This planet sported an evolved race of cold-blooded intelligent reptiles. Oscar somewhat resembled a bipedal alligator.
The meter’s needle quavered a bit around the number 17. The meter, mounted on the face of a complicated machine, was part of Oscar’s grand experiment in macroscopic entanglement.
If successful, this would cap his otherwise unremarkable career as an experimental physicist.
It had been known for some time that subatomic particles “entangle.” That is, collapsing the wave function of a quantum observable over here, instantaneously collapses the corresponding wave function of that one over there, but in a complementary polarity. “Spin” is one such observable. If the spin vector probability over here collapses to “up,” the other one over there will be found to point “down”.
Oscar had taken upon himself the task of promoting this weird behavior into the world of the large. To that end he had looked around for things that spin, and it had occurred to him that washing machines might serve well. Top-loaders spin on a vertical axis, while front-loaders spin on a horizontal axis. And they are already conveniently sprinkled around the universe. All of God’s creatures wash socks (or their local equivalent). At least civilized creatures do, or so assumed Oscar.
Of course, washing machines are considerably more complicated than are electrons. Oscar wasn’t sure exactly how macro-entanglement would exhibit itself. Oscar’s optimism that his research would bear fruit was supported, however thinly, by the well-known phenomenon of socks that vanish from washing machines. This seemed to him to be a case of spontaneous macro-entanglement.
And so, as sparks flew between golden orbs and green fluids bubbled through pipes, Oscar stood that day before a meter reading 17 milliamperes, while Mary Merkle and Mifflix Blitzflig mutually pondered over their strange laundry.
If that were the end of it, we might toss all this into the bin of cosmic unknowables, crack open another beer, and get on with life. But . . .
* * *
Picodella, a seraph in charge of the heavenly laundry room, stood in astonishment between the washer and the dryer. Jehovah’s halo was gone! In its place was an argyle sock.
Somewhere in the cosmos, someone opened their washing machine to find one remaining argyle sock and a halo! The halo, still damp and a bit tizzy from the spin cycle, promptly assumed its usual position above the nearest available head, causing the scalp to itch.
Jehovah was furious. Not at Picodella of course, but at Lilith.
Being omniscient, Jehovah immediately knew that those intelligent reptiles over in Lilith’s prefecture were responsible.
Jehovah grabbed his celestial cell phone and punched up Lilith’s number. “Dammit, Lilith, I warned you about creating intelligent reptiles. Where the hell is my halo?”
“Oh calm down,” Lilith replied. “You should talk, having created your own botch job, human beings. At least my guys, being cold blooded, aren’t burning their planet up.”
“Yeah, well, easy for you to say. But you should have known that those alligators of yours wouldn’t leave spin entanglement the hell alone where it belongs. Washing machines, for Chrissake!”
The very stars trembled in the face of this divine pissing contest. Mifflix Blitzflig, Mary Merkle, and Oscar all forgot their laundry troubles, fearful for their lives.
“You’re not being fair,” Lilith replied in a rising voice. “I couldn’t have known they would do this.”
“Sure you could’ve,” Jehovah roared. “You just didn’t bother to think it through.”
“Oh stop being such a crybaby. Look, I’m sorry. Okay? I’ll even buy you a new halo. I know this smithy fellow who bangs out some first-rate halos in his workshop.”
“Well, okay then. But make it a good one. My last halo was getting a bit wobbly from constant use. I suppose it is time for a new one. I prefer pink. Some sparklies would be nice.”
With that, the stars all settled down. Lilith purged her creation of all physicists. Washing machine entanglement was restored to the occasional spontaneous event of a lost sock. Jehovah got his new halo. And Mary Merkle was left in possession of a garment with ten sleeves. She gave it to the Goodwill.
A thoroughly enjoyable laugh. Made my Monday morning. Your cosmology is spot on. And your writing is damn good. Since I'm from Wisconsin, I could identify with Mary Merkle… except her description perfectly describes a landlady I had California named Dory.
My only nitpick is my favorite pet peeve: "On a planet that only matters to its [it's is not possessive in this case] inhabitants."
A naïve councilman and a down-on-her-luck single mom try to save their county’s last stand of forest from greedy developers and a dysfunctional government.
