Added Sep. 2021
This story is also available to read on my Substack page.
by R.B. Ray
© 2021
Nobody knows where they go. They just disappear. Without a trace. Not just the boats and planes that traverse the Bermuda Triangle or the Devil’s Sea, but whole civilizations like the Anasazi of New Mexico, the Mycenaeans of Greece and the Sanxingdui of China, to name a few. Then there are those entire cities that had supposedly vanished completely as if scooped from the very surface of the planet: the ever-popular city of Atlantis, Aztlán, the ancestral home of the Aztecs and El Dorado, the legendary city of gold.
Theories abound, ranging from the paranormal to the scientific to the downright silly. Earthquakes or aliens? Exodus or extermination? Climate or cannibalism? Portals to another time or even another universe are just as viable explanations as failing crops, bad water or natural climatic changes. Expeditions across the globe have searched for answers with some finding evidence of once thriving civilizations now long deserted while others return disappointed, having found not a single stone hovel or ceramic pot.
Something of a fan of vanishings, Dr. Harry Keen, a learned and experienced physicist—and unrecognized genius—was more interested in something a little closer to home. With a theory, calculations and finally an experiment to conduct, he was determined to learn what few have only theorized about; what most people dismiss out of hand as a fatuous mystery; a joke; something the Human mind is predisposed to ignore, probably because it is inexplicable: Harry wanted to know why that random sock sometimes goes missing from the clothes dryer.
For months, he had been obsessed with the idea to the point of borderline insanity. Shaving, showers, meals and even sleep were often neglected to entertain his bizarre mania. When the clothes dryer went missing and Harry’s wife found it wired up to his other equipment in the basement, she took their two kids and left, never to return.
Harry insisted his theory was sound and would speak of little else. It was not long before his unrestrained enthusiasm had gotten him kicked out of his University job.
He posited that a combination of the gravitational influences of certain planetary alignments, the Earth’s rotation, (making allowances for the planet’s shifting magnetic field), specific atmospheric conditions, the mass of the items inside the dryer, the amount of heat generated, the angular momentum of the drum and a dose of some quantum tunneling that, even for a brief moment, a vortex would form and create a crack in reality; a wormhole of sorts.
“Eat your heart out, CERN,” he muttered to himself, admiring his handiwork.
The dryer door had been replaced with a transparent covering to allow for unrestricted viewing. Cameras inside and outside the dryer were prepared to document everything. Once all was ready, Harry toiled in silence for weeks until the computer finally beeped its alert. The light on the dryer shone as the experiment came to life. Butterflies swarmed in Harry’s stomach.
As the drum accelerated, Harry could not keep from pressing his nose to the cover like some wide-eyed like a kid at an aquarium shark tank. He stepped back when a small, dark dot appeared directly at the center of rotation and expanded into a swirling cloud. It looked as if peering into a tornado from above.
The local news called it an accident. Accumulating natural gas from a leak likely caused the destruction of the house. The resident, one Dr. Harold Keen, had previously been showing signs of mental instability according to his estranged wife, leading authorities to consider a possible suicide. An investigation is pending.
What the news did not detail was the inexplicable fact that the house had been so completely demolished that not so much as a single splinter of it remained. There was a rectangular crater the shape of the basement where the house once stood. Broken pipes and electrical conduits jutted from the ground. The only evidence recovered from the scene was a battered clothes dryer containing a single sock.
END
Disclaimer:
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are fictitiously used. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
R.B. Ray 