Hey readers,
As most of you know, I write a lot of serious things. So sometimes it feels good to write something absurd and fun. This story will ultimately be part of an anthology I’ve been working on for a while but don’t expect the full release anytime soon. The anthology will be called ‘A Comedy of Mechanical Errors’ and it currently has 10 complete similar stories written in it. It’s a sort of a side project for me but I love each and every one of these stories.
Below is a free preview of the story I published for paid subscribers on substack. If you want to read the rest you can visit the link here and subscribe.
The Great Magnetic Sock Migration of 2077
By Michael Kilman
“Socks… socks Luke. Who would have thunk it?”
As the pair drove west on the highway in the old green Land Rover, Luke rolled his eyes.
He sighed. “How many are on the move now, Roger?”
“One second, let me look.”
Roger opened up his phone and scrolled as Luke drove on. They passed scores of abandoned vehicles on the shoulder. The highway, once 4 lanes, only had enough for two cars to pass abreast, and no one was headed east anymore.
“Wow! 2,938,532,971.”
“How the hell could that be an odd number? Wasn’t that the entire point of those damn socks?”
Luke dodged a few flipped-over cars in the road. One car had a few dozen socks inching over the derelict vehicle.
“I don’t know. It’s just what the tracker says. Maybe a bird ate one of them or something.”
“What the hell would a bird eat a sock for?”
“I don’t know. There’s gotta be a reason though, right? I mean, look at those things. Hey! Maybe one of them fell into a volcano!”
Luke rolled his eyes. “They aren’t the one ring, Roger, they’re socks.”
“They ain’t just any old socks. They’re Super Socks! You know what everyone is calling this whole thing on social media?”
“Do I really want to know?”
“The… ASOCKalypse.” He paused. “Get it? Get it?”
“Is anyone actually calling it that or are you just trying to promote hashtags again?”
“Nope, not me this time. There are like a million memes about it and some of them have us and the other teams in it. Do you want to see it?”
“I’m driving. So… no thanks.”
“Asockalypse ha! I wish I’d thought of it first.”
“Millions of people are already following us and the other teams. What more do you want?”
“I don’t know… money? Fame? Memes?”
“T.S. Elliot was right.”
“What? Who?”
“The Poet. T.S. Elliot.”
Roger just blinked and stared at Luke.
Luke sighed again. “He said that the world won’t end with a bang, but a whimper. And our world is ending with socks and memes. That feels like a whimper.”
“Well there’s gonna be a pretty big bang isn’t there? I mean if we don’t stop this.”
“Okay, so a bang after the whimper.”
“The world’s gotta end somehow right?”
“With socks?”
“No, the Asockalypse!” Roger had a massive grin on his face.
Loridian's Laboratory 