by FRED CHARUNDER-MACHARRUNDEIRA, Alternate Reality News Service Science Writer
Socks.
"Socks," allowed James T. Chandrasekar, captain of the IS Ganesh. He did not appear to be pleased by the prospect.
"Socks," agreed Antimonium Troy, chief science officer of the IS Ganesh. She appeared bemused by the prospect.
"Goddam socks!" bellowed Vikram Ghouli Mackoi, chief medical officer of the IS Ganesh. You can pretty much figure what his take on the whole situation was.
The Ganesh had been sent on a scientific expedition to a naked singularity in the Charon Quadrant of the galaxy. A naked singularity is a black hole that has done a strip tease and shed its event horizon; unlike the singularity at the centre of a black hole, naked singularities are not shy, allowing matter to sidle right up to them without being irreversibly sucked into their personal space.
The Ganesh's mission was to communicate with the naked singularity, UO237-56893, nicknamed Sanjay by members of the Indian Space Academy. The ISA had prepared a binary message that included the map of the human genome, the phrase "I am death, destroyer of worlds" spoken by an Alan Oppenheimer impersonator and a 15 second clip of the inexplicably popular 20th century cartoon Astro Boy. The Ganesh sent the message into the naked singularity from a distance of a kilometre.
"I don't know what the eggheads at the Academy were thinking would happen," Captain Chandrasekar grumped. ("Don't pay him no mind," Doctor Mackoi wryly observed. "Jim's just upset that, so far on this mission, he hasn't been called upon to beat up or have sex with any aliens.")
What happened that the eggheads at the Academy weren't thinking was that socks started flowing out of the naked singularity, 100 individual pieces of footwear, one for each second the message was beamed in. The socks, collected y the ship's tractor beam, were found to come in all shapes and patterns: some were made of wool, some of synthetic fibres; some were short, some ankle length; one had little pink hearts, one had images of a cartoonish cat eating lasagna and 14 had holes of various shapes and sizes.
After several hours of analysis in the ship's lab, Science Officer Troy was able to conclude that only four of the 100 appeared to be in a pair. "But, we'll have to get them home to do some deeper analysis," she cautioned.
Comparing the socks to a preflight inventory of socks of the crew, Science Officer Troy discovered that one of the socks matched a sock belonging to Ensign Geordie Mukhabarat. "I'd been looking for that sock almost from the time we left port," Ensign Mukhabarat noted, "but I never expected to find it this way!"
Science Officer Troy mused that it was too early to assume that the socks came from the same pair. It could just have been a coincidence that they looked, felt and smelled similar. "I've run the numbers through the computer," she stated, "and the probability that two similar but unpaired socks come together out of a population of 25,000 random socks (those on the ship and those coming from the naked singularity) are actually quite high. Only testing with the latest equipment when we get back to Earth will prove anything conclusively."
In the meantime, "Bitch confiscated my sock!" Ensign Mukhabarat complained. "Said something about getting it back after she's done some tests on earth. Man, that woman is obsessed! Hunh. See if I volunteer to be the third man through the door for her ever again!"
"I mean, decades of research and development and billions upon billions of rupees spent to create this magnificent starship," Captain Chandrasekar grumped further, "and we're essentially using it as a glorified cosmic laundry basket!" ("Don't pay him no mind," Doctor Mackoi wryly observed. "Jim's just upset that he hasn't been called upon to beat up or have sex with any of the socks.")
Why would single socks appear out of a disturbed celestial body? "A singularity, whether naked, fully clothed or in a state of partially clad dishevelment, is an almost infinitely dense point of matter in space," explained Science Officer Troy. "The laws of physics completely break down there, much the same way they do at a frat party. Some scientists argued that, since the normal rules of the universe didn't apply, what happened in a naked singularity could be magic.
"However, I don't think that any of them expected that it would be laundry!"