Mystery of The Missing Socks
Nate visits a planet (Dennai) populated by humanoids always born in threes as identical triplets. They live in wooden houses and practice magic using handheld hoops of a brightly-colored, plastic-like substance.
There is something strange happening on Dennai. Socks go missing in the wash. Later other items and even pets and children start to vanish. The Dennai blame their failure to appease the gods and suggest sacrificing Nate. He quickly plants seeds of doubt in their minds and mentions that some people have no belief in any god at all. Offering to help, Nate holds a stakeout and discovers that some socks are alive. So are some hats and sleeping bags. Most of the time, they can be worn as normal socks, but when hungry and sure they will not be caught, they open up a portal to a pocket universe and swallow up objects. The objects still exist inside the pockets unchanged except that as the creature draws energy for its life processes, less energy is available to return to our universe in the form of material objects. Any one object can be retrieved, but the total amount of mass returned to the universe must be less than its equivalent in energy (E=mc2) still unused by the creature.
After breaking inside one of the creatures with two Dennai parents to bring back one of the children, Nate finds that not all four of them can return. As energy is continually being used, they must make a choice quickly or they will all be trapped. Sending one out to bring back enough mass for an exchange will not work because forcefully exiting the creature and removing other missing objects has activated its defense mechanism. As soon as anything else crosses the threshold, it will vanish from normal space. Nate keeps pressuring them to make a choice who will stay, but they insist on remaining together. Suddenly it dawns on Nate what the obvious solution is. He must stay. While he has always been willing to risk his life for others, he has never seen the point of sacrificing himself with certainty. Nothing is gained by simply exchanging one life for another. Are not all lives equal? If one is going to begin ranking people by worth, isn’t Nate – a champion of justice with a genius IQ – worth more than most? He quietly wrestles with these issues and finally decides he is worth little as a hero if he cannot even save this one family. At the very last second, he lies to the family, saying he has found a solution. He sends them out with a piece of string, telling them that the portal will not be able to close with the string propping it open. As soon as the family exits, the portal closes and snaps the string. Nate never sees them again or learns how they react.
Nate finds that the socks are cannibals and inside with him are other socks, eating the floating junk around him – pocket universes within pocket universes. Exploring in these spaces, he finds technology that gives him an idea. He builds a simple time machine and travels to a time inside the creature when there was plenty of extra matter present to allow him to leave. Then he simply walks out. This happens to take place just before he arrives on the planet in the first place and so he waits for his past self to arrive in his ship so he can steal it and take off at the first chance he gets.
There is something strange happening on Dennai. Socks go missing in the wash. Later other items and even pets and children start to vanish. The Dennai blame their failure to appease the gods and suggest sacrificing Nate. He quickly plants seeds of doubt in their minds and mentions that some people have no belief in any god at all. Offering to help, Nate holds a stakeout and discovers that some socks are alive. So are some hats and sleeping bags. Most of the time, they can be worn as normal socks, but when hungry and sure they will not be caught, they open up a portal to a pocket universe and swallow up objects. The objects still exist inside the pockets unchanged except that as the creature draws energy for its life processes, less energy is available to return to our universe in the form of material objects. Any one object can be retrieved, but the total amount of mass returned to the universe must be less than its equivalent in energy (E=mc2) still unused by the creature.
After breaking inside one of the creatures with two Dennai parents to bring back one of the children, Nate finds that not all four of them can return. As energy is continually being used, they must make a choice quickly or they will all be trapped. Sending one out to bring back enough mass for an exchange will not work because forcefully exiting the creature and removing other missing objects has activated its defense mechanism. As soon as anything else crosses the threshold, it will vanish from normal space. Nate keeps pressuring them to make a choice who will stay, but they insist on remaining together. Suddenly it dawns on Nate what the obvious solution is. He must stay. While he has always been willing to risk his life for others, he has never seen the point of sacrificing himself with certainty. Nothing is gained by simply exchanging one life for another. Are not all lives equal? If one is going to begin ranking people by worth, isn’t Nate – a champion of justice with a genius IQ – worth more than most? He quietly wrestles with these issues and finally decides he is worth little as a hero if he cannot even save this one family. At the very last second, he lies to the family, saying he has found a solution. He sends them out with a piece of string, telling them that the portal will not be able to close with the string propping it open. As soon as the family exits, the portal closes and snaps the string. Nate never sees them again or learns how they react.
Nate finds that the socks are cannibals and inside with him are other socks, eating the floating junk around him – pocket universes within pocket universes. Exploring in these spaces, he finds technology that gives him an idea. He builds a simple time machine and travels to a time inside the creature when there was plenty of extra matter present to allow him to leave. Then he simply walks out. This happens to take place just before he arrives on the planet in the first place and so he waits for his past self to arrive in his ship so he can steal it and take off at the first chance he gets.