"Here you are, Doctor Klein," Clark said as he laid the rock on the scientist's lab table.
"Oh, thank you, Superman!" Bernard Klein's eyes shone as he eyed the rock. "This might help me solve the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle!"
"Always happy to help science." Clark smiled. "Well," he added, "I'll be seeing you at Thanksgiving. You are coming to dinner, aren't you?"
"Oh, sure," Klein said absentmindedly. He was already absorbed with the rock and Clark turned to leave when Klein suddenly spoke up again. "Um, Clark, can you help me solve another mystery?"
"Sure," Clark smiled. "Do you need another specimen?"
"No, no, nothing like that." The scientist waved his hands, nearly knocking a stack of documents perched on the edge of the table. He rescued the documents and started muttering under his breath. Clark waited patiently but Doctor Klein seemed to have forgotten him.
"The mystery?" he prodded politely.
"Ah, yes. Sorry about that. See, I was always wondering - how do you change from Clark to Superman and back?"
"Change? Do you mean the Suit, Bernie? Because, you know, I'm still me, Suit, business suit or jeans."
"Yes, yes, I mean your cloths. I've seen you do the spin thing and change from Clark's cloths to the Suit and back. I know you wear the Suit underneath your regular cloths but where do you keep the boots? And where do Clark's cloths go when you're being Superman? Well, that sort of thing..." Klein slowed to a stop, slightly embarrassed.
"Well," Clark started, "it's rather hard to explain, but you of all people should get it, I guess. I can show you, if you have a small camcorder lying around."
"Show me?!" Kline became very enthusiastic. "Yes, yes, show me! Here..." he started rummaging through the stuff on his desk. "I know I have a camcorder here somewhere... Ah! Here it is!" He held the camcorder up triumphantly.
Clark took it and turned it over. "Uh, batteries?"
"Right, right!" more rummaging and Klein came up with a new pack of batteries. Clark quickly replaced the batteries in the camcorder and moved to the center of the lab.
He froze for a moment, then asked Klein: "This is just between us, you realize? We will destroy the tape afterwards. No one can see me changing from Clark to Superman," he stressed.
"Of course, of course," Klein reassured him. "You know I wouldn't do anything to jeopardize your secret, Clark. You are my closest friend, and even if you weren't, I would never betray Superman!"
"Right." Clark stepped back again. "You might want to move those papers again, or put something real heavy over them" he advised Klein. Bernard rushed to do as he was told, then stood back expectantly.
"Well, here we go." Superman said. He turned the camcorder on and started to spin until he became a blur. In a few seconds he slowed down and came to a stop, wearing jeans, a faded T-shirt and sneakers. He stopped the camcorder and then turned on the TV in the lab's corner. He expertly connected the cables and rewound the tape. "I hope this model has a slo-mo feature."
"Here, let me." Klein pushed a button.
Despite the slo-mo the image on the TV was of the lab spinning faster and faster. Then a bright light appeared and when it dimmed, Klein saw an incredible scene.
It was a vast space, dimly lit. The light had a grayish hue to it, as did the ground (Was it ground? Klein wasn't sure). In the distance he saw piles and piles of... things. The camera turned around full circle so that he could get a good look and then turned downward. Klein saw a chair, of all things. A chair in the middle of nowhere, with a pair of sneakers on its seat, and jeans and a T-shirt neatly folded on its back.
Then a blue-clad arm appeared in the image, whisking up the cloths. The spinning resumed and Klein could just glimpse Superman's suit flying to lie on the chair's back and red boots dropping on the seat.
The spin accelerated and then there was the bright light again. When the light dimmed the image was of Klein's lab. Klein lifted wondrous eyes to Clark.
"What is this place?"
"I'm not sure," Clark hesitated. "That's why I showed it to you. A parallel universe? Another dimension? I was journalism major, Bernie, not a physics major. All I know is - when you spin very fast a sort of wormhole appears and lets you into that place. I found that, wherever on Earth I was at the time, spinning fast always led me to the same place in that... place. That's why I put the chair there, to make it easier on me changing cloths."
"Why, that's... that's..." Klein's words failed him. Theories of quantum physics, parallel universes, wormholes, started spinning around in his mind. He knew that in a few seconds Clark will grow exasperated with his excited, obscure rambling and made himself stop. Then he thought of something else. "What are all those colorful piles you can see in the distance?"
"Oh, that." Clark laughed. "Well, Bernard, that is the answer to one of life's real mysteries."
"Oh?" Klein was even more intrigued.
"Those, my friend, are piles of lost socks. I guess the fast spin on some washing machines opens up tiny wormholes and sometimes single socks manage to find their way through the wormhole to that place. When I first got there the place was littered with them. It took me a long time to bring some order to that place..."
The End
Excuse any scientific doo-da. I was more interested in the socks...
