“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 his phone and scrolled as Luke drove on. They passed scores of abandoned vehicles on the shoulder. The highway, once four lanes wide, only had space enough for two cars to pass abreast, and no one was headed east anymore.
“Wow! 2,938,532,971.”
“How the hell could it 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 its derelict frame.
“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. Eliot was right.”
“What? Who?”
“The Poet. T.S. Eliot.”
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 said with a massive grin on his face.
Luke changed the subject, “That number seems lower than when we checked last week.”
“Well, some socks found their partners I guess, so they stopped migrating.”
“You know I read a lot of dystopian sci-fi growing up, and it’s true what they say, reality is stranger than fiction. But socks?”
“Dude, they’re not just any old socks,” said Roger.
“How many hours do we have left?” asked Luke.
“Let’s see here…” Roger scrolled on his phone again for a moment and then said, “Ninety-one until they go critical.”
“That’s not much time.”
Roger took no notice of his partner’s scowl and continued his idle chatter.
“You know Luke, I’ve been asking myself, what moron designed socks to explode?”
“They didn’t design the socks to explode, you idiot. They designed them to find each other. Someone got the bright idea that if you quantum entangle socks and give them a basic form of locomotion, you’d never lose them again. But they didn’t think, Roger. They didn’t think what would happen if you put a few billion of them in the same place. That’s what will make them explode.”
“How does that work exactly?”
“How the hell do I know? I’m not a scientist, I’m an exterminator.”
“At least socks are more interesting than cockroaches.”
“Harder to kill, anyway. How much further?” asked Luke.
“Eighteen miles until we’re in the thick of it. The other teams said we will have to go on foot once we get close.”
It was likely true. As they drove there were more and more socks. They had taken the Land Rover with higher clearance and four-wheel drive for a reason. Too many drivers in smaller cars were getting stuck in the socks. It wasn’t much different than getting stuck in mud.
Luke sighed, “You really think flamethrowers will stop the…” But Luke refused to continue.
“You almost said it!” Roger laughed and Luke felt a wave of irritation, “Say it with me, Asockalypse. Come on, Luke.”
Luke didn’t bite.
“Aren’t they flame-resistant?” he asked.
“Resistant, not flameproof.”
“Are all the teams approaching from different sides with flamethrowers?”
“All of them.”
“Can we do that in ninety hours before they go critical?”
“Totally! I mean A.J. said that for every sock we torch, we have more time. If we torch half of them, we have double the time.”
“I don’t think that’s how it works.”
“I told A.J. we should just nuke them or something and be done with it. Sure, we’d lose most of Colorado and Utah, but at least we’d stop the… Asockalypse.”
Roger flashed Luke a grin and a wink. Luke hated him a little more each time for it.
“I’ve told you already — all the scientists said that if you set off a large-scale explosion near them, it would be just as catastrophic as letting them go critical. That’s why we have to be extra careful.”
“Yeah, but aren’t flames like an explosion?”
“Maybe? I don’t know. Flamethrowers have worked in other places without a problem.”
“I’m calling it now. We’re fucked,” Roger almost seemed cheerful about it, then continued, saying, “Man, my feet are cold.”
He opened his backpack and pulled out a small recognizable box.
“You didn’t…,” said Luke.
“What?”
“Bring more socks with you.”
“My feet are cold. What the hell do you want me to do?”
“Go barefoot like everyone else on the planet right now.”
“I can’t! I have poor circulation and Super Socks help. Look, it’s right on the box.”
Roger waved the box in Luke’s face, and Luke smacked it out of the way just in time to see a swarm of socks. He dodged the eight-inch-deep pile just in time. If they had hit it, they would have been stuck. If they were lucky, they would have inched along with the pile in tow and maybe reached their destination in a month.
Swearing, he gritted through his teeth. “Please tell me that’s the only pair you have, at least.”
Roger hesitated.
“… well… no…”
“Do you not understand the phrase ‘critical mass?’ What’s wrong with you?”
“What do you want me to do? You can’t buy regular socks in the store anymore. They all disappeared six months ago. Super Socks is all we got now.”
“So, you’re telling me that on a mission to stop socks from blowing up the planet, you brought more of the same socks?”
Roger shrugged.
“Well, if I am going to risk certain death, my feet aren’t going to be cold.”
Luke said, “How did I get stuck with such a moron?”
“You’re the one who introduced me to the socks.”
Luke slammed on the brakes. Roger’s seatbelt was the only thing that kept him going through the window. The vehicle sat still, and it took them both a moment to process what they were seeing.
Before them as far as the eye could see, stood a massive mountain of writhing, wiggling, multi-colored madness. It looked like a massive infection. And, in a way, it was for the socks were so high, and so deep now, that critical mass was almost certainly imminent. It represented every color, design, and shape of a sock in the mountain. One of the great features of Super Socks was their customizability.
Luke said, “I told you greed would kill the world one day.”
“Greed? These are socks.”
“Do you think these socks made themselves? No, dumbass. This is what happens when you let a company get too big and greedy.”
“Just looks like a bunch of socks to me.”
“Socks you’re wearing.”
“But they’re comfortable!”
“Greed always feels that way at first.”
“It does?”
“Never mind,” Luke said, “, This is as far as we go. Get the flamethrowers and let’s get to work.”
The pair stepped outside. Behind them, nothing but an open road. Ahead of them, a mountain of socks trying their best to get close to their matching pair but unable to get out of their own way.
“It’s kind of beautiful, isn’t it?”
“Beautiful?”
“Almost romantic.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“The socks want so bad to be with their perfect match that they’re willing to blow up the world to do it.”
“They aren’t sentient, dumbass.”
“Maybe… maybe this is what love is?”
“Quantum entanglement?”
“Yes!”
“I’m gonna quantum entangle my boot up your ass if you don’t start burning.”
“Where’s your sense of romance?”
“Romance? The most romance I’ve ever experienced with socks is in middle school before I had my first girlfriend.”
“Gross. Wow… you really hate socks, don’t you?”
“Yes, Roger. I hate socks. I hate that millions of socks have smothered and trampled entire towns. I hate that every major road is impassable without four-wheel drive and constant attention. I hate that it was stupid American capitalism that inspired this… innovation. But most of all, I hate that I’m spending my last moments on this planet burning a bunch of smelly old socks with you.”
“Hey!”
“What?”
“The socks never stink. That’s part of what makes them so great.”
Luke groaned. “Just get burning. And start with your own socks.”
But it was too late. The squirming mountain of color grew brighter and brighter until it swallowed them both, and with it, the world.
About Michael Kilman
He/Him/His
Michael Kilman is an anthropologist who focuses on media and storytelling. He writes fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. He is the author of Build Better Worlds: An Introduction to Anthropology for Game Designers, Fiction Writers, and Filmmakers and the Sci-Fi series, The Chronicles of the Great Migration. In 2021 he gave a Ted Talk called “Anthropology, Our Imagination and How to Understand Difference.” He has been featured on several podcasts, YouTube channels, and loves to read poetry at open mic sessions. When he isn't working on a creative project you can find him cycling, studying eastern philosophy, and traveling to other worlds through linguistic portals.