text: It was a rainy, cold Friday. I was wearing sweatpants and a hoodie, not my usual attire but it was laundry day. I had walked the four blocks from my apartment to the old wash-o-matic laundromat, just like I did every few weeks. It had been longer than usual this time, so I had everything except for what I was wearing in the laundry bag thrown over my shoulder. By the time I arrived, I was sopping wet, and leaving a trail of drips behind me in the slightly too warm, loud room. The rain must have been keeping people at home, because I was the only one there. I had used the last of my quarters to tip the pizza delivery driver the night before, so I walked over to the change machine and inserted a handful of ones I had found in various places around my apartment. On the last dollar bill, the machine froze up and refused to drop the quarters with the usual clank into the metal tray. I hit the side of it with the palm of my hand, and three quarters fell out. I cursed at the machine, knowing that meant 5 minutes less of drying time. But what did it really matter... dry or not, by the time I brought everything home it would be wet again. Still mad, I walked over to the nearest washing machine and loaded my clothes. I inserted most of my quarters, leaving me with only the shorted change from my last dollar. After adding detergent, I pressed the start button and sat back to wait. The Wash-O-Matic’s washers look like they are older than me, and apparently at the time the washers were built, people were not in a hurry. I settled in, ready to wait for the forever cycle of the wash. Little did I know, it was exactly that. After nearly 45 minutes, I watched the clothes spin faster and faster through the glass window on the front. I sat up in my seat, knowing from experience that this was the final stage in the cycle, when it tries it's hardest to get as much water out of the clothes as possible. It usually did a very poor job. As I waited for the sad buzz that signified the end of the wash, the clothes continued to gain speed. Finally, I thought, maybe it will actually work for once. But the drum continued faster and faster, now producing a whirring sound, like a plane getting ready to take off. As the speed increased, the lights began to flicker and spark. When the turbine sound reached a roar, the lights popped, one by one across the entire room. But the machine kept gaining speed, any shakes that had started at lower speeds stabilizing to a barely detectable vibration. I ran out of the building with my hands over my ears, crouching as I tried to avoid the shattering glass above me. I stood outside in the rain, looking in on the row of machines through the large glass window. Maybe there was a power surge, I thought. But the speed of the drum had not slowed down. It was running at a stable speed, so fast the inside was a flickering blur of color from my clothes. I waited outside, not knowing what to do. That's when the vans showed up. Black vans with blacked out windows, carrying heavily armed men in black uniforms. They swarmed out of the van, and circled the building. Before I knew it, I was on the ground and in handcuffs. I guess I didn't look like much of a threat in my soggy sweats and hoodie, because they walked me away from the building and sat me down in the grass and left. I sat there handcuffed in the rain for almost an hour. While I sat there, helicopters started circling around, and men in hazmat suits started towards the building carrying boxes of expensive looking equipment. Finally, a man in a suit came and got me. He brought me into a hastily erected white tent, and questioned me for a while. I told him what had happened, and that all my clothes were stuck in there. After a quick laugh at me, he dismissed me out of the tent and back onto the street. He said I had just solved the world's greatest problem. My only reply to him was “but my clothes...” With another chuckle, he walked away behind the line of armed men. And that was the day the world changed in a pretty big way. That old machine with all of my clothes had somehow created an infinite supply of energy. That one rickety, aging washer with a load of old gym socks and tattered t-shirts had somehow transformed itself into an endless generator of power. That building became the power source for the entire world eventually, with lines running under seas and into other continents. Power plants were obsolete. Power was free for the whole world. A lot of things changed after that. For me though, the only real change was a lack of clothing, and three leftover quarters in my pocket. Not having to pay a power bill any more is nice, but really, I just want my clothes back.