In Cawker City, Kansas, The World’s Largest Ball of Twine holds the truth of the universe.
Of course, few know just how big the ball of twine actually is. Originally no one knew except for Frank Stoeber, its creator. In 1952, Frank returned home to Cawker City, Kansas from a visit to the Bahamas. It’s unknown what happened to him while he was there. The most common theory is that he received a divine revelation. More specifically, a divine revelation that The Almighty has chilly feet. For the day he returned, he set to work on his mission to knit a pair of socks of utter perfection, worthy of God himself.
The first steps of his grandiose plan of divine tailoring required that he create a suitable portal into which he could enter, sheilding himself for all time from the ravages of age and distraction, and the risk of running out of material. To accomplish this he rolled his ball of twine, meticulously laying each string just perfectly so that if you were to view the inside and outside of the ball simultaneously from every conceivable angle, you would have a reliable, 12-dimensional model of time and the universe. This job took him many years, finally finishing in 1961. At this point he wrapped the ball in a layer of rubber and several other layers of twine to protect it and his secret. As a final security measure, he handed it off to the people of Cawker City, relying on their small-town pride to prevent it from being gobbled up by anyone who could bring it to harm.
He then spent the next 13 years preparing his body, his tools, and the universe itself for the next stages of his plan, before finally blinking out of our 3-dimensional existence and into the 12-dimensional spacetime in the center of the ball at the beginning of time.
For billions of years on his own time-line now, Frank has knitted diligently, in a ball so pan-dimensionally gigantic that it takes up nearly the entirety of 7 dimensions of space, causing them to seem tiny and curled up to 3-dimensional observes. The ball has many pores, through which matter from all around the universe is passed through and converted into knitting materials as Frank knits and re-knits, coming closer and closer each time to an infinitely perfect pair of socks.
Eventually, at the very end of time, Frank shall finally acheive his goal, by this time having gone through all of the matter in the Universe and creating an infinite number of nearly-perfect 12-dimensional socks. This shall happen at the moment right before the big crunch. Further, as Frank’s knitting skills improve the needles bang against each-other faster and harder, until- right after he makes the last stitch and right as the Universe collapses upon itself- he lets out a sound of infinite frequency and power, causing the Universe to explode outward again and providing the sound effects for the next “Big Bang.”
Of course, none of this could possibly be true. Twine, Deities, and crazed Kansans aren’t responsible for the creation and observable shape of the Universe. These things just don’t add up to how the world is supposed to work.
Right?
This is so wierd it just has to be true.
I have to say this sounds very very Douglas Adamsy… Nice, I really like the utter weirdness.
Very beautiful
There are more twine balls then just Frank’s languishing on the side roads of small towns across America, holding unseen secrets in their musty smelling coils. While the residents of Cawker City continue to add on to their ball, another eccentric, Francis Johnson in Darwin, Minnesota began his ball of twine several years before the Kansas ball. Were these two old men in some sort of competition? While Francis’ ball was the larger of the two, before Frank went to the big ball of twine in the sky (to continue his life work in some other form) he impressed the people of Cawker City to continue to add onto the ball into perpetuity. While Francis too has died (or disappeared as well) the people of Darwin are fiercely protective of their own twine ball, proclaiming it the Largest Twine Ball Made by One Man, in direct defiance to the upstarts down in Kansas, and keep Francis’ ball in pristine condition in the town park. Meanwhile, in other parts of the country, Wisconsin, Texas, Missouri, other balls of twine are being formed, each with their own claim to fame, the heaviest, the most colorful. Each of these misshapen spheres sits in small towns off the roads, places were locals have time enough to work on such seemingly pointless projects. Could this be the result of some bizarre battle between strange groups of adepts of a kind of mindless boredom common in small towns that cause people to commit themselves to achieving feats that take dedication far outweighing the benefits? Francis Johnson, as happily shown by the people of Darwin, also devoted his time to whittling giant, complicated, and interlocking sets of pliers with multitudes of handles and grips out of logs. Perhaps these roadside attractions may have some hidden significance to those who take the time to stop? Could a Cliomancer harvest some power from one of these sites?