The dryer coughed with a grating, metallic buzz. Dustin stood up from the basement couch impatiently and strode carefully into the laundry room. He found the box of white, latex gloves on the shelf anchored to the plaster wall and withdrew two powdery specimens. They looked like the bitter end of a retirement party, all that's left when the cake's gone, the others have left, and the balloons are all popped and scattered on a dreary linoleum floor. He drove his hands into the gloves unmercifully, snapping the wrist bands high on his forearm with a clinical flourish.

First, the shirt had to be taken out of the dryer. This, he did with tongs. It was set, quite carefully, into a clean plastic receptacle prepared for the purpose. Next the inside of the dryer was vacuumed with a filter-less, hand-held Dust Devil whose dust chamber had been painstakingly cleaned and sterilized. The resulting debris was dumped into a separate receptacle. Emptying the lint trap followed. It was done with extreme care, meticulously stripped of each and every particle it had trapped. Finally a separate lint trap, specially constructed from multi-layered silk-screen, was removed from the exhaust hose. This, too, along with the inside of the exhaust hose, was carefully cleaned. The tiny pile of dust and lint that resulted was duly placed in its own bin.

A special debris trap was then removed from the washer. It was surprising, Dustin thought, how much debris was loosed during the washing process. And nobody ever would have guessed. The debris was carefully placed in the chamber of a dehydrating unit.

Dustin took a deep breath. He exhaled with care so as not to upset the various deposits of lint and dust laid out before him. Then he carefully combined the contents of each of the receptacles, excepting the one for the t-shirt, of course, and placed them into a separate compartment of the dehyrdator. The shirt itself followed. Dustin set a timer on his watch for two minutes, adjusted the unit to its most powerful setting, then chewed on his pencil and watched the seconds vaporize one by one.

The debris collected from the washing machine along with the lint and dust collected from the dryer were then combined and carefully placed onto the spotless steel surface of an electronic scale. Dustin wrote down the scale's reading, biting his lip.

20.483 grams.

And then the shirt. Dustin strained with apprehension as he placed the simple t-shirt on the scale.

227.543 grams.

His eyes rolled back and to the side with excitement. He began looking feverishly for his yellow note pad, doing a sort of hysteric crab walk for want of space in the basement laundry room. The florescent lights seemed too much for him. They vibrated and flickered at an eerie frequency that he felt he'd never noticed until this moment.

Where was that damn note pad? Not the shelf. Not under the laundry basket. Not the little closet space crammed full of a water heater... Ah hah! On the other wooden shelf!

When he saw the original figure he thought he'd pass out from the shear incredulity of the moment. 221.543 grams! Impossible!

He fluttered out of the tiny laundry room, standing up straight as he emerged in his semi-finished basement. Flitting across the room he threw himself into the arms of his couch and quickly produced his cellphone from his pocket with unshakable decision.

"Dustin?"

"Marge I've done it!" He cried, hardly able to contain the nerves in his voice.

Silence for a moment. And then:

"Dustin, come to bed. It's absurd to call me when we're just a flight of stairs away. A woman shouldn't have to deal with phone calls from her husband in the basement at this time of night. Or any time of night, really."

"But Marge it's done! All these weeks of laundering the same shirt over and over. The meticulous collection of lint and debris. The expensive purchase of an all new washer / dryer combo for the purpose... It's finally done! I've proved it!"

Marge's voice turned palpably pouty before Dustin could even hear it begin the oncoming sentence.

"Proved what, Dustin? I'm not even sure I should ask."

"Proved," he started, with excitement in his voice, "Proved.. well, something. The damned stuff is heavier! The figures just don't add up!"

"What are you talking about?"

"Listen, the shirt started at 221.543 grams. That's exact, there's no way there were any flaws in the readings." His eyes clawed at the figures on his note pad, almost unbelieving. "And then.. Now, well. After all the weeks the resulting lint, and the other debris of course, adds up to.. Marge! It's 20.483 grams!"

"Dustin, honey."

"Marge wait! You haven't heard the best of it! The shirt itself is only down to 209.158 grams! Don't you understand? It's all heavier then when it started! It doesn't add up... it's... it's -- It's impossible!"

There was a pause with a loud, audible sigh.

"Dustin won't you come upstairs and talk to me like a normal husband?"

"But Marge! Goddammit Marge it doesn't add up! This means, this means... Hell this is something alright. It doesn't add up!"

"Dustin come to bed."

"Bed? Now? Are you joking? I've got to finish writing my report! The scientific world will reel when it sees this! This could be along the lines of a final antithesis to Unified Field Theory! This could be the bane of the age of reason!"

"Dustin, you aren't actually going to tell anybody about this are you? This is crazy. Won't you hang up the phone and come upstairs?"

"Of course I'm going to tell somebody," Dustin raged, suddenly standing excitedly and striding around in his basement with his yellow note pad in tow. "And not just somebody, everybody! This is the kind of discovery that could really shake things up!"

"This is the kind of thing," said Marge evenly, "that could get a second year lab assistant an uncomfortable chair in the waiting room at the unemployment office."

Dustin deflated suddenly. He sat his yellow note-pad on the table and began looking hazily at the figures for the second time. They seemed to add up, but...

"I suppose it's possible..."

"Honey everyone makes mistakes. There's one of those hidden variables or something. But it's late right now and the bed is cold without you. Would you hang up the phone, sweetheart, and come upstairs?"

"I mean everyone makes some errors sometimes, I guess maybe it's possible that... Maybe I'll just need to start over to make absolutely sure that..."

"Honey, please?"

Dustin stopped looking at the yellow pad and looked instead out of one of the narrow recessed windows embedded in the gray basement walls. The street was visible from the basement, just barely in the late night blackness of coming winter. He realized it was drizzling outside.

"I guess I can look at this stuff later," he said with dreary resolution. "I'll be up in a minute."

Dustin pressed the red End button on his cellphone and tossed it on top of his yellow pad. He felt tired. Very tired. And he had to be back at work in less than six hours now. What would he do without Marge? Probably lose his job and end up waiting tables at some underpaying, trendy cafe.

He turned out the lights and reached his hand out to find the banister. His steps sounded a heavy thud, thud, thud as he ascended slowly to the kitchen and then a less discernible shuffle, shuffle, shuffle as he plodded on into the bedroom.

The house became quiet.

The washer and dryer, who had been painfully convinced that the gig was finally up, breathed a deep, heartfelt sigh of relief. They absolutely must be more careful in the future.