The clock on the oven is losing about a minute a week because there’s apparently a localized temporal viscosity centered around the stove. Cork fills it with watches and eats Hot Pockets for a fortnight. When he opens the door again they’re ticking in unison, one hundred seconds slow.

This has annoying implications for his soufflés.

Later the scientists come: no white-coated Government Men, just some PhD kids from the university. They get excited about the alpha constant a lot. Cork buys bulk Hot Pockets and the Journal of Cosmology, wondering if they’ll show the stain that looks like Steve Buscemi.