For those who thought quantum mechanics was just bunk, wait till you see these cute little things. 

The newest arrivals from sub-atomic realms are called bufferings, tiny white tadpole-like beings from the inner plane. They have humanlike heads with flat buffering foreheads, hence the name. Owing to certain factors in their origin, the all-female bufferings are powerfully attracted to mauve socks. They fall in love with the ankles, then the persons, of mauve sock wearers, floating at floor level and buffering away at the lower legs under some driving impulse. Mauve sock wearers involved in tests record feeling loved and even sexually admired during this process, with an appropriate lift in ego. 

Some – no doubt rather carried away – have actually likened these bufferings to angels.

The method of their discovery, however, was far from angelic, as Professor Grabnotch of the Plithm Institute of Blind Science admits. “It came about through the series of experiments labelled Mode-Clenching With The Bladdersmiths. The Bladdersmiths, a husband and wife team, were obsessed with finding a fixed way of physically existing in non-physical dimensions. Husband Jared Bladdersmith used himself as a guinea pig in the quantum chamber they’d devised. A witness described his face as actually falling out of its skin. More than mere bone, they said, it was a shaped cartilaginous mask, whitened by UV rays – the upper jaw and teeth protruding forward to project the inner mass downward and outward. In her haste to save him, his wife threw herself into the chamber and neither Bladdersmith was seen again. That’s when the bufferings came through – a touching amalgam of the husband’s pushy forehead and his spouse’s selfless love. White, like that brightened mask, yet drawn toward mauve, as to the ultra-violet source.”

Be that as it may, you can’t help liking the little tinkers. Already Scottish Nibcocks are planning to market them as pets. Perhaps they can be engineered to home in on different coloured, or even personalised, socks?

“No chance of that,” says marketing director Cranley Whurrock. “You can’t muck around with the sub-atomic spectrum. It’s literally the sock drawer of Pandemonium.”

Sales of mauve hosiery are expected to soar.