Edward had a marvelous plan. He was going to create a genuine mini Black Hole, right here on earth.

Edward put coils of copper tube, large permanent magnets, sheets of aluminum foil, old iron tubes full of silicone sealant together to construct a two and a half meters high intricate apparatus, putting a copper vertical horn on top. The horn, like the front of a large trumpet, was pointed towards the ceiling.

Edward lived alone in the suburban sprawl of a large city. His father had experimented with inventions in his large steel garage. Because of this, his mother had left home four years ago. He missed his father who had died of a heart attack two summers ago.

Today was Edward's twenty-second birthday, remembered only by the lovely Fiona, the Circulation Librarian. At lunchtime, Fiona had kissed him on the cheek in front of everybody in the tearoom. Edward had flushed crimson with embarrassment.

Edward worked during the day as an attendant at the City Library where he taught himself technology so that he could understand his father's notebooks. At home he stumbled around in track-pants and a T-shirt and busily modified his father's equipment.

But now was the moment. He climbed the stepladder and peered into the trumpet. The curved mirror at its base magnified his reflected image and he admired his golden curly hair and his green eyes, but loathed his big ears.

He had a collection of hardware items arranged near him so that he could throw them into the Black Hole and watch them disappear. Edward sat at the computer controls for the Black Hole Generator.

"That's one small step for a man…" Edward intoned and double-clicked on the start icon. There was a loud vibrating noise and a strange glaring effect in the horn. Edward didn't realize that a simple software mistake had reversed the polarity of his black hold generator. Yes, he could see that the interior of the horn was indeed the deepest, blackest thing that he had ever seen, but within the blackness he could soon make out sparkling points of every color imaginable.

Edward sipped on a glass of cheap soda and whispered, "Black holes are the mysteries of our universe. Everything that enters them never leaves -- even light."

Soon every lost sock in the world flew into the air from the trumpet, and covered the mountain of pens. Then a great number of shopping lists fluttered into the air, followed by an emission of lottery tickets, and train, tram, bus and concert tickets. This was followed by every letter, telegram and E-mail that had never arrived.

Edward's garage then collapsed as millions of metal keys shot out of the horn and rained down -- lost front door keys, car keys and locker keys. The overflow continued as sewing needles, cuff links, pencil sharpeners, razors and lost passports, followed by countless of pins.

Can openers, bottle openers and corkscrews were followed by sink plugs and remote controls. As these flooded over the local community, they were covered by clothes pegs, the caps of toothpaste tubes and a flow of overdue library books.

"Stars?" he thought just before he died. Within a few seconds, around a hundred million colorful ballpoint pens shot out of the horn, bounced off the roof and filled up the garage, spearing poor Edward to death. As every lost ballpoint pen in the world poured out of the black hole, the pressure blew the top off the garage and the mountain of pens continued to grow.

A veritable mountain of lost-receipts needed by the taxman was followed by every lost screw nut from a world of car engines, household appliances and technical instruments.

Finally, just before the black hole generator disappeared in a puff of smoke, every lost love in the history of the world was expelled into the air and rained down in an overflow of desolation.

As the city sagged beneath the weight of all these lost things, millions of credit cards fluttered into the air and rained down. Edward would have been amazed, except that he was long dead.