Got my laundry to the laundromat. The door was jammed half-shut. There were guys out front so drunk that they looked at me like I might be Jesus.

I get in, I get my stuff into the washer and … go to get some quarters. The machine is off.

There’s a sign there stating that quarters now exist only in a parallel alternate universe due to COVID-19, and there’s a fucking phone number there you can call, if you still think you might want quarters.

A phone number?

For quarters?

Yes.

Okay, I guess doing laundry is like a bad video game in which you have to farm for quarters in the apocalypse in order to make the spinny machines go wet and dry.

There are essentially two sources of possible quarters, and neither of them wanted to even »sell me quarters. One of those actually tried to »haggle with me in his traditional way.

I went to two other strange commodity universes, obtained 8 quarters, and was finally able to actually just wash my clothes.