Hostetler disappears in exciting catastrophe

The election process for Indiana’s 8th District representative has become dramatically simpler since incumbent John Hostetler dropped out of the race on Monday. More specifically, Congressman Hostetler dropped into a parallel universe while attending a press conference at Rose-Hulman’s ultra-short pulsed laser lab, and leading scientists doubt that he will be able to return in time for the November elections.

Eyewitnesses (including news teams, Rose-Hulman administrators, and anonymous Navy officials) reported that although the laser was safely turned off, the safety procedures had not been designed to accommodate a bureaucratic cascade failure. “The lab was designed for nerds doing real scientific research!” protested senior scientist Ted Duncan as he rushed around with a screwdriver, poking randomly into the air to test for further rifts in the space-time continuum. “We designed the room to allow for considerable administrative leeway, but with the added political component, a tear was inevitable!”

Later, students connected to the research project admitted that they knew that such an event was possible, but when calculating bureaucratic tolerances, somebody had misplaced a decimal point in Maple. “We inputted John Hostetler’s political clout as 35.22 when it should have been 3,522.” confessed one student who wished to remain anonymous. He added, “They spend so much time teaching us calculus! If we had more classes that focused on addition and decimals, we wouldn’t make this sort of brainfart!” [Ed: “Brainfart” is a very technical engineering term.]

The disappearance of Congressman Hostetler was not negative for all, however. Dr. Mitch Novell, who had previously been attempting to detect a 50 femtosecond pulse’s effect on the space-time continuum, was elated at the development. “We’ve actually achieved a politi-bureaurocratic threshold event!” he yelled distractedly as he rushed to save and plot the data. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance!” he sputtered. “We rarely get administrators in the labs, and for the first time, we’ve had enough to trigger a critical mass!”

One of the anonymous Navy officials was overheard discussing possible military applications of the discovery, but before reporters could ask them to confirm plans for a similar event in the vicinity of Tehran, a special forces team dropped in and firmly escorted everybody out of the building. Remaining administrators report that research at Aleph Park should continue within the week, although plans for future press conferences have been canceled until further notice.