When did it begin?

It was just a routine morning, a routine act. Grace unscrewed the sprayer-head from the automatic coffee maker. As she pulled it out, she saw that it was completely full of white stuff. It puzzled her, so she examined it more carefully. It looked almost like a clump of flour had gotten stuck in the center of it. It was fine enough stuff that it should have gone through the sprayer holes. Still puzzled, Grace went to the sink and held it under the stream of water from the faucet. It washed out easily with no scrubbing or rubbing whatsoever. After rinsing it, she held it up and examined it, ensuring that all the holes were completely clean, and returned to the coffee maker to finish cleaning it.

Following that discovery, she noted as she wiped down the lid to the resevior that there was an unusual build-up of what seemed to be calcium deposits around it and on the plastic grid the water was poured through.

It was only later that the mystery began to take shape in her mind. As it did, the initial and most horrible thought that continued to haunt her whenever her thoughts ventured in that direction was her worry about her own sanity. Was it possible?

An hour or so later, she returned to the coffee maker and lifted the lid to the resevoir again and peered down into it where the still evident excessive lime buildup under the grid could be seen. She regretted her haste and thoroughness in cleaning it earlier. Careful examination netted a very thin line of white residue along the raised outer edge of the resevior. Grace licked her finger and rubbed it off, then touched it to her tongue. It had a salty flavor, saltier than she would have expected, but then she wasn't in the habit of tasting lime buildup on coffee makers.

Truth just wouldn't quite dawn on her for quite some time. When it really began to take solid shape in her mind was while in the midst of other household cleaning chores, she was searching through the cupboard beneath the sink for some misplaced bottle of cleaning fluid, when she noticed a large box of trisodium phosphate that had taken front and center. The logic of that defied her--how can a box of harsh soap that is only used as a painting prep take front and center? Finding what she was looking for, she returned to work, but the box of soap didn't get forgotten. Finally, curious to solve the mystery, she returned to the kitchen and pulled the box from beneath the sink, examined it, wondering, then repeated the moistening of the tip of her finger and touching a bit of soap dust inside the lid, then touching it to the tip of her tongue, tasting it. Her taste memory kicked in--it had that same slightly salty flavor as the supposed calcium deposit that had come off the plastic so easily earlier that morning.

That's where she left the problem for a couple of days. Every morning, she drank her usual two or three mugs of coffee. But that third morning, while wiping down the outside of the coffee maker, she noticed a fine white powder on the shiny black base. It reminded her of the discovery she'd attempted to hide from herself a few days before.

She paused and looked blankly at the machine trying to imagine a way that a white powder--say it was flour--had landed there near the heating element pad. Then slowly, almost with trepidation, she unscrewed the sprayerhead again and peered into its black interior. What she saw there was quite different than what she had seen a few days before.

In the very center there were several small clear floppy looking crystals. There was no confusion whatsoever that it could possibly be a sudden influx of calcium deposits from the water. If her mind could stagger, it did at that moment--she'd only cleaned the coffee maker three days before. They were clearly different than anything that she had ever seen before. The mystery that had seemed so insane, so deniably crazy just three days before, instantly crystalized itself into something real.