Domestic Adventure: Behind The Silver Door

Ah, the storage unit. A cozy, indoor, air-conditioned home for all the things you can’t fit into your actual home anymore. Now that you’re in the process of packing for a move, you’ve been making regular trips out here. You’ve learned the routine. You’re a pro. Pull up to the building doors, grab a handtruck, fill it up with boxes, wheel it inside… and so on.

BEHIND THE SILVER DOOR
A non-interactive Domestic Adventure by Paul O’Brian

Storage Building Foyer
Everything here gleams in sterile silver and white, colors chosen to assure you that this place is clean, secure, and well-kept. The east wall features a locked door as well as two different elevators — call them Left Elevator and Right Elevator. Or don’t bother, because Right Elevator is the one that always opens. A call button adorns the wall between the two elevators. Mounted on the wall to the right of Right Elevator is a security keypad. Automatic doors provide an exit to the west.

Your handtruck is here, loaded with boxes and waiting paitently in front of Right Elevator.

> EXAMINE HANDTRUCK
[You can abbreviate EXAMINE to X, if you like.]
It’s a large, wheeled platform, with a handle at one end. The storage place is nice enough to keep a supply of these in the foyer. It’s a quality piece of equipment, albeit a bit slow and cumbersome when laden with boxes like it is now.

> X BOXES
Oh, you know. Books. Decorations. Photo Albums. Books. Journals. Random electronics components. Also, books.

> X ELEVATOR
Which do you mean, Left Elevator or Right… well, actually, it doesn’t matter. They’re identical. Silver elevator doors, closed.

> X AUTOMATIC DOORS
They’re the doors you’ll walk out of once you’ve deposited all your stuff in the storage locker.

> X CALL BUTTON
Its upward-pointing arrow is currently unlit.

> X KEYPAD
Yeah, the keypad is part of the rather high-tech setup here at this storage building. You’ve got to enter your code at a different keypad just to get admitted to the storage complex at all, but once you get to this foyer, you must enter it again here to activate the elevators. Frequent trips here have taught you not to dawdle — there’s a pretty short timeout window from the time you enter your code, and if you don’t call an elevator, get into it, and hit the key for your floor before that timeout occurs, you’ve got to start all over.

> ENTER CODE ON KEYPAD
With practiced skill, you type the magic number on the keypad.

> PRESS CALL BUTTON
The up arrow begins to glow.

The Left Elevator doors open. This is the first time in your many trips here that you have ever seen the Left Elevator doors open.

> ENTER LEFT ELEVATOR
What, without your stuff?

> PUSH HANDTRUCK INTO LEFT ELEVATOR
You get behind the handtruck and heave. It’s a slow beast to turn around, especially in the somewhat cramped conditions of the foyer. Precious seconds tick by as you wrestle the handtruck out of its position in front of Right Elevator, wrench it around, and get it into…

Left Elevator
More sterile silver walls greet you from the inside of the elevator. As elevators go, it’s a pretty roomy one — no surprise, really, given some of the things people probably have to haul into it. There’s a panel of buttons on the wall next to the door leading west.

> X PANEL
One, Two, Three, Open Doors, Close Doors. Emergency Stop. Solemn weight limit warning. Earnest maintenance chart. Nothing you haven’t seen many times before. Your floor is Three.

> PRESS THREE
You press the button, which lights up, then goes dim again as soon as you release it. Damn. The security timeout expired. Now you’ve got to go back and enter your code again.

> OUT
You step out of the silver elevator.

Storage Building Foyer
Everything here gleams in sterile silver and white, colors chosen to assure you that this place is clean, secure, and well-kept. The east wall features a locked door as well as two different elevators — call them Left Elevator and Right Elevator, a distinction apparently far more important than you realized. A call button adorns the wall between the two elevators. Mounted on the wall to the right of Right Elevator is a security keypad. Automatic doors provide an exit to the west.

The Right Elevator doors open. A guy walks out of them and continues through the automatic doors, into the sunshine beyond. He smiles at you as he leaves.

> ENTER CODE ON KEYPAD
With practiced skill, you type the magic number on the keypad.

The Right Elevator doors close. The Left Elevator doors close.

> PRESS CALL BUTTON
The up arrow begins to glow.

The Right Elevator doors open. Which is great and everything, except for the fact that the handtruck full of your stuff is in the Left Elevator. Apparently Left gets pressed into service whenever Right is busy, which is almost never. Today you just happened to land in that shadowy space between “almost never” and “actually never.”

> WAIT
[You can abbreviate WAIT to Z, if you like.]
Time passes.

The Right Elevator doors close.

> ENTER CODE ON KEYPAD
With practiced skill, you type the magic number on the keypad.

> PRESS CALL BUTTON
The up arrow begins to glow.

The Right Elevator doors open. Your stuff remains trapped in the Left Elevator.

> THINK
What a good idea.

The Right Elevator Doors close.

> Z.Z.Z.

Time passes.

Time passes.

Time passes. Nobody’s going to happen to come along and solve this problem for you, if that’s what you were hoping for.

> ENTER CODE ON KEYPAD
With practiced skill, you type the magic number on the keypad.

> PRESS CALL BUTTON
The up arrow begins to glow.

The Right Elevator doors open. Your stuff remains trapped in the Left Elevator.

> ENTER RIGHT ELEVATOR
Right Elevator
It’s absolutely identical to the Left Elevator. Same stainless walls, same panel of buttons.

> PRESS THREE
The Three button glows steadily.

> OUT
You step out of the silver elevator.

Storage Building Foyer
Everything here gleams in sterile silver and white, colors chosen to assure you that this place is clean, secure, and well-kept. The east wall features a locked door as well as two different elevators — call them Left Elevator and Right Elevator, a distinction apparently far more important than you realized. A call button adorns the wall between the two elevators. Mounted on the wall to the right of Right Elevator is a security keypad. Automatic doors provide an exit to the west.

The Right Elevator doors close, and you can hear it begin its empty journey to the third floor.

> ENTER CODE ON KEYPAD
With practiced skill, you type the magic number on the keypad.

> PRESS CALL BUTTON
The up arrow begins to glow.

The Left Elevator doors open, revealing your handtruck and boxes!

> ENTER LEFT ELEVATOR
You happily rejoin your abandoned possessions.

Left Elevator
More sterile silver walls greet you from the inside of the elevator. As elevators go, it’s a pretty roomy one — no surprise, really, given some of the things people probably have to haul into it. There’s a panel of buttons on the wall next to the door leading west.

> PRESS THREE
The button glows steadily, and the elevator hums.

> Z
The silver doors close, and the familiar lurch sends you gliding upward, your errand back on track at last. Whew!

*** You have won ***

Your score is 100 out of 100, giving you the rank of Elevator Evader.