288: Elevator
| Elevator |
 Title text: Quick, try it with 'LOVE'. |
Image Text
Quick, try it with 'LOVE'.
Description
Cueball is in an elevator, and notices that, beneath the certificate of inspection mandatory in all U.S. elevators at least, there are buttons for Floor 1, 2, 3, and 4, and then a mysterious unlabeled button. (Possible logical conclusions he might have made include (1) there is a fifth floor (reachable by pushing the bottom button) which for some reason is not labeled; (2) the button has some other function (a common one is to stop the elevator wherever it may be, whether exactly aligned with a floor or not) but again, is mistakenly not labeled; or (3) the panel with the buttons is from a template used for various elevators with up to five floors, and as this particular elevator only goes to four floors the bottom button is unlabeled and nothing will happen if he pushes it.
He has, however, chosen to accept a different explanation: the fifth button is not currently assigned, but giving it a label will assign it to whatever floor (or other function) he can give it. The possibilities are truly endless. And so, the intrepid Cueball writes “Zeppelin” on a slip of paper, tapes it next to the unassigned button, thereby assigning it to move the elevator not to Floor 3 or Floor 5 but to Zeppelin. And it works – the elevator opens aboard a zeppelin (or dirigible or airship or blimp) floating in the air, high above a land with many lakes (perhaps Minnesota, the “Land of 10,000 Lakes.”)
The image text is most likely a reference to the Aerosmith song “Love in an Elevator,” which really is about sex in an elevator. However, it would also be great if one could reach the elevation of love by getting there in a magic elevator.
