Just wondering if anyone has ever done a SCP based on an elevator that causes time dilation effects. Background: Everyone jokes that our building has the slowest elevator in the world, so I was thinking, "What if it really *was* the slowest elevator in the world, but it only affected passengers?" People outside the elevator would perceive the normal passage of time that it would take for the elevator to travel from floor to floor, but for those poor unfortunates trapped inside… The trip would take days… Weeks… MONTHS… to go between floors with no escape. Thoughts?
It's interesting, but all you've got right now is an object with an effect. There's a lot of story opportunities though.
Working through ideas for a hook in my head. Journal entries, cell phones found with audio/video recordings, etc. I want to see what kind of feedback I get before committing to anything however.
Journal entries, cell phones found with audio/video recordings, etc.
This could work. Though, it might be hard to pull off in a new compelling way. There are already a lot of stories with people trapped in a confined space for days on end.
What about a crowded elevator? And someone's claustrophobic? How do so many people deal with so little space for so much time, seemingly for no end? If someone happened to bring baked goods into the elevator, what trifles over the food would occur in an uncontrolled environment? Will they complain about using the battery power on the phone to take video rather than trying to call for help? Does anything unusual happen in the elevator, or is it just silence? Is the light in the elevator off?
In such a small setting, details are important. Ponder and nitpick what kind of scenario would feel the most hopeless and destructive.
Exactly what I'm pondering… How best to approach it. Most people get on the elevator here with nothing but what they have in pockets or purses. Thinking lights on, but no escape hatches or call box. Or, call box, but get nothing but a droning sound when you pick it up (operators voice stretched out over time). There obviously would be no cell signal (signal drops to zero when you get in the elevator here anyway) and no WiFi.
I was thinking initial discovery would be elevator doors opening with a jumble of skeletons inside, some of them showing gnaw marks… ;-)
Cell phones and watches and stuff could show time dilation- person inside experiences hours where person outside experiences nary a minute, and their respective timepieces would reflect this.
Exactly what I was thinking would lead the Foundation to thinking that there is a time-dilation effect occurring inside the elevator instead of something else. Test logs would be included to show the effect on highly accurate time pieces.
The biggest issue I have with writing this is how to approach the physics. Time dilation will cause radiation effects since time and space are related. Change the rate of time and you are changing the speed at which an object interacts with its environment. There would be radiation effects that should be noticeable at the boundary between the elevator and the surroundings. I just don't know if I can do it well enough to justify breaking the Laws of Physics.
It's an SCP. It's supposed to break the laws of physics.