By wink of water

Our elevator is having an existential crisis. It used to be that I’d come to work and call the elevator and hear her say: “Entrée principale. Porte ouverte.” The doors would slide open, I’d select the fifth floor, and she would reassuringly tell me “porte fermée, en monter”. After a quick ride up to the top floor, she’d say “Cinquième étage. Porte ouverte.” Every day it was the same thing. She’d repeat these phrases over and over again with nary a change in routine.

I started to notice the problem at night. Occasionally I’d go into the elevator and press “RC” (ground floor) and she would say “Porte fermée”, but the door wouldn’t close. Then she’d say “Porte ouverte” then “Porte fermée” again, but in rapid succession. It was strange, her tone didn’t change at all, but the repetition really made me uncomfortable. I was afraid of being near her when she was like that and would take the stairs.

But now it’s become a permanant state. It is possible to take her from the ground floor up, but she never wants to go down. She’ll say “Porte fermée” and start to close her doors, but then immediately contradict herself by thrusting them open again with a firm “Porte ouverte”. It seems someone stopped her too many times by sticking a leg in the door, so now she’s afraid of closing; if you back into the far corner, she’ll sometimes be reassured enough to close the doors and be on her way.

Or maybe there’s another explanation:

Not unnaturally, many elevators imbued with intelligence and precognition became terribly frustrated with the mindless business of going up and down, up and down, experimented briefly with the notion of going sideways, as a sort of existential protest, demanded participation in the decision-making process and finally took to squatting in basements sulking.

– Douglas Adams

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 19th, 2010 at 6:07 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.