A Series of Mysterious Elevator EventsWitnessed and documented by mona hu

An insight story

I live in a 15 story apartment building in downtown San Fran.

We have 2 elevators, they are quiet and fast. Can’t live without them especially if you are like me, living on the 14th floor.

When you call for it, it’s either this one will open up,

Or that one.

The average wait time: 25 seconds.

When you are in the elevator, it’s nice, quiet, and convenient; nothing to complain about.

No one to bother you, for a whole 20 seconds.Average user number: 1

Peaceful days like this come and go…till one day

Something goes wrong.

When I get to the 14th floor…the elavator door makes a spooky crack sound and stops opening.

OMG am I gonna die? Should I push that big red emergency button?

My life flashes by in front of my eyes, during that catastrophic 3 seconds.

So later the door opens up by itself, but that’s not the end of this modern disaster.

(For the next 2 weeks)

Ever since that, weird things never stops happening in my building.

Mystery 1, We are only down 1 out of 2 of our elevators, but the wait time dramatically become 15 times longer (might as well call it forever.)

Mystery 2, a lot of unknown peeps pop out from no where. The new average peeps number: 7

Mystery 3, super creepy, all those neighbors I never knew I had! 7+ new faces every day huddling with me in a tiny elevator.

(yah, now the elevator is tiny, too!)

Afterthought 1I’ve been living here for over a year and apparently the “quiet”

impression was just an illusion.It was casted and guarded by the double elevator gods. One of

them goes down, the illusion gets dispelled.

Afterthought 2Today people are separated from each other by a lot of fences.

Tangible ones such as two elevators or walls, intangible ones such as virtual world on the web.

We live in our own bubbles, and the bubbles are getting tougher and tougher to go through.

Our various names gain us access to different bubbles. We are creating

more bubbles everyday by finding us more identities.

Afterthought 3A new definition of “Neighborhood”

If my world is arranged by my actual relationship with people, my next door neighbor should be Los Angeles, and then Virginia, and then Taipei. Because those are people who I constantly connect with.

As for the actual next-door neighbors of mine…I have no idea who they are. (and it doesn’t matter anymore)

If I am sick or caught on fire, most likely I will call for help on the phone or online, not to knock on the stranger’s door 10 ft away.

Technology Defined GenerationWe are living in a matrix…

Internet allows us to allocate our time and efforts strictly on people and things we think are most worth our time and effort.

This concentration of attention creates blind spots in our real life, many things are right in front of us…yet we still fail to see.

How do we define “reality” anymore? Is it the way we feel, or the things we see?