Thursday, March 10, 2011

Encyclophobaticsburg's New Wind Tunnel

Just last week, Encyclophobaticsburg engineers unveiled an enormous new laboratory, called Encyclophobaticsburg Labs, which is an underground facility that has great new equipment and several devices. Since I am a Secret Agent, I have all-clear access to the whole place so that I can do tests and experiments, so I was recently touring the building. This is what happened on my tour:

First, I went and saw the Chemical Department, where there are several enormous rooms filled with all sorts of test tubes, glass pipes, beakers, and a bunch of very complex-looking things. I poked around for a few minutes and found nothing that I understood, so I went into the elevator and pushed a button at random. That is, I tried, but I found that there were no buttons.

The Encyclophobaticsburg Labs have very advanced Elevator systems that go in a large variety of directions (including up, down, left, right, backward, forward, diagonally, upside down, and 32.6 degrees from no point in particular). Anyway, I walked in and realized this fact from a small plaque that told about the Elevator. The plaque also said that, instead of boring buttons, these elevators were equipped with "Realistic Voice Personality Software" that talks and interacts with the user to get a better feel for the floor they want to go to. With some foreboding, I said tentatively: "Hello?"

Instantly the elevator started to whir, and I heard a voice say "Hello there valued user, which floor or room would you like to go to today?" At which I responded "Just take me to the most interesting place."

What followed was a very lengthy discussion in which the elevator asked me to define interesting, then define each word of my definition, and so on, under the pretense of discovering "my personal preferences to a more specific degree." I tried to get out of the stupid thing and go find some stairs, but it had to establish my preferences first in order to determine the method in which I wanted to get out (such as the speed at which to open the doors, the number of millimeters above the floor level I wanted, what music should be playing, and so forth) , so I spent the subsequent hour and a half arguing with the thing, until it finally decided to take me to room #4201 and promptly set off at a pace that was arguably half as fast as walking. I asked it why it was going so slow and it told me that this was all for my comfort, because it had established that I would get mad if it jolted me too much. My response to this was to kick its speaker panel until it lay broken and dying on the floor, and after a few minutes of playing around with the complex wiring behind it I managed to make the elevator move at normal speed to my destination.

I finally arrived and discovered that I was standing in a somewhat large room with several thick windows looking in on an enormous tube that seemed to be embedded in the side. There was also a door and some various lab tables with computers and cabinets, but the door just invited me to open it, and so I did. Using my all-access pass, I shoved my way inside and discovered an amazing spectacle.

There was a huge tube with enormous turbine systems that looked like it could generate enormous winds, as well as some stands that seemed to be used for supporting whatever was being tested. The label on the door had said "Wind Tunnel" so I assumed this was a wind tunnel.

That was my entire adventure. I had a great time.

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