Elevator
Elevator
[Elevator panel, with a Certificate of Inspection and five floor buttons, numbered 1–4. The fifth button is unlabeled.] [Cueball thinks.] [Cueball writes something on a small piece of paper.] Write Write [Cueball tapes it onto the panel.] [Elevator panel, with the same Certificate and buttons, and with the piece of paper labeling the fifth button "Zeppelin!"] [Cueball presses the new "Zeppelin!" button.] [Elevator moves.] Elevator: Ding [Cueball is looking out the door of a Zeppelin. The Zeppelin is flying over a green landscape with many lakes.]

Cueball is in an elevator, and notices that, beneath the certificate of Elevator 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; or (2) the button has some other function, a common one is to stop the elevator wherever it may be; 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 believe in 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 and tapes it next to the unassigned button, thereby assigning it to move the elevator not to Floor 5, but to a Zeppelin . And it works – the elevator opens aboard a Zeppelin floating in the air, high above a land with many lakes, perhaps Nunavut or other Northern Canadian tundra.
The title 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.
[Elevator panel, with a Certificate of Inspection and five floor buttons, numbered 1–4. The fifth button is unlabeled.] [Cueball thinks.] [Cueball writes something on a small piece of paper.] Write Write [Cueball tapes it onto the panel.] [Elevator panel, with the same Certificate and buttons, and with the piece of paper labeling the fifth button "Zeppelin!"] [Cueball presses the new "Zeppelin!" button.] [Elevator moves.] Elevator: Ding [Cueball is looking out the door of a Zeppelin. The Zeppelin is flying over a green landscape with many lakes.]
