Transport Doors
These imaginative tales of the Transport Doors were generated by Bard, a large language model developed by Google. Google AI. Enjoy the journey!
Prompt
One night, in the Oval office, two magical doors were discovered. Upon entering one, a man would find himself exiting the other. Write a story that explores the implications of this discovery.
Story
The discovery was as mundane as it was extraordinary. A late-night snack run for a forgotten bag of pretzels, a stumble over a loose floorboard, and suddenly President Harrison was staring at an impossible sight. Two identical wooden doors, gleaming with an unnatural polish, had appeared in the wall of the Oval Office, where before there had been only solid mahogany. He blinked, the image wavering, and then they were gone.
He told no one. Not his staff, not his advisors, not even his wife. The doors returned the next night, their presence growing more insistent. He found himself drawn to them, an irrational curiosity tugging at his soul. One evening, with a sense of foreboding, he reached out and pushed the left door open.
The world beyond was not what he expected. It was a familiar landscape, yet somehow distorted. Sunlight streamed through the trees, but it felt alien, colder than he remembered. The air hummed with a quiet energy, prickling his skin. He walked forward, drawn by an unseen force, and then, without warning, the world shifted. He was standing back in the Oval Office, the doors vanishing as quickly as they’d appeared.
He tried again, this time the right door. This world was even stranger. The sky was a swirling vortex of color, the ground beneath his feet a shifting kaleidoscope. He heard whispers, not in any language he knew, carrying echoes of laughter and pain. Then, just as quickly, he was back in the Oval Office, the doors gone once more.
Fear, a cold and constricting force, began to grip him. He understood now. These doors were not a portal to another place, but to another time, to alternate realities. The knowledge was a burden, an unwelcome gift. He was responsible for something he didn’t understand, something he couldn’t control.
He found himself drawn back to the doors, drawn to the mystery they held. But he also understood the danger. What if he stepped through, and never returned? What if he stumbled into a reality where he was not the leader of the free world, but a nobody?
The President spent his nights staring at the blank wall, the ghost of the doors haunting him. He knew he couldn’t keep them secret forever, but he wasn’t ready to face the implications. What would his advisors think? What would the world think? He was the leader, the one who was supposed to have the answers, and he had none.
The weight of the secret pressed down on him, threatening to crush him. He was a man trapped in a cage of his own making, haunted by doors that offered both wonder and terror. He knew, deep down, that he would eventually have to choose, but for now, he could only wait, a prisoner of his own curiosity.
Prompt
Interesting. Write a follow-up story, where the magic of the door-pairs has been tamed. Engineers have reverse-engineered the technology inside the doors, and you can now buy a pair of doors at COSTCO for $500. They magically and instantly transport you from place to place, wherever each of the doors is installed.
Story
The world was a different place now. Costco had become a hub of activity, not just for bulk-buying toilet paper and giant tubs of mayonnaise, but for purchasing a set of “Interdimensional Transport Doors.” The marketing campaign had been brilliant – “Skip the traffic! Beat the lines! Get to where you need to be, instantly!”
The doors, once a terrifying secret held by the President, now stood in countless homes and offices. The magic of the Oval Office had been tamed, its power democratized. It was a chaotic revolution. For the first time in history, distance was no longer a barrier. Families lived in sprawling, yet interconnected homes, with bedrooms and kitchens scattered across continents. Office buildings sprawled across city limits, with employees clocking in from their homes in the suburbs, a single door separating their cozy study from the bustling cityscape.
The implications were profound. Commutes were a distant memory, traffic jams became a relic of the past. The lines between local and global blurred, bringing people closer together and tearing down barriers.
However, as with any innovation, there were unexpected side effects. The world felt smaller, more crowded. The allure of exotic locales faded, replaced by the instant gratification of being anywhere, anytime. The sense of wonder that came with travel, the anticipation, the journey itself - all these were lost in the blink of a door.
And then there were the accidents. A misplaced door, installed in the wrong place, led to a string of bizarre disappearances. One man found himself stuck in a tropical jungle after his door malfunctioned, his only companion a hungry jaguar. A teenager accidentally transported himself into a crowded Mumbai market during rush hour, ending up in a hilarious tangle of saris and spices.
The world was now a tapestry of connected rooms, woven together by the magic of the doors. But the price of convenience, it seemed, was the loss of something more profound – the beauty of the journey itself. And as the world shrunk, the question remained: was it progress or simply a shortcut to nowhere?
Prompt
In the third story of the Trilogy of the Transport Doors, something causes all the doors to fail at the same time, with tragic consequences. There is a global loss of faith in the Transport Doors, and their memory is soon just that, enclosed into history by the turning pages of time. Write this story.
Story
The world had grown accustomed to the convenience of the Transport Doors. They were as commonplace as refrigerators, as ubiquitous as smartphones. But then, one Tuesday morning, the magic simply stopped.
It started with a glitch. A door in a suburban kitchen wouldn’t open, its usually shimmering surface now a dull, lifeless wood. Then, another, and another. Soon, the reports were coming in from all over the globe. The doors, once portals to anywhere, were now just useless pieces of furniture.
The world descended into chaos. Families stranded on opposite sides of the globe. Business meetings cancelled, projects stalled. People were trapped in places they didn’t want to be, their routines shattered.
The initial panic gave way to a desperate scramble for solutions. Scientists, engineers, even shamans and mystics, all threw themselves into the problem, seeking to unravel the mystery of the failing doors. The cause remained a mystery, the magic fading without explanation.
It was a world-altering event, a collective amnesia about a technology that had defined an era. The air travel industry, once relegated to long-haul flights, boomed again. Ships, trains, and automobiles – forgotten modes of transport - reclaimed their relevance.
The Transport Doors, the marvels of modern technology, were swiftly relegated to the annals of history. They became a cautionary tale, a reminder of the precariousness of progress, the fragility of innovation.
The memory of the doors faded. Children would learn about them in history books, their parents telling them stories of a world that had been both magical and flawed. The convenience of the instant transport, the promise of a world without distance, was replaced by a renewed appreciation for the journey itself.
The tragedy of the Transport Doors, however, wasn’t just about their failure, but about the loss of faith. The world had entrusted its mobility, its future, to a technology it didn’t fully understand. And when that trust was broken, the consequences were profound.
The world had learned a hard lesson. The magic of the Transport Doors had vanished, leaving behind a world that was both familiar and strangely new, a world that had remembered the importance of the journey, even if it meant taking the long way around.