A storefront is set up, with a sign claiming "Travel Through Time!!! $500 to experience the future!". Inside the store is a strange device with a door. The customer is told that the journey will only last 10 minutes. After a fee is paid, the customer steps into the device. A loud noise is heard, the device shakes, then there is calm. When the door opens, the customer is in the same shop, only it's furnished differently and there is a different salesperson - this time dressed in a silver jumpsuit.
The salesperson welcomes the customer to the future, and leads them outside. Outside everyone is dressed in silver jumpsuits, and speak with a strange accent. The street is paved in a rubber foam, and vehicles apparently don't exist. The street is covered in some sort of translucent dome. After 10 minutes have passed, the salesperson escorts you back to the time machine for your return jouney.
Of course, this second store and the entire street is contained in a warehouse behind the first store. When the door is closed, the time machine is moved from one place to the other.-- Worldgineer, Jan 27 2005 The Moebius http://www.improvev...w.php?mission_id=30A similar idea, sort of... [pooduck, Aug 25 2005] Make no payments until 2051!-- phundug, Jan 27 2005 [bliss] That would fit in fine. Anything to distract people. Maybe we could change the jumpsuits to tight-fitting silver shorts.-- Worldgineer, Jan 27 2005 Someone helps me out. She’s wearing tight silver shorts and matching tube top. She’s a midget, yet somehow familiar. Good lord, it’s Charlene! Of course I wonder what she’s up to, what she’s doing in the future, but there’s so little time. “Quick,” I say, “what was the biggest winner in the stock market in 2005?" She pats her beehive like it might be on fire and says she’s not allowed to tell me that, besides which, I now only have nine minutes, thirty seconds. “Damn it, Charlene, you’re no help!” I begin to run. I want to see everything. My god, it’s really the future! Charlene chases after me, yelling that I must go back. Two goons tackle me. I go down on the rubberized road. I scream, but to no avail. They bounce as they drag me, and I see the logo on the back of their spring-shoes: HALFBAKED, it says. They pick me up and shove me headfirst into the device. “Stop it,” I say, but weakly, because I have what I came for—I know where to put my money. I’ll be rich! The door slams behind me, the light goes out. Inside, I’m tumbled until I’m dizzy. Pushing and banging against the door, it finally opens and I fall out of a dryer into the boy’s locker room of JFK High, circa 1997. Boys are standing around, mouths open. I’m nude and covered with socks. I realize I’ve got a lot of explaining to do.-- pluterday, Jan 27 2005 Yes, we set [plute] up with the adventure version. It doesn't cost extra, but creates buzz and drums up business.-- Worldgineer, Jan 28 2005 I should probably stop posting my time machine page on every idea with both words in the title.
This is the sort of thing you might see on an actors resume.-- Detly, Jan 28 2005 If the customer was left inside the machine for 10 minutes, then he could just be let out into the same store and sent home. No trickery; the customer is now looking at the world which is 10 minutes later in time and is therefore the future. "Ah ha", says the salesperson, "We didn't tell you how far into the future. Didn't you read the small-print?"-- Ling, Jan 28 2005 But scams like that only work on the rare adventerous sucker. I'm focusing on the wide spectrum of suckers that would be told by their friends how cool the future is.-- Worldgineer, Jan 28 2005 Why silver jumpsuits, in the 50s they said we'd be wearing silver jumpsuits.
Enough with the silver jumpsuits.
You get a croissant anyway.-- 0_owaffleo_0, Jan 28 2005 Because everyone assumes someday we'll all be wearing silver jumpsuits. Makes sense, really. High visibility, keeps you cool on sunny days, sexy. I may just go out and buy/make a silver jumpsuit and see if I can start a trend.-- Worldgineer, Jan 28 2005 nice one +-- benfrost, Jan 29 2005 [worldgineer] If you go out and buy a silver jumpsuit and actually start wearing it, i'll follow. <in jest>-- chocolateraindrops, Aug 24 2005 Careful with those words, [chocolate]. It won't take much to convince me. Wait, aren't chocolate drops already covered in silver?-- Worldgineer, Aug 25 2005 If someone asks to go to the past instead, you say "well, that's just ridiculous.-- sleeka, Aug 25 2005 [+] This would be an invitation for havoc. What happens if a customer kills someone in "the future"? Do they get more than 10 minutes because they go to trial in "the future"? And, if convicted, you have to have a functioning jail in "the future". You can't really try them in the present/past, as they haven't killed anyone yet.-- sophocles, Aug 25 2005 And, you can build different versions.
1. Maltheus Version: In the future, you are shoved into a small box with 10 other people with very little food, bad water, poor air quality. You're glad to get out and swear off procreating.
2. Utopia Neurotica: Everyone in the future is tall, beautiful, peaceful, making you feel like an ugly brute by comparison, and never satisfied with the present anymore.
3. Police State: As a newcomer with unacceptable ID, you go to jail and get "re-educated".
4. Police State Adventure version: The jail is easy to break out of and a chase ensues. All available weapons are Nerf-- sophocles, Aug 25 2005 5. Post-Apocalyptic: You're in an empty burned-down building surrounded by cockroaches.-- Worldgineer, Aug 25 2005 6. Cyclical-Gone-Bad: everyone has clothes, hair styles, and speech from the 1980s.-- sleeka, Aug 25 2005 [+] Like it. $500 is a little steep though. Do it en mass, ie with 20 or 30 people at a time (much like the crowds they pull through attractions like Phantom Manor at Disneyworld) and it might prove alot cheaper and quicker.
Alternatively, it could be set up purely for a joke .. even then it could have all kinds of spin offs .. maybe you enter a lift (elevator, for those across the pond ;) and it moves you up and down, past 'windows' with the future beyond them ..-- kuupuuluu, Aug 26 2005 i had a prostate exam just like this once-- benfrost, Aug 27 2005 Looks like Scott Adams might have been reading the annos.
{See link}-- Katisha, Sep 21 2005 $500 is not nearly steep enough to be credible. You want the attention of the Paris Hiltons of the world, baby. Charge $15,000.-- RayfordSteele, Oct 15 2007 random, halfbakery