Specify he worked on the top floor. Of the North Tower.
Personally my “I’ll never write it” scenarios around the Twin Towers always had me wondering what I could do to save a lot of lives without accidentally implicating myself.
I keep trying to figure out some way to enter the North Tower around 7:45 (albeit, I don’t really know what security was like then), go to maybe halfway up and start a fire in a garbage can, then pull the alarm. And skedaddle at top speed down the nearest staircase. I’d be hoping to be out by 8, but even 8:10 might be before the stairs were so clogged it was difficult to get down them.
I’m not sure just how many floors that would evacuate, but I’m hoping halfway would maximize the number, and that most of the people below would get out anyway.
It might even save people at the top by closing access before most of them got there.
By going only 1/2-way, any first responders who weren’t the same ones who went in anyway, could probably also get out.
I’ve had so many ideas that I lack the skill to properly execute. For example I’ve got an idea for a time travel story- a cheap Time Machine is invented, but it works in a unique way. You load it with whatever you want to transport, dial in location and time, but instead of transporting the cargo, everything is duplicated (like that movie the prestige). One version of the stuff appears at the target location, one stays where it is. This creates an alternate timeline, separate from the original and impossible to access in any way, and people being transported gain nothing but the satisfaction of knowing that a version of themselves are in the 1920s rubbing elbows with f Scott Fitzgerald, beating up Hitler in the 1930s, or becoming a wealthy industrialist in the 1890s, or meeting Jesus or budda or whatever.
As has been said many times on this message board, the ideas are the easy part. It’s the execution that’s hard.
A scientist discovers that there are an infinite number of universes and how to travel between them. He uses this ability to try to find the one instance where all his favorite canceled tv shows actually got to run to completion. Rife with pop culture and nostalgia.
Also, I have no ability to write creatively so if someone else wants to write it I would be happy to buy the first copy!
I have at least a dozen versions of a very similar plot. Not happy with the names but I am obsessed with the theme. The theme simply demonstrates the power of passion, and the funny ways passion can be woken up in people. Usually by someone else believing in you. One of my favorite version is " The meek shall inherit the earth". This involves a massive free source social media collaboration on climate change.
A side research question (mostly tongue-in-cheek) how does one research things like how to pull off a great heist or horrible methods of murder? I’m guessing some of that isn’t just at your library. Or maybe it is!
I once called my sister, a pharmacist, to ask how much laudanum would be lethal for a relatively healthy adult man. It was for a murder scene in a Western we were writing here on the Dope. My sister was silent for a moment, then, in a hushed voice, asked “Why do you need to know?”
I’m really curious what answer she expected before she found out you were writing something. Heck, that little conversation could work in a book itself.
How about this: he was a quiet, unassuming Alabama farm boy, a modest lad who just wanted a simple life, but after that mysterious lightning bolt gave him amazing strength and resilience, he knew he had to help his country however he could. He fought racketeers and bootleggers in the 1920s, fascist 5th columnists in the 30s, Nazi supermen during WWII, and communist infiltrators during the fifties.
Now, he’s given all that up and retired to the farm, letting the younger generation of heroes carry on the work- but then the country sheriff show up and begs for his help. The Sheriff says that hundreds of rioters are on the streets, led by sinister agitators, and he needs every man available to stand up to them. Reluctantly, he agrees to put on the uniform one last time and meet the mob at the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
I used to work in One Penn Plaza and 120 Broadway, and my experience is that people in large buildings ignore fire alarms. Unless there were firepersons actively forcing people to leave for a garbage can fire, I’m not sure it would work. I learned this because one day at 120 Broadway I was on the 17th floor with my coworker and the fire alarm went off. I immediately exited the building, going down all flights of stairs, only to get to the lobby and it was as if nothing was happening. After a while I went back up to the 17th floor and my coworker looked up at me and said, “Where did you go?”
Actually, that sounds more like a show on Max. Kaley Cuoco could play the delicate genius, and people would tune in to the first episode just to see that.
Then we’ll see how many cancelled shows they could get the rights to make a few CGI scenes of it’s final episode, with Cuoco recapping a lot of the rest excitedly (and acting out-- you know she’d be hysterical) to her roommate, Leanna.
Let’s call Cuoco’s character Michelle, known to everyone as “Shelly.” Shelly gets so caught up in watching all the shows she neglects her job as head theoretical physicist at CalTech, and misses a breakthrough moment to win a Nobel, which is instead won by a woman with a speech impediment.