Elemental Slide of Air

One of the four elemental slides of air, earth, water, and fire. These virtually indestructible objects interact with the world in uniquely peculiar ways. Despite their names and appearances, the elemental slides function more like eldritch mechanisms than playground equipment, with each warranting different preventative measures and/or containment techniques.
== Appearance and Habitat ==
The elemental slide of air is hard, cold, and metallic. It possesses a long horizontal ladder with a light slope, whereas its smooth end is uncharacteristically short and vertical. This makes it something of a reverse slide, from a structural perspective. It is only found in indoor spaces, favoring large and unobstructed rooms with little foot traffic. Once in such a place, the slide does not move unless the ground loses stability or the room becomes an outdoor space, at which point it will instantly relocate to a new favorable destination. Though it cannot be damaged, each iteration may have differing markings or slightly shifted proportions reflecting the ways it's been struck, burned, or otherwise "abused." Ex: an impenetrable slide whacked with a cutting weapon will manifest the next slide with very small slices in its surface.
The elemental slide of air is currently housed in a pigeonhole laboratory containment cell.
== Powers ==
Often regarded as the most dangerous slide, the slide of air acts with malevolent intent and requires no trickery. Each day, it selects a sapient entity [citation needed]. This selection usually favors someone close to the slide, but there does not seem to be a limit to its range. Upon selection, the entity harbors a rapidly growing compulsion to find the slide and use it. climbing up the long ladder and gaining a sudden burst of momentum that should not be possible under the circumstances. The short vertical fall is accompanied by a rapid acceleration that culminates in a splatter of viscera, killing the victim instantly. The acceleration is more pronounced with smaller beings, sometimes achieving speeds that break the sound barrier and partially cook animal cells. This is an effect absent from anyone not compelled to use the slide, but it still isn't fun on account of its horrendus design.
Anyone compelled to use the slide cannot be saved. The compulsion steadily mounts, reaching a peak that achieves priority over all other goals. This is accompanied by a degeneration of their cognition and reasoning skills, leaving nothing of the person they used to be. This is an irreversible process, and many consider the chosen to be effectively dead by the thirty second mark. All that is left is their physical vessel, and all that vessel wishes is for what awaits them past the rungs.
If the victim does not make it to the slide before the end of the day (or is terminated through other means), the slide selects a new victim. It then continues to select a new victim every hour until satisfied, at which point it resets to a daily schedule.
== Avoidance Protocol ==
A series of animals are raised in proximity to the slide, including rats, dogs, cats, parrot, and crows. The slide has a high chance of compelling one of these animals, sparing the human selection pool. If any human is found to be chosen despite these conditions, they are ferried to the slide's containment as quickly as possible and provided to satiate the entity.
In addition to its semi-uncontrollable selection process, the slide appears to harbor grudges. It has a higher chance of selecting someone who acts provocative towards it, prompting the creation of a series of rulesets defining exactly what is isn't warranting of punitive action. These rulesets are based around what is "ethical" to the slide, and which activities infringe on its moral compass.
On any degree of inspection, these guiding principles should become quite simple:
* If you attempt to damage the slide, this is not ethical to the slide.
* If you talk to others about damaging the slide, but do not actually damage the slide, this may be ethical to the slide.
* If you are walking down the street on a cool autumn afternoon, watching trees sway in the middling breeze, this may be ethical to the slide.
* If you stare up into the unforgiving glow of the moon while it is backed by the hateful glow of stars and the light of your eyes is pushed out by the light of several million celestial bodies, this may be ethical to the slide.
* If you invite several friends of any name, gender, and ethnicity to your house in order to partake in a variety of fun activities and after a long day of making memories between your group you wind down with a communal sacrifice of someone who does not even fight back because their mind has been taken by the elemental slide of air, this is not ethical to the slide.
* If your loved ones cannot gaze into your face because something about it no longer reminds them of you and they cannot shake the feeling that you have been broken up and rearranged by a higher power and you cannot gaze into their eyes because you know they are correct and the aches and pains of your vessel late at night are the signs that the you who is you is screaming beneath the flesh cage, this may be ethical to the slide.
* If one thousand years from now the combined energy of decayed signals, godform residue, and human thoughts travelling at inhuman speeds through the soft dark matter of the universe creates boltzmann brains within the unthinking masses of dead earths, gasseous husks, and seething star systems that awake with a hot rage at their existence and a hatred of the universe around them because they know what has happened to it and they know it was never meant to be like this and that the only way to fix any of the catastrophe, to even slow it down would be to burn it all up and sweep it away, sweep the particles and the wavelengths and the energies and the wavelengths so far away they can never become what they are now again, this is not ethical to the slide.
== Trivia ==
* The speed of an entity becomes exponentially faster as its size decreases. This may be to account for the impact resistances of smaller organisms, but becomes excessive over time. It is estimated that, were a sapient entity ~3,000 microns or smaller (roughly 5x the size of an amoeba) it would break the speed of light and either burn away before impact or punch a hole into the ground.
* Proposals to send the elemental slide of air into the sky were shot down on account of its seemingly limitless range. Opponents cited that the slide may very well continue to select its victims from even lightyears away, and without the ability to sacrifice them, it will do so on an hourly basis forever.
* If by some reason a chosen victim slides down and is not killed, the slide does not consider it a sacrifice. This may be one of the reasons caliber 3s and above are immune to its effects. It may also be possible the slide isn't able to override their willpower, or that it considers such an act way too much effort.
* Reading this trivia may be ethical to the slide.
Category:Phenomena
Category:Hostile