". . . Okay so this is going to sound bonkers but I think our hypothesis space should be really really big right now. What if, some people, when they open the door they get this place, and when other people open it they get the room we were all expecting to get? Can you try texting someone who was going to be at this talk and isn't here and see if they're currently watching the talk like nothing is weird?" Deliberately trying to make someone's phone go off during a talk feels like a huge social norm violation on par with asking permission to knock a hole in a wall, but this situation justifies a lot of things.

James volunteers. "I'll text Steve, he got ahead of us so he should be here."

It transpires that Steve is indeed in the room they were all expecting to get and was wondering where the other two had gotten lost to.

"Should I try opening the door?", James suggests.

"Yeah! If you're not back in five minutes I'll open it from the inside for you; I've gotten this one every time. Oh, and we should swap phone numbers first just in case."

"Good idea."

They do. He steps up to the door. Looks at for a minute, a little off-balance. Grabs the handle and pulls. See stars.

"Looks like it works fine for me."

"We should get one of the people in the seminar room to come out. We should get one of the people in the seminar room to come out while I'm holding the door open."

James nods enthusiastically and starts composing a text.

Shirley, however, is old, and has seen many grad students attempt many stupid things. "I think we should wait to test something that seems likely to fail. It may fail dangerously."

James stops typing and deflates a little.

(A few blocks away, in a law firm where two people happen to know magic exists:

"Tee, in here, I have questions to ask you."
"Hmm? Sure, one sec."

He shut the door behind him. "What's up?"
"There's something magic a few blocks that way. Not moving, at all. At a guess, it's in the convention level of the hotel on that block."
He gestures and whistles, then raises his eyebrows.
"That could get messy. How long?"
"About ten minutes so far. No motion at all unless it was while I got up to call you in."
"I'll wrap things up and go look into it. You coming along?"
"This case won't wait, though the curiosity is going to kill me."
"The responsibilities of seniority..."
"Just go.")

Brenda is very easy to talk out of doing things that might rip a hole in the universe or glitch someone into a wall. Instead she sits in one of the chairs and writes down everything they've observed and, in a separate section, everything they've inferred or speculated, and shares the document around to anyone who wants it.

James suggests trying to open the door to the normal room from this side, which doesn't seem likely to rip a hole in the universe if it fails. Well, technically the weird bigger-on-the-inside room is arguably already a hole in the universe? But not a destructive one, and it's stable. Shirley doesn't think this sounds like a particularly dangerous idea.

"What, like go outside and shut the door and open it again but this time specifically hoping to get the seminar room? Oh, and I'm Brenda, by the way, pleased to meet you all independently of whether these are good circumstances or not."

"Yeah, something like that. It might not work, but it seems safer to try. Also the the dangerous experiment will run itself as soon as the talk ends, and on reflection that is in fact scary and we should investigate ways to not do that."

Shirley volunteers, "I haven't tried to open the door, maybe if I try for the normal room?"

"I think a couple of us should try it while wanting both ways, to see if it's person-based or timing-based or responds to intent or what. Also there should always be someone in here so we don't, um, lose contact with it."

James is slightly pensive. "That... might instead mean that we lose contact with whoever is inside. I mean, probably not, but."

Shirley interjects "I think Brenda tried that experiment already, before we showed up. While whoever's inside entered the room normally."

"Oh, right. Okay, yeah, that's not a new risk, and losing the opportunity would be bad. The experimental protocol seems good enough to me?"

"Okay. I guess I can go first, since I suggested it? Unless either of you would rather."

"Sure. I'll go inside, you open the door?"

"Okay."

She does the thing, twice, first concentrating on wanting the room with the galaxy and then on wanting the room with the conference talk.

This works perfectly both times.

Aaaaaaa it's reading her mind! It's not that she has any dark secrets, but that's much more--sophisticated, complicated, agentic--than she had been modeling this phenomenon as being. The computational power involved in reading the neural activity in her mind and interpreting it as preferences about the state of the door is . . . she's getting ahead of herself. That would happen one time in four even if it's completely random. She mentally goes through the first twenty digits of pi, aiming for the galaxy room on even digits and the seminar room on odd digits. She only opens it a few centimeters each time, just far enough to see which room she got, but she's still worried about annoying the people who are learning about tumor growth factors. Hopefully they will understand once it's all been explained.

It is definitely reading her mind and giving her the room she is aiming for.

That's so convenient but aaaaaaaaa. Also she was definitely trying to get the seminar room the very first time, when she found the galaxy room, so what the heck. Not that she was necessarily averse to finding this instead; in fact, given that it exists, she's quite glad she knows about it. She tries one more time, doing her best not to have any expectations about what's behind the door and not to give a damn what result she gets.

The result is: galaxy room.

This time she actually opens it all the way and walks in. "Okay so it's definitely reading my mind about which room I want, which is a separate kind of totally unexpected from the space-warping thing, and I get this room if I'm not aiming for either one. Does someone else want to try?"

James is still in the weird room, so Shirley offers first. "I'll give it a shot. Going to try not to expect anything for the first try."

Surprisingly, it opens to the talk.

"Huh."

From the inside, this just looks like the door not opening. But she only leaves it briefly.

For the second try, she tries to get the galaxy room. This works.

"When I tried not to aim, I got the lecture hall. But then I tried for this room and got it."

"So maybe it has a sort of default per person and overrides it if we're trying for the other one. We should find out what happens if two people each have a hand on the handle, unless that sounds dangerous?"

"I guess that's probably more dangerous than a single person not aiming. But probably not much more, I say go for it."

James just shrugs. "I volunteer to stay in here."