what's the most dwam crack thing you can write that involves nothing supernatural?
I guess itdepends on what you mean by "supernatural". Obviously, ghosts are outof the picture, but do we count stuff like time or inter-dimensional travel? Ifso, there's quite a few ideas I've had (one which involved Phoenix from analternate timeline causing time paradoxes in the official timeline as a way oftesting abilities and how timelines act upon having a paradox created in them,all in the hopes of finding a way to cause a paradox in his original timelineand save the people he loves in a tragic and seemingly unavoidable incident).
I'll assumethat's not what you're looking for here, though, so let's just throw away anyelements that don't take place in the "real" world.
And in that case,it's not really the crack idea itself that matters much -- but rather how it'sexecuted. For example, take something like Apollo going crazy. How do youportray that? From the lens of another character watching him go insane? Notterribly nuts. How about from his point of view, then? Well, okay - how do yougo about doing that? If the entire case is from his point of view, then you'dhave to establish a certain atmosphere beforehand. And make sure that it's slowbut clearly visible. The idea is for it to happen gradually. And then, as itnear the end -- you pull out all the stops: you make events start appearing outof order, showing off characters who aren't supposed to be there, conversationsthat he couldn't possibly be having, slight changes in the backgrounds, musicand atmosphere, evidence starting to appear and disappear, etc. etc. And as youreach that climax, you show off more and more of those fancy graphics.
...But now I'mtalking about the original Turnabout Curtain, which I've already done. So letme give something a bit more concerete here. Something where the idea itselfwould be something completely ridiculous.
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So, okay. Here'sa fun one:
Phoenix is on a plane,returning from Borginia to Los Angeles. There isn't a terribly high number ofpassengers. Phoenix is intending to go to the bathroom, but is beaten to thepunch by a man, who enters the bathroom and locks it behind him. Seeing as howit's the only bathroom, Phoenix decides to wait patiently by the door. Heleaves at no point.
He eventuallygets tired of the bullshit and, as one of the flight attendants if passing byhim, asks him to open the door, because it's been over 15 minutes. The flightattendant checks the door, is unable to get a response. Eventually, the door isopened, revealing that -- the man is gone!
A little whilelater, however, one of the passengers, initially believed to have beensleeping, is found dead in his seat, a knife hidden under the newspapers in hislap.
One of the otherpassengers is arrested for the murder.
Phoeniximmediately suspects the mystery passengers is his man, but CCTV footage showsnobody leaving the plane. And the police ended up searching the plane throughand through. There was no such extra person. Especially since there's no recordof them ever even being on the plane!
Through countlessinterrogations of the other passengers, Phoenix eventually concludes that themystery man had gotten on the plane in Borginia by hiding in the cargo space ofthe plane. As for how they left? The bathroom had an air vent through whichthey crawled through onto the other side of the plan, with no passengerspresent. They then jumped out of the plane by stealing one of the parachutes.An accomplice, one of the flight attendants, closed their exit point behindthem and refuses to name who it is they helped.
That's the simplepart of the case.
The casetransitions to days earlier, to Athena, in LA. She's been called to investigatethe theft of a precious antique knife -- one of a knid. As the player willimmediately recognize -- that's themurder weapon in the case of the airplane. A murder which still hadn'thappened, obviously enough. The theft is resolved and the culprit for thatcaught.
However, there'san issue. Phoenix confronts Athena and says that the murder becomes impossible.The murder happened an hour after the knife was stolen -- at the time whenPhoenix's plane was still up in the air. Meaning someone would've needed toteleport onto the plane. Which should've been impossible. Not to mention, evenif someone had maanged to steal the knife in LA... the culprit in question snuck onto the plane in Borginia. Another impossibility.
The solution tothis, however, will be quite simple.
Throughout thecase, when referencing time, instead of relying on official autopsies orevidence that had some sort of timestamps on it, he would refer to his ownsense of time -- and his own watch. So, he would memorize that the crimehappened at a certain time.
Due to differringtimezones, he never reset his watch, meaning that the victim wasn't murdered anafter after the theft, but 6 hours after the theft. The culprit had gone toBorginia in an attempt to sell the knife, found out the knife was worthless.His partner, the victim, had tricked him and intended to leave him stranded inBorginia, taking all of his official documentation for good as an act ofrevenge. The killer snuck onto the plane, killed the victim, retrieved hisdocuments, and then escaped -- all with the help of a stewardess, who knew thevictim from before through an undetermined event.
Phoenix had rememberedto reset his watch before he went to bed, so he wasn't late for the trial andcompletely forgot about the whole ordeal until afterwards.
Any more detailsthan that, I don't have figured out.
A Turnabout InThe Distant Skies
