A data security, anti-divination thought experiment ft. a button.

[Jowgen]

There is a room somewhere.

In that room is a button.

At some point, a creatures goes into that room and then proceeds to either press the button or not press the button.

This creature, known only as the Button Man, then leaves room.

From this point forward till the end of time, the continued existence of all reality is bound to a single condition:

If anyone other than the Button Man ever comes to know for certain whether or not the button was pressed, everything ends.


You are the leader of a conclave of 1000 20th level full casters of all classes, alignments and optimisation routes.

Your sworn duty is to protect the secret of the button man.

How do you proceed?


EDIT: Clarified parameters (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?617444-A-data-security-anti-divination-thought-experiment-ft-a-button&p=24671875#post24671768).

[AvatarVecna]

A couple thoughts before I get started on a serious answer.

1) Given that the goal is "make sure nobody finds out the secret" and not "make sure the universe doesn't end", the obvious answer is to kill absolutely everybody in the entire multiverse, including ourselves and the deities, to make absolutely sure that nobody can ever find out the secret. Buuuuut that feels like a very "well technically..." kinda solution that's pretending the Goal As Written is the goal you intended this challenge to have.

2) Deities don't count. As an event capable of having apocalyptic consequences and affecting all of reality, it's theoretically possible that the Button Man choosing to press the button or not press the button will, itself, trigger every single deity's portfolio sense in some fashion, and that at least one deity will use Remote Viewing to find out what's going on. Even if we assume that they aren't all triggered (just because finding out the button's secret would kill all elves doesn't mean that the button man entering the room would trigger the Elf God's portfolio sense), there will be some deity who's portfolio sense would trigger upon the button man entering the room and doing his business, and who would totally Remote Viewing to see what's going on. As soon as the secret of the button comes into existence, it will trigger the portfolio sense of (for example) any God Of Buttons, and any God Of Secrets...and most Gods Of Secrets are the type to want to immediately be in on the secret (with Vecna being the canon example of a busybody who can't keep his nose out of other people's business even if the fate of the multiverse is on the line).

[Doctor Despair]

First thing's first: the button-presser must immediately take the God-Blooded of Vecna template, or re-apply it if they (foolishly) did not have it already, rendering them immune to divinations.

Additionally, it would be helpful for the button-presser to somehow convince or force one of the Xorvintaal dragons to include their choice -- unknown as it is -- to press or not press the button as part of their move in the game, thus making it impossible to predict with divination. This precludes folks travelling back in time and using divination to determine whether the button will be pressed in the future.

That should more or less cover the button-presser's choice and their action, but doesn't actively protect the button. Any thoughts apart from really, really thick lead walls to block line of effect? Maybe putting the button in a pocket dimension which functions as a dead-magic zone? The toughest thing I can think of is that we have to somehow bypass portfolio sense, and Vecna would automatically know about this button and its status as a secret. Maybe we could travel waaaaay back into the past with the button, and then press it long before any other magic-using beings or deities existed? Then we have to delve into the lore of the setting to see if there's a deity or deity-like figure that would automatically know about this in a way that can't be bypassed by throwing up a bunch of really thick lead walls. Destroying the button after pressing or not pressing it would be another good step, of course.

[FauxKnee]

I don't know if I can give a quality answer, but I can throw out a couple quick ideas that others can improve on.

Have the Button Man be vecna-blooded, and have him destroyed afterwards through necrotic termination (or maybe unname?.) He can't tell anyone what he did if he doesn't exist and his soul is beyond reach. Does his supernatural ability rendering him immune to divinations function when he no longer exists, though?

Maybe the room is also a creature polymorphed into a room with a button. If nothing else, this might reduce the problem space somewhat, if you can argue that the room is no longer subject to location-based information gathering attempts. You could then solve that half of the problem in whichever way you solved the problem of the Button Man.

[AvatarVecna]

Touching a bit on my earlier bit about deities, it might be useful to game the Divine Rank stuff to your advantage. Using your nigh-godly powers as high-level casters, somehow affect worship on a large enough scale that a Lawful Neutral deity of Keeping Important Secrets comes into existence. This makes the secret of the button part of their domain, but something they have no interest in learning for themselves - and, in fact, have very good reason to avoid learning, and to prevent anybody else from learning as well. Make them powerful enough, and they will get Portfolio Sense whenever a secret with big consequences is learned within the next 1 week per divine rank (IIRC?). This gives the deity, and any high-level clerics worshipping them, and all 1000 of the lvl 20 casters working together, the opportunity to wipe from existence the person who threatens the secret, all without endangering the secret in the first place.

It also might be useful to make it so that neither the Button Room nor the Button Man exist except for a very short window of time. The Button Man must be killed in every way it is possible to be killed, such that even his spirit can never be questioned. The button room is disintegrated out of existence, such that not even dust remains, and it's past history is written out of time in such a way that the room itself isn't causally destroyed and the Button Man can still choose to press despite it not existing until the moment he makes the decision.

(We could also maybe play around with the "know for certain" part of it by doing a ton of obfuscation and then calling it a day, knowing that anybody powerful/knowledgeable/optimized enough that they could get through all our machinations would always have at least a touch of doubt that he actually pierced every defense we put up against him gaining this knowledge - for all he knows, this wasn't even the real button, and similar doubts. But this also feels like a "well technically..." kinda solution.)

[Jack_Simth]

1) Given that the goal is "make sure nobody finds out the secret" and not "make sure the universe doesn't end", the obvious answer is to kill absolutely everybody in the entire multiverse, including ourselves and the deities, to make absolutely sure that nobody can ever find out the secret. Buuuuut that feels like a very "well technically..." kinda solution that's pretending the Goal As Written is the goal you intended this challenge to have.Problem: What happens if sufficiently intelligent creatures come into existence later via some means? I suppose the most efficient way to prevent that is to completely destroy reality. Fortunately, you have an easy way to do that....

[AvatarVecna]

Problem: What happens if sufficiently intelligent creatures come into existence later via some means? I suppose the most efficient way to prevent that is to completely destroy reality. Fortunately, you have an easy way to do that....

Destroy reality yes. But the easy way of doing thatcwould break the Goal As Written so we have to invent some otyer way tocdestroy allcof reality that doesn't involve amy of us learning the button's secret. Prbably meeds to be done retroactively througjout all of time as well. The entirety of existence is just the room, the button, and the Button Man. So as long as the button man doesn't animate tye room or the button and share his secret we win.

[Quertus]

Step 1 - kill all the gods. Because step 1 should always be kill all the gods. And also, you prevent this whole portfolio sense problem.

Step 2 - fill the void. Get part of your dedicated 1000 "end of everything prevention squad" to ascend, with appropriate portfolios.

Step 3 - profit! Have fun!

You could… wipe out all other sentient life, to prevent anything else from knowing. Or change them into or replace them with beings incapable of knowing the answer. Or keep pushing the event into the future so that it never happens. Or… you get the idea.

[Pinkie Pyro]

Question: would going back in time and killing button man before he could or could not push the button defuse the event? as the choice was never made, it can therefore never be discovered.

[Doctor Despair]

Maybe the room is also a creature polymorphed into a room with a button.

I like the idea of making the button into a creature, maybe by awakening it or something. If we could imbue the ability to cast a second level arcane spell into the button-creature, they can take the Vecna-Blooded template, too, to make divination on the button impossible. If we did that to the room as well, then possibly any divination would fail -- as well as anyone's knowledge of the room and the button in it. Combining that with Teleport Through Time to before Vecna or any secrecy-portfolio deities existed should probably cover most of the heavy lifting for the actual button-pushing. For extra security from others who would travel back in time, do it in a pocket dimension surrounded by lead in a dead-magic zone. Render the room and the button-creature unconscious for extra measure so that they don't know whether the button was pushed either.

After the fact, the button-creature, button-room, and button-pusher could all re-apply Vecna-Blooded once to eliminate all knowledge of the button-pushing from literally everyone, so that only the button-creature knows whether it was pushed or not, providing it could somehow retain a memory from when it was unconscious. Then, if we permanently eliminate the button's ability to share those memories, the secret should be safe. I don't think there's a memory-removal ability that can't be undone with wish, so Necrotic Termination might be our best bet, as they eliminate most ways of bringing them back to life and eliminate most of the "soul" fluff ways to learn about it after the fact.

If we put a necrotic cyst in the button-creature and the room-creature before the push, and trained the wizard to use Necrotic Termination on any creature that has a cyst that they aren't already aware of until they fail their save, we should be able to Terminate both of them. The wizard should be able to ensure they fail their save either by SOS spells or just repeatedly rezzing and re-using the ability until the targets fail their save. The wizard doesn't know whether the button was pushed; the button and room don't know whether it was pushed, because they were unconscious, and then their souls were digested, eliminating any chance for them to try to remember. The gods who would have their portfolio sense triggered didn't exist yet, and their sense only reaches a week per divine rank, so they have no idea. Technically metacognition can break through Vecna-blooded, but the psion would have no reason to use it, as they'd have no knowledge of the button or button-pusher.

The button-pusher would probably, to be most safe, have to commit suicide via Necrotic Termination after the fact, too. That oughta do it, right?

[daremetoidareyo]

Make the button man hypothesis a central tenet of a religion. Hide in plain sight

[RSGA]

First, you have to go and make the entire universe and everything with access to it is completely unable to lie or fabricate evidence, as the quickest way to have somebody know for certain if Button Man pushed the button or not is to choose an answer and a credulous individual and then fabricate a convincing enough set of evidence for that answer and drill it into the individual. This is rules lawyering it a bit, but considering the situation it does need to be said.

Wait, no. Rules laywering it would be to choose all available answers and an equal number of individuals and separately convince them. This way we set up the hardest obstacle and remove the obvious patch to that bit of trickery.

[Segev]

It’s about knowing, not having a guess (no matter how accurate). Else, two people each guessing the opposite would trigger reality existence failure.

So, the button-presser needs to be very good at lying and tell many people what his choice was...and change his story semi-randomly.

Then send in a nonsentient being or few to press or unpress the button a random number of times. It’s mindless so it can’t know anything. Then have it destroy the room and the button.

The other steps people have suggested should work for divination; this is to obfuscate efforts to investigate the room directly.

[Zancloufer]

Make the button a creature. Clone said creature so you have two buttons that are indistinguishable from each other. Don't tell the button man which button is the real one. Don't observe the button man yourself as he presses one of the buttons but not the other. Remove both buttons from existence.

Now you have two identical buttons. One is the one that can "destroy the world" and one isn't. No one knows both which button was pressed and which one is the "real" one. Might need something to deal with a deity that automatically knows all secrets but even then I'm not sure it would apply.

Alternately this also might make it so the button was both pressed and not pressed at the same time. Therefore either answer is both correct and wrong at the same time.

[AvatarVecna]

Oh and while we're on the subject of information security, all of this might be pointless depending on what side of the "contingency is the most accurate and powerful not-actually-divination divination spell" argument you fall on. At some tables, "when I guess the correct state of the button" is a viable trigger for a contingency, at which point you guess the two possibilities, the spell triggers on one of your guesses, and now you know for sure, and then the universe ends.

[Doctor Despair]

Oh and while we're on the subject of information security, all of this might be pointless depending on what side of the "contingency is the most accurate and powerful not-actually-divination divination spell" argument you fall on. At some tables, "when I guess the correct state of the button" is a viable trigger for a contingency, at which point you guess the two possibilities, the spell triggers on one of your guesses, and now you know for sure, and then the universe ends.

It shouldn't matter with the Teleport Through Time Vecna-blooded method. No one who exists, deity or otherwise, has any knowledge of the button, the room, or the button-pusher, so no one should know to use metacognition or contingency magic to figure out the pushed/not pushed status of the button.

[Dr_Dinosaur]

The problem with turning the button into a creature is that it would know whether The Button Man pressed it or not, ending reality

[tyckspoon]

The problem with turning the button into a creature is that it would know whether The Button Man pressed it or not, ending reality

Not if the creature-button or buttons is unconscious at the time of being pressed. Or not pressed.

[Darg]

Jump through some hoops to unname the button. It now never existed. Mission accomplished.

[Doctor Despair]

Jump through some hoops to unname the button. It now never existed. Mission accomplished.

I think Necrotic Termination is actually more permanent, as Unname has a specific ritual you can perform to restore the creature

[Darg]

I think Necrotic Termination is actually more permanent, as Unname has a specific ritual you can perform to restore the creature

Sure, you can rename them. The only hoop you have to hop is somehow figuring out something that never existed actually did exist. The problem with necrotic termination is that the button has existed and is therefore still subject to the laws of the realm.

[Doctor Despair]

Sure, you can rename them. The only hoop you have to hop is somehow figuring out something that never existed actually did exist. The problem with necrotic termination is that the button has existed and is therefore still subject to the laws of the realm.

That's fair. If you have the awakened button apply the Vecna-blooded template, and then Unname it in the same round, that should also do it by the same logic that Vecna-blooded protects the button from metacognition.

One possible issue: if the button is unnamed, doesn't that make a definite answer that it wasn't pushed, as it never existed? I suppose there's no way to prove the negative definitively though...

[Segev]

Create many identical chambers, and have many button-pushers, all of whom are skilled liars and protected from divination magics that would tell who the real button-pusher was. Have them all tell the story of how they made their choices to push or not push, and have them change them frequently.

Create veils that show false images of the chambers with the buttons being pushed or not pushed.

Ultimately, you insure that nobody knows because even if they find out, they can’t be sure it’s The Button nor whether the pushed/not-pushed state they learned was the truth.

Since it triggers on knowledge, and it’s never known, merely guessed....

[Darg]

One possible issue: if the button is unnamed, doesn't that make a definite answer that it wasn't pushed, as it never existed? I suppose there's no way to prove the negative definitively though...

If it doesn't exist, then know one knows anything about the button. Meta knowledge is irrelevant. Some one could know that an Unname spell was cast, but the personal true name no longer exists. This means that no one even knows who or what was unnamed. You can't know something unless you are able to conceptualize it and fully believe it.

[Gusmo]

There seem to be many different assumptions about Button Man. Do we have any control or knowledge of Button Man? Can we hunt Button Man down and use necrotic termination to ensure that adversaries can't learn anything from Button Man? What control do we have over the room and button? Can we add many duplicate buttons for obfuscation? Can we make Button Man press many of these dummy buttons? Can we make several people who each think they are Button Man, and have them press different buttons are random, not excluding the important button as a possibility?

[Oracle71]

What about annihilating the button room completely, without anyone looking inside it, then drowning the button man and everyone else who knows about the existence of the button and the button man in the river Styx? No one will be able to accidentally discover the button's existence, nor would anyone else be inquiring about some hypothetical room with an equally hypothetical button and button man when they have no reason to even ask the question.

[Jowgen]

Some fascinating perspectives so far.

Portfolio Sense and Remote Viewing appear to be some of the biggest concern.

The primary schools of thought within the Conclave of the Button appears to be to a) obfuscation of the truth through the creation of decoy button (men), and b) means of erasing the button and button man as completely from existence as possible, be it by Unnaming, Necrotic Termination, or time travel.

To help refine the process, I shall define some additional factors that were up till now left up to interpretation.

Origin of knowledge: The Conclave of the Button knows about the whole Button man by means of prophecy that it itself has sent back from the future. In the original/previous timeline, the Conclave of the Button failed in its mission, but they manage to execute this fail-safe. The current timeline conclave does not know whether this is the first iteration, how the message got sent, and whether the method employed is guaranteed to succeed. You, as the leader of the conclave, were the one to receive this message from the future; although you can not be certain that you are the only one who got this sort of message.

Location and timing of the Button: Per the prophecy, the Button will come into existence upon an as of yet non-existent and therefore un-numbered/named layer of the Abyss 200 years after the prophecy is received. The only planar connection to this layer will be a portal that randomly apears somewhere in Sigil, starting at the moment of its creation, which leads to a point 100 miles from the 100x100x100 ft button room, which has a gargantuan sized doorway and a heavy curtain in place of a door.

Identity of the Button man: The first living creature with at least 3 Int to come within physical pressing distance of the button and subsequently leaves the room gets to be the button man.


EDIT: For giggles, the pass-phrase for members of the Conclave of the Button to recognise each other is "Do you know the Button Man?".

[OracleofWuffing]

Can... Can I just Wish that the secret of the Button Man is never discovered? Maybe not in exactly those words, and I know it falls under the "But doing so is dangerous" clause of Wish, but given all the workarounds mentioned for how easy it would be to find out already, it feels like it's worth a shot. I mean, worst case scenario, everything ends but the secret is safe, right?

[Edea]

1) God with secrets element in his portfolio senses this coming way before anyone else, and also intuits what will happen if he keeps probing to the point where he learns if the button was pressed or not (if he doesn't intuit this in time, that reality's already screwed and no mortal would've ever been able to do anything about it, anyway).

2) Said god wraps this information up in a conceptual 'portfolio bubble' so that no-one else can get to it (not even other deities, regardless of rank).

3) Said god will then ensure that they become the Button Man; the original Button Man is either absorbed or terminated.

4) Everything else associated with the Button gets locked tight in the god's 'portfolio bubble', possibly to be 'dropped off at the overdeity's office.' It's as if it never existed to anyone other than the god of secrets (and said overdeity, who would be able to unravel all of reality anyway, secret or no).

5) Now the god of secrets is the only holder of the secret that would erase all existence. You don't need to worry about the god of secrets getting hold of it, because he's the Button Man already.

[Gusmo]

Get the button pressed in such a way that nobody knows who Button Man is, including Button Man. First you would need to find and secure the button room, then have team one go in and put multiple decoy buttons in the room. Next you would release a second team in the room to go around and press buttons. Each member of the button-pushing team would draw a card telling them how many buttons in the room to press, such that each pusher has an equal chance of being told to press no buttons, all buttons, or any amount in between. This makes it possible that nobody or everyone would press The Button.

In order to be gain the knowledge to unravel the multiverse, someone would need to be observe this process. If they fail to do so, the secret is lost. Therefore all participants ideally would be Vecna-blooded, and you would also have a team of seers proactively looking for observers using metafaculty and other such issues. Even metafaculty requires a caster level check, so employ powerful illusions and defenses with a jacked up caster level using circle magic, consumptive field, and the like. You would then need a strike team to deal with interlopers, likely across the planes as you spot people trying to observe remotely. When you have reached maximum confidence about observation being quashed, proceed with the decoy button placement, and then send in the button pushers. However, someone would always wish-transport into the room, so be prepared to necrotically terminate adversaries as they appear.

Edit: once every button has been passed by a pusher, I think you're safe. Observing part of the process is insufficient for adversaries, due to the certainty requirement.

Edit2: I figured it would go without saying, but since I didn't specify, you would necrotically terminate the button placing and pushing crews upon the completion of their tasks.

[unseenmage]

Hmm. IIRC black holes and similar can warp not only time but the very exchange of information between the universe and themselves.

If we completely surround the physical space that the event occurs in with enough black holes the information becomes (depending on your favorite theory of black holes) impossible to discern.

Teleport Through Time to arrange said wall of information obliteration far enough back in time to stymie would be time travelling universe murderers.

How? TO can do it. It shouldnt. But it can. My favorite way is infinite money/time/resources glitching and building REAAAAALY big ring gates.
Or jacking your CL high enough that you can Animate ANYTHING. Minor Servitor animates by volume for instance.

How do the black holes not eat the event in question? Probably force effects. That or divine intervention. Or incorporealness/etherealness or similar somehow applied to an area.

Hmm. Other planes is an issue. Easily solved. Throw more black holes at the problem. Any plane that would grant access to the event has black hole making dropped at the appropriate coordinates as well.

[Doctor Despair]

Hmm. IIRC black holes and similar can warp not only time but the very exchange of information between the universe and themselves.

If we completely surround the physical space that the event occurs in with enough black holes the information becomes (depending on your favorite theory of black holes) impossible to discern.

Teleport Through Time to arrange said wall of information obliteration far enough back in time to stymie would be time travelling universe murderers.

How? TO can do it. It shouldnt. But it can. My favorite way is infinite money/time/resources glitching and building REAAAAALY big ring gates.
Or jacking your CL high enough that you can Animate ANYTHING. Minor Servitor animates by volume for instance.

How do the black holes not eat the event in question? Probably force effects. That or divine intervention. Or incorporealness/etherealness or similar somehow applied to an area.

Hmm. Other planes is an issue. Easily solved. Throw more black holes at the problem. Any plane that would grant access to the event has black hole making dropped at the appropriate coordinates as well.

That runs the risk of creating unintentional black holes with the sheer mass of accumulated catgirl corpses though...

[Gusmo]

Expanding on my previous idea, is there a way to make a group of people act within the same time stop? Without time stop, you could feasibly get the groups to perform their tasks within a single ground, which is already a tight window for observers to hit. But if they could perform it within the bounds of a time stop, that's an even narrower window for observers.

[unseenmage]

Expanding on my previous idea, is there a way to make a group of people act within the same time stop? Without time stop, you could feasibly get the groups to perform their tasks within a single ground, which is already a tight window for observers to hit. But if they could perform it within the bounds of a time stop, that's an even narrower window for observers.
Pathfinder Mythic Time Stop, and as a bonus it lasts for hours.

Theres also the Time Dimensional (https://aonprd.com/MonsterDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Time%20Dimensional). It can follow you into time stop.

[Xervous]

Expanding on my previous idea, is there a way to make a group of people act within the same time stop? Without time stop, you could feasibly get the groups to perform their tasks within a single ground, which is already a tight window for observers to hit. But if they could perform it within the bounds of a time stop, that's an even narrower window for observers.

Ruling dependent but the epic feat spell stowaway may be of use here.

Side note, what happens if we resolve the button pushing inside a dream or similar?

[Gusmo]

Ooh, the Wu Jen spell body outside body presents an interesting possibility. The decoy button team and button pusher team could all consist of BoB clones, with two different people providing the clones for each task. Arguably you wouldn't even need to necrotically terminate these clones, but it'd probably still be a good idea. Making it so that the knowledge needs to be recovered from several necrotically terminated BoB clones is probably as close to impossible as we need. But if you want to make it even more ridiculous, the BoB clones could be given scrolls of BoB, making clones of the clones. Then you make clones of those clones. And then clones of those clones! I don't know whether each degree of separation makes the secret safer, but you have 200 years to prepare. :D

[noob]

Time travel so that the button was never created.
If the button was here at the start of the universe know that you can time travel before the creation of the universe by making a negative enough dc epic spell and decide the reverse spent components are another universe then afterwards prevent the creation of the new universe (Which is the one you started in).
If the button is atemporal and always existed even infinitely before the creation of the universe then it makes everything confusing.
A simpler solution is making everybody be the button man: each creature have retroactively always been a portion of button man(time travel before the apparition of life and make sure all life is portions of button man)

[Animosity]

If anyone other than the Button Man ever comes to know for certain whether or not the button was pressed, everything ends.



How does anyone ever know anything for certain?

If someone is delusional or mentally ill, they can believe things for certain that are almost certainly not true. Similarly, people can often disbelieve things that have mountains of evidence. Mental illness can cause some to come to believe things that are almost certainly true, too.

Basically, how does one prevent someone from firmly believing something irrespective of evidence?

Well, you can't. In an infinite universe and timeline, someone will inevitably come to firmly believe the correct thing about Button Man. Does this qualify as a trigger for the end? Or is the actual trigger something like, "having witnessed it"? Is that enough, though? What if they witnessed it but thought it was a dream and didn't believe it for certain?

If we do not have a concrete definition for certainty that is objective, then this problem has no solution. The end is inevitable. It might not come to pass for an arbitrarily long period of time, but it will come to pass and achieving the goal is impossible.

Or did I completely misunderstand the premise?

[noob]

How does anyone ever know anything for certain?

If someone is delusional or mentally ill, they can believe things for certain that are almost certainly not true. Similarly, people can often disbelieve things that have mountains of evidence. Mental illness can cause some to come to believe things that are almost certainly true, too.

Basically, how does one prevent someone from firmly believing something irrespective of evidence?

Well, you can't. In an infinite universe and timeline, someone will inevitably come to firmly believe the correct thing about Button Man. Does this qualify as a trigger for the end? Or is the actual trigger something like, "having witnessed it"? Is that enough, though? What if they witnessed it but thought it was a dream and didn't believe it for certain?

If we do not have a concrete definition for certainty that is objective, then this problem has no solution. The end is inevitable. It might not come to pass for an arbitrarily long period of time, but it will come to pass and achieving the goal is impossible.

Or did I completely misunderstand the premise?

There is a simple solution: make everyone part of button man thus making people learning about the button a non issue.

[Demidos]

If you have some influence over button man before he goes in, you can use Modify Memory to inform him of which button is the correct one of the many fakes, have him press many different buttons, and then dismiss the Modify Memory afterwards. He now has lost all knowledge that you implanted in an irretrievable way, since you used Modify Memory to GIVE him knowledge, instead of to take it away.

You could also make the room small enough that you could do the portable hole/bag of holding combination to send the room itself elsewhere, which explicitly states that items sucked through are "irretrievably lost".