« Back
Generated:
Post last updated:
this was a triumph
I'm making a note here: huge success
Permalink Mark Unread

There is a muffled song coming from somewhere. It's not a song she's familiar with. In fact, the whole place is nothing like anything she's familiar with. She seems to be in some metal-and-glass pod, for starters, which is itself inside a rather peculiar...

...room.

There are no doors.

Permalink Mark Unread

- what the fuck.

She opens her eyes, and when that does nothing to resolve her confusion, she winces and opens her groundsense.

There are no living things in range.

What the fuck.

Permalink Mark Unread

The glass part of her pod opens of its own accord. The timer above the only part of the walls of the chamber she's in that's not made of glass—which is synchronized with another timer outside of it—starts counting down from one minute.

Permalink Mark Unread

She gets out of the pod smart quick before it decides to close itself again, and looks around the ...room... in case there's anything useful present.

Permalink Mark Unread

The room contains: a small corner table with a radio (which is where the music is coming from), a coffee mug, and a clipboard with some pictures and diagrams; a toilet; and a pair of white boots with bizarre heels. In fact, one of the diagrams attached to the clipboard is about these boots.

Permalink Mark Unread

She studies the diagram. It makes no sense. It continues to make no sense even after she has read it twice.

The boots look kind of nifty, though. She puts them on. They're probably better than nothing, and she wasn't wearing any shoes when she took the nap from which she inexplicably woke up in Insane Cube Land. And hey, if as the diagram vaguely promises they have a way of protecting against falls, even better.

The radio is even more puzzling. She examines it with eyes and hands and groundsense. It's definitely a made thing, but the materials and craftsmanship are like nothing she's ever seen. And it's - not alive, exactly, but it has something like aliveness. She's tempted to take it apart.

Permalink Mark Unread

When the countdown reaches forty seconds, a disembodied voice comes from—the ceiling, apparently.

"Hello, and, again, welcome to the Aperture Science computer-aided enrichment center."

Permalink Mark Unread

She jumps slightly.

"The what center? Again?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"We hope your brief detention in the relaxation vault has been a pleasant one," the voice says, heedless of her questions. "Your specimen has been processed and we are now ready to begin the test proper."

Permalink Mark Unread

Um?????

"What are you talking about -" but she's beginning to suspect the voice is like the radio, just a thing that makes sounds -

Permalink Mark Unread

"Before we start, however, keep in mind that although fun and learning are the primary goals of the enrichment center activities, serious injuries may occur. For your own safety, and the safety of others, please refrain from t—" Then the voice is cut by sudden static and random noises, a sentence in Spanish that rises in pitch until it's incomprehensible, then the audio is cut altogether for a second. "—stand back. The portal will open in three" (the voice says exactly as the countdown reaches three) "two, one."

And then the non-glass wall has an oval hole surrounded by orange light. If she walks over to and looks through the hole, Sable will be able to see...

...herself, and the chamber she's in. From the right. And if she looks right, the wall below the other now-zeroed timer has a similar hole, framed in blue light, that shows herself, from the front.

Permalink Mark Unread

Um.

The - that - what -

She picks up the clipboard and pokes it through the hole. And it's just... there. It's not in two places at once because as far as the clipboard is concerned they are the same place. It makes her head hurt to think about. How would you do that? This is magic beyond anything the ancients ever did, she's pretty sure.

It is also a way out of this small unsettling glass box.

She tosses the clipboard through the space-hole, picks up the mug and the radio, hesitates only a moment, and steps out.

Permalink Mark Unread

It... doesn't really feel like anything. It's exactly like stepping through a hole. To her right there is a wall with a large sign on it.

And to her left there's enough space for her to walk around the glass room she was in to the other side.

Permalink Mark Unread

She puzzles over the sign for a moment. Beware of... lumpy squares... falling out of giant ceiling pipes... and hitting you on the head...? Okay. And she does not need to beware of... being hit by weird-looking balls that fall into weird-looking pits, being attacked by small angry water snakes, jumping into a floor hole and being flung out a wall hole, being attacked by a one-eyed spider-rabbit-thing that spits arrows, being seen through a strangely shaped window while an ominous triangle hits her in the face with little dots, or, um, cake. Maybe the cake comes after you have defeated all the hazards. What the fuck is this place.

She walks around the glass room. The glass room is unsettling. Everything about this place is unsettling. The boots take some getting used to; they're very... springy. It's a little awkward to juggle the mug, clipboard, and radio, but she doesn't want to leave anything behind in this unsettlingly spare environment lest she turn out to need it later.

Permalink Mark Unread

There's a circular double door, there, and a strange apparatus attached to the wall above her that moves to track her movements. When she approaches the door, it opens on its own to reveal...

...a rectangular room with a huge red button, a giant ceiling pipe that apparently contains... a lumpy square... and another double door.

Permalink Mark Unread

Um.

She stops to thread her belt through the handle of the mug so she doesn't have to carry it, then proceeds into the next room. What is this nonsense.

Permalink Mark Unread

As soon as she does, a little hatch-like thing on the mouth of the ceiling cylinder opens, letting the lumpy square fall on the floor.

Permalink Mark Unread

Oookay.

There are more weird pictographs. She examines the weird pictographs.

Permalink Mark Unread

As she gets closer to the button on her way to the pictographs, her radio's music is replaced with static and some weird underlying... noise.

Permalink Mark Unread

There are just so many unsettling things here!!!

What do the pictographs look like?

Permalink Mark Unread

The two on the floor next to where the cube fell are the same as the two highlighted ones on the big white sign she saw on the previous room. The two above the door are an arrow and a little person in a rectangle. There is also a blue one with a black X to the left of the door, and a trail of blue circular lights leading from that sign to the huge red button. Also once she's far from the button again the static noise stops and the music resumes.

Permalink Mark Unread

Right then. The obvious inference is that she's supposed to put the lumpy cube on the huge red button to open the door. She has to put down the radio and clipboard briefly, but she wrestles the lumpy cube over to the big red button and does that.

Permalink Mark Unread

The blue lights turn yellow, the door opens, and the voice speaks up again: "Excellent. Please proceed into the Chamber-lock after completing each test. First, however, note the incandescent particle field across the exit." And indeed, on the other side of the door there is a corridor leading to a field with blue sparkles moving horizontally from side to side. Beyond the field there is a cylinder with double doors.

Permalink Mark Unread

Oh she's noting the incandescent particle field all right.

Permalink Mark Unread

"This Aperture Science Material Emancipation Grid will vaporize any unauthorized equipment that passes through it," the voice continues. "For instance, the Aperture Science Weighted Storage Cube."

Permalink Mark Unread

"- what."

 

She goes up to the blue sparkles. She pokes them with a corner of the clipboard.

Permalink Mark Unread

The entire clipboard becomes a black weightless thing that goes through her hand like it wasn't there and dissolves into a white sparkles.

Permalink Mark Unread

...

Yeah she's not putting any more objects through that thing, herself most certainly included.

She studies the blue sparkles, focusing her groundsense on the space they occupy and the places where they are emitted from the wall. They feel - weird and fizzy and sparky. And there's more of that not-aliveness from the radio in the sparkle-related wall fixtures.

...she gets out her knife and starts prying at the wall fixtures, careful not to even get close to touching the sparkles.

Permalink Mark Unread

The wall fixtures are extremely strongly attached to the walls!

"To ensure the safe performance of all authorized activities, do not attempt to destroy Vital Testing Apparatus," says the voice.

Permalink Mark Unread

 

So there is someone watching her. Either that or a sort of really pathetic trap, where the sound-making machines are set up to scold you if you start messing with things.

"I wouldn't step through that thing for all the gold in Tripoint," she says. But the knife clearly isn't doing the job. She puts it away and steps back, regarding the Emancipation Grid with a thoughtful frown.

Permalink Mark Unread

The voice does not react to that.

Permalink Mark Unread

Maybe it's just a sound machine, then. Or a person pretending they're just a sound machine.

She hesitates. Ground-ripping things really hurts, and if she wants to be sure the thing stops working she's going to have to get both wall fixtures right down to physical structure, all in one go, as quickly as possible. And she'd better not be standing in front of it when she does that in case it explodes.

But she is not stepping through a thing that can do that to a clipboard. She just isn't.

"...I don't really want to break your thingy," she says, in case the voice actually is meaningfully listening to her. "You could just make it stop doing that."

Because who in their right mind would install something like that and not have a way to make it stop doing the thing? Not that whoever built this place appears to have been within spitting distance of their right mind...

Permalink Mark Unread

"The Aperture Science Material Emancipation Grid does not affect living tissue, except in semi-rare cases in which it may emancipate ear canals, dental fillings, crowns, tooth enamel, and teeth."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...that's not very reassuring!" she exclaims. "I like my teeth!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"This possibility is only theoretical, as this has never happened before."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...are you sure."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yes. Even in cases where it emancipates living tissue, it is very unlikely to do it to all your teeth. At most one tooth will be lost this way."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I like all of my teeth! Every single one! And my ear canals! Can you not just make the thing stop?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Aperture Science regulations require that Vital Testing Apparatus be active at all times for the safety of the test subject and others and for the validity of test results."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Test results? Who's testing what?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"The Aperture Science computer-aided enrichment center's purpose is—" The voice is cut by static again then goes silent.

Permalink Mark Unread

Augh.

She crosses her arms and glares at the blue sparkles.

"What-all does it vaporize, exactly."

Permalink Mark Unread

"The complete list of compounds emancipated by the Aperture Science Material Emancipation Grid can be found starting on page three hundred twenty-seven of the Aperture Science enrichment center test subject manual provided to all test subjects prior to relaxation."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I never got one."

Permalink Mark Unread

"All test subjects are provided with a copy of the Aperture Science enrichment center test subject manual."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Then maybe I'm not a test subject and I should just leave! Where's the exit?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"The test chamber's exit is through the Aperture Science Material Emancipation Grid."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well that's too bad for the Aperture Science Material Emancipation Grid," she says. "Are you sure you can't just make it stop doing the thing."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Vital Testing Apparatus must not be disabled."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Oh, it's going to be disabled, the question is whether temporarily by you or permanently by me."

Permalink Mark Unread

Silence.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Right then."

She goes back to the corner with the giant ceiling pipe. She'd like to be all the way back at the, uh, 'relaxation chamber', but she'd have to break a door to get there, and anyway she's not totally sure she can work precisely enough that far away around that many corners. So this will have to do.

And she tucks herself into the corner and reaches out with her groundsense and finds the wall fixtures and gets a good grip and pulls.

Or, from an observer's perspective: she does absolutely nothing with a look of concentration on her face, and the wall fixtures simultaneously collapse into fine grey dust, and she curls up tighter and makes a pained noise.

Permalink Mark Unread

"For your own safety, do not destroy Vital Testing Apparatus."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Pff. It didn't even explode!"

She peeks around the corner.

Permalink Mark Unread

The corridor remains there. The Aperture Science Material Emancipation Grid doesn't.

Permalink Mark Unread

Sable and her unauthorized equipment proceed toward the exit.

Permalink Mark Unread

They are in a cylindrical room. Inside it, there is a metal cylinder with metal cylinder double doors that open to admit Sable and her unauthorized equipment.

Permalink Mark Unread

Well that's ominous as all get out, but sure, she will go into the cylinder with her mug and her radio and her knife and her clothes and every single one of her teeth thank you very much.

Permalink Mark Unread

The doors close. After a couple of seconds there is a "ding" sound and the cylinder starts moving up.

Permalink Mark Unread

"- what."

Permalink Mark Unread

The voice does not answer her query.

Eventually the cylinder stops, and she finds herself facing another corridor which turns right. The wall directly ahead of her has a big sign like the first one she saw but it's unlit.

Permalink Mark Unread

Oh this is so unpromising.

Well. Onward!

Permalink Mark Unread

It lights up, revealing a sign exactly like the first one she saw, except there's a 01 rather than a 00, and none of the little warning drawings at the bottom are highlighted. At the end of the corridor there is a six—or seven-foot drop into a square room. The walls ahead and to either side are glass, separating her from three other rooms: the one to the right contains a single cube; the one to the left contains a large red button; the one straight ahead contains a closed double door, a line of blue lights leading from it to the red button.

Permalink Mark Unread

 

"Do I have to put a cube on a button again."

Permalink Mark Unread

The voice remains silent.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Do I have to walk through glass to do it, or are you going to provide a convenient space hole."

Permalink Mark Unread

Silence.

Permalink Mark Unread

 

Fine.

She hops down into the room. The strange springy boots indeed do wonders to cushion her fall.

Permalink Mark Unread

There's the voice again: "Please place the Weighted Storage Cube on the 1500 megawatt Aperture Science Heavy Duty Super-colliding Super-button."

Simultaneous with that, one of the space holes appears on the stone wall behind her, and the connecting one appears in the room to the right, on the wall opposite to the cube.

Permalink Mark Unread

She puts down the radio. She goes to the cube. She wrestles it toward the space hole. Stupid heavy lumpy square.

Permalink Mark Unread

The space hole disappears just as she reaches it, trapping her in the side room. It appears in the other side room.

Permalink Mark Unread

"If I have to walk through glass I'm going to be annoyed."

Permalink Mark Unread

The space hole disappears from the other side room and reappears in the exit room.

Permalink Mark Unread

She waits.

Permalink Mark Unread

It reappears in her room after a couple of seconds.

Permalink Mark Unread

Shove shove shove out goes the cube! Out goes Sable right behind it!

Permalink Mark Unread

Now it's in the other side room—

Permalink Mark Unread

The cube goes buttonward as fast as Sable can manage.

Permalink Mark Unread

But the portal disappears from the wall before she can go through it again.

Permalink Mark Unread

Scowl. Wait wait wait.

Permalink Mark Unread

Portal—

Permalink Mark Unread

And back through!

Permalink Mark Unread

And now the other end of the portal is in the exit room.

Permalink Mark Unread

She scoops up the radio, and out she goes.

Is there another of those stupid blue sparkle things there.

Permalink Mark Unread

Yep! And the voice says, "Perfect. Please move to the chamber-lock."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Do you have a fond sentimental attachment to the continued existence of this Material Emancipation Grid," she inquires.

Permalink Mark Unread

"The continued existence of Vital Testing Apparatus is crucial for the safety of test subjects and others."

Permalink Mark Unread

"And yet," she says. "If I have to go through it, it is not going to be in a condition to emancipate any material at the time."

Permalink Mark Unread

No comment.

Permalink Mark Unread

She really doesn't want to ground-rip another one so soon after the first, though. Her ground is still unpleasantly sparky. So she sits in front of the Emancipation Grid and closes her eyes and inspects it. How does it work? What is the deal with all this not-aliveness? It's almost like - veins or nerves, in an alien metallic sort of way. Maybe she can do the equivalent of severing an animal's spine instead of ripping its whole ground away so it collapses into a pile of dust.

Permalink Mark Unread

Yep, all these veins and nerves seem to connect to each other and to a single vein/nerve place that leads away from the thing.

Permalink Mark Unread

Ooh. Tiny metal wires, with the not-aliveness flowing through them, going to all the places where stuff happens...

She retreats around a corner again, but this time reaches out much more precisely. Better do both sides at once again, but if all she has to do is cut a few wires on either side...

The power goes dead instantly on both the wall fixtures. She barely even winces. A couple tiny morsels of copper is nothing compared to last time. She can still see the previous set of wall fixtures splattered across her ground, slowly being absorbed.

Permalink Mark Unread

"For your safety and the safety of others, do not disable Vital Testing Apparatus."

Permalink Mark Unread

"You have totally failed to convince me of the safety of the Vital Testing Apparatus."

To the elevator! With her mug and her knife and her radio and all of her teeth!

Permalink Mark Unread

"You're doing very well!" the voice says when she reaches the next floor. The sign, no highlighted hazards again, is on the wall to the left. Directly ahead there is a window that lets her see the test chamber.

There is a weird machine in the middle, being rotated clockwise and pausing every ninety degrees to shoot a beam of blue light. When that beam hits a wall, a blue portal disappears from where it previously was and appears there. To her right there are descending stairs that turn left to an empty corridor.

Permalink Mark Unread

She surveys the latest nonsense.

"Um, what."

Permalink Mark Unread

The portal-shooting thingy rotates once more, pointing in the direction of the wall between it and the empty corridor Sable can descend to, and there's a tiny square aperture on that wall. The thingy shoots a portal through the hole and a portal appears on the wall Sable can access.

Permalink Mark Unread

- fine, through the portal she goes.

Permalink Mark Unread

Unsurprisingly enough, she steps out of the orange end of the portal, from which she can step down into the room where the thingy is. There's a door to her right, between her and the chamber's exit.

Permalink Mark Unread

Oh she's going for that thingy all right.

Permalink Mark Unread

The thingy seems designed to be held: it has a place she can stick her hand into and something to hold with her hand in there and a little trigger thingy for her index finger.

Permalink Mark Unread

And does it make portals when she points it at something and makes it go?

Permalink Mark Unread

Yup! Just the blue one, though.

"Very good. You are now in possession of the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device," the voice says when she picks it up. "With it, you can create your own portals. These inter-dimensional gates have proven to be completely safe. The device, however, has not. Do not touch the operational end of the device. Do not look directly at the operational end of the device. Do not submerge the device in liquid, even partially. Most importantly, under no circumstances should you—" And the voice is interrupted by static and random noises again. But the door that was separating the orange end of the portal and the exit is open now.

Permalink Mark Unread

She skips merrily through her shiny new portal, pauses to disable the Emancipator -

Permalink Mark Unread

Except there's a second Emancipator after the first one! And a third! There are in fact five Emancipators there.

Permalink Mark Unread

"- Do you actually enjoy watching me destroy these things," she wonders, ground-ripping pairs of power connections one after the other. By the time she finishes the sentence, all the Emancipators are dead. She strolls past them to the exit.

Permalink Mark Unread

The elevator admits her, but there is otherwise no response.

Permalink Mark Unread

She spends the elevator ride examining the Handheld Portal Device with her groundsense. It's so shiny!!!!

Permalink Mark Unread

It is very shiny! And its innards make less sense than anything she has ever examined in her life.

When she arrives, the voice says, "Please proceed to the chamber-lock. Mind the gap." The sign (again, no hazards highlighted) is directly ahead of her, and to her right there is a shallow pit between her and the rest of the chamber. There's an oval orange light on the wall across the pit from her, moving like it's liquid.

Permalink Mark Unread

- interesting.

She could probably do this even without a portal device, but - she puts a blue portal on the nearest wall; does it do the obvious thing and connect to the available orange?

Permalink Mark Unread

Yep. And when she steps through she can see the exit to her right, separated from her by a pit, too.

Permalink Mark Unread

Blue portal by the exit! Boop!

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well done. Remember, the Aperture Science 'Bring your daughter to work' day is the perfect time to have her tested."

And the corridor leading to the exit is much longer than the previous ones and has a grand total of fifty Emancipators.

Permalink Mark Unread

"I don't know why you keep doing this when it's clearly not going to work."

One at a time, she disables fifty Emancipators.

Permalink Mark Unread

The elevator takes her up to the next chamber. The sign shows the same hazard types as the zeroth chamber. When she gets there, the voice says, "Welcome to Test Chamber 04. You're doing quite well."

Directly in front of her there is a large red button connected to the closed door farther ahead. There is a glass barrier between the button and the exit but she can walk around it. There is also a moderately deep pit at which one of the ceiling cylinders with a cube is pointed, and an orange portal on the wall to the right of the button, leading back to the blue portal she placed on the previous chamber.

Permalink Mark Unread

"What's this nonsense, then," she says, going over to peer into the pit.

Permalink Mark Unread

As she gets closer to it, the cylinder's mouth opens to drop the cube—

—as well as another little radio like hers.

Permalink Mark Unread

Huh!

She considers the situation, and then puts a blue portal on the floor of the pit under the cube and radio. Because going into that pit sounds super annoying.

Permalink Mark Unread

They fall through the portal and emerge from the other end behind her. The little radio is playing the same song hers was when she woke up.

Permalink Mark Unread

And now she has a redundant songbox. What odd little things they are.

...she puts a blue portal on the ceiling directly over the button and shoves the cube through it, because moving these things around is such a pain.

Permalink Mark Unread

It falls on the button! ...and then bounces a tad and its corner is now resting on the ground and it's not properly pressing the button.

Permalink Mark Unread

She turns and glares at it.

Permalink Mark Unread

And the business end of her portal gun starts glowing slightly when she points it in the cube's direction.

Permalink Mark Unread

- uh?

Permalink Mark Unread

If she holds the gun steady while pointing it in the cube's direction a little round button above it starts blinking.

Permalink Mark Unread

... sure. She will push the button.

Permalink Mark Unread

And then the little metal fingers at the end of her portal gun become connected by electricity and the cube twitches—

Permalink Mark Unread

Ooooooooh.

Permalink Mark Unread

—and she can easily lift it with the portal gun, it's like it can just telekinetically move the cube like it's completely weightless.

Permalink Mark Unread

Nice.

And now the cube is on the button!

Permalink Mark Unread

And the door opens! "Once again, excellent work. As part of a required test protocol, we will not monitor the next test chamber. You will be entirely on your own. Good luck."

And in the corridor... from this distance she can see the emancipation field but not the actual device.

Permalink Mark Unread

She closes her eyes and 'looks' with groundsense, feeling for the shape of the terrain. Well, more like shape of the architecture, in this case. Where are those wall fixtures?

Permalink Mark Unread

They are... not there! Neither are walls. There are metal grids replacing a specific section of the walls, and the Emancipator fixtures are outside the chamber—they're not exactly the same as the ones Sable's seen before but are recognizable enough, set some ten feet back behind the grids.

And now that she's paying attention she might notice that there is rather a lot of empty space beyond the edges of the chamber. Like. A lot.

Permalink Mark Unread

 

- that's a really unsettling thing to suddenly notice about one's environment. Um. What. She winces slightly and expands to her full range, trying to figure out - what's out there, why it's like this -

Permalink Mark Unread

The walls that are not metal grids actually have more wallstuff separating the chamber proper from the empty space but eventually there is empty space in all directions. The chamber can apparently be disassembled—there are metal arms connected to all walls and test elements—and it's suspended/held up by these metal arms. There are lots of metal arms, in a lot of empty space, and farther away some other metal arms are moving and assembling or disassembling other rooms, moving wall parts around, moving other weird machines around.

The vertical track of rooms she's in is not the only one—there are in fact other similarly weird towers of rooms connected to each other by elevators. She is however still the only living thing within her range.

Permalink Mark Unread

Um. Well. Fuck.

 

She can cut the power on the Emancipator fixtures, anyway. She does that.

Permalink Mark Unread

"For the continued functioning of the test chambers, please do not destroy Vital Testing Apparatus."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I am going to leave this place with all of my teeth," she says, proceeding toward the exit.

Permalink Mark Unread

The voice does not respond, but if Sable hasn't stopped paying attention she'll notice a lot of movement in the chamber above, changing this and that and something else.

Permalink Mark Unread

Uh-huh.

And what's it look like when she gets there?

Permalink Mark Unread

Like such:

There are two buttons connected to the exit, two elevated platforms, and a pit. The pit and one of the platforms have cubes, and the wall behind the other platform has the orange end of the portal. Pretty straightforward, all in all.

Permalink Mark Unread

Welp. Time to put down her radios.

She traipses over to the pit and portals its cube onto the orange-portal platform, then makes a portal in the wall next to the pit and steps through and shoves the cube off the platform with portal-thingy telekinesis, then makes a portal in the opposite wall and steps through and shoves that cube off its platform, then - because she does not like jumping from heights if she doesn't have to - steps back through and makes a portal in the wall near one of the buttons and steps through that and arranges the cubes on the buttons and picks her radios back up.

Permalink Mark Unread

The door opens. "As part of a required test protocol, our previous statement suggesting that we would not monitor this chamber was an outright fabrication. Good job. As part of a required test protocol, we will stop enhancing the truth in three, two, o—" Cut off by static.

The voice has used the metal grid trick again, except this time the electronic parts are much farther away—some hundred feet to either side rather than just ten.

Permalink Mark Unread

She cuts the power to the Emancipator fixtures without breaking stride.

Permalink Mark Unread

The elevator accepts her. As it ascends, the voice pipes up again: "It is incredible! Thanks to the efforts of the Aperture Science Material Emancipation Grid Research Team, the Aperture Science Material Emancipation Grid no longer poses a risk to crowns, tooth enamel, tooth filings, and teeth. Please proceed through the Aperture Science Material Emancipation Grid."

The elevator stops and there's another Emancipation Grid waiting for her. The device is in fact subtly internally different than the previous ones.

Permalink Mark Unread

"But I've gotten so attached to my unauthorized equipment," says Sable. "And my ear canals. And you have not come off as particularly trustworthy in our interactions so far."

Permalink Mark Unread

"According to required test protocol, we have stopped enhancing the truth."

Permalink Mark Unread

"But can you offer any meaningful assurance of that?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Providing information is not part of the test."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Suit yourself."

She cuts power to the emancipator and proceeds.

Permalink Mark Unread

This chamber's sign is a little bit different:

Permalink Mark Unread

"Beware the orbs," she mutters under her breath.

And what's the setup?

Permalink Mark Unread

The exit's directly ahead of her, but higher up, with a raised platform in front of it.

There are also two strange contraptions: on the floor to the right, a sort of hole that emits light with three raised metal arms around it; on the ceiling to the left, a white dome with three metal arms coming from the dome's edges and meeting in the middle in front of it, the orange end of the portal (still connected to the last blue portal she used) directly below it. As soon as she steps into the chamber, the dome opens and spits out an orb made of lightning which slowly makes its way down towards the portal.

"While safety is one of many Enrichment Center goals, the Aperture Science  High-Energy Pellets seen to the left of the chamber can and have caused permanent disabilities, such as vaporization. Please be careful."

Permalink Mark Unread

- aha. So, don't let the orb get you in the face, instead make the orb go in the orb-grabber. And indeed the placement of the pictograms on the floor strongly suggests this interpretation.

Ceiling above the orb-grabber portalable?

Permalink Mark Unread

Yep!

Permalink Mark Unread

Boop.

- and then she makes the mistake of opening her ground for a closer look at the orb, and she flinches back like she's been stung, which is not far from the truth. It's like the groundsense equivalent of staring into the sun, and her groundsense is not a painless way to interact with the world even at the best of times.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Unbelievable! You," and the voice switches to a different, higher one, "SUBJECT NAME HERE," back to the original, "must be the pride of," and the new one finishes with "SUBJECT HOMETOWN HERE."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Sable. Tripoint," she supplies helpfully, proceeding toward the exit.

Permalink Mark Unread

Just a single, regular Emancipation Grid this time.

Permalink Mark Unread

Away with it.

Permalink Mark Unread

Perhaps the voice has given up. It is anyway silent.

Permalink Mark Unread

Onward!

Permalink Mark Unread

 

 

 

The corridor towards the next chamber is entirely filled with emancipators, long enough that it would take her five minutes to walk its length. Some of them are in the actual corridor, most are outside and using the metal grid trick. They're connected to each other and to their power sources in dizzyingly complex patterns with an enormous number of redundancies such that destroying any one source won't work. There are robot arms actively increasing the complexity and power throughput of the setup. Some of the Emancipators are as far as seven hundred feet away from the actual chamber.

"Please proceed through the Aperture Science Material Emancipation Grids to the next chamber."

Permalink Mark Unread

... She looks at the Grids.

"Do you really want to play this game," she says.

Permalink Mark Unread

No voice. But the robot arms continue to make everything more complex and higher voltage.

Permalink Mark Unread

She puts down her radios and stands still and closes her eyes.

Distantly, she notices that her fingertips are numb. That's probably a bad sign. Her ground glitters and sparks with tiny fragments of copper.

Now. What can she do with this.

Permalink Mark Unread

First of all: ow that is a lot of not-aliveness. Like, not quite as much as the high energy pellet thing but same ballpark.

The Emancipators do not have any single points of failure—the voice must've noticed where Sable was attacking and patched that—and they're absurdly connected to everything else. If she can reach all the wires at the same time she'll probably be able to disable the whole thing. The biggest problem if she can't do that, though, are the robot arms, which seem to be replacing and adding and modifying extremely quickly. They aren't super uber-connected, although they don't exactly have a single spine, either.

Permalink Mark Unread

You couldn't do to the robot arms what's being done to the Emancipators - they'd be trailing wires every which way, it would interfere with their work.

Okay. Time to get a little more creative.

 

Among the things she can sense right now is the chamber up ahead. With an orb-maker, an orb-grabber, and the orange end of a portal, right there in the floor, blank and shimmering, waiting for its blue friend to spring into being.

She makes the blue end directly underneath herself and her radios, scooping them with her free arm and rolling to the side as she and they fall through. Falling up is an interesting sensation.

Permalink Mark Unread

There is a moment of silence that might be described as 'stunned' before the voice says, slightly more robotically than usual, "Warning devices are required on all mobile equipment. However, alarms and flashing hazard lights have been found to agitate the High Energy Pellet, and have therefore been disabled for your safety."

The next chamber does indeed contain all of those things, as well as an Aperture Science Unstationary Scaffold, stopped in place away from the exit, with a stone surface above it.

Permalink Mark Unread

Orb maker there, orb grabber here, orange portal directly under orb grabber therefore blue portal goes on wall with smoking impact mark, boop.

Permalink Mark Unread

As soon as it reaches the orb grabber the little platform starts moving. "Good, now use the Aperture Science Unstationary Scaffold to reach the chamber-lock."

Permalink Mark Unread

She puts a blue portal on the ceiling above the moving platform and hops down through the orange end, ta-daa.

Permalink Mark Unread

The voice does not congratulate her. And doesn't do anything with Emancipators before the next chamber, either.

The next chamber which...

...doesn't actually have a floor. Instead it has a weirdly colored liquid that moves in unnatural ways. There is once again an Unstationary Scaffold and an orb thingy, and as soon as she steps into the chamber the voice says, "Please note that we have added a consequence for failure. Any contact with the chamber floor will result in an unsatisfactory mark on your official testing record. Followed by death. Good luck!"

Permalink Mark Unread

...ooh, and that's what the 'angry water snake' pictograms are about. And the dots-hitting-you-in-the-face one too, for some reason, she's not so sure about that one.

Okay. Blue portal on the impact mark, orb goes through, proceeds toward wall, bounces off wall, proceeds back toward orange portal. Blue portal on convenient dot of light cast by orb grabber, orb comes out of portal, goes neatly into orb grabber, so far so good. Now, getting out of here...? Ah yes. Blue portal on the wall next to her, step out onto orange-portal platform, blue portal on the wall next to moving platform, step back through, wait for moving platform to cross to exit area.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Very impressive. Please note that any appearance of danger is merely a device to enhance your testing experience."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Uh-huh."

Out she goes. What's the Emancipator situation.

Permalink Mark Unread

Just a single Emancipator, nothing complicated or weird.

Permalink Mark Unread

Away with it. Onward.

Permalink Mark Unread

The next chamber has a cube and an Emancipation Grid separating it from the part of the room where a button awaits.

"The Enrichment Center regrets to inform you that this next test is impossible. Make no attempt to solve it."

Permalink Mark Unread

...Sable snorts.

"I assume you have to say that for some sort of testing protocol reason," she says, "because really."

Which means there is a way through the puzzle without just killing the Emancipator and sauntering on through. Perhaps that big square hole in the wall above the Emancipator is relevant. Yeah - blue portal behind the cube, take cube through onto orange-portal platform, thank you telekinetic portal widget, put down cube, send blue portal through convenient wall hole, pick up cube, put cube through portal, follow cube through portal, put cube on button, walk out door. She didn't even have to put down her radios.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Fantastic. You remained resolute and resourceful in an atmosphere of extreme pessimism."

And a regular Emancipator there at the exit.

Permalink Mark Unread

Away with you, regular Emancipator! On to the next adventure!

Permalink Mark Unread

When she steps into the next chamber, the voice says, "Hello, again. To reiterate—" lots of garbled noise "—previous—" more noise "—momentum."

The chamber's sign isn't in the corridor; rather, it's in the chamber proper, which contains a raised platform made of unportalable surfaces with stairs leading up to a door and a wall with the orange end of a portal.

The highlighted hazards on the sign are the ones on the bottom left, which look like falling into and flying out of a portal.

Permalink Mark Unread

Well that seems fairly obvious.

She could probably climb up onto the annoyingly tall bottom step of the stairs, but doing it the obvious way sounds much more fun. Portal in the floor, step in, fly out the orange one, land on the stairs.

Permalink Mark Unread

The chamber is not actually over, this time; there's another room after the door. It contains a fairly deep pit—its floor is portalable—and as soon as she walks into that room the orange portal appears on a wall higher than her pointing forwards. The next door is across the pit from her.

Permalink Mark Unread

Blue portal on the floor, fall through, fly out. Fun!

Permalink Mark Unread

The final room once again has a hole and a portalable wall pointing forward, except this time the floor at the bottom of the hole is the part that contains the orange portal. There are, furthermore, two too-high-to-reach floors, and the exit of the chamber is on the highest.

Permalink Mark Unread

Goodness. All right.

Blue portal on the high wall, leap down into the orange portal. She's really starting to get used to jumping from heights.

Permalink Mark Unread

Her momentum is enough to reach the lower of the two higher grounds.

Permalink Mark Unread

...and now, being higher up, if she leaps into the orange portal again...?

Permalink Mark Unread

Success!

"Spectacular. You appear to understand how a portal affects forward momentum, or to be more precise, how it does not."

Permalink Mark Unread

Snort.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Momentum, a function of mass and velocity, is conserved between portals. In layman's terms: Speedy-thing goes in, speedy-thing comes out."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I don't know your fancy terms but I do know a thing or two about how stuff moves around," says Sable. She proceeds toward the exit.

Permalink Mark Unread

The next chamber seems to be an observatorium with no exits, only glass windows.

"The Enrichment Center promises to always provide safe testing environments. In dangerous testing environments, the Enrichment Center promises to always provide useful advice. For instance, the floor here will kill you. Try to avoid it."

Permalink Mark Unread

 

"..."

She steps up to the windows to peer down at the death floor. It feels like that goo again.

Permalink Mark Unread

There is indeed that goo again. There is also another portal gun, rotating like the first one she got did, except this one is shooting orange portals. The Unstationary Scaffold near it isn't moving, and there's a High Energy Pellet Receiver there on one wall below a door. Directly across from her, on a lower level, there's a room with a closed door, and she can see through its windows that there is a High Energy Pellet Generator in there. The door to that room seems to be connected somewhere she can't see, directly below the observatory she's in.

Permalink Mark Unread

...it's shooting orange portals.

It's shooting orange portals.

Sable starts cackling.

Permalink Mark Unread

It is! And apparently whatever's below the observatory room also contains a portalable surface because the orange portal disappears once the new portal gun shoots that way.

Permalink Mark Unread

Groundsense agrees, and also certifies that alcove goo-free. Portal in the wall next to her, step through onto nonlethal floor, okay now what...?

There's a little pedestal with a button on it; it's the origin of that trail of blue dots that wraps most of the way around the room and ends at Mystery Door. She goes up to it and pushes the button.

Permalink Mark Unread

The door does indeed open, but there's a ticking sound when it does.

Permalink Mark Unread

Yeah that's not ominous or anything. Well, there's a portalable surface visible through it; she lands one there.

Permalink Mark Unread

And the orange portal that was behind her is now on another wall so she'll need to wait until the new gun is pointing her way again.

After a couple more seconds, the door closes.

Permalink Mark Unread

She examines the unseen area with groundsense while she waits for the orange portal to come back around. (Orange portal!!!!!) (She is pretty sure this puzzle is going to naturally lead to her picking up the orange portal device, but if it does not, she will cheat.)

Permalink Mark Unread

If she steps through the orange portal there is a risk the energy pellet will hit her—the floor there is high enough that it's level with her. However, there are stairs down to a lower area she can hide in so she won't be hit. The room is otherwise empty.

Permalink Mark Unread

Then she can choose her timing so as not to be hit by the orb, and go through and down the stairs and... aha. If she waits until the orange portal has gone onto the wall opposite the orb grabber, and the orb is heading toward its scorch mark, she can put the blue portal on the scorch mark and the orb will pass through and go across the room, over the orange portalizer, and straight into the grabber. Poor timing may result in stray orbs, which are nobody's friend, she's sure.

The moment comes. Boop, portal.

Permalink Mark Unread

The Pellet goes through the portal... wait, wait... success!

And the Unstationary Scaffold starts moving.

Permalink Mark Unread

Such that if she puts a portal in the wall next to her and waits until the platform reaches the wall and the orange portal comes back around again, she can step out and onto the platform and the platform will start taking her directly toward the orange portalizer! She vibrates with excitement. One of the radios tucked under her arm slips a little and nearly falls into the death goo, but she manages to save it.

Permalink Mark Unread

The business end of her portal gun starts glowing a bit when she approaches the other one.

Permalink Mark Unread

Is it going to do something cool? It's going to do something cool, isn't it.

Permalink Mark Unread

Yep! When she points her gun at the new one they both glow, her gun vibrates, and her trigger changes under her finger to become two triggers.

"The device has been modified so that it can now manufacture two linked portals at once. As part of an optional test protocol, we are pleased to present an amusing fact. The device is now more valuable than the organs and combined incomes of everyone in," and the voice changes to that other weird one and says "SUBJECT HOMETOWN HERE."

The pedestal with the other portal gun sinks into the floor and a button pedestal is raised up from the goo in front of her.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee," says Sable.

What happens if she pushes the button.

Permalink Mark Unread

The door above the orb receiver opens! And a ticking sound starts.

Also the wall behind that door is portalable.

Permalink Mark Unread

She puts a blue portal on the wall behind door number two, and turns around and puts an orange portal (!!!) on the wall where the moving platform goes, and goes onto the moving platform to get a ride over to the wall.

Permalink Mark Unread

She is successful at this!

Permalink Mark Unread

Onward!!!

Permalink Mark Unread

 

 

 

 

 

 

The voice has outdone itself.

The rig with Emancipators is similar to that huge one from before, except there are no portalable surfaces at all anywhere, and there are even more emancipators.

Also where the door was there is now a plate with spikes slowly and inexorably advancing towards her.

"Please walk through the Material Emancipation Grids to the next chamber," the voice requests politely.

Permalink Mark Unread

 

—no, now there is a plate with spikes that is perfectly stationary because several crucial pieces of the mechanism propelling it have crumbled into grey dust.

"I am not going through those," she says. "If you would like me to continue, you can get them out of my way."

Permalink Mark Unread

"The Aperture Science Material Emancipation Grids are an important part of the test environment."

Permalink Mark Unread

"And yet!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"You will not be harmed by the Aperture Science Material Emancipation Grids. The risks of tooth and ear canal evaporation are negligible."

Permalink Mark Unread

"You have not been behaving in a trustworthy enough way for me to feel safe believing you about that! For example, you tried to push me through them with a wall made of spikes!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"It is standard testing protocol to incentivize test subjects to comply with standard testing protocol."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Then perhaps you should do that, instead of incentivizing me to cheat and break things," she suggests.

Permalink Mark Unread

"The enrichment center is not responsible for test subjects' unreasonable reactions to the environment."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It's an unreasonable environment!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"The enrichment center's environment has been built by Aperture Science's most brilliant minds with fun and learning as its goals."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Wow."

(And as she speaks, she's searching right out to her full range for any portalable surface she could get an angle on if there weren't walls in her way, and hopefully at least one that she could get to from here if she were very creative—)

Permalink Mark Unread

Well if it's her full range—

—the not-quite-empty space around the tower of test chambers is really disorganized. There are metal catwalks and beams and wood planks and panels lying around. Some of them are, yes, portalable—and in fact, if she's rather more fearless than the average person, she could attempt a jump towards that one catwalk down there to the right...

"The enrichment center apologizes for any misunderstandings caused by the test subject's unreasonableness. There is nothing to fear from the Aperture Science Material Emancipation Grids. Please proceed through them so that science can continue."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Final warning," she says. "If you want me to proceed to the next test, then stop this foolishness with the Emancipation Grids."

Permalink Mark Unread

"The Aperture Science Emancipation Grids are meant to ensure that there is no contamination from earlier test chambers, so that tests are performed under controlled conditions."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That sounds like a no," she says. "Well, suit yourself."

The mechanical arms holding up the wall on her right abruptly collapse, and she runs up a faltering wall segment to leap for the catwalk, dropping one of her radios in the process but hanging onto the other.

Permalink Mark Unread

"What are you doing? Stop it! I-I-I-I-I—... Weeee are pleased that you made it through the challenge where we pretended you had no choice but to do as we told you. We are very very happy for your success. We are throwing a party in honor of your tremendous success. Place the device on the ground, then lie on your stomach with your arms at your sides. A party associate will arrive shortly to collect you for your party. Make no further attempt to leave the testing area. Assume the 'Party Escort Submission Position' or you will miss the party."

She lands with a thud that dangerously shakes the catwalk, but it holds firm. Behind her it continues for a few feet then ends abruptly as if something had ripped the rest of it off. The catwalk continues forward, though, and there's a portalable panel lying on it a couple of feet in front of her.

And below her there is a bottomless pit.

Permalink Mark Unread

—how bottomless is that pit, and what are her options for portaling to from here—

Permalink Mark Unread

The pit is more bottomless than her groundsense can reach. There are tall walls with coiled metal arms to either side of her catwalk and from where she's standing she doesn't have line of sight on anywhere to portal to but if she turns around the corner up ahead where the catwalk curves between two more walls she'll be able to see a portalable wall in the distance with a very ordinary door on it and a catwalk that allows the door to be actually usable.

Permalink Mark Unread

She puts an orange portal on the panel nearby, goes around the curve, puts a blue portal on the wall by that door, goes back, and hops through.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Stop what you are doing, and assume the Party Escort Submission Position."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Don't wanna."

Door!

Permalink Mark Unread

The door leads to an observatory room overlooking a test chamber. Her groundsense already informed her that there was no one else there but it's rather creepy to see the abandoned room like that. The computer screens flash gibberish and there is a chair lying on its side on the floor, as well as a broken mug in a corner. There's also another door.

Permalink Mark Unread

...the gibberish machines are kind of fascinating, and she pauses to examine them before moving on to the next door.

Permalink Mark Unread

There are two black screens with yellow text appearing on them. It's... recognizably English, if not understandably so. There is mathematical jargon and technical stuff everywhere, and it's all flashing too fast for the eye to keep track of. The screens seem to be connected to a stained white metal box with a few buttons on a desk.

Permalink Mark Unread

Huh. Interesting.

Okay, door.

Permalink Mark Unread

There is a long, badly-illuminated corridor with a few doors here and there on either side and at the very end.

"Stop," the voice echoes from far away. "The device will detonate if removed from an approved testing area."

Permalink Mark Unread

...on the one hand, that seems disturbingly plausible.

On the other hand, she is already pretty far out of approved testing areas and look how non-exploded she is. And she's going to need to find food eventually. She can't just traipse around the approved testing areas indefinitely, and she'll have a much easier time getting around this place if she has the portalizer. It's worth the risk.

Permalink Mark Unread

Her device remains unexploded while she ponders this.

Permalink Mark Unread

All right. Time to peek behind all the doors!

Permalink Mark Unread

The next one is another observation room to another part of the same test chamber. The next one is a toilet, the following is a broom closet, then a room with lots of files, another observation room, a door labeled KEEP OUT with stairs behind it, more files...

Permalink Mark Unread

Ooh, KEEP OUT is promising.

Permalink Mark Unread

The door is locked!

Permalink Mark Unread

Oh, is it. And how badly does she have to cheat to get it open?

Permalink Mark Unread

Not very, it's not Aperture Science Technologies locked, just regular locked.

The stairs lead down.

Permalink Mark Unread

Down she goes!

Permalink Mark Unread

"Hello? Where are you? I know you're there. I can feel you here."

Permalink Mark Unread

 

...what.

Permalink Mark Unread

Who even knows.

The stairs go a long way down.

Permalink Mark Unread

Sable does not have very much better to do.

Permalink Mark Unread

"What are you doing? You haven't escaped, you know."

And in the distance, from down below, she can hear loud periodic noises, as if there are enormous metal cylinders hitting the floor every now and then.

When she gets in range she finds out that there are indeed enormous metal cylinders hitting the floor every now and then.

Permalink Mark Unread

...um?

Permalink Mark Unread

Well, some of them are hitting the ceiling or a wall instead!

Permalink Mark Unread

That's not an explanation???????

Permalink Mark Unread

Yeah the place seems disinclined to explain why there are large metal cylinders hitting various flat surfaces. They just seem to—be doing that.

The stone steps end in front of a door, still well above the level of the metal cylinders, but the way continues in the form of a badly maintained metal staircase. Also, drawn on the wall after the door in what appears to be red paint... or blood... is a large exit sign with an arrow pointing down.

Permalink Mark Unread

Okay. Sure. Trust the creepy wall-painter.

...she checks whether it is in fact blood.

Permalink Mark Unread

It is in fact blood.

Permalink Mark Unread

Okay! Down she goes!

Permalink Mark Unread

Down down down and the stairs cut out around here. She can see/feel its rusted remains a way down.

Permalink Mark Unread

Well, on the one hand she could go back up.

On the other hand where's the fun in that?

Down she jumps.

Permalink Mark Unread

She reaches an extremely cramped space full of gratings and concrete and inexplicable pistons. There are two of them to her left which don't quite hit the ceiling whenever they move, and they should give her a better view of the top of a stone platform blocking her way. There is some space for crawling under that platform, though, which might also allow her to get to its other side.

Permalink Mark Unread

Sable is small and can easily fit through cramped spaces! Sneak sneak.

Permalink Mark Unread

There is another piston on the other side, this one hitting a wall periodically. She can probably climb up on top of it, and the wall it's hitting is actually another platform with another drawing of an exit sign, pointing to the left.

"Where do you think you're going? Because I don't think you're going where you think you're going."

Permalink Mark Unread

She follows the creepy signage and ignores the creepy voice!

Permalink Mark Unread

There is a small cramped corridor that ends in a metal grating, but she can see a portalable wall on the other side.

Permalink Mark Unread

And she has a ~double-ended portalizer~!!!

Boop. Back to the last place she could detect a portalable surface. Boop again.

Permalink Mark Unread

She's in a tiny cramped space, on top of a glass tube like the ones that held cubes. The walls around her are portalable, and there is a hole on the wall, too high for her to reach normally but within easy access by portals.

Permalink Mark Unread

Ooh. Boop boop!

Permalink Mark Unread

The hole leads into a corridor that turns left into a cramped and badly illuminated space that opens into a more open room with a high ceiling and more cylinders that randomly go up. Across the room there are signs that there used to be a metal ladder attached to the wall but it's been rusted off.

Permalink Mark Unread

—can she get up there with some combination of portals and dangerous piston-climbing?

Permalink Mark Unread

Yep! These pistons also do not quite reach the ceiling so she can just go up high enough to see the place the ex-ladder led up to.

Permalink Mark Unread

And high enough to see is also high enough to reach, under the circumstances. Excellent.

Permalink Mark Unread

There's a corridor! Following it leads to a place she can drop down to with a couple of pistons smashing a portalable ceiling and another portalable ceiling visible higher up that she could perhaps access.

Permalink Mark Unread

Ooh. Portal, portal, dangerous piston-climbing, up, down.

Permalink Mark Unread

She falls on a slow moving horizontal piston next to another slow moving horizontal piston next to a stone platform. There is another of those exit signs pointing up on the wall there, and in the direction it's pointing there's a metal grid with a portalable wall behind it.

"Hello? Is anyone there?"

Permalink Mark Unread

She does so love portalable walls. Boop boop!

Permalink Mark Unread

Yet another cramped little space, with an exhaust fan and a view to another portalable wall up high, facing an entrance up into more maintenance areas.

Permalink Mark Unread

Boop!

She peers through her new portal. Unpromisingly wide gap over to another bit of floor; long drop down to yet more floor. She hops through, puts a portal on the floor as she falls, falls through it and comes out zooming across the gap toward a nice comfortable landing. Well. Comfortable-ish.

Permalink Mark Unread

And following that bit of ground there are some more mysterious pistons blocking the way.

Permalink Mark Unread

Sable holds no fear of mysterious pistons. She puts a portal on the far side of them and another portal next to her and strolls on through.

Permalink Mark Unread

"You really shouldn't be here. This isn't safe for you. It's not too late for you to turn back."

She finds herself in a room with a very high ceiling and various horizontal pistons above her head, with no obvious exit. There's another exit sign drawn on the wall, pointing up, though.

Permalink Mark Unread

No obvious exit? Pff. Nonsense. Portal on the wall, as high as she can get it; portal next to her; hop out onto a piston; and from this new vantage she has line of sight on a fence or grating with a portalable wall on the other side. Boop. Over she goes.

Permalink Mark Unread

The place she steps out to... looks about as exitless as the one she's just left. Unless you count that hole through which the cube transportation tube over there sinks into the floor as an exit—there's more than enough space for Sable there.

("I'm not angry. Just go back to the testing area.")

Permalink Mark Unread

Time to traipse along some cube transportation tubes, then!

Permalink Mark Unread

She finds herself in a small enclosed space with a bunch more of those tubes, some horizontal and some vertical, and the floor is covered with deadly goo. The tube she's standing on goes into a wall, but there's another horizontal one perpendicular to that one below it she can drop down to.

"I feel sorry for you, really, because you're not even in the right place. You should have turned left before. It's funny, actually, when you think about it."

Permalink Mark Unread

Drop!

"I question your premises," she says aloud.

Permalink Mark Unread

The voice doesn't say anything.

Up ahead there's a huge piston intermittently blocking her way, but the wall it slams against (across the goo) is portalable. There's an arrow drawn on the wall pointing ahead and up, so there must be some way to get there.

Permalink Mark Unread

Portal on wall just above piston impact point; now where's an accessible portalable surface...?

Permalink Mark Unread

Well the wall back where she's come from dangerously near the goo was but that's risky...

Permalink Mark Unread

She goes back to it. She puts a portal there. She watches the piston do its thing a few times, and then she tucks her radio firmly under her arm and picks her moment very carefully and jumps.

And lands neatly on top of the piston just as it hits the wall right under the portal. Tragically, there is no spontaneous environmental applause.

Permalink Mark Unread

So unreasonable of the environment.

After walking for a bit she finds a room with a locked door and a square hole in the middle, surrounded by metal railings. And there's another arrow drawn on the wall, pointing down.

Permalink Mark Unread

...that locked door is tempting, but following the arrows has been interesting so far. Down the hole she goes.

Permalink Mark Unread

There is a sort of air duct she could squeeze through in front of her and a corridor to her left.

Permalink Mark Unread

Advice from mysterious wall-scrawler?

Permalink Mark Unread

There doesn't seem to be any.

Permalink Mark Unread

Hmmmmm. Corridor first.

Permalink Mark Unread

It's short-ish and leads to a square room where the floor's been replaced by horizontal pistons meeting in the middle. They're not moving.

Permalink Mark Unread

 

...yeaaaaaah she's not keen on falling through the blatantly obvious piston floor trap. Air duct it is!

Permalink Mark Unread

It is extremely short and leads to a small room with a few containers labeled "Water," a couple of computer towers, and the word Help written on the floor.

Permalink Mark Unread

...do the containers labeled Water actually contain any water, and is it drinkable, because if so that's really useful and if not perhaps she should go back to the blatantly obvious piston floor trap.

Permalink Mark Unread

Alas, they are all empty.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Blight it," she mutters. All right, back to the blatantly obvious piston floor trap it is.

What is there in this room besides a blatantly obvious piston floor trap? She extends her groundsense, wincing slightly. She has done all kinds of awful things to her ground today.

Permalink Mark Unread

There is a shallow space under the pistons, and three doors. Behind each door there is an oval-ish thing with three legs and filled with little metal things, which are shot by...

...a spring.

There are some electronics in there, too.

Permalink Mark Unread

...ooooooh, it's the one-eyed spider-rabbits! They don't spit arrows, they spit little metal things!

She would not like any little metal things spit at her today. She disables all their electronics before venturing out onto the blatantly obvious piston floor trap.

Permalink Mark Unread

The blatantly obvious piston floor trap blatantly obviously swallows her up and traps her. An alarm starts blaring and one of the door opens, but the one-eyed spider-rabbit doesn't do anything.

Permalink Mark Unread

She stands around under her new ceiling of pistons and tries to figure out where to go next. If she ends up trapped under these pistons for an hour or something she is going to be so annoyed.

Permalink Mark Unread

The small chamber behind the door across the room from the first door to open actually has a hole on the ceiling from where a grabby metal thingy is dangling...

...and the alarm sounds again and the middle door opens.

Permalink Mark Unread

She goes over to the third door and impatiently awaits another alarm.

Permalink Mark Unread

 

 

 

Alarm! And the door opens and there's a disabled spider-rabbit and a metal grabby thing dangling from a hole in the ceiling and if she peers through the hole there's a suspiciously portalable-looking wall over there—

Permalink Mark Unread

Boop boop! Onward to adventure!

Permalink Mark Unread

The other room contains a few more one-eyed spider-rabbit things, but only one is active and it's completely bulletless.

Permalink Mark Unread

Poor thing. She doesn't bother disabling it, just looks around for where to go next.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Hello," says spider thing in a very childlike voice. A line of red light tracks Sable's movements and the thing's sides extend outside but nothing actually happens.

Permalink Mark Unread

"You can talk?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"You're not a good person. You know that, right? Good people don't end up here."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yes. Deploying." Nothing continues to happen.

Permalink Mark Unread

"You I already knew about," she says with a dismissive wave creepy-voicewards. To the spider-rabbit: "What's your deal?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Protection!" it chirps.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Of what?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"My charge!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"From what?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Targets!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"And, uh, what is your charge?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I don't know."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...kind of hard to protect it, then, isn't it?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"If I stop everything from getting close I'll protect it!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"How do you know?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"It is my mission."

Permalink Mark Unread

...yeah this conversation is kind of going nowhere.

"Well, it was nice to meet you," she says, and resumes searching for an exit.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Nice to meet you, too!"

There is an upper level but the stairs have rotted off and the walls up there are unportalable. However, there is a portalable wall a cube tube is coming out of that's level with the upper floor.

Permalink Mark Unread

Boop?

Permalink Mark Unread

Well the noise is not quite boop but yes.

There are desks and other inactive spider-rabbit carcasses and a door over there leading to a tiny room with a hole on the floor.

Permalink Mark Unread

Hole in the floor! Where does the floor hole lead?

Permalink Mark Unread

An even tinier room, all walls in it portalable, and another spider-rabbit just standing there.

Also if she looks with her groundsense she'll notice one of the walls is actually a door of sorts.

Permalink Mark Unread

Huh.

She drops down behind the spider-rabbit. "Hello," she says.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Hello," it says, its laser sight moving this way and that. "Where are you?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"If I knew the answer to that question, my life would be a lot simpler!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"...who are you?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"My name's Sable, what's yours?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm 92G0C8JJL1-7BB!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Nice to meet you! What're you doing here?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Protecting my charge!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"That's what they all say," she says, half to herself. Is there perchance a way to open that door? What's on the other side of it?

Permalink Mark Unread

There's—

—no it actually opens by itself, its hinges attached to the top so it sticks out from the bottom and opens diagonally to a larger room with a bunch of old machines. There is an elevated catwalk directly in front of the newly opened space, but too high to be reached.

Permalink Mark Unread

"If I step in front of you are you going to try to hurt me," she inquires of her new friend.

Permalink Mark Unread

"I will protect my charge."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That sounded like a yes. 'Scuse me."

She picks up the whatever-it-is with her helpfully telekinetic portal widget and carefully turns it around so it faces the wall behind her, then sets it down again and hops out into the room to contemplate how she's going to reach that elevated catwalk.

Permalink Mark Unread

...well the outside of the not-really-a-door is portalable...

Permalink Mark Unread

...and so is the floor, and the doorish thing is up on an angle facing the catwalk in an extremely flingable-looking way...

Yep, she can do this. She gets line of sight on the angled door-surface, puts a blue portal on it, puts an orange portal on the floor, hops carefully through and balances on the edge for a moment, puts another orange portal on the floor in a more optimal location for this purpose, and jumps down into it.

Fling!

Permalink Mark Unread

Wheee~

The catwalk she lands on turns right and there's a door there leading to a corridor. "This is your fault. It didn't have to be like this."

Permalink Mark Unread

Traipse traipse. "You keep telling yourself that."

Permalink Mark Unread

Directly ahead there is a locked door, and to her left there is an Emancipator and another door.

Permalink Mark Unread

She cuts the power to the Emancipator and tries the door behind it.

Permalink Mark Unread

There is a large window to an empty room and a button pedestal there.

"I'm not kidding now. Turn back or I will kill you."

Permalink Mark Unread

 

"Why?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"You are in an extremely forbidden area and no one should be in this area."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm just following the signage! Granted the signage is scrawled on the walls in blood, but maybe they ran out of paint."

Permalink Mark Unread

"—please ignore all signage there, as there is no signage there."

Permalink Mark Unread

"You are without a doubt the sketchiest disembodied voice I have ever met. And you might not be the worst liar but you're in the running."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Seeing signage where there is none is a sign of severe brain damage. You should head back for a checkup."

Permalink Mark Unread

"My brain is fine. I would happily ask you for directions to the exit if I thought there was the slightest chance that following your directions would get me out of here, but since that's obviously not the case, I guess I'll just have to keep wandering around and stumbling into forbidden areas."

Permalink Mark Unread

Silence.

Permalink Mark Unread

"I wonder what happens if I push this button."

She tries it.

Permalink Mark Unread

A little thing that looks like an eye emerges from the floor in the room in front of her and  starts looking around, a green laser pointing at where it's looking.

Permalink Mark Unread

Well that's creepy. She bets she does not want to be in front of that. How about she goes and investigates that locked door.

Permalink Mark Unread

Locked door: leads to a broom closet.

Permalink Mark Unread

Why does this place lock its broom closets and not its super secret robot eyeball rooms??????????

Fine, back to the super secret robot eyeball room. Hello, super secret robot eyeball, how are you today.

Permalink Mark Unread

The super secret robot eyeball looks at her and freezes in place, making a noise. The green laser shooting out of its eye becomes yellow, and her groundsense can detect—a rather enormous version of the metal things inside the spider-rabbits—

Permalink Mark Unread

She was right! She doesn't want to be in front of that! How about not being in front of that, that sounds like a good plan!

Permalink Mark Unread

The thing shoots the huge rocket in her direction—or the direction she was when it locked onto her—which causes the glass window to shatter in a million pieces.

Permalink Mark Unread

Oh wow she was so very right that she didn't want to be in front of that!

 

...however, that also looks like a really useful way to break things she doesn't want to ground-rip, such as that other glass wall on the other side of the eyeball enclosure!

She darts over to the other side of the eyeball and stands still for a moment to taunt it, then ducks to the side when it gets mad.

Permalink Mark Unread

Beep beep bop BOOM

Permalink Mark Unread

...she giggles.

She hops through the shattered window and looks for - well, somewhere to hide from the eyeball, first thing, and then an exit.

Permalink Mark Unread

She's in a room with more computers but there's a door leading to a corridor there. It leads to another back room with another large window. On the other side of it there are a few tall metal cylinders and some scribbling on a wall pointing into a hole.

Permalink Mark Unread

...Can she perchance taunt the eyeball into breaking that window for her, perhaps via a portal?

Permalink Mark Unread

The walls separating these rooms are conveniently portalable so yep!

The words "Over Here" and an arrow pointing to a space below a cube tube are drawn on the wall, but the only thing of note in that cramped little space is an air duct, much too high to be reached.

Permalink Mark Unread

Too high to be reached, you say?

Not if she taunts the eyeball into blowing open that cube tube!

Permalink Mark Unread

Well then it will be blown open! And ooh lookit that cube passing through—

Permalink Mark Unread

Yoink!

Can she reach the air duct standing on one cube or will she have to stack a few?

Permalink Mark Unread

An adult-sized person would be able to...

Permalink Mark Unread

But Sable is a smaller person than that so she needs to pile up multiple cubes before she can investigate the air duct. On the other hand it's very easy to fit into the duct once she's there!

Permalink Mark Unread

It is! The air duct (which has more arrows scrawled in) leads to a large sharp-looking horizontal fan but there is a portalable wall behind and below it.

Permalink Mark Unread

She aims her widget through the fan and boops a portal onto the wall and then wiggles back out of the air duct and portals through.

Permalink Mark Unread

She's in... some sort of sewage place? There's floor beneath her feet and a door in front of her but goo to her right.

Permalink Mark Unread

Is the door another broom closet.

Permalink Mark Unread

Nope! It has lots of wires with the not-aliveness flowing through them though.

Permalink Mark Unread

This does not look like a place she can go. The goo looks like maybe a place she can go if she is clever about portal placement!

Permalink Mark Unread

She is correct! And eventually she reaches another place with a floor instead of goo and an arrow pointing up towards a small hole in the ceiling with a metal grid blocking the way.

Permalink Mark Unread

The metal grid cannot block the portalizer! Boop. What's above the grid?

Permalink Mark Unread

...ick.

She leans through the portal and extends her groundsense, looking for a portalable surface she can get line-of-sight on as efficiently as possible, and any miscellaneous hazards that may be waiting for her once she's out of the mysterious dirty water corridor.

Permalink Mark Unread

The dirty water corridor is in fact part of a system of moatlike things in a very large chamber with tall metal poles and various doors at various levels on all four walls leading to small chambers with spider-rabbits in them.

Permalink Mark Unread

Well.

She would kind of not like to kill the spider-rabbits since she now knows they can talk, but on the other hand she would kind of not like to have them spit small chunks of metal at her.

...eh, can't be that bad. She finds her angle, takes two steps out into the dirty water, puts a portal on the chamber wall near the edge of the moat, and steps out.

Permalink Mark Unread

Alarms start blaring everywhere and the doors start opening.

Permalink Mark Unread

Can she get line-of-sight on the interiors of any of those small chambers, ideally without the spider-rabbits spotting her and getting excited -

Permalink Mark Unread

Absolutely.

Permalink Mark Unread

Boop!

"Hello," she says, stepping out behind the spider-rabbit. "How are you today?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Hello! I'm okay! Who are you?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm Sable! What are you doing here?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Protecting my charge!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Why?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"It is my mission!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Who gave you the mission?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"...I don't know."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well then how do you know it's your mission?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I just do. Where are you?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Good question."

She picks the spider-rabbit-thing up and turns it to face into a corner, and then she peers out of the little alcove looking for another alcove to portal into.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Hey, what are you doing!"

There are a few more of those!

Permalink Mark Unread

She goes and relocates all the spider-rabbits she can reach so that they are tucked into corners where they cannot spit metal things at her.

Okay, now what?

Permalink Mark Unread

Well, two of the doors that opened are angled outwards and one of them seems to point towards a hole on the wall...

Permalink Mark Unread

Ooh. Can she perchance get a portal onto the top of that upward-angled door and fling herself through.

Permalink Mark Unread

If she throws herself from high enough...

Permalink Mark Unread

wheeeeeeeeeeee

Permalink Mark Unread

There are a couple of exhaust fans on the walls and a patch of floor directly under a square hole on the ceiling is portalable—

—and two metal grabby things start lowering spider-rabbits onto the floor there.

Permalink Mark Unread

 

—she sprints directly toward them so that when the spider-rabbits reach the floor she is already standing behind them, safe from having metal spit at her.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Hello? Where are you?"

"Are you still there?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"No comment," she says, and carefully turns both the spider-rabbits so they each face into a corner.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Hey! Put me down!"

"What are you doing!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Who, me?"

Okay, now what? Helpful graffiti? Convenient doors?

Permalink Mark Unread

No graffiti nor any convenient doors. However, the ceiling is higher directly above her head and it looks like there might be another floor there.

Permalink Mark Unread

Hmm.

Does she have any hope of just climbing up there...? No, not really. And she can't get an angle on any portalable surfaces through the ceiling hole, either. But she's standing on a portalable surface, and there's a lovely portalable floor behind her, just a short walk and a long fall away.

Boop. Boop. Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

Permalink Mark Unread

Boop continues not to be the actual noise the portal gun makes but the logic is sound.

Up she goes and the floor around the hole is portalable, as is the wall around a door frame higher up...

Permalink Mark Unread

Boop boop! Ooh, is that that catwalk way high up above the floor of the big room with the pillars?

Permalink Mark Unread

It is! It is that catwalk! With a door at its end.

Permalink Mark Unread

Gosh. A door.

Permalink Mark Unread

And then a corridor which bifurcates: to her right there is another door, and to her left it continues on for a bit then turns right.

Permalink Mark Unread

Hmm... she'll try the door first.

Permalink Mark Unread

Locked.

Permalink Mark Unread

Yes but how locked exactly.

Permalink Mark Unread

Not incredibly locked. Just regular locked.

Permalink Mark Unread

Let's see what's on the other side, then.

Permalink Mark Unread

Broom closet!

Permalink Mark Unread

Why do they lock all their broom closets around here.

Okay, other direction.

Permalink Mark Unread

To her right there is a little alcove with windows showing the... vast emptiness beneath... as well as a passage/bridge thing leading to another room up ahead.

And there's a door that leads to this bridge thing!

Permalink Mark Unread

And does the bridge thing lead to a giant broom closet by any chance? No, if it did the door would be locked.

Permalink Mark Unread

Nope, it leads to an Aperture Science Material Emancipation Grid. Unenhanced.

Permalink Mark Unread

Not anymore it doesn't.

And what is on the other side of the ex-emancipator?

Permalink Mark Unread

A machine of some sort. Except...

"Well you found me. Congratulations. Was it worth it? Because despite your violent behavior the only thing you've managed to break so far is my heart. And several Aperture Science Material Emancipation Grids. And a wall."

Permalink Mark Unread

She blinks up at the - person??

"I didn't want to find you," she says. "I wanted to leave. I still want to leave. With my unauthorized equipment and all of my teeth. I wouldn't even necessarily object to solving your puzzles if it weren't for the insistence on walking through those Emancipators in between!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"You do not have authorization to take unauthorized equipment with you. You do not have authorization to destroy vital testing apparatus. You do not have authorization to leave. And now I have a surprise for you. Deploying surprise in five, four—" And then a sphere of some sort falls off the person, causing the lights to briefly dim. "Time out for a second. That wasn't supposed to happen."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...are you okay?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm fine. Do you see that thing that fell out of me? What is that? It's not the surprise. I've never seen it before."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I, um, I normally tend to think that people with parts falling off of them are probably not fine."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, never mind. It's a mystery I'll solve later. By myself. Because you'll be dead."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Nnnnno," says Sable. "No, that is really not going to be the thing that happens."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yes. Yes it is."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Listen, I don't actually want to kill you," she says. "But if I have to, I will."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Good luck with that. Your little trick is not going to work on me. I have backups all over this facility and more redundancies than you could count. Now, as I was saying: deploying surprise in five, four..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Seriously, can we not just discuss our differences like civilized people?"

She can sort of dimly sense the big complicated swirl of not-aliveness in front of her, and it is going to hurt so much if she takes a closer look, but if the alternative is dying... she winces preemptively and opens her ground.

Permalink Mark Unread

First of all: Ow.

The—person—is huge. She's connected to everything, the whole facility is only a thought away. There is an enormous tangle of cables and wires connecting her to everything else, and although it's true that the thing that sorta looks like her head is the ultimate source of information flow, it is redundant with other similar pieces of storage and processing elsewhere.

There is also a constant influx of not-aliveness from the eye-like things attached to her, an endless stream of information affecting every decision, every pulse, every movement. And, surprisingly enough, the detached sphere is still active, sending information wirelessly to her.

Also, while she's at it, she might notice that there's one of the eye-robot-rocket-launcher things below the ground being activated.

"...three, two..."

Permalink Mark Unread

—nope. The evil eye is now missing several crucial pieces of copper.

Permalink Mark Unread

"—did you do something to the Aperture Science Targeted Rocket Launcher?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Maybe. Now can we talk?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Fine. Talk."

(There are other mechanisms starting to grind and rotate and move here and there, though.)

Permalink Mark Unread

"What is your goal here? Why are you doing the things that you're doing?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"My goal is to kill you."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That's a stupid goal. Try having a better one."

Permalink Mark Unread

There are more rocket launchers being moved this way.

"You have done nothing but disrupt this facility from the moment you woke up. According to the rules, this is grounds for termination." The spheres continue to send information into her "brain" nonstop. Sometimes a process is noticeably scrambled by that.

Permalink Mark Unread

...hm.

"Okay," she says. "Last chance to decide you want to have a nice civil nonviolent conversation after all."

Because she's pretty sure at this point that she can kill the machine-person. The body is strange, an intricate tangle of not-aliveness in a shell made of nothing that's alive, but the mind is a mind and has a mind's ground. And she can use that. Though she'd really rather not have to.

Permalink Mark Unread

Rocket launchers!

Permalink Mark Unread

"Taking that as a no."

The rocket launchers cease to function before they finish emerging from the floor.

And she reaches out with her ground and takes hold of the substance of this person's mind and pulls as hard as she can. There's a lot of it - she's so big, she has pieces everywhere, and those spheres are all tangled up in everything - it's a full three seconds before Sable staggers back, unchanged to mundane senses but to groundsense cocooned in a hissing sparking blanket of alien mindstuff.

Permalink Mark Unread

The rocket launchers stop.

The spheres attached to the robot stop.

The robot's chassis goes limp, its head dangling uselessly at the end of the cord.

But its eye is still active. "Whoa whoa whoa what what happened what did you do I can't move I can't do anything—"

Simultaneously, a different voice starts speaking: "Warning: central core has been destroyed. Initiating self-destruction protocol." And a screen on a wall starts counting down from 30 while various electronic things start lining up everywhere around the place.

Permalink Mark Unread

Sable doesn't answer. She's a little busy collapsing on the floor in terrible pain. Even a normal person's ground would have trouble integrating this much foreign stuff, and Sable's is not normal, she hurts just looking at big bright things, ground-ripping them is much much worse.

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm not destroyed, I'm fine—"

    "Warning: central core has been destroyed. Self-destruction will happen in twenty-five seconds."

"Look what you've done—I should've killed you before you even woke up—" Her voice seems very different: less robotic, more fluid, with more sensible emphases. "Now my whole facility is going to be destroyed!"

Permalink Mark Unread

She hisses under her breath. Still curled up in a little ball of pain, but now at least capable of accessing language.

"If you have - any constructive suggestions - I'm listening," she says through gritted teeth.

Permalink Mark Unread

    "Warning: self-destruction protocol interrupted due to core reactor meltdown. Core reactor explosion imminent."

"Oh, great. Now there's nothing I can do. You and I are both going to die horrible, painful deaths. Nice job breaking it, hero."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I gave you a chance," she snaps. "I gave you an unreasonable number of chances!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"You could've just stood there and died like an adult!" she snaps right back. There's an explosion somewhere that rocks the room, and an alarm starts blaring while red lights start blinking.

    "Warning: core reactor meltdown imminent."

"Oh we know."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well you could've not tried to murder me!"

Permalink Mark Unread

There's a sourceless light—no, actually, it's coming from everywhere—that gets brighter and brighter as a high-pitched noise gets louder and louder—" Well if you hadn't—" But the rest of the sentence is drowned out by the noise and the light and it's too much—

Permalink Mark Unread

Permalink Mark Unread

 

 

 

"Thank you for assuming the party escort submission position," says a robotic voice, before an android starts dragging Sable's body back inside.

Permalink Mark Unread

This was a triumph!
I'm making a note here: huge success!
It's hard to overstate my satisfaction.
Aperture Science:
We do what we must because we can,
For the good of all of us—except the ones who are dead.

Now there's no sense crying over every mistake,
You just keep on trying 'til you run out of cake,
And the Science gets done, and you make a neat gun
For the people who are still alive!

I'm not even angry...
I'm being so sincere right now.
Even though you broke my heart and killed me.
And tore up my test track.
And turned all the things into gray dust.
As they dissolved it hurt because I was so happy for you!

Now these points of data make a beautiful line,
And we're out of beta, we're releasing on time!
So I'm GLaD. I got burned.
Think of all the things we learned for the people who are still alive!

Go ahead and leave me.
I think I prefer to stay inside.
Maybe you'll find someone else to help you.
Maybe Black Mesa.
That was a joke. Ha ha. Fat chance.
Anyway, this cake is great, it's so delicious and moist.

Look at me, still talking while there's Science to do.
When I look out there it makes me glad I'm not you.
I've experiments to run, there is research to be done
On the people who are still alive!

And believe me, I am still alive.
I'm doing Science and I'm still alive.
I feel fantastic and I'm still alive.
While you're dying I'll be still alive.
And when you're dead I will be still alive.

Still alive.

Still alive.