Chapter Text
Music is the first thing you’re aware of: a cheery tune playing on loop, coming from somewhere nearby. The surface underneath you is firm but not uncomfortable, and you groan slightly as feeling bleeds back into your limbs. You blink your eyes open and squint at the bright light as some sort of clear covering above you slides open.
You sit up, rubbing sleep from your eyes. You appear to be in some sort of sleeping pod within a small glass chamber, which itself is in a large room composed of sterile-looking white and grey tile. You swing your orange-clad legs over the side, grunting with the effort of lifting deceptively heavy white plastic boots, and shakily stand on your feet. You look around at the glass chamber’s sparse furnishings and are surprised to discover that there isn’t a door or any way out you can see, just a door-sized slab of metal on the wall in front of you with a countdown timer at the top. There is an identical slab with its own timer on the concrete wall of the larger room, directly to your right.
You pause as a low, robotic voice echoes through the chamber.
Hello, and welcome again to the Aperture Science Facility and Enrichment Center. We hope you have had a pleasant rest and are feeling reinvigorated and ready to begin testing. The test chambers are of course designed to be healthy and fun, but be aware that Aperture Science is not liable for any broken bones, poisonings, moderate to severe burns, electrocutions, or bullet wounds that may occur from failure to follow safety guidelines.
You laugh nervously, glancing around. This isn’t normal, right? You’re pretty sure this isn’t normal. You can’t remember ever waking up in a regular room- you can’t remember much of anything, come to think of it- but you’re pretty sure they usually have things like beds, and doors, and windows that actually look outside. They definitely don’t have disembodied voices giving cryptic warnings, or observation windows high in the stone walls that stare right through the glass of your little chamber, or security cameras that track your every move.
The door’s timer begins to approach zero, and the Voice says Portal opening in 3, 2, 1-
Right when the timer runs out, a large vertical oval of shimmering orange light materializes on the metal slab in your little glass chamber. You glance to your right and see an identical oval of blue light on the matching metal slab in the larger room. After a moment the hazy center of both the orange and blue ovals fade into transparency, leaving only rims of energy that flicker like a dying flame. You look through the newly created window door portal in front of you, and are shocked to see what looks like a view of your little glass chamber from outside and to the right of it, complete with a human figure in profile you assume to be yourself, considering they move exactly as you do.
You run backwards and forwards and then do a few jumping jacks, watching the person seen through the portal do the same. They are of average height and build with pale skin and short brown hair, and are wearing an orange jumpsuit with those same bulky white boots. Some vague impression within you says, man, and after checking within yourself you decide that you do in fact feel male. Part of you wonders how you understand the concept of gender when as far as you know you’re the only person you’ve ever seen; the phrase guys, gals, and nonbinary pals drifts through your head before disappearing again into the ether.
Having stalled as much as you can, you cautiously approach the portal. You stick one hand through experimentally, watching as your mirror-figure does the same, then pull it out again and find it unmarred. You tentatively try to touch the orange, flame-like edge of the portal, but find your hand repelled as if you were trying to touch the north poles of two magnets.
You squeeze your eyes shut, take a deep breath and then jump through the orange portal. You open your eyes to find the same view you saw when looking through the orange portal a few moments ago, with the exception that your double has disappeared. You turn around and realize you’ve come out through the blue portal on the stone wall, and are now standing in the larger room that surrounds the little glass chamber. Through the blue portal you can see the inside of the glass chamber as if it were right in front of you, despite the fact that it should be directly behind you right now. You step through the blue portal and find yourself in the glass chamber again, step through the orange and find yourself back in the outer room. The two portals are connected, you realize: if you go through one of them, you’ll come out the other.
You hop back and forth a few more times, moving between two completely different points in space as if you were stepping through a doorway. You don’t have a frame of reference to judge against, but something tells you that a thing like this shouldn’t be able to exist. For a moment, your wonder overtakes your fear.
Yes, please keep playing around in the starting room, the Voice drawls, jarring you out of your thoughts. It’s not like we went to the trouble of preparing nineteen actual test chambers or anything.
You shoot a dirty look at the nearest security camera, and after looking around and seeing no other option, reluctantly head through the large circular door in the wall.
The next room contains a large red button on the ground, a closed circular door, and some sort of dispenser which promptly drops a large plastic cube. You step onto the button and the door slides open, step off and it snaps closed. You go over and pick up the cube, finding it surprisingly light for its size, then put it on the button to hold the door open, revealing a hallway with some sort of barrier of shimmering energy spanning across it.
Truly, your deductive skills are miraculous, the Voice says dryly. Please proceed through the Emancipation Grill and into the elevator. Note that any physical objects will be vaporized upon contact with the Emancipation Grill, excepting personal items such as clothing and medical implants. In the event that such an item is emancipated, Aperture Science advises you to ignore it and continue testing.
That is not at all comforting; you’re beginning to suspect that comfort isn’t something you’re going to get much of in this place. You walk through the energy barrier- the Emancipation Grill, you assume- and are relieved to feel nothing more than a minor tingling sensation.
The elevator doors slide closed behind you as you enter, and you feel the rumbling as it begins to ascend.
“Um, Voiceover Guy?” you say to the empty space. “Could you maybe tell me what I’m doing here, and when I can leave?”
There’s no response. The doors open into another test chamber, and you take another deep breath, then reluctantly step forwards to face whatever will come.
The first test involves a series of portals that shift on regular intervals, disappearing from one enclosed chamber and moving to another. It isn’t too hard to get to the right chambers once you grasp the pattern, and before you know it you’re back in the elevator.
After a few seconds the doors open again, revealing a glass window which oversees a large room. A blue portal is appearing, disappearing and reappearing at different points on the walls just like in the last test, but this time there is an origin point: some sort of gun-like device in the middle is shooting out balls of blue light. As soon as a blue light-ball connects with the wall it spreads into a new blue portal, while the old blue portal disappears.
“Amazing, isn’t it?” someone says from above you.
You yelp and practically jump into the air. Placing a hand over your rapidly beating heart, you look upwards and see something you’d probably find odd if you weren’t already numb to the entire concept of odd by now. It appears to be some sort of metal ball, just big enough to wrap an arm around and with a circular opening in front that glows dark blue in its center. The opening looks like an eye, you realize, complete with shutters that open and close like eyelids. The ball has handles above and below the eye, and it seems to be hanging from some sort of metal rail, revealed through a missing ceiling tile.
“What?” you say.
The ball rotates to peer down at you.
“The Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device,” the ball says. Its voice is formal and matter-of-fact, like it’s giving a lecture. “It is a marvel of modern engineering: the creation on demand of a compact region of spacetime whose boundary is topologically trivial but whose interior is not simply connected. Truly spectacular.”
You stare at the ball. “I understood some of those words. Individually.”
“You really should have at least a basic understanding of mathematical concepts if you’re going to be using such a complex device,” the ball scolds.
“I know plenty of math,” you retort automatically, realizing as the words leave your mouth that they’re true; you do seem to know math quite well, though your knowledge is more in applied mathematics than in the topology the ball was referencing.
The revelation is disconcerting. What else do you not remember learning? How much do you really know?
You mentally shake yourself. Now is not the time to be going down that rabbit hole, not when you need to get out of here.
“Maybe later, metal ball robot,” you say.
You walk through a door into the test proper, finding yourself blocked off from the rest of the room by a smooth wall with a small hole in it. The ball slides after you on its metal rail, the ceiling tiles retracting ahead of it to clear a path.
“I am not Metal Ball Robot! I am the Logic Core.” The ball somehow manages to appear offended, despite only having one eye and two handles to gesture with.
You wait until the device shoots a ball of blue light through the hole in the wall, creating a blue portal next to you. You step through the portal and find yourself on an open ledge overlooking the rest of the room.
“The Logic Core?” you repeat as the ball zooms over to you.
“Yes, that is what I said.”
You stare at it with an expression you hope is inquisitive, but probably just looks confused.
“Goodness, do you not even know what a Personality Core is?” the ball says.
You shrug with an apologetic smile.
It sighs heavily. “I am an artificial intelligence modeled after the centers of the human brain that govern logical thinking and the acquisition of knowledge, and am accordingly responsible for ensuring that the system running this facility behaves in a manner that is both logical and consistent with its knowledge base.”
The Logic Core huffs. “Or at least I was, before-”
The Logic Core’s voice cuts off suddenly. It narrows its eye at the nearest security camera, so briefly you almost think you imagined it, then turns back to you.
“Well, suffice to say that the central system and I have been separated for some time now.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” you say, unsure how else to respond. The Logic Core- you decide you’re going to call it Logic for short- gives a nod of acknowledgement, which you hope means you didn’t just screw up your first real conversation.
Below you the portal gun shoots a blue portal onto a wall near itself, and you turn around and walk back through the orange portal, coming out in that location.
“You could have just jumped down,” Logic says. “Your Long-Fall Boots are designed to negate impact forces up to those created from landing at terminal velocity.”
You shudder at the thought of falling that far. “I think I’m good.”
Tentatively, you walk forward and lay a hand on the portal gun. It immediately stops shooting and instead rests inert on the pedestal in front of you. You reach out and pick it up, settling it comfortably on one arm and tentatively laying a finger over the trigger. It’s surprisingly light.
Congratulations, the disembodied Voice says, You are now the proud owner of the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device. While the portals themselves have been proven to be safe, prolonged exposure to the operational end of the Portal Device has not and should be avoided at all costs.
It gives a moment for that to sink in, then says with an exaggerated cheerfulness, Good luck!
You wait for another few seconds in case the Voice has more to say, but it seems to be satisfied with leaving things here.
“I do not like him,” you mutter.
A sudden thought occurs to you, and you look back at Logic, who has been calmly observing the exchange.
“Is that a him?” you ask the bot. “The Voice, I mean. And you, I guess- do you have pronouns?”
“Ah, yes,” Logic says. “We were all created from a male personality, so it’s he/him pronouns all around.”
You don’t miss the implication of more people- more AI’s- being around. You’re not quite sure how to feel about that.
“But enough about that!” Logic says. “You still have the final part of the puzzle to solve.”
Your mind is still spinning with the idea of more entities being in the facility with you, but you reluctantly follow Logic’s prompting and look for a way out of here. You pull the trigger of the Portal Gun, and that same blue ball of light shoots out and forms into the blue portal on the wall in front of you. You go through the blue portal and come out the orange onto the ledge you just jumped off of. To your right, a door opens to reveal the elevator doors once more.
You turn back to look at Logic. “Are you coming with me?”
“As an inanimate object, I am incapable of passing through the Emancipation Grill,” Logic says, nodding towards the familiar energy barrier blocking the hall.
“Oh,” you say, stomach sinking.
Logic seems to notice your disappointment. “We have access to all 19 test chambers, so you will likely be seeing me again,” he says.
You find yourself smiling at that. “Then I guess I’ll see you later.”
“Indeed,” Logic says. “Until then, goodbye.”
With that, he vanishes back into the ceiling, ceiling tiles sliding back into place so that it looks like he was never there. After a moment, you turn and walk through the Emancipation Grill, once again feeling nothing but a tingling sensation, and step into the elevator.
As the doors once again close behind you and the elevator begins to rise, you realize that for the first time since you woke up, the idea of the next test chamber doesn’t fill you with dread.
Because for the first time since you woke up…
You’re not alone.
Despite Logic’s words, the next test chamber contains no hint of anyone’s presence apart from the mysterious Voice’s occasional interjections. And even that goes away for the test chamber after that, with the Voice declaring beforehand that you will not be monitored at all for the entirety of the test.
By the time you’ve made it halfway through the test, which involves using strategically placed portals to move cubes onto corresponding buttons, you’re starting to wonder if the spherical robot was just your brain succumbing to the weirdness of this place and making you see things. Either that, or you managed to piss Logic off enough in your brief conversation to make him decide he never wanted to see you again and to probably warn off the “others”, whoever they are, as well. You wouldn’t put it past yourself.
Sighing, you try to push the nervousness down as you go over to the second cube and grab it, using a trick you’ve figured out with the Portal Gun: get the shooting end close enough to a physical object and then click a button on the gun’s side, and the object will move with the gun as if being levitated by some sort of force field. It makes moving large objects such as cubes much easier, particularly since with the Portal Gun your hands are already full.
After both buttons have been pushed down by their respective cubes the door in front of you slides open, revealing a small, rectangular room with a glass ceiling. Confused, you walk through the door to inspect the room, only for the door to slam shut behind you, effectively trapping you in a stone and glass box.
Fantastic.
You shoot a few portals at the glass above you, but they shatter into little bursts of blue light on contact. It was probably too optimistic to think they’d go through.
“Well aren’t you in a pickle!” a cheery voice says. “Or should I say a pickle jar?” Whoever it is taps the glass above you, presumably to punctuate the joke.
You peer up and see a familiar ball shape, the translucent glass between you making its features fuzzy and indistinct.
“Logic?” you call hopefully.
The core peers down at you, and through the frosted glass you can see that the light shining from him is a much paler blue.
“Oh, no sorry kiddo, he’s not here right now!” the core chirps. “It’s just little ol’ me. I thought I'd come say hello.”
“Oh,” you say. “And you are...?”
“I’m the Morality Core!” he says. “Pleased to meetcha!”
“Uh, yeah, same to you,” you say. “Sorry I can’t really shake your hand or anything, I’m kind of trapped.”
Morality chuckles good-naturedly. “How about you take a look behind me?”
He moves out of the way, and sure enough you see a familiar orange oval glowing from the ceiling, far above you both. You shoot a blue portal onto the stone wall next to you, moving towards it but freezing when you realize that what looks like a far wall through the portal is actually the ground. That orange portal must be something like twenty feet into the air! You’re not that scared of heights or anything, but you do have basic survival instincts, and right now those instincts are screaming at you that if you go through that portal you’ll break a leg, or worse.
“Aw, don’t worry kiddo!” the Morality Core calls. “You’ll be fine, I promise!”
You gather yourself and hesitantly step into the portal, then shriek as gravity grabs hold of you and pulls you forwards- pulls you down, now, because while the blue portal was upright like a door, the orange is pointed straight at the ground.
Your boots vibrate and you feel your body twist in the air to match gravity’s pull, reorienting from falling belly-first to feet-first. When your feet hit the ground, you feel no more force than if you’d just done a bunny hop.
“What the- what?” you exclaim, crouching down to poke at the boots. You can’t see anything to suggest that they’re more than bulky plastic boots, despite the fact that they just reduced a couple story fall to nothing. What even is this place?
You hear a whoop from above you. “I told you that you could do it!”
The metal ball lowers to face you, and you get your first good look at the Morality Core. He looks fairly similar to Logic, clearly built off the same plan, but there are noticeable variations. Most prominently, where Logic was formed from a dark, almost black metal, Morality is a pale grey, much like how his eye-light is a lighter shade of blue.
The metal ball tilts to one side and half-closes its eye, giving off the impression of beaming.
“I’m proud of you, kiddo!” Morality says. “You faced your fear! Oh, I wish I had a lollipop to give you!”
“A lollipop?”
“That’s what you get after getting through something scary- like a doctor’s appointment, or a science death-trap,” Morality says. “That or stickers! Neither of which I have.”
You find yourself smiling. “That’s usually for little kids, Morality.”
“Aw, you have a nickname for me!” Morality says, then adds seriously, “and you’re never too old for lollipops and stickers.”
You chuckle. “You’ve got me there!”
“I’m a stickler for stickers!” Morality declares.
“Better stick to it, then,” you say, and are rewarded with that same crinkle-eyed smile.
“I see we share a love of dad jokes,” Morality says. “This is going to be fun!”
“Don’t you mean, this is going to be ‘pun?’” you say slyly.
“Of course! It will be quite ‘punny’.”
“Okay, okay,” you laugh, “I think that’s enough for now.”
“If you say so, kiddo!” Morality says cheerfully.
You look around and see that the exit is actually right in front of you. The Emancipation Grill shimmers across the hallway, a reminder that Morality won’t be able to follow, and you find yourself reluctant to go.
“So, you’re the Morality Core?” you say.
“That’s me!”
You nod. “Does that mean that you, uh, control morality? For the facility?”
“Sort of,” Morality says. “Science can get a bit... messy. I made sure that everything was on the up-and-up, that we were doing the right thing. It’s no good if we hurt the people whose lives we were trying to improve, now is it?”
You don’t miss the use of past tense, nor the fact that Morality’s tone has dampened significantly.
“Logic said that he and the main system were ‘separated’,” you say nervously. “Does that mean that you’re not keeping this place moral any longer? What does that mean for me?”
“Well, I don’t want to keep ya any longer!” Morality chirps, joviality back full force. “I think you’ve just about solved this thing- I can’t come with you on the elevator but I’ll be sure to meet you in a room or two!”
“Morality-”
“Oh, and you haven’t even met R- Creativity yet! He’ll be so excited, we haven’t seen a human in- he’ll be glad to meet you,” Morality says. “I’ll go talk to him now, see you later!”
And with that, he disappears back up into the ceiling.
Yeah, so that wasn’t suspicious or anything.
As part of a required test protocol, our previous statement suggesting that we would not monitor this chamber was an outright fabrication, the Voice says, breaking into your thoughts. Good job! As part of a required test protocol, we will stop enhancing the truth in 3, 2-
It breaks off into static.
You just shake your head, then head into the elevator.