Portal 2 - For Science

I.

The speakers welcome her, on an expanse of devastated floor tiles.

By now, she probably knows this place more than she knows herself. Today a warm light pierces the panels, making things even easier. Even so, she feels puzzled, just like she was back then – green branches and a few vegetables are not enough to keep one’s sanity intact. She has to focus on the regular shapes of the old test chambers, clinging to the hint of familiarity they preserve in their destroyed faces.

Yet, in the end, is not that different. Not less operational, not less crazy than it used to be. The elevator comes to fetch her as promptly as ever, the doors open smoothly, the announcer talks about death in cheerful frequencies.

The only missing element is the voice. Other than that, the feeling is exactly the same. She never knows whether she’ll be killed in the next few seconds or impeccably taken care of. Will they ever make up their mind? She guesses not. Uncertainty must be Aperture’s trademark.

Come what may. For now, everything is fine, and the chambers flow behind her feet like handfuls of sand. Buttons lighten up under her weight, cubes shine, portals – her ever faithful companions – tickle her skin with pleasant electric fields.
It seems all of Aperture is happy to see her again. She is not.

II.

Not that she didn’t expect this – honestly, it was the one possibility she had been able to foresee from the very beginning.

It is easy to realise her new robotic guide is not that bright. She, on the other hand, is way too intelligent for a huge steel wreck hanging from a ceiling.

Her robotic voice is not very confident in the new chambers. In its depths, under the layer of lies and cheats and mocking, it almost sounds tired. For her, on the other hand, things are better than they were back then – no question marks, no uncertainties now. Although the lasers are unbearably hot and the acid smokes three times as smelly, the ocean of danger ahead doesn’t look that deadly anymore.

With the rules clear and the games open, the threads are in her hands. All she wants is to get out of there.

Portal after portal, the air lets them through, opening new paths for her and new rails for him. And when she has to battle again, the riot of contradictory orders bombing her nerves cancels itself, paradoxically leaving complete calmness in her mind.

It is the same old story – she knows exactly what to do. She may be worried, she may be diffident, ready to escape bullets and poisonous gases; but she is no longer afraid of her, not now.

A voice and a yellow optic will never be able to destroy it – the feeble glimpse of hope which she, finally accompanied by a friendly being, can afford to fuel.

The taste of hope – something she had forgotten. Something that grows stronger with her heartbeat; something that, after shaking violently, fades in utter horror and rushes downward for miles and miles, along with a potato battery and a million glass arrows.

III.

No human being is alive to remember what she is seeing right now. She can hardly believe her own eyes, as she wanders in fields of corroded iron and fallen walls.

It all looks so forgotten and lonely that, somehow, it may resemble her life. But there is no room for pain nor betrayal – she has learnt that, in whatever area of Aperture she is in, the only chance of survival is moving on, and never looking back.

An ocean of acid stretches in front of her, slowly devouring all that is left in the vitrified area. She stares at the gigantic Aperture sign, half-sunk in the acid, so abandoned to its fate.

What has become of these testing areas? Were they closed and forgotten just to move on, leaving behind all the effort human beings put in them – computing, testing, death?

The fact is just one. Testing and testing; that’s all it is about. And if the enormous figures of different dates weren’t printed on the iron walls, tracing the course of long gone years, she would come to think that Aperture was born with time, a time that never marches on.

Actually, Aperture is all she can remember – it is the only memory she holds on to now, one memory to replace her whole life.

It is simple, it must be. Aperture is made of lies. And the master of lies, very predictably, is not being of much help right now.

The potato battery is resting on the portal device, waiting for safety and a more honourable body. The circuits are inactive, the yellow lens still, her words mysteries; from time to time, she starts screaming and rambling, taken by unbearable fits of excitement.

She had to let go of all her illusions, as her former ally sent them to die and her former enemy became friendlier. Now she holds back her hope, full force, when she realises her old enemy’s advice is actually being useful. She never fell for that – she certainly won’t now.

It is all proving to be a lie; her disbelief, along with the lack of any idea about what may be going on, is fully justified. It is no use trying to understand, as no one else can – not even the boss, not the potato.

All she has to do is put an end to it. This time, she must do it for good.

IV.

Science is made of concrete facts. In those long hours, spent wandering through chambers and dismantled areas, she has learnt how machinery can only react, following external commands it cannot elaborate by itself.

Every bit of experience she has collected on the field screams it to her – technology should always lack consciousness.

She is weak and hungry, she longs for fresh air and light; but this plain fact is perfectly clear to her, and it makes her more confused, more eager. She feels she may lose her self-control any moment now.

He was programmed to do his best, and worst; he was the friend she held on to from her own portal, the fake friend who betrayed her up to the very last second.

The enemy, the thing that swings in front of her now, is a computer as well. Yet, in cruelty, jokes or temporary affection, she has always been a mystery to her. And this, simple exception to a simple rule, is what puzzles her the most.

She loses herself in her words, ignoring the pulse of danger in her guts. She lives her farewell journey to the surface like a surreal dream – so wonderful, so weird, ready to turn into the most irrational of nightmares anytime. The tender song, the echo of his last scream, that elegant voice of hers – they mingle in her ears and go straight to her chest, making it melt in desperation.

Minutes and minutes have to pass before she can move the first step under the sky. Blinded by the full sunlight, she kneels in the wheat, trembling uncontrollably with a violent rush of emotion. She feels as if she were going to burst soon.

She has got a few spare seconds, and then she is screaming, in anxiety and joy. that short time is just enough for her to realise that she, the most successful test subject on Aperture’s records, still cannot understand what it all was for.

There is no point in answering, she sobs to herself. All of it – from start to finish – never made any sense.