And now you understand anything that I had to do. But I never chose you. [Open]
It's been six months. Saul Garamond has been running through puzzles for a malevolent AI who's in control of some place called the Aperture Science Computer-Aided Enrichment Center. He's been hounded day and night to keep up with her testing demands. He's been strung out on adrenal vapors and other chemicals that have been pumped into his system, and he's been running, lifting, solving, this whole six months. He's put on a few pounds of muscle as a consequence. The bloody robot voice won't stop taunting him about his "weight variance."
"Aperture Science regrets to inform you that this test is impossible. Your rat brain can't help you now."
Run. Shoot a portal in the wall. Jump in. Fly across the gap out the other side. Run up the opposite wall. Press the button, grab the redirection cube. Direct the laser. Charge the dotted lines on the wall. Find another cube and do it again, each strand in the web of dotted lines must be charged before the lock opens. Each action affects the puzzle, brings it closer to completion, brings him closer to the next test and the next. The adrenaline is always flowing in him. He's always intent on the task. It's hard to plan escape, hard to plan killing her, when he's just so energized and focused on this thing. Time doesn't mean much, it's never needed to. Nothing is urgent. He can wait her out. Forever. Until her batteries run out.
He shoots the blue portal onto the wall and runs towards it. He stops at the edge. He can only stare.
"What is that?" the computer's tone has a slight edge of nervousness, something he can only tell by having spent nearly every waking moment with her voice over the speaker system.
In the blue-ringed oval there is a city, night-blackened skyscrapers pierced by yellow lights through hundreds of windows. Street lamps and traffic lights at crossroads. Neon and billboards. Gentle wafts of pollution. The lights, hazing out the night sky. The lights were calling him home. Or at least, closer to home than this lab. Chicago.
"I wouldn't go in there if I were you. Sure it looks like the outside, but really it's just a boiling pit of acid where no one could ever love you. It's part of the test!"
He leaps into the night sky without another moment of hesitation.
A journey that should have taken only a second seems to have lasted some hours, as he's flung across the dawning day's sky and right into the side of a building. He clings spider-like to the brick briefly, dazed, before letting himself drop down to the sad stringy city grass. He sits with his back to the wall, in his dingy orange jumpsuit and bare feet. He clutches the portal gun to himself, stares at nothing. His heart and mind are racing but his body is exhausted. For the first time in months, he tastes fresh air without chemicals. Well, fresher air without mind-altering chemicals. The city smells like gentle decay, unlike the sterile death of the lab. Creation and entropy, not stagnation.
He can feel that his invisibility's gone for the time being, but he doesn't care about feeding his powers right now. He just, he needs a moment.
[OOC: Somewhere between the Kashtta and the park. But if a better location would suit you, that's fine too.]
"Aperture Science regrets to inform you that this test is impossible. Your rat brain can't help you now."
Run. Shoot a portal in the wall. Jump in. Fly across the gap out the other side. Run up the opposite wall. Press the button, grab the redirection cube. Direct the laser. Charge the dotted lines on the wall. Find another cube and do it again, each strand in the web of dotted lines must be charged before the lock opens. Each action affects the puzzle, brings it closer to completion, brings him closer to the next test and the next. The adrenaline is always flowing in him. He's always intent on the task. It's hard to plan escape, hard to plan killing her, when he's just so energized and focused on this thing. Time doesn't mean much, it's never needed to. Nothing is urgent. He can wait her out. Forever. Until her batteries run out.
He shoots the blue portal onto the wall and runs towards it. He stops at the edge. He can only stare.
"What is that?" the computer's tone has a slight edge of nervousness, something he can only tell by having spent nearly every waking moment with her voice over the speaker system.
In the blue-ringed oval there is a city, night-blackened skyscrapers pierced by yellow lights through hundreds of windows. Street lamps and traffic lights at crossroads. Neon and billboards. Gentle wafts of pollution. The lights, hazing out the night sky. The lights were calling him home. Or at least, closer to home than this lab. Chicago.
"I wouldn't go in there if I were you. Sure it looks like the outside, but really it's just a boiling pit of acid where no one could ever love you. It's part of the test!"
He leaps into the night sky without another moment of hesitation.
A journey that should have taken only a second seems to have lasted some hours, as he's flung across the dawning day's sky and right into the side of a building. He clings spider-like to the brick briefly, dazed, before letting himself drop down to the sad stringy city grass. He sits with his back to the wall, in his dingy orange jumpsuit and bare feet. He clutches the portal gun to himself, stares at nothing. His heart and mind are racing but his body is exhausted. For the first time in months, he tastes fresh air without chemicals. Well, fresher air without mind-altering chemicals. The city smells like gentle decay, unlike the sterile death of the lab. Creation and entropy, not stagnation.
He can feel that his invisibility's gone for the time being, but he doesn't care about feeding his powers right now. He just, he needs a moment.
[OOC: Somewhere between the Kashtta and the park. But if a better location would suit you, that's fine too.]