Aperture Science Surveillance Room | Some Ohio Somewhere

[dollpocalypse]

"And this," Topher said, swiping his ID badge against the sensor on the door that he and Victor had just arrived at, "is the surveillance room. For watching the test subjects mess up and stuff. It's kind of also a break room, 'cause most of us eat in there and there's a fridge and a popcorn popper, but its technical purpose is surveillance

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[ultron_junior]

"Sure," Victor said, snagging a handful as he flopped onto the couch. "So what is the dude trying to do?"

He'd been having a good weekend. Aperture was a little creepy, in a way that set off his possible-supervillain detection senses, but interesting.

[dollpocalypse]

"Okay, this but minus the building destruction and the Wheatley and GLaDOS is actually one of the easy ones," Topher noted, pointing. "That button that opens the door is activated by weight, like a person or a cube, so he needs something on it to hold the door open. So he has to get the cube from over there and use the hard light bridge so he doesn't get turreted."

The guy seemed not to be picking up on the hard light bridge part, and appeared to be a little afraid of jumping down near the turrets, though. And who could blame him?

"It's awesome to watch people not get things," Topher summarized.

[ultron_junior]

Victor nodded slowly, mentally mapping out what the man would have to do. Pres the button here, step on the light bridge there, add a fourth portal on that panel ...

It didn't seem hard to him. But he wouldn't want to do it with a merely human brain.

"What happens if the turrets get him?" he asked. "It's like a paintball thing and he's out?"

[dollpocalypse]

Two months into working here, Topher had given a fair amount of thought to the amount of moral shadiness that went on at Aperture. Maybe not as much as someone who actually cared about morality would have, but still, it had crossed his mind more than once. And while he knew that he, personally, didn't care, he was also pretty sure that Victor, as a superhero, would.

"Uh, yeah," he said, managing to pass off his slight hesitation as distraction-related as he reached for another handful of popcorn. "Like at school."

It was a dumb lie, because what if the guy actually got injured as they were watching? But he seemed smart enough, and the last test subject fatality had been a while ago. A week at least. So Topher had hope.

"We're testing cognition, mostly," he added. "Not murderability or anything."