[GLaDOS] Welcome to the jungle.

[notawastedlife]

He was strapped into a suit that usually accelerated the palladium poisoning that was killing him; the only reason it wasn't, this time, was that in the place of the arc reactor he had an unstable cold fusion reactor that was going to overload, causing the reaction to become uncontained and devolve into standard fission

Comments

[gla_dos]

There was a moment's white-noise, the non-silence generated by a living space station, before a slick whir emanated from what had been a plain wall and a large, glowing white rectangle with rounded corners appeared. It had on it in black a symbol that possibly denoted an airlock and the number 4. After a moment, a second image flickered up onto it, which was the same airlock only open, and the sort of symbolic human most often found on slippery when wet signs and restroom doorways falling into it, as though in pictorial warning.

A jaunty little tune, most likely composed on a synthesizer, played from unseen speakers.

"Hello," a pleasant if strangely modulated female voice said, "and welcome to the Aperture Science Computer-Aided Space and Enrichment Station. We are very pleased to have you on board and would like to congratulate you on your discovery of the location of this station. The Enrichment Station hopes you find your time aboard to be both funnn and educational."

[notawastedlife]

Oh, this was interesting. And people thought you never got anything worthwhile out of plugging an unstable nuclear reactor into your chest and going on a jaunt into space.

He took a look around, to see if he could spot the speakers, and didn't. Stepped to the panel with the pictorial warning on it instead, and waved his hand in front of it, in case it had an interface.

"Congratulations... accepted," he said. "Can you hear me? Is this automated?"

[gla_dos]

There was a pregnant pause.

"Hello," the voice said, "and welcome to- oo the-" The sound stretched for a split second then stopped.

"Just kidding," the voice said. "I am the station's Genetic Lifeform and Disc Operating System. Which is to say, I am the computer in the 'computer-aided' part of the Aperture Science Computer-Aided Space and Enrichment Station's title."

[notawastedlife]

That was a little unsettling, that voice, but he supposed he couldn't blame -- her? he'd go with her -- her for having a synthesized voice. It wasn't her fault her engineers hadn't done as good a job on that as he had with Jarvis.

Besides, she had a sense of humor. That was promising, wasn't it?

"Nice to meet you, Genetic Lifeform... et cetera," he said, turning away from the pictogram. He picked a direction. One seemed as good as another. Started down the wall, head tilted upwards. "It's a pleasure. Tony Stark. Interesting place you got here."