When he woke up, his knowledge consisted of only two things: One, he knew he was himself, although he didn't know his name or even a vague idea of what "himself" looked like; and two, that wherever he was was very white. And very bright.
"Dead?" He muttered to himself as he raised a hand to his forehead, instinctively checking if he was cold of not without even realizing it.
The sound of his own voice made his brain swim. He squeezed his eyelids closed and grabbed the sides of his head. Something reminiscent of a headache, but not quite it, rang out from the middle of his skull.
"Ah." He shook his head and opened his eyes wide and became aware of a third thing. He was laying down on something comfortable. After a quick check he discovered it was in fact a large white bed. A large bright bed.
"A large bright bread." He said aloud, mispronouncing the word bed. "I knew I was going to do that." He said to no one and had a sudden moment of clarity. He kind of understood who he was in a foggy sort of way. Like remembering an old TV show character - not a star, but someone important enough. His facial features rose up to the surface of his brain and began forming a picture of himself in his head - and as they did his left hand instinctively reached for a spot behind his ear. His fingers traced a small scar that ran in a semi-circle behind it.
"I know that scar…"
A name began to form in his head, but the letters were coming to him slowly, like the numbers came to you on the Pennsylvania Lottery drawing.
Pennsylvania. I'm from Pennsylvania.
A-L-L-A-N.
"And now for the power ball drawing… Allan? God that's a stupid name." He said sitting up. Nothing on him hurt as he did so, which was a good sign, but nothing changed either. That meant it wasn't a dream. There was something weird going on. And he was Allan… the Pennsylvanian.
The room he was in was about the same size his bedroom on Cooper street was.
That's right. I grew up on Cooper street. I'm… in my twenties. Twenty-one? No… that's being generous. I'm twenty-three… or four.
He pondered his true age for a bit longer before settling on twenty-three and getting back to observing the room. It was the same size as his little green room from Cooper Street, but it had been soaked in an eye-straining white. He was living in a giant eggshell, out of the side of which was a window.
A window!
He slid off the bed and made two more discoveries; One, he was barefoot because the floor was cold; And two, that he was dressed in an ugly prison-orange jump suit. A cold splash of panic hit him. Was he a prisoner somewhere?
"Allan the Pennsylvanian convict?" He said aloud, studying the words to see if they rang a bell or even made sense to him. "No… I was a student. A good one too."
He ignored the ugly clothing for the time being and made his way to the window. Somehow he miscalculated the height of it from his spot on the bed, because it was just above his head. He looked around for something to stand on, his eyes landing on an appropriately colored white chair that was at the foot of the bed. He dragged it over and peered outside.
Clear blue sky and swollen, puffy clouds peered back at him and nothing more. He looked down and didn't see anything, he looked up and saw a replica of below. It made him a little light-headed. Either he was in a very tall building, or he really was dead.
"Dead…" He whispered the word, too afraid to say it much louder.
"Please do not kill yourself." A voice came so sudden and loud it caused Allan to disorient and lose his balance, stumbling before knocking his head and shoulder of the wall and tumbling off the chair to the floor below. His elbow flared in pain as he landed on his side.
"Do not even think about jumping out of the window, you can not fit your whole body out of it anyway."
The voice again, this time he was a bit more prepared and was actually able to hear it. The tone in it. It was… a robot? No, it was somehow human. A female, in fact. The way she spoke though was strange, as if she had just learned the English language, but somehow learned it wrong, learned it from a computer.
"Hello?" The word escaped his lips in a whisper. He cleared his throat and tried again. "Hello?" The time his voice was loud and clear, it filled the little room and hung there waiting for a reply.
"Hello." One came.
The voice was definitely female. She seemed to be over-pronouncing every word she spoke though, not to mention the fact that it sounded like she was speaking out of a broken voice modulator. Behind all the strangeness though there was a real person in it… he could almost make out some emotion…
"Are you still there?" The voice questioned, seeming to come from very inch of the room at the same time.
"Where… where am I?" It was the first question that came to his head.
"Welcome to the Aperture Science Testing Facility. You have chosen, or been chosen, to participate in-"
"I didn't choose anything!" He cut the voice off, finding strength in anger as he rose to his feet. He stared at the ceiling, being as it was the only place it made sense for him to stare.
"You have chosen, or been chosen," The voice continued, putting a slightly annoyed emphasis on the word been, "to participate in the further development and evolution of our scientific studies."
"What the hell is going on." He said to himself in disbelief, grabbing the sides of his head and getting little fistfuls of hair. "Is this real?"
"Yes." The voice answered, even though he was talking to himself. This time he didn't hear the woman inside it. He didn't hear any emotion behind the sound. All he heard this time was a cold answer told to him by a machine that had him at it's mercy. He had spent all of three minutes in this place and he already hated it. Hated the machine, hated the room, hated the ugly orange jump suit. He was just Allan from Pennsylvania… and he wanted to go home.