Chapter 4
In a room, where the walls glowed bright pink and the counters were cluttered with bowls and batter encrusted whisks, worked a large black man. His name was Ted LeBerge, but every one called him teddy bear, or they would have at least if he was ever let out of his nauseatingly pink prison. Day and night he would be that room, spending all his time working, sleeping or reading a worn copy of the book Brave New World. But, although he was confined to his kitchen, Ted never really complained. For he loved his job and any onlookers would see that he performed it with a ballerina like grace. He floated from cupboard to cupboard balancing a larch porcelain bowl in the crook of his arm, whisking its fluffy pink contents with ease, and using his free hand to pluck out, from the cabinets, whatever ingredients he pleased and toss them into the bowl. His feet were used to nudge open fridges and pantries and his knees were used to shut ovens and dishwashers. He whistled an uplifting tune all the while, one which his mother would gently sing to him when he was a young boy. The song was called "Memories" which was ironic because it was his job to take them away.
He spun and glided to and fro around the room and after he had circled the kitchen twice, for the room he was in was indeed a kitchen, Ted halted in front of a small round table, and gingerly placed the bowl upon it. His hand disappeared into the pocket on his apron and reappeared holding an ornate rubber spatula. He spun it between his fingers and raised it into the air. But just as he was about to plunge it into his bowl, seemingly filled with large pink clouds, his performance faltered. His whistling stopped and his arms dropped to his sides. With a considerably less amount of flair he walked a few paces away from the bowl and opened a cupboard filled with vials all containing the same volatile black substance. Ted grabbed one of them and shuffled back to the bowl. He lazily removed the stopper from the vial and put four drops of pure black on the pink substance. His clouds deflated and sunk down into the bowl. He frowned, picked up his rubber spatula and mixed the contents around a bit.
"Hello, Mr. LeBerge." Ted jumped and looked up from his stirring.
"M-Mr. Gerald, you scared the bejesus out of me. I didn't hear you come in." responded Ted to the man that now stood in front of him. Mr. Gerald looked around at the pink walls that enclosed the room.
"Mm, yes, most people don't these days." He continued to look around the room that he, with his dark suit and black brief case, was in clear juxtaposition with.
"Well what are you doin all the way down here, I haven't seen you in a looong while." Ted resumed mixing but kept an eye on Mr. Gerald, who's gaze had just snapped back toward Ted.
"I just came to see how you were doing."
"Well I'm doin just fine." Ted broke out into a grin. "I'm almost finished with this icing. Man I can't wait to get out of here."
"Mm… can't we all." Mr. Gerald's head abrubtly turned to the right and Ted followed his gaze. He didn't know what Mr. Gerald had looked at so suddenly. Ted went to turn back to the man when two hands grasped either of his face and snapped his head in the opposite direction.
Mr. Gerald released his grip on Ted's skull and the large male crumpled to the ground. Stepping over the murdered man he picked up his brief case and flickered out of exisistance.
It had been three weeks since Frank had met with Dr. Magnusson, he was told to come back the day after they had done the scenario questions, but last he heard something happened with one of the scientists' other experiment that took precedence over GLaDOS. In the meantime Frank was told to get back to his work as an Angel. But Bernard had taken over his most important case, so Frank was left with the scraps of tests that no other Angel wanted to do.
Currently he sat lolled in his chair lazily speaking commands into the microphone. "Pick that box up, yes that box, put it on top of the other one, yes that's good." His voice was as emotionless as the Official Supervisor Manual says to be and he stayed far out of view of the fogged glass window as his boss once advised. After the excitement of Sarah, and his other high profile cases, a subject testing adrenaline pills bored him to no end.
This train of thought brought him to the idea of his soon to be new job: being nothing more than GLaDOS's glorified security guard. How bored would he be with that job? "Now walk through the elevator…." But it was an honor. He kept coming back to that word. Back to Magnusson telling him how he should be honored to have anything to do with GLaDOS. He sighed and spoke once again into the mic "Now walk out of the elevator and…" This one wasn't exactly a 100 watt bulb, Frank sighed, again, knowing he would have to hold the man's hand throughout the entire test.
A soft knock rasped on the door. Frank's head swiveled on his palm to look at the entrance. "Come in." he said. The door opened, and one of the white coats entered. Frank perked up and lifted his head out of his hand.
"Hello, um, Mr. Anderson?" He was a small nervous man whose tie was ruffled and creased from his constant fighting with it.
"Yes." Replied Frank standing up to shake the man's hand. The white coat stepped back a little from the extended arm and starred at it as if he was making a life or death decision on whether to shake it or not. He decided on the former and removed his right hand from his tie to quickly rest his fingers on Frank's outstretched palm and then return it back to its proper place. Frank looked at the man not sure what to make of him. The room was silent for some moments. "Soo… Does Dr. Magnusson need me?" Frank asked. The man looked up from the carpet to respond.
"No! I need you, or, what I mean is you're my new partner. I'm Louis Faraday."
"New partner?"
"Y-yes, for observing GLaDOS. I was asked to teach you today, but if you're busy.."
"Oh god no! Please get me out of here, I don't think I can take this test subject any longer." Louis was startled by Frank's enthusiasm.
"W-well all right, I have an Angel on hold to take this test over. Meet me down in GLaDOS's chamber after he arrives."
The past three week hadn't been too kind to Sarah either, although it was anything but boring. After her gourmet meal her food returned to the disgusting grey slop, and it took three days for her Angel to figure out that she had been flushing her food down the toilette. It occurred to him after she collapsed in the middle of a test. After that he watched her eat, keeping the mounted ceiling gun hanging in front of her face, as a nice little reminder of why she should keep swallowing spoonfuls of the grey sludge. Every so often he would mention how wonderful her congratulatory cake would taste when she finished the testing. Her mouth would water at the prospect and she would grudgingly fill it with what ever food they put in front of her.
What her Test Supervisor didn't mention was the interaction she had with the other test subject. The next day it came upon Sarah that he was trying to make her think that it never happened when they repeated the test. How stupid could he be to think that she would just forget the thing that fueled her need to get out of this hell? In truth Bernard simply assumed that she had eaten her delicious dinner that night and ingested the groggy pill that he had hidden in it to make her forget the previous day's happenings. He thought the reason she was refusing her following meals because they weren't up to par. Nevertheless, Sarah played along, keeping her mouth shut. She would take anything that she might be able to use to her advantage.
Throughout the week she continued on her desperate path for control. When they made her to eat she refused to sleep, leave her chamber, or even touch the Portal Gun. She even stopped dead and sat down during a test. Each of her vain attempts for any sort of free will was met by some sort of pain or drug that forced her to surrender, only strengthening the grip that Aperture had on her. Sarah went insane, at a brisk pace. It didn't take long for her to try to kill herself.
She used the Portal Gun to hurtle herself into walls and to send her body plummeting down deep pits. She wasn't sure what life she had before this hell, but maybe it was good enough to get her into heaven. Maybe that picturesque scene wasn't one plucked from her mind, maybe it was what awaited her in the afterlife. "There is no after life." Her Test Supervisor informed her. "There is only an after this test, which will come when you complete it!" Her death wish was getting to him, Sarah wasn't really sure why, but it seemed that he went against all odds to keep her alive. For every time she thought she felt the cold embrace of death she awoke, not to her paradise, but to her hell, in which she would be tortured in every way imaginable. Yet she wouldn't stop.
Her Angel had forced her to watch a video showing the gruesome deaths of former test subjects, there was even a clip of how her Portal Gun predecessor met his demise. It showed a corpse in complete free fall through portals placed adjacently; one on the ceiling and one on the floor. The dead body had reached such a velocity that they had to have three men jar it from the portals by interrupting its path with a large slab of metal. The image only fueled her attempts. The next day she tried to mimic the man's idea. She placed an orange portal directly above her and a blue portal directly below. After falling for a few moments her chin caught the edge of her blue portal, sent her careening out of the free fall, and caused her to vomit several times before passing out.
This suicide attempt, her fourth, was her last. Because this was the one that caused her Angel to snap. His robotic monotone voice was slowly being replaced by one that was shrill and angry until he was all out screaming at her. "Why do you insist on making this so hard?! Just complete the tests and we'll set you free! There is no need for you to kill you self!" Throughout the scolding she was being beaten around her glass cubical by a metal pole suspended from the ceiling instead of the electricity gun. "Don't you want to go to your home?! Don't you want the cake!? Maybe I should just allow you to die! You're worthless like this!" As she was falling from the blow of the metal rod she managed to catch her self on her bed and speak.
"Some Angel you are." Her tone was venomous, portraying all the hate she had for her Test Supervisor and the center. This comment hit hard, and Sarah heard a loud yell from the control room. The metal pole raised above her, poised to strike. And then she heard a second scream from the control room, but this was not the voice of her Angel, it was deeper, more booming, and sounded faint. It screamed a name, Bernard, and the metal pole went limp and rose back into the ceiling. The voice of Sarah's Angel crackled through the loud speaker again.
"We'll resume testing in the morning." It said. He was clearly trying to speak in his normal emotionless voice, but it sounded strained and his anger showed through.
The room was silent. Sarah waited for something to happen, for some device to lower from the ceiling. From behind her there was a metallic clank and she spun around to see her grey slop slide through her food slot on a plate.
She fell back onto her bed and reflected on the passed few weeks. She realized that, in a very short time, she had lost sight of her true goal. She wanted to get out of this place more than anything, yes, but the solution was not to kill herself. But it wasn't to complete the test either, for she was sure that her paradise and a delicious cake would not be waiting at the finish line, as her Angel frequently reminded her. No, the way to get out of the Center was to wait, watch and listen. Take the amazing tool they had given her and exploit its power. Gain information and use it to her advantage. And the best way to do this, currently, was to break Bernard.
"Bernard." She said it a loud and looked toward the fogged control room window. "So that's your name." Sarah smiled, for the first time in three weeks. Her sanity had returned, and she was taking control of the situation. She walked over to her plate of mush and lifted it. She needed to keep her strength up; tomorrow was going to be a new start. Just before she fell into a deep sleep she looked into a grate outside of her cubicle. If only she could some how get to it, then she could escape. She starred at it for a few more moments and then sat bolt up right when she could've sworn she saw a shadow move within the duct. She watched closely, and, when nothing happened, she dismissed it as her imagination and went back to sleep.
Two-thousand three-hundred and forty-two below Sarah the body of Ted LeBerge was only now being moved from the pink room in which he had been murdered barely four hours earlier. His once jolly face was now lifeless, and his head lolled side to side as he was picked up off the ground. His death was not random; it was not out of spite, it was simply necessary.
His life at Aperture Science Center started like this. He had just opened his pastry shop when a man approached him about a job. The man's name was Mr. Gerald, and he didn't appear mysteriously behind Ted, but walked through his bakery door. As he walked in Mr. Gerald eyed a cake that stood untouched under a glass cover. It was doubled layered, covered in chocolate frosting and topped with eight cherries, laying upon dollops of whipped cream. Ted greeted his first customer and Mr. Gerald promptly asked Ted if he would like to work for Aperture Science Center. He told Ted that he came from an organization that tested people and that those cakes would be perfect as incentive for their test subjects. He failed to mention that these test subjects were taken against their will and were performing extremely dangerous tasks with cutting edge weapons and technology. Ted said thanks, but no thanks to the offer, for he already had a job. Then Mr. Gerald mentioned what Ted's salary with Aperture would be. Ted closed his bakery by the end of the week.
The Enrichment Center provided him with near by housing and made him swear to secrecy. They told him that, while everything they were doing in the Center was completely legal, it was top secret government technology they were working with, and that it was important that he not tell anyone exactly what his job was. They also told him that the only alteration he needed to make to his recipe was three drops of a special liquid into his frosting. But he was to never, ever, taste it. Ted agreed. he was a man who rarely argued, and who would? His job was to bake cakes, his paycheck was higher than most pro football players and the only restriction was he couldn't eat anything he made.
Ted quickly got to work on making all of the cakes the Enrichment Center required. He arrived at work the exact same time every morning and left at the exact same time every afternoon. He made every cake with skill, precision, grace, and, yes, even some love. Four years came and went like this, and Ted's work load gradually increased as the Enrichment Center grew. Eventually it became too much for one man and Aperture brought in another chef. Her name was Claire Austen, she was a stubborn young girl, but Ted took a liking to her. Unfortunately she didn't stay long, for she was a bit more inquisitive of the Center than Ted was.
She was obedient, like Ted, for six months, for fear of getting fired from her high paying job. But Ted noticed the changes in her attitude. It was slow at first, but then he could see her changing day after day. She got angry, impatient. Why did she have to live so close by? Why couldn't she tell anyone about the Center? And what was in those black vials?!
"Don't you ever wonder, Ted? Why would they use cake to motivate test subjects? And why do we need to add that unnecessary ingredient." She would ask these questions frequently, her whisk flicking violently in her bowl and her blond ponytail jumping up and down.
"I don't ask questions Claire, and neither should you. They treat us well here, let it be."
"But I should think that I should be able to taste my own ingredients. Don't you?"
"Fine, then! Taste the black liquid! Just stop your whining." This was the first time Ted responded angrily to Claire's constant questions, and it surprised her. She slammed her bowl down onto the counter and grasped a near by black vial. Ted starred at her with intensity. She starred back, raising the open vial up to her mouth, and tipping it toward her.
One drop. That's all it took. The instant she swallowed it she fell to the floor and went into convulsions. Ted's bowl shattered as it hit the floor. He ran to her aid, but had no clue what to do. He cried out for help and ran to the door. It was locked. In all of his four years in this kitchen the door had never been locked, but in all of his four years he had never tried to leave before his shift was over.
The reality of what he was doing and who he was working for hit him hard. His job was to make cakes for the test subjects. And they received theses cakes at the completion of their tests, but these were no ordinary cakes. The black liquid that was mixed into the icing for each cake was an extremely potent memory block.
Throughout the testing, subjects were exposed to subliminal messaging and other various tricks that made them crave the very cakes that Ted was hired to make, but once they consumed a single slice of the dessert their memory of the ordeal was gone. Aperture Enrichment Center used this cake to recycle Subjects, to place each person they had captured in a variety of different tests, with no knowledge of the multitudes of labyrinths they had already completed.
This truth became clear to Ted when Claire woke up without recollection of who or where she was. Soon after, Ted's pleasant kitchen was invaded by strong men in uniforms, holding guns. They dragged Claire away and left Ted alone, locked in his kitchen. Three days past until someone showed up. It was Mr. Gerald. He told Ted that he had two options: remain at his job, living in the kitchen instead of his home, for one more year, or have his entire memory erased and send him on his way. Ted wisely chose the former.
But was it so wise? For year after year Ted remained in his pink prison, hoping that each year would be his last. Eventually a decade went by, and Ted remained in the kitchen making cakes day after day. It finally seemed like they were going to release him, after his fifteenth year working for Aperture, but on his very last day Mr. Gerald arrived and snapped his neck. The Center had no need for him anymore, GLaDOS could make cakes twenty times as efficiently as he could. So Aperture sent out their new teleporting mercenary to snuff him out, extinguishing all his knowledge of the Aperture Science Enrichment Center so that it would never leave Ted LeBerge's peppy pink room.
"Hello? Are you still there?" The voice was sweet and kind, but Sarah knew better than to seek its source. A red laser beam weaved in a figure eight pattern on the wall adjacent to the corner in which Sarah was hiding from that red beam. She took a few deep breaths and placed a blue portal on the wall behind her. She then spun around and took careful aim at the ceiling above the sleek metal turret bot. A ball of orange light escaped her portal gun and hit its mark as she fell back into the portal behind her, only barely escaping an onslaught of turret fire. She reoriented her center of gravity in mid air and landed skillfully behind the robot. After lifting it with her Portal Gun's magnet attachment she spun around another corner, unleashing the robot's gun fire unto three other robots. Their shrieks of protest were disturbingly human like, but Sarah enjoyed watching them squirm on the ground, sputtering out their last bullets before fading away. She let her robot fall to the ground and it followed suit.
After the robot wished Sarah good night she moved on. As much as she hated these tests she had to admit that she was good at them, and there was no denying that their completion came easily to her. She had gotten past her suicidal phase now, and was back on the right track. She jumped through a blue portal and was propelled onto a raised plat form. Equipped with her new knowledge about Bernard, she was ready to escape on her own terms. Her impact protectors made a sharp clang as they landed on the metallic floor. Bernard thought that he had knocked some sense into her and Sarah eluded her insanity. Bernard. She savored the knowledge of his name. It was a small fact, but one that she would come in handy. Every one was happy, relatively.
Sarah ducked past a few whizzing energy balls and turned the corner. She stopped dead in her tracks in a large open room. She starred into Bernard's fogged window, standing perfectly still. His voice spoke through the speakers, monotonic once again.
"What's the problem? This room shouldn't be a challenge for you Subject 4815." She didn't move. Bernard feared that she had given up once again, and just as she had changed her mind. "Stop looking up into the window and complete the test." But she wasn't looking at his window, in fact she was looking just below it where, written in crusted dried blood, were the words "Follow Me."
Hi again. Sorry this chapter took a little while to write. I had trouble organizing my thoughts and I kept adding more content, but I think it came out good. Thank you to all those who have favorited my story and to those who submitted reviews on my last chapter. Please tell me what you think of this one, and thanks for reading.