Douglas Rattman ran down one of the long hallways of the Enrichment Center. He was late, and today was a very important day. It was the day they had all been preparing for since back when Cave Johnson was alive. It was the day they were going to activate their Genetic Lifeform and Disc Operating System for the first time.
As he reached the lab he was going to be in for the activation, he paused for a moment and looked at his barley visible reflection in the plaque that numbered the door. This was going to be a day that went down in history, after all, and he wanted to look good in case anyone wanted to take his picture.
Feeling satisfied with his appearance, he opened the lab door and went inside. His partner on this project, Henry, sat hunched over a stack of paperwork. Hearing Doug come in, he turned around with a dissatisfied look on his face.
"Where have you been? She's getting activated in less than 8 hours, and I've had to fill out all these contracts by myself!" He said, angrily.
Doug approached the table Henry was sitting at and looked over the papers. They were all contracts for applying for patents on the Genetic Lifeform and Disc Operating System. Aperture had had some problems with their competing company, Black Mesa, stealing Aperture's products before.
"Well, I'm here now, so give me half of it," Doug said, gesturing to the paperwork. Henry grabbed a large portion of the documents and handed them to Doug.
"This thing better love us to death for all the work we put into it," Henry said, going back to filling out his stack of papers.
The shaking elevator rose into its position in front of the entrance to Chamber 3. They really need to work on making those things safer, Chell thought, still a little dizzy from how much the elevator had shaken on the last trip. Walking into the chamber, she looked around.
The chamber was significantly bigger than the previous ones she had been in, being at least as big as 15 feet in length. To her left was the exit door, with two trails of small circles protruding from it to two buttons. To her right were 2 platforms, one with an orange portal atop it, and one with a cube. Even farther to her left was a pit, about 8 feet deep. It contained a cube.
The robot voice once again came on. "This next test is very dangerous. Please be careful." The voice stayed off for a few seconds, then came on again. "Additionally, the Enrichment Center staff would like to ask you to refrain from destroying vital testing apparatus."
Chell thought back to the previous chamber, when she had shot down a security camera. Oh, you don't like that, do you? She thought. Spotting another camera above the pit to her left, Chell aimed the portal gun, and fired at it. A blue portal once again formed around the camera, making it fall to the ground.
"Please do not destroy vital testing apparatus. The Enrichment Center does not appreciate it," The voice said, sounding slightly less emotionless than before.
If that thing really is a computer, it looks like they gave it some emotion, Chell thought. Laughing to herself, she thought it impossible for a computer to have emotion.
After her brief moment of laughter, Chell's normal solitary look plastered her face once again. She began to look at how to solve the chamber. It didn't take her long to figure out that she needed to put the two boxes on the buttons to open the door, and getting to the boxes was no problem at all. With the use of her portal gun, Chell quickly had both boxes on the buttons and the door open. As she walked toward the exit, she paused for a moment. Looking back at the room she was in, she noticed that there were no more security cameras in the room. Walking back to one of the buttons, she picked up a cube and took it off.
The door snapped shut, and Chell took one more look around to see if there was any way for anyone to watch her, but there wasn't. She had taken out the only camera in the room.
This could be the only chance I have to do this, she thought, walking over to the corner of the room and getting down on her hands and knees. There was a very small crevice in between the wall and the floor to let light in, and if she could just fire a portal into that holeā¦
The gun made a mechanical splat as a portal was fired in between the crevice and into whatever room was below the floor. She backed up and then looked up at the orange portal on top of the pillar, and realized the flaw in her plan. Chell had no way of getting on top of the pillar to the orange portal without the help of her blue portal, which was inside the crevice. She heaved a disappointed sigh, and craned her neck to see if there was any way to see inside the orange portal.
From her current angle she couldn't see much, but there were a few words scrawled on the wall inside the orange portal. Squinting her eyes to see, she made out the words.
The cake is a lie.
