GLaDOS's Story: Part A
Chapter Four
We arrived at the salt mine and were greeted by a small crowd of men and women wearing business attire. Mr. Johnson and I approached them, and they acknowledged our presence.
"Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Cave Johnson, and this is my assistant, Caroline."
One of the men shook our hands. "Well, it's a pleasure to meet you two. I'm Clark Reeves."
I gave him a pleasant smile. "So, do you know who will be overseeing the sale?"
"I'll be showing people around the mine, and if they decide to buy it, I'll send them to my boss, Mr. Brunswick."
"Okay." Mr. Johnson let off an energetic breath of air. "Let's see what this old puppy's got in store for us."
Mr. Reeves chuckled. "Well, so far, everyone who has stopped by here turned down the sale after being showed around the place. We might get lucky with you two, but I wouldn't hold my breath to that."
"The sooner we get through, the sooner we'll know." I brushed a lock of hair out of my face. "Shall we begin?"
"Very well. Follow me." He motioned us to a large wooden shack. "The elevator's in here."
As we rode the elevator, Mr. Reeves explained the history of the mine to us. It had opened in 1875 and operated for 30 years until it was shut down for violating a new slew of work safety regulations. It reopened after upgrading to the new policies until all the salt that could be mined was mined. The company decided to sell the mine tunnels and search for another location.
As few companies had use for a large network of tunnels that reached close to the bottom of the Earth's crust, nobody had tried to buy it before us. A movie company did consider using it to make a movie, but the sheer quantity of tunnels made the mine impractical for their plans.
But as we were shown around the labyrinth of tunnels, Mr. Johnson slowly became cemented to the belief that the abandoned mine would be perfect for my proposition of a science research company. It covered a lot of ground for any experiments that we could foresee, and its depth would easily hide whatever happened within, be it controversial research or anyone on the run from the law.
Of course, Mr. Johnson never made his true intentions known to anyone except me, and I was perfectly fine with it. After the tour and our meeting with Mr. Brunswick, we were able to buy the mine for $10,000. It was a really cheap deal because of how many previous companies had declined to buy it. The purchase made front-page news.
We hired a team of construction engineers to start construction on the new business we were about to launch. I took to learning as much as I could about science while Mr. Johnson started recruiting personnel. Most of them were college dropouts who had been pursuing degrees in science and/or medicine, as Mr. Johnson thought much of what colleges taught was useless.
Three years passed, and Aperture Science Innovators was finally opened for business on July 17, 1947. We were awarded the Best New Science Company Award from the Science and Business Institute of America that same year.
In 1949, we were ranked #2 among the Top 100 Applied Science Companies by the Mechanical Engineering World Journal. Naturally, since we were second place, I wanted to know who was in first place.
It didn't take too long to find the answer: the Black Mesa Research Facility in New Mexico. My suspicions were confirmed when I found that my father was its founder and administrator. The company's wide range of awards led Mr. Johnson to lock Aperture in a tight rivalry, struggling to beat Black Mesa at their own game. But not only did they outdo us in more ways than we could count, they didn't even know we existed.