The Things We Do For Science

by Dr. Kineil D. Wicks

Cooperative testing is supposed to bring people together through science. Cake is often a good motivator, but escaping a madhouse that tries to pass itself off as a science facility works better. Will they escape? Or will the facility keep them clutched in its iron grasp forever?...

11. Bots Building Bots

Chapter 11, everybody! I've decided to add an update every other Thursday for this one in addition to the Tuesday updates—I've got enough of a buffer on this one to do so, so we shall see how this goes….

Don't Starve © 2013 Klei Entertainment

Portal © 2007 Valve

They found a management rail and followed it.

"Why didn't that turret fire at us?" Willow asked.

"Let's not look a gift horse in the mouth," Wilson said. "Hmm…the rail seems to be leading towards an assembly area."

"Assembly area?"

"To put it in plain terms: bots building bots."

"Ah."

Wilson debated about telling her the story he had heard—that the people working on it had been replaced with animatronics—but decided against it. In this environment, it made it too scary.

The absence of any other employees was beginning to scare him.

"We'll run into someone soon—don't worry," he told her. "We'll run into someone and report that test track supervisor—"

"Or they're in cahoots with him and will turn us right back over to him," she said.

"Don't be so pessimistic."

"That's really hard at the moment—didn't you say that this place employed hundreds of people?"

"Thousands of people."

"Shouldn't we have run into someone by now?"

He hated to say it, but she had a point. He leaned against a desk, thinking—

Wait….

He looked at his hand, the fine layer of dust showing up beautifully against the gray gloves. On the desk was a perfect outline of his hand.

There was never dust in KVAS. Never.

Fine! Fine! The test track supervisor yelled—he'd be stonily silent for about five minutes before trying again. Go ahead, get lost back there and die! A cleaning bot will find you eventually!

Not 'an employee will find you eventually'—a machine would.

What was going on here?

"This way," he commanded, heading for the next door.

"Are you sure?"

"This will lead us to a control panel—I'm sure of it."

They left the management rail, turning down a side hall and heading down it.

"This looks familiar," Willow noised after a while.

It did. It really did.

It really, really did.

Wilson stopped dead.

"What? What is it?" she asked.

Wilson swallowed hard. "Ah…to get out of here…we have to go through his chamber."