Chapter 24, everybody! In which some progress is made….

Don't Starve © 2013 Klei Entertainment

Portal © 2007 Valve

The maintenance areas had not been maintained, ironically.

"And all this time he said he was fixing this place up," Willow muttered.

"He lied, obviously," Wilson pointed out. "No one would ever see this now—I suppose he felt that his attention was better directed to the testing tracks."

Willow sulked as she scanned the area for portable surfaces—ah, there. She fired the first portal and looked for another surface, finding one about ten feet back on the scaffolding.

They walked through and continued picking their way through the detritus.

There was grime everywhere.

"Now will you admit that there's something wrong here?" she asked.

He looked around at the grime and the stagnant pools and the rust, a fretful look on his face. "Well…ah…eh….There has to be a logical explanation for this!"

"There is—the guy killed everyone and left this place to rot."

"Then why continue testing?"

"Because the guy's a nut!"

Too late—Wilson was pacing now. "No, no…one guy can't have killed everyone in the facility and disposed of their remains—there are programs—"

He stopped abruptly, an odd look on his face.

"They have programs for disposing of bodies?" she asked, appalled. "What kind of sick twisted place is this?!"

"There are programs in place," he said slowly. "To keep people from becoming violent…that's run by the central computer."

"A computer?" she asked incredulously, as he went over to bang his head gently against an I-beam. "That was a person torturing us! There wasn't a thing mechanical-sounding about him!"

"Yes there was," he said, increasing his banging's strength.

"That was the mike…wasn't it?"

Bang. Bang. BANG. BANG. BANG. BANG. BANG.

She tapped his shoulder, concerned about his sudden stop.

"I think I remember," he said slowly. "Before—I was reading a file—I don't remember why—I got in trouble for it, serious trouble, but…something happened before I could get fired and relocated."

He looked at her.

"That file," he continued, weighing every word. "It was about linking up a human being with a computer network."

She said the only word applicable.

"Woah."

"Woah," she noised upon spotting the new room.

"Agreed," Wilson declared. "So he's doing more spring cleaning than I gave him credit for."

The orange light at the one end—that must have been the incinerator. There were multiple conveyor belts heading for it, loaded down with junk.

"No portable surfaces," Wilson said after a few moments, jolting her out of her focus.

"We'll have to jump across," she declared, looking.

"I'm not sure that's wise…."

"Do you have a better idea?"

He glanced around, then up.

"Actually, I do," he muttered, smiling slightly.