Port-Ed Chapter 5
Created by rcmero
Edited by Yoshermon
"These people are insane!!" Edd shouted to himself as he dodged the gunfire. He quickly opened up a portal above the menace and shot one under a Weighted Storage Cube, causing it to fall over and deactivate. Breathing heavily, Edd peered out from behind the wall only to be noticed and shot at once more.
"Building military androids to replace soldiers I can understand, and running them through a test course I can understand as well, but why do I have to go through it?!? he thought to himself. It was true; GLaDOS had put him through a test chamber for military andriods, stating that the intended test chamber was broken.
"And whoever designed these turret 'buddies' must've been crazier than Ed!"
Ed looked through a large pane of glass in the room at the turret "buddies" ahead. They were ovular-shaped, standing on three stationary legs with a red lense acting as an eye for them to find a victim. Edd merely thought they were harmless, especially when one saw him and said "hello" in a friendly voice. However, when its sides moved out to reveal four machine gun barrels that started to open fire on Edd, he quickly thought otherwise. However, he found he could disable the turrets by knocking them down, either by pushing them or dropping a heavy object on top of their round bodies. Edd was nicked a couple of times with the bullets, but the turrets didn't have a very sophisticated targeting system and simply pointed their guns in the direction of the victim.
Edd crouched down beneath a Storage Cube and slowly went in front of the turret buddy down the hall.
"I see you!" it happily chimed as it started to shoot. Luckily, the cube's weight was made up for by being three feet of solid metal Edd used to sheild himself from the bullets. He made his way quickly towards the turret and shoved the cube at it, knocking it over. It shot wildly in as many directions as it could aim before deactivating on the ground, its glowing red eye fading into a dark gray. Edd turned to reuse his strategy on another turret across the room when something caught his attention. Still crouching behind the safety of his cube, Edd crawled through the inconspicuous doorway to find a room inside of the larger on he was in. In it was a large pile of Weighted Storage Cubes, the cube dispenser above them apparently broken. Edd, partly out of spite for his "guide" throughout the tests, used the extra cubes to his advantage. Placing portals above the turrets (which, for some reason, were marked with X's) he dropped the cubes one at a time at each of the turrets. He made his way to the end of the level and let out a sigh of relief.
"If I wasn't so facinated by the inventions and scientific miracles I've witnessed I'd sue this place into next week!" he remarked as he went into the elevator.
"Well done, android. The Enrichment Center once again reminds you that Android Hell is a real place where you will be sent at the first sign of defiance."
Although Edd figured that was just an automatic response, it disturbed him greatly.
"The Vital Apparatus Vent will deliver a Weighted Companion Cube in 3… 2… 1."
Edd noticed a cube drop down from the dispenser at the beginning of testchamber 17. Upon closer inspection, the cube had a slightly different color scheme then the others. Also, regular Weighted Storage Cubes had an Aperture Science logo on each of the cube's faces. This cube had a big red heart on each side instead.
"This Weighted Companion Cube will accompany you through the test chamber. Please take care of it."
Ed and Eddy were having the time of their lives. After exploring the dark, rusty and suspiciously empty backrooms of the Aperture Science Enrichment Center, they came across a storage room stocked with Aperture Science Handheld Portal Devices, or just portal guns as Eddy called them.
"Eddy, look at this!" Ed shouted as he put portals above and beneath him, causing him to fall from ceiling to floor repeatedly. Eddy shot a portal at the one on on the floor Ed made, causing it to close. Ed landed hard on his feet and made a loud thump that echoed throughout the empty halls.
"It didn't hurt a bit Eddy!" he mocked, showing off his heel-spring implants.
"Oh yea? Try it again, on your head this time!" Eddy said as he "portaled" behind Ed and tackled him. After exploring some more (breaking a few miscalanious objects in the process), they came to one end of a long hallway.
"Race ya!" Eddy shouted as he and Ed quickly placed blue portals on the floor and orange portals on the low ceiling above them. They jumped in and fell, pointing their legs together and putting their arms to their sides to pick up as much speed as possible. They faced the wall in front of them and shot orange portals at it. As they fell through the blue portals on the floor with the speed they gained, they rocketed out of the orange portals and high speed and wizzed down the hallway in midair.
"WAIT!!!" Ed shouted, stopping in midair like a cartoon and grabbing Eddy as he wizzed by.
"What about Double-D?" He said as reality came back and he and Eddy plopped onto the floor.
"Oh yea, I forgot! Double-D would go crazy for scientific stuff like this!" Eddy shouted as he and Ed continued their race to find Edd first.
"The symptoms most commonly produced by Enrichment Center testing are superstition, perceiving inanimate objects as alive and hallucinations."
Edd quickly realized the usefulness of his Weighted Companion Cube as soon as he went into the next room of the test. Early on, Edd found out he couldn't place portals on metal surfaces, of which were increasingly strategicly placed throughout the test chambers to add to the challenge and keep Edd from simply "portaling" his way past every obstical. And since the entire hallway he was walking through was made of metal, he was glad that his Companion Cube repelled the energy balls that were slowly coming towards him. After going through another hall, using his Companion Cube again to deflect the energy ball boucing to and fro in it, he came across the main part of the test chamber. On one side he found an inlet covered in metal with a passage to another part of the test elevated above his reach. Edd also took notice of the three platforms on the ground next to it as well as multiple catchments for energy balls. Edd quickly found solutions to the numerous puzzels involved in getting the energy balls into the catchments, ranging from using his cube to deflect the ball into it to using his companion to weight down buttons to open the door blocking the ball's path. As each catchment was activated a platform would rise and become another stepping-stone to the inlet, which Edd assumed was the exit to the chamber.
"The Enrichment Center reminds you that the Weighted Companion Cube will never threaten to stab you, and in fact, cannot speak."
Edd was getting increasingly annoyed at the voice's comments and made a mental note to complain about them once the test was over. Before he got onto the ledge where he could jump to the platforms, Edd noticed something strange near the middle of the room. A section of wall protruded outward into the room an a large hydraulic arm. Edd could see a small room behind it and used a portal to get into it. In the small room behind the wall, Edd made a face of discust as he saw various bottles, cans and other rubbish strewn all over the floor. He looked at one of the walls and saw disturbing writing all over it.
"The Vital Apparatus vent will deliver, oh it will WILL. The weighted companion cube DOES speak. Superstition, perceiving inanimate objects as alive, and hallucinations. I'm not hallucinating. You are. The companion cube would never desert me. Dessert. So long... Cake, ha ha Cake. A lie. The companion cube would never lie to me. NEVER."
"Login: cjohnson Password: tier3"
"Trust me"
"Where are you? I will find you." (Separate words mixed with hearts and pictures of the companion cube)
"You said to take care of it. How can I you wouldn't let me. I should disregard your advice. Leave me alone! STOP WATCHING. Though earth and man are gone, I thought the cube would last forever. I WAS WRONG."
"Because I could not stop for Death, he kindly stopped for me The cube had food and maybe ammo and immortality"
"Not in cruelty, Not in wrath, The REAPER came today; An ANGEL visited this gray path, And took the cube away"
Along with the writing were several pictures of the Weighted Companion Cube, some replacing the heads of various people in pictures. Along with a crudely drawn picture of what looked like the security cameras seen throughout the tests came the words "She's watching you". Edd was highly disturbed by all of this. Whoever wrote it must've grown obsessed with his or her Companion Cube, but Edd noticed they quoted Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Emily Dickinson in some of the phrases. This, along with the voice's increasingly disturbing and wierd comments, made Edd's suspision skyrocket. However, there was nothing else in the room so Edd had no other choice but to portal back out. As the portal closed inside the room, more writing on the wall behind the portal appeared. "The cake is a lie." was written repeatedly down the wall.
"The Enrichment Center reminds you that the Companion Cube cannot speak. In the event that the Companion Cube does speak, the Enrichment Center urges you to disregard its advice."
Edd hopped across the elevated platforms with his Weighted Companion Cube hovering firmly in front of his trusted Portal Device. He finally got to the inlet and found a Super-colliding Super-button on the floor. In the room past it were two doors and a strange cylinder protruding from the floor tilted forward a bit.
"You did it! The Weighted Companion Cube certainly brought you good luck. However, it cannot accompany you through the remainder of the test and, unfortunately, must be euthanized."
"Euthanize?" Edd asked himself. To euthanize meant to kill something painlessly, but Edd's Weighted Companion Cube couldn't feel pain anyway.......Could it?
"Please escort your Companion Cube to the Aperture Science Emergency Intelligence Incinerator."
Placing his cube on the button, a door opened up to a small room containing a hand button. Edd pressed it and the top of the cylinder opened up, letting a fierce red glow poor into the room and causing the air around the cylinder to distort with the heat. Edd looked in the cylinder to see fire deep below. The ticking sound coming from the hand button grew faster and faster until the cylinder suddenly closed back up.
"They want me to incinerate my Companion Cube? Why?" Edd asked himself as he looked towards his faithful tool.
"While it has been a faithful companion, the Companion Cube cannot accompany you through the rest of the test. If it could talk - and the Enrichment Centre takes this opportunity to remind you that it cannot - it would tell you to go on without it, because it would rather die in a fire than become a burden to you."
"But why? Even if it can't go with my, why do I need to destroy the thing?"
"Rest assured that a independent panel of ethicists has absolved the Enrichment Centre, Aperture Science employees, and all test subjects of any moral responsibility for the Companion Cube euthanizing process."
"But it helped me through the test! I couldn't have completed the chamber without it!"
"Although the euthanizing process is quite painful, nine out of ten Aperture Science employees believe that the Companion Cube is most likely incapable of feeling much pain."
"Is anybody listening to me?? I demand to talk with someone sensible this minute!!" Edd shouted. Unfortnately, all he got in response was a repeated message to "euthanize" his Cube. Edd looked at it, resting on the button with his big red hearts. He had it for only a short time, yet he just couldn't see how he could just incinerate it. He destroyed other cubes before--accidentally dropping them into acid pits or watching them dissolve in the Emancipation Grille, but this was different. The Companion Cube was Edd's, well, companion!
"...No! Get a grip of yourself Eddward, it's just part of the test. It's not a person." Edd forced himself to push the hand button, once again opening up the incinerator. Running against the clock, Edd quickly grabbed his companion cube and started to lower it into the fire. However, he couldn't get himself to release the thumb-ring on his Portal Device, and his Companion Cube simply hung helplessly over the hellish flames.
"....I......Can't....." Edd stuttered to himself. He started to lift the cube out of the incinerator when suddenly the timer gave out and the door slid back into place, the Cube under it. A bright glow from the small hole in the middle of the lid indicated that something was burning, and Edd felt a small tear run down his cheek.
"You erased your faithful Companion Cube more quickly than any test subject on record." Edd felt a pit of anger forming inside of him as he heard the voice speak. "Congratulations."
The second door opened up, revealing the elevator to the next test. Edd slowly walked in, feeling remorse for the "inanimate" object he just killed.