the combines had been searching the ice covered monstrsity for hours trying to find the hidden treasure that would help them concour the earth. the ship was huge, with ice covering most of it's hull. a group of combine soldiers were chipping ice off the hull when they found several letters painted on, A_rt_e, they uncovered the rest of them, aperture, they've found it, this is the Borealis.
Cave johnson and his lovely assistant Caroline stood on the dry-dock of the great ship borealis, this would be one of their greatest achievements yet. this massive ship would be the first vehicle in history to use its own propulsion system and long range teleporters. and because of the teleports this project had to be kept secret, the monsterous ship was to leave for its first test run up in the arctic circle in a few minutes, cave was here to see it off. cave was worried and jittery, he couldn't stop thinking about the dream he had, this very ship, frozen in ice, with strange soldiers chipping away. he was tempted to call of the test, but aperture was loosing money fast, with so many products still in the test phase, and even more being pulled of the shelves for safety reasons, aperture was gaining a bad reputation... at least he could always fall back on his shower curtains.
as the ship left, Cave reached for Caroline's hand, he found it, he still couldn't believe it had been 19 years since the interview. it was 1970, and Cave had just ordered 7 million dollars worth of moon rock.
Cave rushed down the hallway with his normal impatience, but this time, he was headed for Caroline's room. also different, was the fact that he was carrying a bouquet of flowers. Cave and Caroline had been secretly seeing each other like this for quite some time now, it was entirely a secret. so naturally, every aperture employee knew about it. though they never talked about it, it was more of an unspoken thing. when he reached the door he stopped, knocked three times, waited a second. no answer. he knocked three more times. still nothing... just as he was about to knock again the door flew open and before Caroline could even react she had Caves arms around her, and they stayed like that, for a very long time. eventually she let him in, they sat on the couch for a while, watching T.V and talking, not much happened, they left Caroline's apartment and walked around for a while. eventually the computerized voice sounded midnight and Cave walked Caroline back to her apartment, they said goodnight and Cave walked away, but as he was going away he heard footsteps racing after him, he turned around and Caroline kissed him. for a long, long time.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back! Get mad! I don't want your damn lemons, what am I supposed to do with these? Demand to see life's manager! Make life rue the day it thought it could give Cave Johnson lemons! Do you know who I am? I'm the man who's gonna burn your house down! With the lemons! I'm gonna get my engineers to invent a combustible lemon that burns your house down!... the point is... if we can store all this music and information on a tiny disk, why cant we put a persons personality on one to? now I'm going to say this on tape so everyone hears it a hundred times a day. if I die before we can pour me into a computer, I want Caroline to run the lab. now she'll say she cant, she's modest like that, but you make her! hell, put her in my computer if thats what it takes!..."
when Cave finished his latest pre-recorded message, he stood up, paused for a moment to cough violently, then left the recording room. Caroline heard all of this from her vantage point behind the door, and she didn't accept a word of it. why was her beloved Cave not his normal optomistic self? mabey it was the moon rock jell/pure poison coursing through his bloodstream, that was probably it. knowing that you were marked for death would probably ruin anyones day... but why would he want her to run aperture? she could think of quite a few people who would do a lot better. it was then that it occurred to Caroline that she should probably tell him her secret, it might make him feel better, or worse, a whole lot worse... given that risk she probably shouldn't tell him, aperture couldn't take another hit like that... Caroline's phone beeped, it was Cave, he needed more pain pills. Caroline sighed and went to get him some.
aperture founder, Cave johnson, died on april fifteenth, 1987, and no one was more distraught than Caroline, his personal assistant and secret lover. he died before the artificial conciousness wing could even be finished, so she was going to be downloaded into a massive supercomputer that would be in charge of the entire facility... but she didn't want to run the lab, she just wanted to be with Cave. which made it all the more terrifying when the scientists came to take her to see her new body.