Disclamer: I don't own Portal that is owned by Valve
Chell's Afterlife – 4
Mel and I sit in her apartment eating. Some sort of meat? Well, at least it's cooked. I've been in Lobella for about 45 minutes now, and out in the world in general for like a day. I know it's the LAST thing I'd ever have wanted to admit to myself, but I'm feeling homesick…er…Aperture sick. I mean, I have Ash, and Cameron, and my turret now that I've gone back and collected it. But mainly I have Ash, yet, I've had no opportunities to USE him. What's the point of having the greatest scientific device ever if you can't even find enough usable surfaces to make it work! As Mel dragged me over to her house earlier I saw 6 useable surfaces, SIX! And that's with some generous rounding…
Urrrrrgg… I blame Black Mesa for this. Why? Well other then the fact that everyone at Aperture did it, they're the ones that inspired the Portal project. If there was no portal gun then I wouldn't have a reason to complain right now!
…
No, I don't mean that, I love Ash, even more then how much the cake was built up and I wanted it when I first heard about it but then I didn't get any. I love Ash even MORE then that wheat field that symbolized that I had my freedom back. My point is that despite all things that make sense and logic, I miss testing with Glados, I'll admit that pushing the boundaries of reality WAS pretty awes-
"CHELL!"
What? I look up at Mel, who looks like she wants my attention.
"Finuly," Mel says, "I've bin tryna' get yer attention fer thuh last few minites."
"Sorry, I must have zoned out while I was thinking to myself." I guess I'm one of THOSE people that day dreams too much. Crap. "What's up Mel?"
"I wuz guna' show ya yer room." She says, standing up. I comply by putting my fork down and getting up to follow her.
Mel leads me down a flight of stairs into a sort of basement. It might be important to note that the apartment I'm in only has one floor, there's no second floor. So until now I was wondering where the bedrooms were, now I know they're downstairs instead of up.
"I see yu got a Portle gun thare, yer guna' luv yer room then." Mel says, stopping in front of a door.
"Why's that?" I ask.
"Weeeeeeeeell…" she says, slowly opening the door. The room I see is nothing like I expected, it's so much better. I excitedly run into the room, It's a huge empty space covered in flat whitely painted walls, it's a completely blank room. This place is devoid of EVERYTHING except a small painting on the left side wall, a bed, and a small mounted shelf with two containers of paint. It's perfect! I give Mel a huge hug
"Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!" I jump up and down a couple times before I shoot blue and orange Ash around randomly.
"Ha haha ha hahaha haha!"
"Yeah," Mel says, "I aridginully wannina use this room ta paint murals on thuh walls an' stuff. But ull let ya use it ta sleep an' that such." I look at her.
"You paint? You don't seem the type." To me she looks more like an apocalypse survivor, actually, everyone seems to look like that in this town. I wonder what everyone's hiding from me…
"Uh-huh, I paint, not on enny paper tho, ma dad taut me that." What? Oh right, Mel says that. But I need her to answer a question for me.
"That's cool, but hey," I question. "What happened to this town? it looks like you guys were recently attacked." Mel became, well, I'm not sure that there's a word for the expression on her face, the only word that's coming to mind is confressed.
"That wood be thuh Combine," Mel motions to the bed, "sit, I hav a LOT ta tell yu."
Over the course of however long we were down there she told me the whole story, starting from the portal storms, and ending with Borealis, and I quietly listened the entire time. Of how Black Mesa of all places, unleashed hell when they tested THEIR portal technology, Mel told me to avoid using Ash where the people of this town could see me, she says it'd freak them out. Black Mesa ripped a hole in reality, followed by aliens and the like to come through and be on earth, they're called the 'Zen' or something, but they aren't as important. Apparently the portal storm alerted some sort of multiple universal controlling master race called the Combine to invade and devastate everything. A war took place that lasted as little as seven hours, and humans lost, this was, I'm going to guess and say, sometime around when I defeated Glados, personally, neither Mel or I know when I did that.
Anyway, the Combine have been in command and ruled with an iron fist for the last 20 or so YEARS. Meaning I haven't been in stasis for all that long, good. What ISN'T good is that some alien assholes took Earth for themselves, at this point in the story I got up and declared to bring them down or die trying. If you knew me you'd know for a fact that if I declare something then nothing stands in my way until it gets done. Like in 3rd grade, I didn't want to have homework so I made the teacher not give the class any, it took 2 months and a couple mental breakdowns on his part, but I did it, and no one's stood in my way since! But I'm getting sidetracked; Mel calmed me down by telling me that someone was already on their way to stop them. Some scientist named Gordon Freemint or something like that started the resistance movement all over the world. He then went north to an unspecified arctic location to retrieve some documents on a ship lost up there.
Mel and I used our collective knowledge to figure out that the 'ship' is the Borealis, it used to belong to Aperture, but one day it disappeared, along with part of it's dry dock. It was later figured out that the ship didn't disappear, it just teleported up north to 'an unspecified arctic location' or something. Either way, Gordon and a woman named Alex went there to get the documents and beat the Combine that way. Whatever he's going to do, he left three months ago, and since has gone missing, but it's alright, since the Combine were also pulled from North America over the last 4 or 5 weeks, meaning he's still alive, and winning, which is good.
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The rest of the day I spent time getting to know the townspeople, specifically Mel, the twins, and the first guy I met, who everyone calls Gil. It's a nice little town that I wouldn't mind spending time in, that is if I wasn't planning to return to Aperture. But not for another couple days, I want a chance to rest up and regain full strength before returning, but not tonight, tonight I have a plan. During the day I kept getting asked questions about what went on at the Enrichment Center while I was there. I didn't feel comfortable answering a lot of them, or just talking in general, since APPARENTLY remaining silent for a few years straight affects your personality. Either way no one got my story, and that isn't fair to my new…ish friends, Tonight I'm going to tell my story with the paint and brushes.
