Portal: Love as a Construct

Part 128. The Freeman

Part 128. The Freeman

-

I don't feel any different.

I don't understand what that means. Have I still not done what I need to do? Is letting you go the only thing that will make me feel better? Or is that simply never going to happen? Is letting you go even possible?

I wish I had someone to talk to about this. Someone who understood what I'm trying to do. Wheatley would try, of course, but I really think I need someone with the relevant experience.

Maybe Gordon knows. I wouldn't say we're 'intrusive personal questions' close, but then again, Gordon doesn't seem to be that close with anyone. If he was, it was with Chell, and she vanished without a trace months ago. Perhaps he'll welcome the familiarity. And if he doesn't, it isn't as though I see him that often.

I am seeing him very soon, though. The mainframe, as instructed, slotted him in early because he's human. I offered to move him to some other time, given he's a friend, but he declined. Perhaps he also likes to get meetings over with.

"No," he says, when I ask. "I like being up early. Not a lot of other people are."

"Is avoiding your fellow humans a goal of yours, Dr Freeman?"

"You could say that."

I like him already. I liked him before, because he doesn't talk that much, but now I like him as a person.

"You'll have to wait a moment," I tell him. "Caroline needs to know this, but she was in the middle of something when I asked for her to come here." She didn't say what. My educated guess is the aesthetic upgrade for the Facility. I sort of expected her to have brought me something by now in a flurry of excitement, but she appears to be taking it very seriously. I have to say I'm pretty pleased about that.

Gordon merely shrugs.

She's going to take a few minutes to arrive, which is fine because I have to find my old diagrams and redraw them onto this digital whiteboard. I know where they are, of course, but I might need some time to refresh myself on what my thought process was when I made them originally. Explaining it was something I was never asked to do. In fact, Isaac and Gordon are just about the only people who ever asked me to explain to them how something I made works. Well. I'm sure you would have, if you were a scientist. You did let me teach you programming when it was probably about the last way you should have been spending your limited free time.

"All right," I say once Caroline arrives. "First, you probably don't realise this, but I actually have two methods for teleportation. One of them is not technically true teleportation, but it is the only real solution for objects which cannot support the atomic transposition engine and are too large to be moved through a stable quantum tunnel, as can be opened with the portal gun."

"Which does this by generating a miniature black hole," says Gordon, and I nod.

"Yes. The black hole enables the removal of space and time between the two portals. Because of the properties of a black hole, this does not scale very well. It is technically possible to generate larger portals, but it would be a terrible idea. You don't want a terrestrial black hole, and especially not one larger than you can ever feasibly contain."

"How would you contain it?" Caroline asks. It's a good question, one I'm a little surprised she's thought to ask. She's never been very inclined to any of this, but perhaps she's just curious.

"In the event I was able to catch it within approximately ten seconds, I would generate two portals and trap it inside of the quantum tunnel."

"That might actually work," remarks Gordon, sounding impressed.