Portal: Love as a Construct

Part Thirty-Nine. The Adventure

Part Thirty-Nine.  The Adventure

Today I’m goin’ out by myself.

Usually Daddy comes with me when I go somewhere  I never been before but today I’m gonna do it myself.  I’m a little scared ‘cause this place is really big but I wanna start bein’ more grown up.  I’m doin’ pretty good ‘cause now I can read and write and I can draw a little better, and I can even get my Edgeless Thingamabobs out when they get stuck without askin’ for help.  So I’m gonna go in the facility.  I dunno where I’m goin’ yet, but it’s gonna be somewhere I never been.

Part of why I’m doin’ it is ‘cause Momma gave me an update yesterday and she says I got my own camera now.  And what I can do with it is take pictures of what I see!  So I’m gonna go really far and take some pictures to show her.  I hope she’ll be proud of me again.

I erase the picture I had on my panely – I mean my whiteboard, that’s what Momma said it was, and put the markers for it away.  I’m really excited for my adventure but I’ve never really done anythin’ without tellin’ Momma before.   I mean she’ll always know where I am if she looks but I feel kinda diff’rent not actually tellin’ her.  But Daddy and her don’t tell me everythin’ they’re doin’ so I guess it’s okay.

I make sure everythin’s neat and tidy for when I come back and then I go down the hall.  I’m goin’ a little slow ‘cause I still feel funny about not tellin’ anyone but the panels are here so someone does know, right?

The farther I go the older lookin’ stuff gets.  It’s not really diff’rent from where I usually go otherwise.  There’s lots of offices with computers and desks and windows in them.  Some of the offices I go and look inside but they’re all the same.  The only thing I can see through the windows is test chambers, but they’ve all got their lights off and the testing stuff is shut down.  The one I’m lookin’ at now I think has the pellet-firing thingy and the thing that makes the blue swirly things.  One day I wanna go in a test chamber and solve a test, but I haven’t asked Momma to yet ‘cause I dunno how you solve a test chamber without bein’ able to hold the portal gun.  Also Momma won’ let me touch the portal gun so that makes it even harder.  She said she’ll let me look at it when I’m old enough to understand what a black hole is.  I’m gonna look it up in the database but I keep forgettin’.  I really wanna look at one ‘cause they’re really pretty an’ Atlas has a blue one so I really wanna look at it.  Momma has a portal gun too but I haven’t seen it.  I just heard Momma and Daddy talkin’ about it one time.  Momma was sayin’ that she thought it might be broken and it would be just like her to break it before she left, and Daddy started laughin’ and said she got the last word in, even though she was mute.  I dunno who ‘her’ is.  I haven’t seen anyone else here and the only other girl is P-Body, and she’s here so it can’t be her portal gun.  Plus she still has hers. 

The farther I go the more lights are off, and I see some of Momma’s cam’ras but I think they’re turned off too ‘cause they’re facin’ the floor.  I go up to one an’ look at the front of it.  I don’t see the little red light on it so it’s gotta be off.  Once I asked Momma why she has a little red light near her eye, and she told me it was because she makes a recordin’ of ev’rything she sees.  She told me I couldn’ do that though because then I’d fill up my hard drive, which I need for other stuff like learnin’.  So I gotta be careful when takin’ my pictures.  I feel a little nervous again.  Momma only turns off the cam’ras farthest from her chamber.  So I’m gettin’ really far now. 

I keep goin’ but a little slower.  There aren’t a lot of panels here anymore.  I can see this place and it looks kind of like an office but not like the ones where I just came from.  The only problem is that the ceilin’ has a diff’rent kind of rail on it and I’m gonna have to leave the one I’m on to get there.  I don’t know what I should do.  I’ve never been off this rail before.  Is that rail safe?  Maybe it’s not, since it’s stuck to the ceilin’ and all.  But if it wasn’t safe, why would Momma leave it there?