Portal: #239

Chamber 0 - Waking Up

The room was slowly illuminated by the light coming from the observation window overlooking the small, practically useless room. This wasn't entirely useless though, this was where they always started, no matter what track.

A woman lay down in the relaxation pod bolted to the floor in the glass box. Consciousness started returning to the seemingly lifeless body, encased in the futuristic coffin-like contraption. The woman's eyes began to open as her vision was still trying to focus on the surroundings. The glass casing suddenly split clean in two and moved to the sides, allowing her to move off of the white bed.

When her sight fully came back, she noticed the glass room she had found herself in was very small, clean, minimalistic, yet cage like. Danielle didn't like how it felt. There was a small table, no taller than halfway up her shins, placed in the corner, upon it was a radio, playing some upbeat music, a clipboard displaying symbols, and a mug of what seemed to be warm tea. She cautiously drank it, noting how it had been made with milk & 2 sugars, just how she liked it.

A few questions floated around in her head, like "what is this place?", "how did I get here?" and "what is going on?". She even voiced a few of them, muttering under her breath.

In response to her questions, a speaker contained in the ceiling of the room made a noise as it activated and soon came a human voice saying "Hello, subject #239. You are in the Aperture Science Enrichment Centre, we brought you out of hibernation to participate in the handheld portal device testing series."

Happy that whoever was talking to her had answered the questions, her memory started to return. "who are you?" she asked, posing yet another question to be answered.

"Ah, of course. Where are my manners? My name is Christopher Bennett, and I will be your guide throughout the testing initiative."

Danielle decided to try and move around some more, but she stumbled over, luckily stopping her fall by grabbing the side of the hibernation pod.

"Looks like you're taking a bit longer to adjust to the reanimation process, take it easy. You have been asleep for 2 years, after all." Chris told her.

Danielle was taken aback at that news, "2 years?!" she thought to herself. "what about the outside world? I have friends there, they'll be worried sick about me!" She expressed towards the disembodied voice.

"You don't need to be worried about that. All of your friends have been told that you're going to be away for a while and will be out of contact with them for a while, we've taken care of everything." She felt slightly calmer after hearing that, at least they wouldn't think she was dead.

"Now, I need to keep informal interaction with you to a minimum during the testing, so if you have any more questions to ask, then please ask them now, the tests should begin in a few seconds." Christopher said. Danielle had none left to ask, so she told him as much. "Good, please be aware of the white panel in front of the relaxation pod, the testing will proceed in 3, 2, 1". As he said that, the rectangular panel he was describing lit up, and a strange orange oval, made of a weird energy opened up.

Through it she could see a room similar to the one she was in, with a woman that looked identical to her. It didn't take long however, to realise that she wasn't seeing a different room, she was looking into her own room. She looked to her right, and noticed a blue version of the Portal that stood in front of her. Dumbfounded as to how it worked, she put her hand through the orange, and sure enough it came out the blue. "This is incredible" she exclaimed to Chris.

"Yes, I suppose it is. However, we do need to get on with the testing, and time is of the essence." he reminded her, making her walk through the orange portal, still very impressed with the technology that had just been presented to her. Sadly, the short hop between the two points could not be replicated for the distance between the Portal and the doors, but nevertheless she walked around the cube she had been in moments ago towards the exit.