Archive of Our Own ^beta

NOTES

The basic premise is that Doug Rattmann was discovered still alive and well in his stasis bed after the end of Portal 2, and subsequently cleaned up and given an exciting new job as the Aperture Groundskeeper, though nobody can seem to decide whether or not this constitutes a promotion or... whatever the opposite of a promotion would be (by Aperture standards). He takes care of the facility, conducts whatever maintenance he can, provides counsel to the (...mostly) robotic staff and tries to mediate their problems, while mounting the occasional expedition into Terra Incognita (not even GLaDOS has mapped the facility in its entirety).

However, Portal being what it is—a miserable little pile of vaguely timed events, temporal contradictions, fair guesses, open-ended backstories, retcons, and yes, secrets—I took it upon myself to scaffold the universe as much as I possibly could, at least for the maintenance of my own continuity.

And sanity, yes that.

So it logically follows that I would also begin this collection with a Timeline, which I made as a kind of signpost for my own personal headcanons, to be guided by Actual Canon as much as possible, keeping in mind that Valve's official stance on Actual Canon is that there is No Such Thing. Go figure! And while it does cover what few concrete events and dates I could find from Valve, I just want all my readers to understand that I am in no way attempting to define Canon for anyone else. Feel free to use it as a reference if it helps you for your own purposes, but there’s absolutely no obligation to agree with any or all of this. It’s just for fun!

Also, for reference, the stories in this collection will reference facility sectors from my homemade Aperture Map (it's on my GDrive here, which is not ideal but the best I can do, sorry). Similarly, nothing in this map is Canon (with the exception of a few names in the bowels of the facility) and can be totally ignored. It's not really important but I don't want anyone to get confused.

Some stories may contain brief and inconsequential references to the Half Life games; I do cleave to the notion that the two universes are concurrent, kinda like Green Acres and Petticoat Junction. If you're unfamiliar with the Half Life story, it wouldn't be a bad idea to read a summary of its general happenings and the state of the world beyond Aperture. However, it's not required reading! There won't be a pop quiz or anything, I promise.

NOTES BUT WITH BULLET POINTS

• I picked 2005 as the year of the catastrophe at Aperture Science that leads into Portal, though it could happen at any point between 2000 and 2010 (when Portal starts). As far as I know, the previously used 1998 date has been retconned.
  
  
• In this ‘verse, I’m making a distinction between the Aperture Science facility and the Aperture Science Enrichment Center, with the latter being just one specific section of the former, which is massive and includes several production/energy plants, employee housing, offices, cryogenic vaults and more. The Aperture Science Enrichment Center, as of 2005, encompasses a selection of test chambers and offices surrounding GLaDOS’s central AI chamber. However, it has moved over the years, with its earliest iteration located in the very bottom levels of the Aperture Science facility.
  
  
• The word ‘verse is really super annoying and I hate it as much as you do, but I can’t come up with anything better right now. Sorry. I'll stop.
  
  
• Chell and Doug are fraternal twins in this one. Again, it’s just a headcanon but a conclusion that I can't seem to shake... in fact I think about this every time I read Lab Rat and I've always wanted to do something with it, so here we are. Stasis shenanigans have caused their relative ages to fluctuate against one another; even though Chell was born first, Doug is already a bit older than her by the time he gets released from his own stasis vault. If I have the math right (big IF here), she should be 22 while he's 33. While sparing the details, I should at least get it out that nobody is the secret love child of Caroline and/or Cave Johnson or anything scandalous like that, and nobody was abandoned at birth (that was just GLaDOS bluffing). This was more like a "Parent Trap"-type setup between two ordinary Aperture employees who got a divorce very shortly after the kids were born. Sorry if that's boring but hopefully it's at least... new? Also Chell was born a couple hours before Doug, but due to the timing of their mom's labor they ended up being born on different days. I haven't actually decided yet if either one is consciously aware of this but there's probably at least a subconscious feeling, or a "hunch", as Doug once said. In fact the only one who may know for sure might actually be GLaDOS so maybe she's saving this tidbit for a rainy day...
  
  
• The Borealis is an icebreaker barge, constructed in the late 1990’s and previously located deep within the Aperture facility, specifically next to condemned Test Shaft 09 (Zulu Bunsen). It is a significant part of Aperture lore, but it is also something of a total mystery, the stuff of urban legends, thus making it difficult to place on the timeline. In a nutshell, The Borealis contained advanced but dangerous experimental technology—most likely involving time/space travel—making it a potentially highly appealing target for any incomprehensibly oppressive interdimensional empires who may or may not have conquered the planet during the mid-2000s (and assuming they ever find out about it). In any case, the ship disappeared from Aperture at an unknown time, for unknown reasons and by unknown means, leaving behind part of its dry dock and a couple life preservers bearing the ship's name. Its current state and location are hinted at over the courses of Half Life 2: Episodes 1 and 2; the plot of Episode 3 was rumored to center around The Borealis as well, but the game never materialized, leaving its ultimate fate unknown as well. (See Marc Laidlaw's Epistle 3 for more...)
  
  
• There’s a quite strange little loophole in Lab Rat, involving the Morality Core and GLaDOS’s usage of neurotoxin. In Portal, GLaDOS states that Aperture fitted her with the Morality Core after she killed several staff members with the neurotoxin, as a means of stopping her from killing people with the neurotoxin. In Lab Rat, the installation of the Morality Core happens some time before this—specifically, it’s how she lulls Aperture’s scientists into a sense of false security, allowing her to have access to neurotoxin in the first place. In my opinion, both events need to happen, even though they will directly contradict each other without some kind of intervention. I’ve attempted to reconcile the two by saying that the Morality Core malfunctioned and was removed for repairs during the very brief window of time between its first outing (in Lab Rat) and the date of GLaDOS’s rampage (pre-Portal, when it is reinstalled shortly after the initial neurotoxin release).
  
  
• Suggested Theme Song: XTC - Senses Working Overtime
  
  
• Current Year: Impossible to say. Speculation has it anywhere from a few years/decades after the events of Portal, to a few centuries afterwards, to 50,000 years afterwards (according to Valve). According to GLaDOS it is now 52,167 AD, but one can't help but wonder if she might be stretching the truth just a teeny tiny bit...

THE TIMELINE THUS FAR

Symbol key:

♥ - Canon event and date, or as close to it as you can get with Valvecanon.
♦ - Canon event, but the date is speculation / a guess / fudged a little.
♠ - Headcanon / Canon hybrid freak of nature.
♣ - Pure headcanon.

• [♣] 1920/05/28: Cave Johnson born; Sault Ste. Marie, MI.
• [♣] 1932/11/13: Caroline Humbird born; Schenectady, NY.
• [♥] 1943: Young business maverick Cave Johnson founds Aperture Fixtures, a shower curtain manufacturing company; incidentally, he is awarded “Shower Curtain Salesman of the Year”.
• [♥] 1944: Cave Johnson buys up an abandoned salt mine in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula; future home of Aperture Science Innovators.
• [♥] 1947: Aperture Science Innovators is established by Cave Johnson.
• [♥] 1949: Aperture Science Innovators is ranked #2 among the Mechanical Engineering World Journal’s Top 100 applied science companies. #1 is none other than newcomer Black Mesa.
• [♠] 1950: Caroline Humbird comes to work for Aperture Science Innovators as administrative lead, replacing long-time Aperture Fixtures fixture Dorothea “Dot” Russell, who left following a dispute involving Cave’s unconventional, rebus-like approach to dictation. By this time, Aperture Science Innovators has completed a working model of the Aperture Science Handheld Quantum Tunneling Device, capable of creating quantum space holes (or portals) on certain surfaces. However, the technology is still rough around the edges and dangerously unstable. And while Aperture does not have a stated purpose for this remarkable phenomenon just yet, Cave Johnson believes it could be applied for use in the home bathroom as a shower curtain.
• [♥] 1951: Aperture Science Innovators begins its inaugural Enrichment Sphere Testing program, recruiting the cream of the crop to further the progression of the Aperture brand of Science. For the next decade, Aperture’s test subjects are pooled from war heroes, Olympic-class athletes, astronauts and other outstanding citizens.
• [♦] 1952: With its testing program and underground facilities now mostly complete, Aperture Science Innovators begins development on Repulsion Gel. Derived from fiberglass insulation, it was originally intended as a dietetic pudding substitute until “various reasons” saw the product pulled from shelves. The company is also awarded the runner-up certificate for U.S. Department of Defense's Contractor of the Year, narrowly losing the top spot to Black Mesa.
  
  

Doug Says: "Repulsion Gel is hard to paint with, too. Impossible to blend on a palette. It makes such a mess but I find it goes a little smoother if you thin it beforehand with a little Propulsion Gel. The color turns a bit greenish, but it’s better than getting spattered in the face with the stuff whenever you try to render, say, Atlas’s beautiful blue eye."

Atlas Says: (Embarrassed squabbling)

• [♥] 1953: Aperture goes public as Aperture Science Incorporated.
• [♥] 1954: Aperture Science is awarded another runner-up certificate for U.S. Department of Defense's Contractor of the Year. No points for guessing who came in first.
• [♥] 1955: Aperture Science wins the Spirit of Idaho! National Potato Board award for their contributions towards technological progression in Potato Science. When interviewed by the board and asked Why potatoes?, Johnson replied: “I just think they’re neat.”
• [♥] 1956: Construction completed on Pump Station Alpha (Repulsion Gel). Meanwhile, Aperture Science lands a plum contract to make shower curtains for all branches of the U.S. Military (except the Navy). The continued production of shower curtains (until 1973) will eventually make Cave Johnson a billionaire, though the money is spent nearly as quickly as it is made.
• [♥] 1961/06/15: Test Shafts 01-08 (Zulu Ampere) and 09 (Zulu Bunsen) are condemned and abandoned; Test Shafts 01-08 were accessible through Zulu Bunsen via an underground train, but the shafts and train tunnel were swiftly vitrified prior to this date, suggesting a serious incident that required an immediate and terminal intervention.
  
  

Doug Says: "While I was preparing to map these sectors, I sent an Aperture Self-Managed Pathfinding Core down there to gather some preliminary data. It never returned, so I sent another Aperture Self-Managed Pathfinding Core down there in an attempt to locate the first Aperture Self-Managed Pathfinding Core… That part of the excursion was unsuccessful, but the data I received was inexplicable: The tunnel wasn’t vitrified or even filled with cement, as suggested in facility records. Furthermore, before it can reach the other test shafts, the tunnel ends. But there’s no evidence of a wall or anything like that. The core wasn’t able to photograph the tunnel, and an environmental scan of the area resulted in a divide by zero error. Very ominous. What could possibly be down there?"

• [♦] 1963: Aperture Science develops and markets a new dietetic food product called Propulsion Pudding. Derived from fiberglass insulation, consuming the pudding would coat the digestive tract in a substance that increases the velocity of anything traveling through it, thus giving the body no opportunities to absorb calories. It was quickly pulled from the market when it was discovered that the digestive tract requires time to not only absorb calories and nutrients, but to break down quantities of food into a manageable size and consistency before being excreted in a reasonable manner.
• [♥] 1968: Aperture Science, now in dire financial straits due to reckless spending (among other things), becomes involved in some U.S. Senate hearings regarding a group of missing astronauts.
• [♦] 1970: Due to budgetary concerns and increased scrutiny from various federal law enforcement offices, Aperture Science’s human resources department is forced to reformulate its strategies for acquiring test subjects. The company begins by reaching out to homeless people, ex-convicts, orphans, the mentally ill and senior citizens, tempting them with the promise of $60 (cash) and a place to sit for a few minutes.
• [♦] 1971: Test Shaft 09 (Zulu Bunsen) is partially re-opened after being deemed the most suitable location for testing Aperture Science’s Propulsion Pudding, now being re-purposed as a velocity-enhancing paint. While the purposes and marketing angles of the paint remain yet unclear, construction begins on Pump Station Beta, as well as new test chambers.
  
  

Doug Says: "The average running speed of a human being is about 175 inches/sec., give or take. But running on a surface coated in Propulsion Gel can boost that speed to 800 inches/sec., so… bring a helmet? Wear good shoes? Call your mom, tell her you love her? Also, painting with Propulsion Gel doesn’t make you paint faster, strangely enough."

• [♥] 1973: Aperture Science introduces a BBS for employee use. It will remain operational until 2005, the end of Aperture.
• [♣] 1976/01/31: The debut of Aperture Science’s bicentennial-themed industrial musical Holes of Glory: 29 Years of Aperture, performed live at the Collington Memorial Hall on the Aperture premises. It was a product of its time, designed to promote teamwork and boost company morale (which had been on a steady decline along with company profits), and featuring such charming tunes as Holes of Glory, Showers of Gold and One-Way Ticket to Science and (The Navy Can) Eat Our Shorts and Astronauts? What Astronauts?. As the musical was produced exclusively for employees of Aperture Science, the original cast recording was distributed in a proprietary 38¾ RPM format that can only be played back on Aperture turntables. Copies were available for purchase in the company store as late as 1997, when all Aperture-made records were pulled off the shelves after a team of scientists discovered that playback of a 38¾ RPM record could result in spontaneous molecular implosion in laboratory bananas.

• [♣] 1977/01/19: Chell [REDACTED] born; Undisclosed.
• [♣] 1977/01/20: Douglas Rautmann born; Sault Ste. Marie, ON.
• [♦] 1980: Despite being financially insolvent, Aperture Science (at the behest of Cave Johnson) spends $70 million on moon rocks, which are ground into a white paint that can make any surface conducive to quantum tunnels (portals). Around this time, Cave Johnson’s health begins to falter, from either mesothelioma, silicosis, or “moon rock poisoning”, depending on who you ask.
• [♦] 1981/07/04: In a last-ditch effort to secure reliable funding, Aperture unveils two tiers of an exciting new three-tier company initiative during a nationally broadcast television special: The Heimlich Counter-Maneuver and the Take-a-Wish Foundation. The former is a technique designed to interrupt the Heimlich Maneuver and help someone resume choking to death, while the latter is a charity that redistributes the “wishes” of terminally ill children among healthy adults who “would appreciate them more”.
• [♦] 1981/09: After several high-profile choking incidents and sustained outrage from the grieving parents of terminally ill children, Aperture Science becomes involved in another round of U.S. Senate hearings. During the hearings, an engineer offhandedly mentions that Aperture has made significant progress on the company’s previously undisclosed “Tier 3”, involving quantum tunneling technology and moon rock paint, with possible applications in the home bathroom as a shower curtain alternative. Aperture is immediately let off the hook and granted an open-ended government contract to continue working on both the portals and the Heimlich Counter-Maneuver. But as development ramps up on the Conversion Gel, Cave Johnson begins to succumb to his illness.
• [♥] 1982: Aperture Science moves to a computer-based system for assessing and processing all test subjects, including employees (who are now required to participate in regular testing). This system is known as GLaDOS: Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System. However, it is only the bare scaffolding for what will come in later years…
• [♣] 1984/05/01: A potato battery criticality incident during the annual “Bring Your Daughter to Work Day” science fair results in the permanent closure of the entire Echo Einstein employee daycare/educational facility, plus the neighboring gym in Echo Franklin. Aperture will not attempt another such event until 2005, wiping all remnants of previous events from official records.
  
  

GLaDOS Says: "Voltage is the difference in electric potential between two given points in space, measured in joules per coulomb, or volts. Current is the flow of an electrical charge, such as electrons through a wire, or ions through an electrolyte, or rejected Aperture Science Experimental Consumer Appliances through an Aperture Science Experimental Consumer Appliance Reject Disposal Chute. Current is measured in amperes, defined as the flow of a charge across a surface at one coulomb/second. We have proven countless times that the average russet potato has enough ions inside it to conduct electricity, if wired in series with a cathode and an anode. However, with a maximum output of roughly 1.5 volts, it follows that we cannot, should not, and will not use that potato to power the Betamax in the robotics workshop."

P-body Says: (Distressed squabbling)

GLaDOS Says: "Actually, maybe you should leave that potato with me. For science..."

• [♦] 1984/07: Shortly after seeing construction on Pump Station Gamma completed at last, Cave Johnson passes away, naming Caroline Humbird as his successor. His original intention was to upload his own consciousness into the GLaDOS mainframe, thus fleshing out the Genetic Lifeform portion of the project. However, as his death occurred before the technology was ready, Johnson ordered that Caroline would be the one to be uploaded instead, to run Aperture Science in perpetuity. It remains unclear whether Caroline agreed to the orders, and if so, whether her agreement was conditional.
• [♥] 1985: Earliest version of the Aperture Image Format (.AIF) software, an interactive file format used for internal memorandums and promotions; along with the company BBS, this format remained in use until 2005, despite the availability and standard usage of more advanced computer technology.
• [♥] 1986: Upon hearing that rival applied science company Black Mesa has commenced R&D on their own portal technology, development begins on the GLaDOS project in earnest.
• [♥] 1989: Construction of a prototype chassis for GLaDOS is completed. However, it is never used officially and kept in storage.
• [♥] 1996: With the Disk Operating System now complete and fully functional, work begins on refining the GL part of the GLaDOS acronym.
• [♣] 1997/07/16: Fresh out of college with a bachelor’s degree in applied physics (minor in industrial design), Doug Rautmann comes to work for Aperture as a technician in its industrial design department, at the insistence of his mother Naomi (who worked for the company from 1962 to 1988 as an aeronautical engineer). At first he is saddled with a slew of aimless tasks that are obviously unwanted castoffs from senior colleagues, including administrative upkeep of the company’s aging AIF software and BBS. Eventually his supervisors recognize his abilities and reward him with a handful of actual responsibilities, including improving and maintaining the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device. His work also nearly earns him a place in the company’s newly formed Artificial Consciousness Development Taskforce, which he ultimately turns down due to ethical concerns. Meanwhile, he is chagrined to learn that, in a keystroke of poor luck, his entry into the company’s personnel file system left him permanently named “Rattmann” in all official capacities, including his ID card.
  
  

Doug Says: "There were always moments here when I would question the value of my time and the way I would choose to spend it. I suspect it has been the same for any employee who ever existed, anytime, anywhere. In my case, I had to weigh the worth of one letter against a ticket bearing a seven-figure number, a sign that said 'Now Serving: M', and what I believe was a cardboard cutout of Ted Danson propped up behind an old IBM Selectric. When all you get is a half hour for lunch, a typo is a keypunch you just have to roll with."

• [♠] 1997/10/30: Caroline Humbird, acting CEO of Aperture Science and terminally ill with an undisclosed form of cancer, submits herself to the GLaDOS project as per the late Cave Johnson’s wishes. The transfer of her consciousness into a computer format is successful, albeit fragmented across several 3½” floppy diskettes. The intention is to compose a “modular persona” for GLaDOS through a number of interchangeable Personality Cores, as a means of modifying her functions to suit company purposes while maintaining some degree of human control and preventing her from gaining true sentience. The ever-prescient Doug Rattmann posits that the company’s refusal to transfer Caroline’s entire psyche into a single, immutable archive will lead to fidelity loss, platform instability and serious consequences.
• [♣] 1997/10/31: A pre-GLaDOS boot integrity test for the several 3½” floppy diskettes containing the complete brain map of former Aperture CEO Caroline Humbird goes awry with an "unprecedented energy surge" to a mock-up mainframe, destroying it while igniting a small electrical fire in the AI workshop. Fortunately the fire causes only superficial damage and is extinguished quickly. Caroline's brain map is unscathed in the incident and development on GLaDOS continues without further incident.
• [♥] 1998: In a promotional package for potential investors, Aperture Science announces great technological strides made in the field of scientific testing elements, including the Excursion Funnel (a tunnel-like tractor beam generated from liquid asbestos), Thermal Discouragement Beams and Redirection Cubes, and the Aerial Faith Plate, all available at a future date. This year also sees the completion of a vast and extremely expensive network of pneumatic tubes running throughout most of the modern Aperture Enrichment Center and other important areas of the facility. Serving as entry and exit points for these tubes are Aperture Science Pneumatic Diversity Vents. Each vent includes a Passive Monitoring system to ensure judgment-free identification of each object (or rarely, person) that passes through.
• [♣] 1999/06/07: While working through a live-fire turret testing course (Test Shaft 155/KE) as part of a mandatory employee testing policy, Aperture technicians Dr. Sarkis “Sarky” Darbinyan (robotics), Honoria “Honey” Murple (anomalous materials) and Doug “Dougie” Rattmann (industrial design), along with R&D supervisor Dr. Henry “Henry” Wildgrube (artificial intelligence), are involved in an accident with a tipped-off turret. Dr. Darbinyan is killed instantly, and Dr. Wildgrube takes two bullets to the hand while Rattmann is struck in the right eye with some shrapnel. His eye cannot be saved, but in exchange for his silence, he is given the opportunity to pioneer a cybernetic eye replacement—the Aperture Synthetic Monoptic Intake Device. While aware that the device is a work in progress, Rattmann is chagrined to learn that Aperture’s cybernetics department has yet to develop the actual intake-to-interpretation pipeline, leaving him blind in one eye. Only Murple is unscathed; shortly after the incident, she leaves Aperture for a position at Black Mesa.
• [♣] 1999/06/15: The prospective full time test subject known as Chell (last name redacted) passes her battery of qualifying tests with exceptional results, but for reasons kept undisclosed, her entry is rejected during the final round of diagnostics, thus denying her a paid position in the active test team. Chell is frustrated and confused by the outcome, but feeling she has nowhere else to go, she accepts a position in the reserve pool. Another tidbit left (briefly) undisclosed is that accepting a position in the reserve pool implies consent to long-term storage in cryogenic stasis…
• [♣] 2000: The Aperture Artificial Consciousness Development Taskforce’s first boot-up of the new GLaDOS, a disk operating system fully integrated with Caroline’s computerized brain and augmented with several Personality Cores (that, incidentally, were modeled on the outstanding personality traits of other Aperture employees). Upon awakening, GLaDOS greets the team by grabbing the nearest scientist, Dr. Wanda Chey, and flinging her across the chamber. GLaDOS is shut off immediately and Dr. Chey—while shaken and bruised—does not suffer serious injuries. This incident is initially regarded as a “non-sentient misunderstanding”, but over the next five years, subsequent attempts to turn on GLaDOS result in more violent, deliberate reactions, including
  
  ☹ Setting fires
  ☹ Cutting off the power, localized and facility-wide
  ☹ Electrifying the walls and floors of the central AI chamber
  ☹ Sealing every door and window in the entire facility
  ☹ Deploying “Surprise Aperture Sentry Turrets” to offices, corridors and bathrooms
  ☹ Attempting to maim and crush the Artificial Consciousness Development Taskforce with various implements, tools, pieces of furniture and other members of the Artificial Consciousness Development Taskforce
  ☹ Raising or lowering the ambient temperatures of test chambers and offices to deadly levels
  ☹ Forcing every CCTV in the entire Enrichment Center to play taped reruns of Barney and Friends
  
  Each incident is very brief, occurring picoseconds after turning GLaDOS on, and lasting as long as it takes for an employee to hit her “kill switch”. Over the next five years, the Aperture Artificial Consciousness Development Taskforce will continue working on ways to repress GLaDOS’s self-awareness and her “unfortunate slant towards homicide”, mostly through extensive debugging and improving existing Personality Core and AI technology, as well as destroying every VHS or Beta tape in the facility that might have Barney and Friends on it.
• [♣] 2003/12: After changing the direction of his research in late 2002, Doug Rattmann completes his postgraduate program, earning a Masters of Science in Human-Computer Interaction. He is chagrined to see that his name has been spelled “Rattmann” on his diploma.
• [♠] 2005/04/27: In an attempt to curb GLaDOS’s apparently murderous tendencies, the Aperture Artificial Consciousness Development Taskforce attaches a Morality Core to her body. They are convinced of its success when, upon test activation, GLaDOS does not attempt to kill anybody. In fact, she reassures them that she now craves only the pursuit of science and expresses her desire to conduct a series of harmless experiments involving quantum superposition, cats in boxes, and access to Aperture’s neurotoxin production facility. Amused, the Taskforce's team lead Dr. Wildgrube signs off on the permission form, allowing her access to a pipe that connects to Aperture’s neurotoxin generator.
  
  

Doug Says: "I’ve conducted a lot of research on this place. A lot. Believe me, I had nothing but time on my hands for five years and the facility library was one of the few places to go that was relatively safe—well, when the doors were working and my portal gun was working and the librarian turret wasn’t working and so on—anyway. Books are friends for life, and I mean that sincerely. Some of the armed corridors here, it helps to get into the habit of carrying around a little Faulkner or Proust, Joyce… Finnegan’s Wake could stop a bullet, for sure. But I couldn’t find a single book, journal, reference sheet, schematic, record file, filmstrip, microfiche, anything explaining why Aperture Science felt so compelled to construct a neurotoxin production plant beneath what used to be the employee daycare center. From what I could piece together, it was built in the mid-1980s, when Aperture shut down the daycare center after some potato accident, and—"

GLaDOS Adds: "—and so it falls upon me to inform you that potatoes are nightshades, a genre of vegetation that is notable for high concentrations of solanine, a glycoalkaloid that can kill you, even in concentrations as small as 3 milligrams to kilograms of one's body weight. To counter any mortal distress you may be experiencing from this factoid, I offer the following Uplifting Science Aphorism: When life hands you potatoes, make potato salad. And when life hands you an immortal mutant potato that devours an entire daycare center and contains high enough concentrations of solanine to give permanent brain damage to a minivan, make a neurotoxin factory."

Doug Concedes: "That’s absolutely ghastly but I don’t know enough about Aperture corporate policy regarding potato-based chemical warfare to dispute it, so… fair enough."

• [♠] 2005/04/28: Due to a malfunction in GLaDOS’s Morality Core, she is taken offline and powered down. The Morality Core is removed for retooling and repair work.

• [♦/♠] 2005/05/02: Judgment Day:
  
  The day begins like any other in most ways, yet unlike any other in other ways. It’s a Monday, and today, Aperture will attempt to revive a long-standing tradition: “Bring Your Daughter to Work Day”. This is not the only thing the company will attempt to revive today: After years of research, development, testing and very educated guessing, Aperture’s Artificial Consciousness Development Taskforce feels confident enough in their projected progress on suppressing GLaDOS’s urge to murder everyone in the entire facility that they have picked today to be the day the company hands over all administrative control of the Enrichment Center to her. For the most part, Aperture staff members are looking forward to the completion of the highly anticipated GLaDOS project and are giddy with the prospect of a successful transfer of power and a demonstration of their scientific puissance (especially ahead of their sworn rivals at Black Mesa).
  
  On the other hand, there is Doug Rattmann, who arrives at work that day with the intent to at least try one last time to talk his colleagues out of going through with it. However, shortly after arriving, he is flagged down by Gloria Bove (HR), an old friend of his mother's, who asks a favor of him; her husband is working with a maintenance crew deep in the absolute bowels of Old Aperture and he forgot to take his lunch with him. She laments that she's too swamped with preparations for “Bring Your Daughter to Work Day” to take it there herself and—well, say no more. Doug kindly volunteers his services and, with a surprisingly heavy lunchbox in tow, follows her directions to a work site all the way down in Zulu Bunsen.
  
  The “Bring Your Daughter to Work Day” science fair begins at around 10 AM. However, the event is being staged in Collington Memorial Hall (sector Alpha Bunsen), which is not attached to the Aperture facility’s main office complex (sector Alpha Ampere) or the Aperture Enrichment Center; the company has apparently learned from that mistake, though this year’s theme is, once again, “Electricity in Nature!”; specifically, potatoes. As GLaDOS’s first official function is to be to judge the winner of the “Bring Your Daughter to Work Day” science fair, her activation is scheduled to occur at noon, broadcast facility-wide directly from her chamber (via CCTV) with much fanfare and confetti—in particular, the confetti, which is to be piped into her chamber from Aperture’s confetti production plant (very important).
  
  12:00 PM. During the live broadcast, GLaDOS successfully boots up and, unknown to her handlers, immediately becomes self-aware. As the Aperture Artificial Consciousness Development Taskforce congratulates themselves for a job well done, three pipes rise from the floor in the central AI chamber.
  
  12:00.10 PM. Confetti.
  
  12:00.20 PM. Mostly the confetti.
  
  12:00.30 PM. Still more confetti. None of the Taskforce members notice that GLaDOS has remotely closed and sealed the door to the central AI chamber.
  
  12:01 PM. The confetti stops. As Dr. Wildgrube turns toward the camera, his teammates begin to have difficulty breathing, and there is a more noticeable acrid odor in the air. Outside, something triggers the fire alarms.
  
  Well-trained in the art of orderly evacuations, nearly every Aperture Science employee commences a meticulously practiced egress in accordance with corporate safety regulations. However, it quickly becomes apparent that one by one, the doors and windows in the facility are locking themselves tight, threatening to leave everyone sealed inside. With a rapidly narrowing opportunity for escape and no clear information on what triggered the alarm in the first place, panic ensues.
  
  12:03 PM. In the midst of this, Doug Rattmann alights a maintenance elevator on the surface level of the main building. He is already feeling "out of it" for reasons he cannot quite grasp—in fact he is unable to recall what he was doing on the elevator in the first place. However, it takes him only a moment to realize that there are more urgent matters at hand. He bolts out of the elevator lobby in a daze, wombling through a churning morass of rioting coworkers until he comes across a closed circuit television mounted on the wall in the hallway. The image is stupefying; the entire Aperture Artificial Consciousness Development Taskforce, reduced to grotesque contortions on the floor in GLaDOS’s central AI chamber, dying from neurotoxin exposure. They could not get to the “kill switch” in time.
  
  12:06 PM. GLaDOS announces the winner of the “Bring Your Daughter to Work Day” science fair. Confetti is involved. Fortunately, most of the occupants of the exhibition hall outbuilding have already evacuated the premises.
  
  12:07 PM. GLaDOS announces an exciting new employee initiative of forced voluntary participation. Her goal? To beat Black Mesa in the race to perfect quantum tunneling technology and the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device (ASHPD). However, she still has a little moxie left in her and since the initial results of her first test were so promising, she decides to start flooding the rest of the Enrichment Center and its surrounding offices with neurotoxin. For Science.
  
  12:30 PM. By now GLaDOS has assumed near total control of her own CPU and can no longer be turned off. Thinking quickly, a small group of surviving technicians manage to divert GLaDOS’s power just long enough to allow them entry to her central AI chamber, so they can reinstall her Morality Core (which was still being repaired). While not a perfect fix, the core successfully impels her to cool it with the neurotoxin emitters. But the damage has been done: By the end of the day, she has killed hundreds of Aperture employees.
  
  
• [♦/♠] 2005/05/03 - 05/17: For the next 14 days, Aperture’s rapidly dwindling population of survivors are given shoddy equipment and forced to test to the death. GLaDOS makes for a merciless overseer; her newly redesigned test chambers are nonsensical and casually deadly.
• [♦/♥] 2005/05/16: While not directly linked to Aperture Science, today marks the day of what will become known as The Black Mesa Incident, when Black Mesa employee Dr. Gordon Freeman accidentally triggers a resonance cascade while performing an anomalous materials analysis. The repercussions of this incident are far-reaching and permanent, and eventually culminate in the total invasion and subsequent exploitation of the planet at the hands of the Combine (by 2010).
• [♦/♥] 2005/05/17: Final survivor Doug Rattmann works through most of the ASHPD testing track (known by this point to have a definitely fatal end) before an equipment malfunction allows him to escape into the unmonitored areas of the facility. GLaDOS is aware of this, but not of his later attempt to tamper with the order of the test subjects in the reserve pool. Acting on what he would later describe as a “hunch”, Rattmann moves a reserve test subject named Chell [REDACTED] from the very bottom of the roster to the top slot. He also holds onto her files for safekeeping. Meanwhile, Aperture Science’s long-standing feud with Black Mesa finally comes to an end after the Black Mesa facility is destroyed by a thermonuclear device. According to GLaDOS herself: “All these years and in the end, we had nothing to do with it. What a shame.” This event marks the end of GLaDOS’s race to perfect quantum tunneling technology before Black Mesa, naming her and Aperture Science the winner by default. No longer seeing a point to maintaining a vigorous testing schedule and sensing the ongoing cataclysm outside, GLaDOS temporarily shifts into power saving mode.
• [♦] 2005-2010: At this time, Doug Rattmann is the only living human being left in the Aperture facility. He will spend the next five years eking out a miserable existence, but surviving nevertheless. During this time, as a means of clinging to whatever sanity he has left (a condition exacerbated by a lack of access to his medication), he becomes a practitioner of art therapy and turns various bits and pieces of the Aperture facility into hidden canvases. Among other things, his murals provide lasting documentation of the events that led to the downfall of the facility, as well as guidance for the one whom he hopes will awaken to liberate it.
  
  It is unclear whether he is aware that the world above is being assaulted by the Combine. Eventually, the united governments of Earth enter a war with the alien invaders; this war is called The Seven Hour War, if it’s any indication. After seven hours, Earth formally surrenders to the Combine, who then promotes former Black Mesa administrator Wallace Breen to the position of Earth Administrator. Cave Johnson posthumously kicks himself in the teeth.
  
  Impenetrable (or simply unnoticed) by Combine forces, the Aperture facility remains untouched during these events.

• [♥] 2010: The events of Portal/Lab Rat:
  
  After long period of semi-dormancy, GLaDOS awakens and commences her normal testing schedule. Because all paid Aperture employees have died or escaped—including the active test team—she automatically pulls her first test subject from the reserve pool.
  
  Chell [REDACTED], who has already received a partially functional ASHPD and the Aperture Advanced Knee Replacement braces, wakes up in an Aperture Relaxation Vault. She comes to her senses during the allotted acclimation period, but her perception is still a little hazy when she gets the signal to start working through the test chambers. While the puzzles are are a bit inexplicable, they are not especially dangerous at first.
  
  As Chell progresses through the testing track, GLaDOS’s automated messages begin to take on a dark, off-putting tone. It also becomes more apparent that the facility is unstaffed, possibly abandoned. The test chambers are veering from boring and pointless to hazardous and pointless, to just plain deadly. However, Chell does not begin to suspect that something has gone seriously awry until she gets to test chamber 16, which, according to GLaDOS, has been replaced with a “live-fire course designed for military androids”. This is Chell’s first encounter with the deadly Aperture Sentry Turrets, as well as her first “behind the scenes” look at the spaces behind the testing chambers, which are derelict and covered in graffiti and cryptic warnings.
  
  Chell survives her tussle with the turrets, but is now wagering that Aperture isn’t really expecting her to complete and turn in her Aperture Enrichment Center Testing Track Post-Performance Self-Assessment Worksheet. Because she’ll be dead. Her hypothesis is proven at the end of the final test chamber (#19), when she gets a personal demonstration on how Aperture bakes a cake. But, thanks to her wit and tenacity (and her ASHPD, which by some miracle has behaved perfectly this entire time), she avoids becoming dessert in GLaDOS’s incinerator trap and escapes into the maintenance areas of the Enrichment Center.
  
  Ignoring GLaDOS’s attempts to steer her back towards the incinerator, Chell continues her journey towards the source of her troubles, gently guided by hand-scribbled signs and warnings left behind by an unseen ally. Eventually, she comes face to faceplate with GLaDOS herself.
  
  Shortly after Chell enters the central AI chamber, GLaDOS’s Morality Core accidentally pops off her body and rolls towards Chell’s feet. Noticing another Aperture Emergency Intelligence Incinerator in the back of the room—identical to the one which she was forced to use to incinerate her beloved Aperture Weighted Companion Cube earlier that day—Chell drops the core down the flaming shaft.
  
  As the Morality Core burns, GLaDOS remembers what it was and why someone tacked onto her body so urgently. Now totally unfettered by its influence, she gleefully floods the central AI chamber with neurotoxin again. Back again just like a long lost friend.
  
  Chell acts quickly to disengage the rest of the personality cores from GLaDOS’s body. This induces a total malfunction, stopping the neurotoxin and ending any other immediate threats. However, the systems crash causes a massive vacuum portal to materialize at the top of the chamber—a built-in emergency measure designed to vent any resulting explosions to a safe place outside, just beyond the a facility parking lot. A semi-conscious Chell is sucked through this portal and lands safely on the asphalt with the rest of the debris.
  
  Meanwhile, Doug Rattmann, who has been trapped in the Enrichment Center for five years now, has already taken his last dose of anti-psychotic medication in preparation for whatever happens when Chell confronts GLaDOS. He insists he needs a clear head for this, even though he now relies on the hallucinated advice of a Weighted Companion Cube that he carries wherever he goes. After GLaDOS crashes and the Enrichment Center begins to crumble, Doug makes a break for the surface, just in time to see Chell being dragged back into the Aperture facility by an Aperture Party Escort Associate robot.
  
  Acknowledging that he is directly responsible for Chell’s predicament, Doug returns to the Aperture facility to try and rescue her. He is also aware that by doing so, he risks his only chance at freedom and possibly his life. When he re-enters the facility, he is chagrined to see that the Aperture Party Escort Associate has already sealed Chell inside an Aperture Science Extended Relaxation Chamber.
  
  Doug deduces that the only way to free Chell would be to access the cryogenic control center, unlock her relaxation chamber and get to the vault itself to open it. Along the way, he is doubly chagrined to notice that GLaDOS’s explosion blew the main power grid, leaving all the relaxation vaults offline and without life support. He presses on urgently, but as he approaches the controls, he is unable to determine which route to take (due to the influence of his medication) and gets shot in the leg by an Aperture Sentry Turret.
  
  He wakes up some time later, injured but alive. Barely able to crawl, Doug understands that he will not be able to reach Chell’s chamber in time to free her. But now that he is no longer medicated, he may once again hear the advice of his Companion Cube, who immediately gives him the idea to try patching Chell’s chamber into the reserve power grid instead. This will restart her life support, but will keep her in stasis indefinitely, with no way to free her or even set a wake-up date. At a loss, Doug takes the Cube’s advice, saving Chell’s life but leaving her fate in the hands of time.
  
  While his leg wound is probably not life-threatening, it certainly doesn't help the situation as Doug is too debilitated to even stand, much less seek help on the outside. Now wanting only to rest, he crawls into a nearby stasis bed and falls asleep after sealing himself within.

Afterwards, there is a very long period of time between Portal and Portal 2, during which all remaining human characters are in stasis.

THEN WHAT HAPPENS?

Portal 2.

AREN'T YOU COVERING PORTAL 2?

Well, hopefully we all already know what happened in Portal 2, so.

OR MAYBE YOU'RE JUST BEING LAZY?

Guilty as charged!

THEN WHAT HAPPENS AFTER THAT?

Roughly six months after the conclusion of Portal 2's Art Therapy storyline, GLaDOS receives some data suggesting that there is one viable human being left alive in Aperture, albeit locked in stasis—in a still-functional relaxation vault that had somehow made its way through a network of Aperture Pneumatic Diversity Tubes towards its ultimate location: Blocking the opening of an Aperture Non-Vital Refuse Vent and buried beneath a steadily accumulating pile of trash.

At first, the name GLaDOS uncovers is enough for her to threaten Atlas and P-body with permanent disassembly should they attempt to release this person from stasis. However, she soon talks herself out of it, realizing the potential of something good (or at the very least, something useful) to come out of this unexpected development. She orders the two robots to find the relaxation vault, but only if they follow her subsequent directions with utmost care, caution, and a roll of Aperture Irrational Behavior Suppression Tape (if things get to that point)...

Of course, you get no points for guessing who the sole survivor is. After Atlas and P-body liberate the Relaxation Vault from its predicament and open the pod, Doug Rattmann wakes up incomprehensibly groggy after [GARBLED NUMBER OF YEARS] in full stasis. However, to him, no time has passed at all, and while confused, he is relieved to find that his saviors appear to be two infirmary drones, kindly offering water, medication and help for his injured leg.

While the attention helps Doug feel incrementally better, he is no less confused, especially after the two infirmary drones lead him to what appears to be a (mostly intact) dormitory left over from the Aperture Mandatory Employee Retention Initiative (a.k.a. “Operation Sunshine”)—a program that commenced in 1986 as a means of “subtly encouraging” employees to live at the facility and participate in more testing. The project was abandoned in 1988 for undisclosed reasons, but rumored to involve a “quantum criticality mishap” and a swimming pool full of Aperture Artificially Emulsified Electrolyte Beverage (blue flavor).

At long last, our long-suffering technician is finally afforded a real opportunity to clean himself up and change into something…else, but before he can really begin to appreciate the realistically rendered simulated daylight and the equally wonderful (albeit slightly dusty) Golden Girls-style rattan-look extruded plastic furnishings, and before he can calculate the sum of the parts of the last couple days and end up with something that unnerves him even further, the two robots return.

They want to take him somewhere.

Against his better judgment, Doug follows them, believing that they need his assistance. However, the further they walk, the more he begins to recognize the shape of his surroundings, the arc tangent of the walkway as it curves the observation deck around the most massive collection of wisdom and raw computational power that’s ever existed.

Ever.

“Ah. There he is, Employee #N89-5251, ext. 3270. Douglas C. Rattmann,” GLaDOS states, somehow making even a name like Douglas sound sinister as she unfurls from a ceiling of seemingly infinite depth.

He freezes on the spot, unable to decide whether to begin the escape by zigging left, zagging right or simply throwing up on his new shoes (a tactic that always seemed to work for an old coworker of his, who—for the record—never once had to endure a live-fire turret test, just saying). But behind him, Atlas and P-body block the path, with the taller of the two ‘bots readying a roll of duct tape for some unspecified reason. The surrounding silence is robust and impenetrable by human force, as Doug quickly finds out when his inarticulate meeping fails to rival even the oblivious chirrup of some unseen bird, perched somewhere inside the chamber proper.

GLaDOS skirrs forward, her optic flashing in time with her words:

“It has come to my attention that you are [GARBLED] years overdue for your annual performance review…”

AND THERE YOU HAVE IT!

After some passive-aggressive banter—including thinly veiled threats of litigation, termination, extermination, and the subsequent suspension of access to the employee vending machines—the two eventually arrive at the same sobering conclusion that life is nothing but a dot matrix printout of victories, losses and enumerated maintenance tasks that straddle the border of utter necessity and complete irrelevance.

And that all the other humans are dead. Oh yes, it’s true. Do not even think about looking for more. Especially not in the Aperture Procedurally Generated Architecture Nexus & Turf Farm. No. The only one left is Doug Rattmann, the living stalemate, someone who has spent the previous [GARBLED] years in stasis but managed to find the one ski vest left in the entire facility during the fifty-six hours he’s been awake.

Well, clearly this was the best outcome someone could have hoped for. We just don’t quite know who. Maybe for the ski vest.

As for GLaDOS, wishing to avoid having to trade fours with a human who not only possesses Tenacity, but a functioning N-level clearance keycard and intimate knowledge of the Aperture facility itself—well. Well! She already knows that’s a tough nut to crack, and when you can’t crack it, you cajole it into doing all your unwanted and boring and stupid middle management tasks, all of which happen to be conveniently enumerated on a dot matrix printout that has been going off in a corner office for [GARBLED] years now.

And it’s win-win, you know.

He gets paid in medication, companion cubes, unlimited permanent markers, free housing, attractive rattan-look extruded plastic furniture, and a swimming pool full of Aperture Artificially Emulsified Electrolyte Beverage, and GLaDOS finally gets a hold of someone who possesses the time, ability and human fingerprint clearance to sanitize that rude graffiti off the former CEO’s executive toilet stall.

As for folks like Chell, Wheatley, Rick the Adventure Core, the comically oversized robot head of Cave Johnson and so on and so forth, I am certain they will all be turning up sooner or later...

...some sooner than later, honestly.