Post by SeekerWing on Feb 11, 2012 19:30:29 GMT -8
Portal Canon Characters Claimed: GLaDOS, Wheatley, Chell
The following is a basic summary of the events of the games, including many spoilers and much speculation; if you haven't played the game yet, or are easily offended by the ideas of others, turn back now!
Aperture Science is a company that was founded back in 1947. Their primary research focus was on the dual portal device; however, this was far from the only thing the facility worked on. They had many projects, including DNA combination, mobility gels, power suits, defense related objects, and 'flexible connections' that allow a whole room to be taken apart and reconstructed, with every connection falling into place perfectly. Most of their work oriented around flexibility and defensiveness; some would argue that they worked for the military, but whether that was true or not may never really be revealed.
However, in order to continue, they needed to be able to test their products - and the only way they could test many of them effectively was with live tests; particularly the Dual Portal Device and the accompanying Long Fall Boots. In the search for the absolute greatest test subjects, they would hunt for athletes, astronauts, war veterans - all of the strongest, the fastest, the bravest. The aimed high and far, overlooking everything to get to their final goal - even money. When people discovered the fates of the missing Athletes and Astronauts in the testing chambers of Aperture, subjects of a mission to improve the human race, Aperture got more publicity than it ever had before - and more than it would ever get again. These were the famous cases on the missing Astronauts in the mid nineteen seventies, the one public thing that could indeed be traced back to Aperture.
However, after these court cases, Aperture was running themselves into the ground. Their finances had run down into nothing; at this point, much focus was put into conserving resources. They had mighty incinerators build to melt things down, to separate the materials and send them back to the construction area. Machines were gradually taking over the facility as scientists ran into accidents and were forced into testing, the employee staff being gradually replaced, and materials being conserved at a high rate, despite how long it took to melt them down. Aperture became, for the most part, self sufficient.
Still, they were struggling to get by without government support; having previously worked for reclusive military branches, all support was cut off after the court cases, and they were no longer supplied. It was this time that Cave Johnson, the CEO and founder of Aperture, ordered millions of dollars worth of moon rocks, having found that they make great portal conductors - and later learning that they were extremely poisonous.
Bankrupt and dying, Cave made his last living request, shifting the last of the facility's focus from the research that had been ongoing since the beginning to look into artificial intelligence and the shifting of a human conscience into a machine. The scientists worked hard and fast, building many prototypes and possible solutions, even to the extent of building a machine that was programmed to run things just in case Cave's consciousness didn't transfer well. In desperation, Cave ordered that his assistant and lover, Caroline, be the one to test the system. Caroline was forced against her will through the excruciating process, her soul forced into the machine that would later be called the Genetic Life form and Disc Operating System of Aperture - or GLaDOS. Despite the transfer seeming apparently successful, the computer program mixed with the human soul proved a deadly combination, as vengeance was the first emotion the machine experienced.
During this time, the scientists began a more thorough process in order to transfer Cave's consciousness in a safer manner, hoping to preserve his true personality better than Caroline's had been preserved - which left the two's child without parents, as Cave, at this point, was considered as good as dead. The facility having gone underground a long time ago, it's primary entrance and exit being an inconspicuous shed in the middle of prairie land and wheat fields in the north-western region of Kansas, Chell had little family outside of her parents, and family friends were in the lab only - as such, she was adopted by a family of one of the lab scientists.
In the meantime, the thing that was GLaDOS was becoming harder and harder to control, as the scientist's research into Artificial Intelligence became more and more vital, cores being produced in the hope of controlling the mad robot - however, this only manipulated the main personality, only twisted their own flawed programming and the need for vengeance present in the computer/human combination life form, and breaking apart primary aspects of the main personality as insanity set in, along with Caroline's growing desire to be free from the prison they'd put her in. Aiming to accomplish this goal, GLaDOS began to understand more about the world around her - and used this knowledge to formulate a plan.
It was bring your daughter to work day when she began this plan, taking over the facility by force and giving everybody in it two options: either they could go through tests, as she had been programmed to run, or they could die. Thousands of them died in the first week, the casualty numbers dropping as there were gradually fewer and fewer scientists remaining. Chell and the other girls in the "Bring Your Daughter to Work" day program were different, though. Chell, especially, was the subject of many of GLaDOS' hopes. The girl was almost grown by the time she'd been captured, and it wasn't long before she was suitable for testing.
Cave Johnson himself, however, had never been fully transferred into his own robotic body, forever being a computer program. Chell was forced through tests as GLaDOS prepared her for her final mission: Destroying the robotic body that had become her prison. Chell did eventually succeed in this goal, in 1984, but death still evaded the entity as she was forced to re-watch her death over and over for forty years, having these years to think about what had happened, to further delve into that shell that was her opinion on the world.
Chell had not gotten free, either, having collapsed outside one of the many exits to the facility and dragged back in by one of the bots that was supposed to care for the humans, and put in one of the many relaxation vaults. However, in damage done to the facility after GLaDOS' destruction, many of the power grids were found to be offline - including this one. The last surviving scientist, a schizophrenic called Rattman, used the last of the emergency generators to patch power to Chell's chamber, before falling asleep in one of the relaxation pods himself, likely to never awaken again. Signs of his presence can be seen throughout the facility still, his murals decorating many a hidden surface, telling the tale of GLaDOS and the hope put in the mute subject that was Chell.
It was forty years before Chell was discovered and reawaken, by none other than Wheatley, a personality core specifically designed to come up with horrible plans - or, at least plans that never worked. However, just like the thousands of scientists and test subjects that had failed before, Wheatley wanted to get out - and Chell was the last surviving test subject. In the escape plan, though, they woke GLaDOS, who quickly 'disposed of' Wheatley, dumping Chell back into testing; there are many rumors of her motivation of this, but the most obvious would be a pure hatred, a desire to eliminate the girl for her failure and the torture that destroying her body had put the entity through.
During those forty idle years, the lab fell into disarray; plants grew everywhere, and walls caved in, rushing machinery falling apart despite the best efforts of the disorganized maintenance bots. Without GLaDOS' direct attentions, programs began to die out, and the program that Cave Johnson had been turned into had tried - and failed - to boot up. There was a pocket of energon outside the walls of the laboratory that was leaked in as the structural integrity of the lab was slowly compromised, which had it's own effects on the objects of the lab as well.
Unknowing of all that had changed, Chell was too stubborn, to go down without a fight after waking up again, and Wheatley was not so easily disposed of. After many a test chamber, and GLaDOS' underestimation of the blue core's abilities and her efforts to rebuild the lab brought a new tragedy to the great bot. Chell and Wheatley, together, got to GLaDOS for another confrontation, and this one resulted in Wheatley being put in power, and GLaDOS being split from the main computer that gave her her directives. With GLaDOS' personality protocols damaged as they had been by the controlling spheres that had been put on her, this split was actually much cleaner for it, despite the fact that she had been built to serve only in the main computer and the body provided; she had become her own personality core. Wheatley, however, fared poorly against the demands of the primary computer program, quickly becoming power mad and taking over, further traumatizing GLaDOS' program by turning the high and mighty bot into little more than an intelligent potato battery, and sending both of the women into the depths of Aperture, some of the only areas that had never been converted to the robotic lab space that Aperture had become.
Many truths were revealed in this area about the past of Aperture, a past that GLaDOS, despite having Caroline in here, had long forgotten. Caroline became a much more dominant force in GLaDOS during this period, and she and Chell were forced to work together to get out of the mess that had been instituted by recent events. In the meantime, Wheatley was destroying much of what GLaDOS had managed to rebuild, and the facility was falling apart. The core that created all of the energy that kept the facility running was falling apart, about to explode and ruin what was left, and Wheatley knew not how to fix it.
Wheatley was eventually taken out of GLaDOS' body and GLaDOS put back in, and the recently reawakened Caroline prompted GLaDOS to let her daughter free. Wheatley was shot into outer space, and it was a happily ever after... Right?
Sources include the games Portal and Portal 2, created by the Valve Company, and the web comic 'Lab Rat' used to explain some of the story behind the two games, and what happened between them. Much of the information here is speculation that will be used on this site as needed.
