Anonymous asked: Tell us about your pre-Portal Aperture Science. Cave, Caroline, Doug and any others
Cave Johnson has something like celebrity status. He made Aperture what it was by being a hands on kind of guy - though he became more of an ‘ideas man’ later. He tells himself that it’s because he paid his dues and deserves it but the truth is that he eventually can’t pull 20 hour days in the labs anymore, and this declines further the sicker he gets.
He has a thing for good scotch and cigars but there’s no addiction, though he will drink in the mornings - particularly once his health starts to go. He’s not belligerent or violent under the influence - in fact he’s much more talkative when he drinks, which was why the habit started. The cigars make him look worldly.
Caroline is a product of her times - she was one of a small handful of women to get a degree in applied physics from Michigan State. She doesn’t like publicity but she has a few lab boys she likes - Doug is one of them and of course she was a fan of Cave even though he is her senior by any number of years. She had to start in filing before she could even get five minutes of Cave’s time but she impressed him and he gave her a chance. He didn’t regret it. They have a relationship though it’s rather open. They respect eachother though Cave’s treatment of her becomes much less kindly and a LOT more sexist once he gets sick. Caroline is at work a jack of all trades - sometimes it’s getting his scotch. Sometimes it’s relating things to the lab boys sometimes it’s taking notes.
The 60ies and early 70ies were her favourite time working for Aperture. They would often be at the office for such strange hours that they developed a tradition of eating ‘breakfast for dinner’ (and if you haven’t done this - pancakes, bacon, potato scones and sausage with baked beans and a fried mushroom is awesome to have at 18:00 as well as 9:00.). She enjoys her time with Mr. Johnson and finds him attractive but their relationship is more one of conveinence rather than purely sexual. A lot of people assume they’re close because she’s sleeping with him but she’s thick-skinned and she knows the truth of things so she doesn’t care what ‘they’ think.
She was not expecting the GLaDOS thing and it was in his will so she was forced. It didn’t help that Wheatley turned out to be a dickbag.
Doug Rattmann works on the Portal gun but he winds up heading up the core-project. He’s kind of a cold man, rather anti-social and remorseful about his actions, which is why he winds up giving Chell a second chance. He likes his lab, he likes to be left to work on projects and most people are fine to let him do just that because he does good work when he’s left alone. He’s an addicted coffee-drinker and can’t get through the day without at least three cups.
He respects Caroline much more than most men in the labs. He stays nearly as late as Cave or Caroline, if not later - and tends to forget to do stuff like eat or sleep (part of the problem is his pills - they have a side effect of curbing his appetite) until such time as he’s passing out. He sleeps on the couch when he does sleep has a thing for crossword puzzles and has a pile of laundry on his bed that he WILL put away one of these days.
He has a mural behind a file cabinet in his office.
Wheatley: Becomes Caroline’s assistant after Cave passes away. He actually DOES have a PhD and is at least smart enough to have deserved it (from Oxford no less) but as Caroline is told by his thesis adviser, he is ‘very charismatic’. It’s said as a warning.
He’s quite a fan of theme parties, he tends to shock and amaze his coworkers with the amount of sugar he takes in his tea (like 4 or so…I think I have said before he could put some of the Scottish natives in my department to SHAME with his tea-to-sugar ratio.) and kind of is prone to making small errors. With a calculator. He seems…harmless….
Rick: Got a juicy degree from Penn State. Possibly the only man alive to make a lab coat look deliciously sexy. Hits on anything with a skirt. Brags about his abilities but he CAN back it up. He doesn’t particularly care for Authority but Cave and Doug get his respect. Cave for being the kind of man he can admire, Doug because Doug’s kind of hard to dislike as a boss. Doug asks politely and doesn’t get on his case as long as the work in question gets done.
He hits on Caroline an awful lot and HAS raised both Cave and Caroline’s ire.
Craig: 3rd Generation half-Indian-American with albinism. Unusual physiological things aside he is a hard worker and actually rather close friends with Rick. They tease eachother but it’s fairly good-natured. He works well with Rick at the best of times, though they tend to have wonky disagreements over fiddly details. Craig is a stickler for precice measurements, Rick is still a scientist but all too happy to let things slide when they can be let to slide.
Neil: An Intern from Harvard. A very eager young Masters student from Harvard, Caroline picked him up shortly after Cave Johnson’s death at Doug Rattmann’s suggestion. She gave him the ‘Aperture rewards loyalty’ speech and he did take it to heart. He’s a typical 22 year old kid - eager, excited, big smiles and very hard working. Loves space of course - writing his thesis on it. He impressed his colleagues immediately and right before the shit hit the fan with Caroline finding Cave’s will and the clause she could not get out of that would stick her in a supercomputer - he even was known to have indulged Caroline and Cave’s old tradition of breakfast-supper. She appreciated it.
I'm probably a dodgy fourty year old unwashed fanboy...or maybe I'm a 27 year old PhD Student living in Scotland. Maybe I'm The Doctor. You never can tell.
