Locations of Half-Life - Locations - Other Locations - Aperture Science Laboratories

Aperture Science Laboratories

The Aperture Science Laboratories computer aided enrichment center is a research facility built completely underground, that forms the setting of Portal and Portal 2. The company Aperture Science is a direct rival to Black Mesa and, as revealed by in-game information and a website for the fictional company, was initially building shower curtains for the US military. However, when its founder Cave Johnson contracted lunar poisoning from moon rock conducting gel, he shifted the company's direction to several ill-conceived projects, interdimensional portal research among them. The project was deemed worthwhile and government funding was granted to expand Aperture Science's facilities, using an old salt mine to give them nearly unlimited space, expanding the maximum dimensions of the facility to approximately 10 by 1 miles in width and 3 miles deep. This ultimately led to the installation of the "Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System", GLaDOS, an advanced artificial intelligence, revealed in Portal 2 to be based on the personality of Johnson's assistant Caroline; however, shortly after its installation, GLaDOS turned on its creators, connecting the facility's ventilation system to a neurotoxin generator and imprisoning the survivors for later use as test subjects(including Chell) and Dr. Rattmann.

The areas of the underground Enrichment Center seen by the player in Portal consists of clinically white "test chambers", overlooked by laboratories and office spaces devoid of life, and disused maintenance areas behind these chambers. The clinical feel was designed after the settings in the film The Island, aiming to reduce the amount of background detail to allow players to focus on the puzzles. In Portal 2 however, the facility has been overgrown by plant life and has fallen into disarray after about 20 or so years, GLaDOS is able to restore the chambers to their pristine conditions, showing the capability of highly configurable testing chambers. Later, the player travels deeper underground through the mine revealing earlier sections of Aperture Science from the 1950s to the 1980s, each with a more industrial style. Recordings from Johnson during these areas show the gradual decline of the company's fortunes, going from performing tests of its discoveries on elite personnel from the military, to using paid volunteers, and finally to requiring mandatory testing of its employees, and this directive became the basis for GLaDOS' core programming. At the end of Portal 2, the player reaches the surface, revealing that an entrance to the facility is a run-down shed in the middle of a wheat field.

In Half-Life 2: Episode Two, the player learns that the Borealis, an Aperture Science research vessel, and a portion of the drydock it was moored to, was somehow teleported to the Arctic, and is a point of interest that the player is told to investigate. Episode Two concludes as the player prepares to visit this location. Portal 2 includes a location deep in the Aperture Science facility where the Borealis was originally docked before its disappearance.