dollpocalypse | Aperture Science Surveillance Room

"And this," Topher said, swiping his ID badge against the sensor on the door that he and Victor had just arrived at, "is the surveillance room. For watching the test subjects mess up and stuff. It's kind of also a break room, 'cause most of us eat in there and there's a fridge and a popcorn popper, but its technical purpose is surveillance."

The badge sensor was lighting up red instead of green, and Topher frowned, swiping his card again. When it lit up red again, he paused and just tried the handle. It opened.

"Guess it isn't locked." Darn. He'd felt really cool swiping his badge everywhere. "Anyway, here it is."

The room did look a lot like a break room, in that it had a number of couches and it smelled like coffee, but the flatscreen video monitor that all the couches were facing was showing a feed of a flustered-looking thirty-something man in an orange jumpsuit firing portals at a wall. Most break rooms didn't have that kind of entertainment.

"So yeah," Topher said, flopping on a couch to watch. "Questions, comments, concerns? Want popcorn?"

[[for victor!]]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Sure," Victor said, snagging a handful as he flopped onto the couch. "So what is the dude trying to do?"

He'd been having a good weekend. Aperture was a little creepy, in a way that set off his possible-supervillain detection senses, but interesting.

"Okay, this ~~but minus the building destruction and the Wheatley and GLaDOS~~ is actually one of the easy ones," Topher noted, pointing. "That button that opens the door is activated by weight, like a person or a cube, so he needs something on it to hold the door open. So he has to get the cube from over there and use the hard light bridge so he doesn't get turreted."

The guy seemed not to be picking up on the hard light bridge part, and appeared to be a little afraid of jumping down near the turrets, though. And who could blame him?

"It's awesome to watch people not get things," Topher summarized.

Victor nodded slowly, mentally mapping out what the man would have to do. Pres the button here, step on the light bridge there, add a fourth portal on that panel ...

It didn't seem hard to him. But he wouldn't want to do it with a merely human brain.

"What happens if the turrets get him?" he asked. "It's like a paintball thing and he's out?"

Two months into working here, Topher had given a fair amount of thought to the amount of moral shadiness that went on at Aperture. Maybe not as much as someone who actually cared about morality would have, but still, it had crossed his mind more than once. And while he knew that he, personally, didn't care, he was also pretty sure that Victor, as a superhero, would.

"Uh, yeah," he said, managing to pass off his slight hesitation as distraction-related as he reached for another handful of popcorn. "Like at school."

It was a dumb lie, because what if the guy actually got injured as they were watching? But he seemed smart enough, and the last test subject fatality had been a while ago. A week at least. So Topher had hope.

"We're testing cognition, mostly," he added. "Not murderability or anything."

"Well, yeah, this is a pretty fancy set-up to test murderability," Victor said, surprised Topher was even making a point of it. "... unless your client is a supervillain, and I don't even think they have those here."

He was silently cheering on the test subject, who had almost made it across the hard light bridge.

"Well, non-supervillains can probably test murderability too," Topher mused. "In simulations or with--" Nope, better not say 'robots' -- "like, psychics or computer programs predicting how murderable people are in a given chamber before they actually, you know, die."

But actually, robots. Maybe Aperture should start a robot testing program too...

"That's ethically okay, right?"

"I guess, if nobody's actually getting murdered," Victor mused. "But, like ... usually people talk about simulations being to make sure nobody can get murdered."

"Bet it's the opposite in, like, military ones," Topher offered. Though Aperture was hardly the military. "They have those drills to practice their whole... murdery maneuvers and make sure they work, right? Or is that football?"

Victor frowned, but decided to put his concern in the back of his mind. Topher wasn't always the best at explaining things; maybe there was a totally logical reason Aperture was making mock torture chambers and he just hadn't heard it yet.

"Sure, why not?," he said instead. "I don't think they call it murder, but ... whatever."

If there was a reason (and there wasn't), there was a reason Topher didn't know: it had at no point occurred to him to ask.

"Anyway," he said. "Looks like this guy is gonna make it out without getting turreted." He twirled one finger in the air in celebration or something. "Yay."

It wasn't like he was rooting for the guy to die or anything, but it was... hard to be emotionally attached.

"So," he said, reaching for more popcorn, "'sup with you?"

"Yay," Victor agreed, with less sarcasm than Topher. "Is he it for today, or is somebody else coming in?"

He munched some more popcorn before answering the question. "I'm good," he said. "Like, genuinely just ... good. Got to put down these three stooges-y villains during Batman's final."

Edited 2013-07-01 01:09 (UTC)

"Don't know," Topher said thoughtfully, tilting his head at the screen. The test chamber was empty for now, at any rate. "Guess we'll find out. There's a Batman teaching classes now?" He thought that name was a little lame, personally. "But way to go. Danger Shop villains, right?"

"Yeah. Some tall guy in a mask and a cape," Victor explained. "There's another one who calls himself The Spirit."

Nowthat one seemed like a little much, but Batman hardly registered.

"And no -- he actually had, like, this real supervillain show up and kidnap him, and the mooks were working for the Joker. The supervillain." He swallowed. "I guess maybe the Joker and Batman are friends and planned the whole thing, but if they are they're still pretty awesome."

"Yeah, that's some final," he agreed. "I'm almost jealous, except I suck against bad guys, so 'final' might have wound up being a good word for it."

He snickered at his own joke, because Topher was just that unclassy.

"Anyway, nice."

Victor snickered, either in sympathy or because his sense of humor was just that lame. "Nobody died or even got maimed too bad. So that was nice."

"Lucky he had a competent class, I guess," Topher mused. "Did everyone go? There wasn't anyone who was like, 'eh, I didn't love this class anyway, so I'll sit this out'?"

"It felt like everybody went, but I wasn't exactly counting noses," Victor said. "Though now I really wonder."

"Yeah, I probably wouldn't have gone," Topher said. "I mean, unless it was a teacher I really liked, like GLaDOS. Who wants to be the person who winds up hindering the rescue by getting beat up by bad guys too thoroughly?" He whistled. "Embarrassing."

"Ai, you'd get mocked for months for that one," Victor agreed with a vigorous nod. "So glad you weren't there, man. No offense, but rescuing you would've cramped our style."

Aperture Science Surveillance Room | Some Ohio Somewhere

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject