Aperture Science

"Aperture Science: We do what we must because we can."

- Company tagline and lyric to "Still Alive".

Aperture Science Incorporated, formerly known as Aperture Fixtures and Aperture Science Innovators, are an antagonistic organization from the Portal and Half-Life franchises. Their headquarters, the Aperture Science Enrichment Center, is the lone setting for both of the Portal games.

1940s
Aperture was founded by Cave Johnson sometime in the early 1940s. However, then it was known as "Aperture Fixtures", and was a shower curtain manufacturing company. Johnson ended up renaming the company to "Aperture Science Innovators" in an attempt to make their products seem more hygienic and appealing to the consumers. In 1947, Cave Johnson purchased an abandoned salt mine that ran over 4200 meters underground in order to create the facility for Aperture Science, where they would expand their inventive and innovative pursuit beyond shower curtains.

1950s
In 1956, Aperture signed a contract with the government to receive funding for their projects and to make and deliver shower curtains to branches of the United States military. Around that time, work began on the Aperture Science Portable Quantum Tunneling Device, which was intended to serve as a interdimensional portal-creating device (that would eventually become the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device). Other inventions began to make way, but not always as expected. Experimental diet supplements failed, but were later turned into the Repulsion and Propulsion Gels. Turrets were developed for home security, but were later discovered to be so lethal that they became used as test chamber obstacles. Experimentation on a teleporting boat called the Borealis was also put into effect to try and beat out the competition from bitter business rival Black Mesa, but it suddenly vanished one day.

1960s
Aperture Science Innovators continued its string of inventing and testing, but their tests could often be questionable or even corrupt, resulting in many tester deaths, including replacing human blood with gasoline, replacing human blood with peanut juice, implanting postcard-sized chips into people's heads, making humans excrete coal, pumping Fluorescent Calcium into Test Subjects' blood, creating tumors, a teleportation system that accidentally removed subjects' skin, and splicing human DNA with preying mantis to accidentally create vicious "mantis men". Originally, Aperture used the brightest and best of society for testing, including astronauts, Olympians, war heroes and soldiers, etc.) However, after a string of astronaut disappearances was investigated and tied back to Aperture in 1968, Cave Johnson decided on a different approach.

1970s
In 1972, Aperture shifted its focus into employing homeless people for testing, so if they died or disappeared, no one would notice. However, Aperture was running out of money, and possible industrial espionage from Black Mesa nearly caused the company to go bankrupt.

1980s
In 1981, during work on Conversion Gel made of moon rocks, Cave Johnson contracted a fatal illness from the rocks. He began to rush an artificial intelligence program to store his mind in should his physical body die. However, he did not survive long enough for the project to be completed, and left his assistant Caroline in charge of the company.

In 1982, the Aperture Science Enrichment Center in Upper Michigan is made public, and puts into effect the Enrichment Center Test Subject Application Process, a 50-question questionnaire destined for applying Test Subjects. During this same year, scientists begin work on a prototype AI core referred to as the Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System, or GLaDOS.

In 1985, the Aperture Image Format is created and maintained by Doug Rattmann.

In 1986, after hearing that Black Mesa is beginning its own portal device experimentation, scientists begin further developing GLaDOS.

1990s
In 1996, the basic computing and disk operating components of GLaDOS are brought online, but no AI is integrated yet.

In 1998, Aperture releases a long line of brand new inventions, such as the Excursion Funnel, the Thermal Discouragement Beam, the Weighted Pivot Cube, the Aerial Faith Plate, and the Pneumatic Diversity Vent. That same year, on the company's first annual Take Your Daughter to Work Day, the first version of the untested AI for GLaDOS, mapped from the now deceased Caroline's mind, is put into effect. She immediately becomes self-aware and floods the entire facility with a deadly neurotoxin that kills the majority of people inside. She is fitted with a Morality Core, stopping her attack, but not until everyone had already been poisoned and soon died. GLaDOS began a quick, endless cycle of testing in her programmed goal of beating Black Mesa. However, the Black Mesa incident that released The Combine caused Black Mesa to cease being a threat. However, GLaDOS manages to finish development on the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device beforehand.

2000s
Sometime in the early 2000s, the Seven Hour War is raged, leading to the Combine's takeover of Earth.

Chell is the next test subject to be awakened, and performs tests for GLaDOS. However, when GLaDOS attempts to dispose of her, Chell retaliates and fights back, eventually fighting GLaDOS and destroying her before being pulled back into the facility and put back into stasis by the Party Escort Bot. However, she is given priority wake up in case of an emergency by the still alive Doug Rattman.

Portal 2
Portal 2 takes place an unknown amount of time after the events of the first game. Though some sources claim that it takes place 50,000 years after the first game, Doug Rattman is speculated to still be alive, so this is unlikely. Other theories state that the signs of Rattman may be his ghost, as suggested by the track on the Portal 2: Songs to Test By soundtrack, "Ghost of Rattman".

In Portal 2, Chell is awakened by Wheatley after the reserve power runs out. They travel through the decrepit facility until they accidentally revive GLaDOS, who forced Chell to test. However, Chell switches GLaDOS and Wheatley out as the main core, but Wheatley goes mad and throws Chell and GLaDOS (now trapped in a potato battery) down underneath the Enrichment Center and into the abandoned old Aperture beneath. The two reconcile their differences, GLaDOS remembers her past life as Caroline, and the two defeat Wheatley. GLaDOS redeems herself and lets Chell go.