Portal calls it a departure lounge. I knew that once those seals hissed into place behind me, departure would fall far short of describing what happened next. I would either be precisely and wholly in that space, or so fully and completely removed from it that I might as well never have existed in this universe. With a nod to that old feline paradigm, I knew some tech-drone was aching to commission a plaque on the wall of Remembrance mourning the day I was reduced to an indeterminate probability.
Not only was the notion of departure moot, there was nowhere to lounge. I peered through the airlock at a bare, spherical chamber, suffused in white light of a pure and epiphanic intensity. I asked Portal if all this razzle-dazzle was really necessary; after all, movie-makers only used this effect when they needed to suggest a kind of other-worldly wonder that we’re not quite capable of depicting or imagining. It admitted that the walls of the sphere were a permeable construct of hard light and could be any colour it chose; it felt an effect from the Pure Truth range would put me in the right mood. I reminded it of its earlier errors of judgement in matters of messianic mania and persuaded it to give me something in Cinnamon Latte.
I asked how was the reciprocity issue was coming along as the whiteness gave way to delicate ochre with a calming swirl of dusty red. It suggested I not worry my pretty little head about such matters as ensuring each universe retained its correct quotient of matter. It was sure it would find an equivalent and hopefully inanimate lump to bring back in my place. I shouldn’t lose too many organs, and should a sentient be grabbed by accident, Portal’s euthanasia and hygiene protocols were top notch. Perhaps, it conceded, it was joking, but until I got past my Boy’s Bumper Book of Cosmology, I didn’t deserve a sensible answer.
The debate usefully distracted me from the fact that the sphere was the business end of a spiral accelerator the size of a small city-state. When Portal set into motion the incomprehensible sequence of sub-atomic events that would turn me into abstract concept, I would in effect be strapped across the muzzle of a cannon that does far more than disrupt matter. Perhaps that’s why Portal wouldn’t let me chew gum or play with my atomic displacement utilities while I waited.
