Portal Mysteries

[jumpman17]

Inside the game, you can find a secret area with a scribble on the wall saying username: cjohnson, password: tier3

Goto "http://aperturescience.com" and type "login" and then enter the username and password.

You can either type "help", "?", or "lib" to have it show the menu of options.

Notes displays the following:
1953 - Aperture Science begins operations as a manufacturer of shower curtains. Early product line provides a very low-tech portal between the inside and outside of your shower. Very little science is actually involved. The name is chosen to make the curtains appear more hygienic.

1956 - Eisenhower administration awards Aperture a contract to provide shower curtains to all branches of the military except the Navy.

1957 - 1975 - Mostly shower curtains.

1978 - Aperture Founder and CEO, Cave Johnson, is exposed to mercury while secretly developing a dangerous mercury-injected rubber sheeting from which he plans to manufacture seven deadly shower curtains to be given as gifts to each member of the House Naval Appropriations committee.

1979 - Both of Cave Johnson's kidneys fail. Brain damaged, dying, and incapable of being convinced that time is not flowing backwards, Johnson lays out a three tiered R&D program. The results, he says, will 'guarantee the continued success of Aperture Science far into the fast-approaching distant past.'

Tier 1: The Heimlich Counter-Maneuver - A reliable technique for interrupting the life-saving Heimlich Maneuver.

Tier 2: The Take-A-Wish Foundation - A charitable organization that will purchase wishes from the parents of terminally ill children and redistribute them to wish-deprived but otherwise healthy adults.

Tier 3: 'Some kind of rip in the fabric of space... That would... Well, it'd be like, I don't know, something that would help with the shower curtains I guess. I haven't worked this idea out as much as the wish-taking one.'

1981 - Diligent Aperture engineers complete the Heimlich Counter-Maneuver and Take-A-Wish Foundation initiatives. The company announces products related to the research in a lavish, televised ceremony. These products become immediately wildly unpopular. After a string of very public choking and despondent sick child disasters, senior company officials are summoned before a Senate investigative committee. During these proceedings, and engineer mentions that some progress has been made on Tier 3, the 'man-sized ad hoc quantum tunnel through physical space with possible applications as a shower curtain.' The committee quickly permanently recessed, and Aperture is granted an open-ended contract to secretly continue research on the 'Portal' and Heimlich Counter-Maneuver projects.

1981 - 1985 - Work progresses on the 'Portal' project. Several high ranking Fatah personnel choke to death on lamb chunks despite the intervention of their bodyguards.

1986 - Word reaches Aperture management that another defense contractor called Black Mesa is working on a similar portal technology. In response to this news, Aperture begins developing the Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System (GLaDOS), an artificially intelligent research assistant and disk operating system.

1996 - After a decade spent bringing the disk operating parts of GLaDOS to a state of more or less basic functionality, work begins on the Genetic Lifeform component.

Several Years Later - The untested AI is activated for the first time as one of the planned activities of Aperture's first annual bring-your-daughter-to-work day.

In many ways, the initial test goes well...

[END]

Typing "apply" takes you to a 50 page application to enroll as a test subject. However, I did not bother to write down the long code at the beginning which it then asked for at the end. Need to test this part.

Typing "play portal" has a woman say goodbye really quiet and then takes you to a Youtube video which has been removed by the user.
Youtube Link

That's all I discovered so far. Wonder what else is on here?

 

[bluebright]

that is too cool. I finished protal, and found that username thing, but thought nothing of it. you rock. thanks.

 

[warbird]

im at the final boss now. gonna check this out later.

edit: btw, both portal and hl2 ep2 was way too short :/

 

[bluebright]

i took a screenshot of the number at the start of the test and then entered it in wrong at the end. if anyone try's that again, make sure you do it right as you only get one go.

 

[- Wrath of God -]

i took a screenshot of the number at the start of the test and then entered it in wrong at the end. if anyone try's that again, make sure you do it right as you only get one go.

The number constantly changes as it flashes, and when you enter it, it says that the number is case sensitive, and as the number flashes with lower-case letters and you can only enter capitals... well you get the point. It's impossible - literally.

I finished Portal. And all the advanced maps. And a few challenges. It was a great game, but it was WAAAAAAY too short.

Oh btw, does anybody have a hl2 (original) save that I can use - I got really far, and then wiped my drive, so I lost my saves, and I REALLY don't wanna go through the beginning again. I was at the part where you get the antlion bait.

 

[juggernaut911]

that part is fun

 

[kellyan95]

The cake is a lie!

 

[Don Andy]

If you go through the history of the Wikipedia Portal article, you'll see that the cjohnson thing has been in the article before the game was even out, due to some spoilsport decompiling the flash

But yeah, I discovered it the "hard way", too.


I also think that the WHOLE thing was a test. I didn't went out of control for GLaDOS when Chell avoided the fire. Even destroying what appeared to be GLaDOS was just a test. I base this not on the rather lame ending with the cake, where all the "balls" blip up, but rather on the ending song. There she obviously states that she was collecting data through her desctruction. I guess what she did with Chell was something like a "final testing run" for the Portal gun (we are out Beta, we're releasing on time).

I have two theories as to why the lab was abandoned:
1. The scientist left it in the course of the 7-Hour-War, but leaving GLaDOS running, which unkowing of the situation outside (or much rather KNOWING about the situation outside) continues her work (go ahead and leave me, I think I prefer to stay inside).
Maybe you'll find someone else to help you (could be referring to a Gordon/Chell crossover, but I think Valve already ruled that one out). Maybe Black Mesa, that was a joke, ha ha, fat chance. Mainly because it's the cause of the 7-Hour-War, so not exactly your best bet when looking for help. And I know Black Mesa and Aperture Science where competitors.

2. Since we can't tell when EXACTLY Portal happens, it could also be long before the Black Mesa Incident, or even long after. So it could be that all the scientist were made to unwilling test subjects by a out-of-control GLaDOS (in a SHODAN manner, just less freaky). So Chell coud be a former scientist or even the daughter of one of the scientist (Bring your daughter to work day).

So, yeah, either that, or I'm just putting a bit too much thought into it. Think what you will

 

[Hiratai]

It's a secret to rick rolling.

 

[cubin']

im at the final boss now. gonna check this out later.

edit: btw, both portal and hl2 ep2 was way too short :/

Yeah they were quite short but if you add them all together you get a substantial amount of play time and extremely good gameplay which I think is worth it

+ TF2


'didn't we have some fun though? remember when the platform was sliding into the fire pit and i said *goodbye* and you were like *no waaay* and then i was all, we pretended we were going to murder you ...that was greeeaat"