Undetermination

[trustycrowbar]

Well, it seems Ky was right.

There's no reason in keeping it secret now. I worked for about two years at a classified, government-contracted research facility in the middle of the New Mexico desert. Black Mesa. Seems it's no coincidence that I started conducting anemoi research here so quickly; that's almost exactly what I was up to over there too! Anomalous materials research! It's almost as though I walked right out of that lab, and into this one!

Now I'm starting to wonder... is that it? Is this really ALL I have to remember? 'Cuz it could be. Those monsters I recognize could've just been escaped experiments. Everything ties together. I even threw more Anemoi into the refraction-coding analyzer to make sure and all I get are a little things, minutia, friends, co-workers, locker combination, spectroscopy settings, how many times I fried the microwave in the break room, the history of the company, stupid stories about Aperture and the stunts they used to pull before they... well... nothing huge and important, anyway.

I guess I could live with this... It'd be a relief to not have anything else to remember.

[It doesn't look like a relief. In fact he seems to be staring into the far distance more than the camera. Something about this is still not sitting right with him, and it shows.]

[2% on life at Black Mesa, 1% on general lore and propaganda about Aperture Science, 1% on friends and colleagues.]

Comments

[trustycrowbar]

[...wow.]

You're pretty close to that, actually! You can't really see them, because we're talking expressions in more dimensions than we can perceive at once. But they ARE there, and they mark the very edge of our reality and the beginning of a theoretical "borderworld." Mine, yours, they all probably have one.

Don't ask me what they look like. It's doubtful anyone will ever actually get to see it.

[...if only he knew.]

[nomen_est_numen]

[Man, is he ever getting philosophical. Maybe the blow to the head did him some good...]

A fish probably doesn't think he'd ever know what the world on the other side of the water would look like, either. We're all like that fish, then, I suppose--knowing there's another world on the other side of a barrier but having no way to see it. All we see are things that come from it, like hooks. And feet. And oars....

[trustycrowbar]

...And... they seem strange and maybe even terrible to you, but they're actually perfectly normal on the other side.

[An analogy like that could grant a scientist a book deal, miniseries and radio talk show all at the same TIME, and Shen just pulled it out of his tail feathers! There's obviously more brain to this bird than anyone figured, including him.]

Problem is, fish can't live out of water. We may not survive being out in a borderworld either, but I do know one thing. We all survived coming HERE.

[nomen_est_numen]

[He didn't survive three decades of being an exiled warlord by being stupid, that's for sure, whether he remembers it or not.]

Perhaps we only passed through it....

[trustycrowbar]

That's what I've got figured. Now the only thing left is to gain proof a borderworld exists.

[His eyebrows furrow as something comes to him.]

...Maybe the anemoi...

[nomen_est_numen]

[Oh, dear, Gordon's having Thoughts. When he has those, crazy science happens.]

What of them?

[trustycrowbar]

They may be a toe. Or an oar. Or a fishing hook.

I've exhausted every avenue I can think of trying to evaluate the substance--things like mass, specific density, specific heat capacity, x-ray spectrosopy angles, lattice configurations... Don't let this go too far but I get inconsistencies at best and complete nonsense at worst. But then again, I was only measuring in qualities that would be implied in four dimensions. If these things are cross-sectional geometry of something in a borderworld or even straight out of one, then that would explain it!

[nomen_est_numen]

[He looks right and then left and then back to the screen.]

Mum's the word. But do let me know if you find anything out. I may not understand much of it right now, but it's still oddly fascinating.

[Not to mention that there's something in the back of his mind that tells him that having information this important is a good thing....]

[trustycrowbar]

If I find out, you'll be the first to know.