[My submission for @wheaterz Testing Maintenance fic! This was a ton of fun to do and I enjoyed streaming it! I’ll probably do more stuff like this in the future too]
When I started working on Testing Maintenance I thought I would make an art contest of some kind when it was all finished, and now that it’s done and I have an idea of what I want to do, here it is! Actually, I’ve been wanting to do a contest in general for a while and this is was a good excuse to get one off the ground, so it all works out. <3
Here are the rules!
1: It won’t just be an art contest. You can submit creative writing works or even music, just as long as it’s something you have made that’s inspired from the Testing Maintenance fanfic.
2: You do not have to be following me to enter the contest.
3: I will be shipping prizes so you will have to be comfortable with giving me an address to send them off. If you are uncomfortable with giving me your address and you win a prize we can arrange something else!
-PRIZES-
Anyone who enters will also get a surprise participation’s prize.
If you want to win one of these you must use #TestingMaintenanceContest so that I can find your submission or directly message me your submission with the hashtag
1st Place Winner: Companion Cube Messenger Bag and a colored drawing request. (Portal Themed)
2nd Place Winner: Companion Cube Keychain and a colored drawing request. (Portal Themed)
3rd Place Winner: A fully colored drawing request. (Portal Themed)
CONTEST END DATE: APRIL 22nd at Midnight PST (California USA time)
Dr. Aadland had never been much of a coffee drinker until he’d taken this job.
My (very last-second) entry for the Testing Maintenance contest!
I wish I could’ve done this whole scene because God, is it awesome, but I didn’t want to run out of time to enter! I’ll probably do a couple more pages at some point, though, because I really like how these came out! (I did change a bit from the original writing, because I wasn’t sure how to make it work in comic form.. I hope that’s okay–)
Here's my entry to the Testing Maintenance contest! Testing Maintenance is a post-Portal Stories Mel fanfic by @wheaterz, and it's incredibly good! I highly recommend the story for all Portal fans! I am also a huge Porter Robinson nut, so when they brought up Sad Machine in the story, I had to use it as inspiration :D I hope you like it Wheaterz!
Virgil Aadland raised his eyes, though his head barely lifted. He was so heavy now, like he’d spent every last ounce of his energy destroying that ... thing. He could still smell machine oil and mercury on his hands. His coat was still blistered from the sparks. There were lacerations on his ankles from the shrapnel.
He was aware, in a vague sort of way, that he’d probably lost his mind. It wasn’t uncommon for people under this sort of stress to experience psychotic breaks. These nice fellows in the white coats were probably here to take him to a quiet, pastel place where he could reconstruct the mush in his head, like building an apple out of applesauce.
Except he didn’t feel particularly mushy. He felt sharp and hard and precise. He was still thinking at about eight million cycles per second, such that his head was hot and fevered. These people were dressed in Aperture lab coats. Their faces were stern, impersonal. They had come to get him from the prison cell where he had been locked up. Oh, sure, they called it a relaxation chamber, but the door didn’t open from the inside and the walls were reinforced and when he’d screamed no one had come to check on him at all. These men, whoever they were, were not here to institutionalize him. Their purpose was far more sinister.
Or maybe that was just paranoia, continuing to play its ugly little games. He’d had one psychotic break already, why not another? The unfinished, inert robot had been talking to him, sure. The nice men in white coats were here to kill him. Right. Sure.
“Dr. Aadland,” one prompted, annoyed.
“Yes,” he said, getting to his feet. “Sorry. I didn’t sleep well.”
Didn’t sleep at all, in fact, because he’d been tearing his fingernails off trying to pry open one of the wall panels, with no luck whatsoever. He’d wiped the blood off on the inside of his red coat, where it wouldn’t be seen, and he stuffed his hands into his pockets before the Nice Men In White Coats could see the absolute ruin he’d made of his fingers. There was blood in his hair. He’d been too out of sorts to suppress the habitual urge to push his hands into it. He hoped they wouldn’t notice, would think it was more machine oil that was slicking his fringe into wild spikes.
“Apparently,” one of the Nice Men In White Coats remarked.
“We’ll need you to come with us, sir,” said the other.
“Where?” said Virgil, not moving an inch.
“We’re here to escort you from the Enrichment Center and transfer you into the custody of the police,” said the first. “You’re being arrested for destruction of property.”
LIAR, Virgil’s brain shrieked, but he kept his mouth shut. The corner of his lips twitched.
“Deserved, I guess,” he said. Absently, he pushed a hand through his hair. It was only when he felt the crusty clots of blood that he remembered he wasn’t supposed to do that and hurriedly stuck his hand back in his pocket. He shrugged. “Take me away, boys.”
Run, his mind warned him. Run. Run. Run.
He ambled to the door, watching the NMIWCs for any wrong twitch. They made none, and in fact stood aside to allow him through the door. He nodded to them, while the screaming clamor of his brain went wild, digging sharp claws into his brainstem.
RUN. RUN. YOU ARE GOING TO DIE.
The two NMIWCs fell in behind him as he walked, standing just close enough to grab him if he bolted. His eyes darted side to side, looking for escape routes, weapons, allies--even a desk chair would do.
Virgil had always prided himself on his skill at making things. Yesterday he’d discovered he was also very talented at smashing them to gory bits.
Robot, human, what was the difference? If both could talk to him and both could scream and both could host a consciousness, what really was the difference? They all bled. They all broke. Anything could be killed. Everything could die.
The men were within arm’s reach, close enough to grab him, if he bolted. Perhaps they had not considered that he was also close enough to grab them.
Virgil knew his way around the Enrichment Center, especially because in more recent days he’d been planning escape routes. The thing he was making, the awful thing that whispered to him when he went too long without sleeping, it was going to kill them all. He’d known it. And he hadn’t been able to stop building it, because it was important, but he’d have been damned if he was going to lie down and take it.
And then he really had stopped it, but his preparations had not been in vain, because when the NMIWCs gently corrected his course he knew instantly that his paranoia had been right all along.
They were not taking him away. They were taking him out.
Virgil smiled amiably at them and muttered of course and silly me and so easy to get lost, and then he said, “Why don’t you lead?”
The NMIWCs shared one single glance and Virgil knew the jig was up.
He clocked the nearest one right in the jaw, throwing all his weight behind the strike, and the NMIWC crumpled with a grunt. Virgil kicked the other in the knee and bolted, his shoes clanging like alarm bells on the catwalks.
One of the NMIWCs shouted. Virgil ducked instinctively. Two red-hot javelins hit him in the back. His whole body locked up, painfully rigid. He fell flat. His face cracked hard against the catwalk. He tasted blood. Pain was pumping through him from the twin spears in his back. His jaw was locked so tight it was about to crack his teeth. He was seizing, barely able to breathe.
The pain shut off, leaving only two hot coals, one on either side of his spine. His muscles all turned to water. He couldn’t move. Blood was running out of his nose, over his lips, and it burst in a fat and viscous bubble when he moaned.
More clanging alarm bells, slower. Hot hands gripped him by the arms, too tight. Hot hands gripped him by the ankles, too tight.
“Of all the goddamn times to run out of tranquilizer,” one of the NMIWCs grumbled.
“Shut. Up,” said the other.
Reeling and aching and petrified, Virgil couldn’t even struggle as they hauled him away.
The lights were brighter, here.
He wasn’t sure if it was a residual effect of the tasing or if everything was really that bright, but it was like someone was using his eyeballs as pincushions. He didn’t dare to shut his eyes, though. A left, a right, red line on the floor, six seven eight doors, a left, a right--he’d have to remember, he had to keep it in his head, so he could run, so he could get out--left, left, stairs, an awful lot of computers....
Virgil had started to regain some motor control, but he was electing not to use it. Everything still hurt. They hadn’t even pulled the taser prongs out of his back, and the pain of them hit him afresh with every step the NMIWCs took.
“Jesus, he’s heavy,” one of them remarked. As though he couldn’t hear them.
“Doesn’t look it,” said the other. He grunted, adjusting his grip on Virgil’s ankles. “Told you we should’ve brought the cart.”
“Sure, sure, so you could get decked instantaneously.”
“Strut, I swear to God.”
Virgil paid their bantering little mind. He did, however, note the big red splotch on one NMIWC’s face where his fist had landed. When it came down to it, that was the button to aim for. The other NMIWC was still limping.
As Virgil’s mind came back into focus, shedding the residual sparks from the tasing, he began to recognize the place he was being carried through. He found he could anticipate the turns instead of having to memorize them. He almost lost his composure. He hoped. He did not pray, because he knew better than anyone that there was not, could not be, any God to hear.
No God would have let him get away with what he’d already done.
But the NMIWCs took him just where he knew they would, to the room with the array of metal spheres and the operating table and the banks of computers and the Lexan walls, a room where he’d spent so many hours in silent and ruthless contemplation of his subjects, fine-tuning, fiddling, and ultimately failing....
They were going to try and turn him into a personality construct. They were going to take his work, his life’s work, and turn it on him, and they probably wouldn’t even list him as a fucking coauthor when they killed him--
How ironic. How fitting.
🎶 Let the punishment fit the crime--the punishment fit the crime; and make each prisoner pent unwillingly represent a source of innocent merriment....🎶
God dammit. God dammit. Now not only was he going to die, he was going to die with showtunes stuck in his head. He’d see Gilbert and Sullivan in hell.
“Get him strapped down,” someone said.
🎶 My object all sublime, I shall achieve in time🎶
Virgil could bear it no more, and lashed out furiously and all at once. His captors shouted in alarm. He nearly wrenched himself from their grasps with his thrashing, but more joined them. Hands took his arms, his legs, gripped his coat and his hair. He was slammed down onto a cold metal table. He screamed through his teeth, both in rage and in pain. The taser prongs were still in his back, driven now nearly an inch into the muscle.
🎶 To let the punishment fit the crime--🎶
They were pulling some sort of cap over his head, gloved hands pressing down on his chest, his hips, his thighs and shins. He thrashed and screamed. He banged his head against the table so hard he saw sparks. Someone grabbed his jaw.
“For God’s sake, hold him still!”
🎶 The punishment fit the crime🎶
Cold gel touched his temples, his jaw, his scalp, pressed in through the cap. Virgil kicked out as hard as he could and was gratified by a heavy grunt. They started trying to stick electrodes to him and he redoubled his efforts. No easy seal. No solid contact. Work for it. Work for it, you bastards.
🎶 And make each prisoner pent🎶
“Where in the goddamn hell are my tranquilizers?!”
“I’m sorry, ma’am, we’re out--”
“What the fuck do you mean out, Dr. Gray? How can we be out?”
“Why don’t you ask him?”
🎶 Unwillingly represent🎶
The last conversion had been rough. He’d supervised. There had been no struggling. There had also been no tranquilizers left by the end, but that was fine because they weren’t going to try again for a while--
“Hell with it, just do it.”
“Ma’am--”
“Did I stutter, Dr. Strut?”
“It’ll kill him before we’re halfway done! His body won’t take the stress, you can’t--”
“Start. The goddamn. Conversion.”
Virgil wriggled on the table, drawing every ounce of his strength, his grit, his terror and rage. Someone dropped their forearm across his throat and bore down hard. He choked, terrified--
“Beginning conversion in three, two, one--”
A stick of dynamite exploded in Virgil’s head. His vision went white, and there was pain, pain, pain, everything was pain, and through the ringing in his ears he could hear himself screaming....
🎶 A source of innocent merriment, of innocent merriment🎶
This is my art piece for @wheaterz art contest for their fic “Testing Maintenance”. It is an amazing piece of writing and I highly recommend it if you are in the Portal fandom! I loved every single chapter!!
