Portal-ing Into The Stone Age
Chapter One - Modern Inconvenience
Prologue
This was meant to be longer, but the adhd demons got to me and beat me with pencil, so it's not. I genuinely did not know how to keep going so the rest of what was supposed to be here gets to be in a different chapter, tee hee. I'll introduce other characters one day.....
It’s kind of hard to truly appreciate something when you’re constantly surrounded by it. That’s to say, it’s very easy to take things for granted. Take, for example, literally any scientific advancement ever. To be thrust into a blank slate of a world moments after having been surrounded by fancy, high-tech creations for upwards of a year— probably— was rough. It’s a full zero to a hundred, absolutely no warning provided. Sure, you may not have ever been a person in STEM— you’d be better described as someone desperately trying to escape it— but you can appreciate a little human ingenuity here and there, all right?
That’s what makes your recent discovery of, what is likely, the ruins of human civilization all the more upsetting. There's nothing around other than nature; there’s no one nearby: that is the conclusion you’ve come to. Your best explanations so far have been either; one, nuclear warfare happened, which led to total nuclear fallout and now everyone is pretty much dead, but it’s been long enough that nature has reclaimed the earth. Or, two, humans fucked over mother nature so bad that they had to flee, developed high-tech space travel, and are currently living on a different planet, leaving Earth to revitalize itself all whilst keeping the fact that humanity moved planets a strict government secret for the sake of peace.
You’ve yet to find any evidence to support either of these claims, unfortunately.
You bite into your poorly seasoned fish of pain and misery; if you had known this is what you’d be met with on the surface, you would’ve gotten some salt from the mines on your way back up. In this world, it’s only you, pathetic tasting food, and your companion cube you’ve loving named Carlton (which may subject to change).
It’s like a sandbox game out here, but worse. Sighs accompany the crackle of fire and the sound of quiet munching. Living like you’re in Minecraft is actually significantly less fun when the world isn’t a bunch of cubes that can defy the laws of physics. Moreover, you simply miss defying the laws of physics in general. At the very least, peaceful mode is perpetually on. You don’t know what you’d do if creepers and zombies actually existed. (Die probably, who knows.)
You’re sitting on the ground, leaning against your companion cube as if it’s a glorified backrest. A large metal cube has a surprising amount of uses when you really think about it. Facing the little fire pit you’ve made, you blankly watch as the other fish you caught get roasted and toasted; you hope angling it directly on top of the smoke gives it more flavor, perhaps even kill some bacteria. You took culinary class once, that’s probably how it works. Being alone with your thoughts, your mind drifting away, has become commonplace. It’s not impossible that there are others around, GLaDOS did mention seeing people on the surface a while ago. To be fair, she could’ve just been lying to you like she did with the whole “finding your parents” thing. But having a little hope has never hurt anyone, has it?
You toss the stick you were using to kebab the fish into the fire. You should probably hit the road soon, if you want to have any hope of finding civilization. You’re not really willing to stake your chances on someone randomly traversing out into the middle of nowhere and stumbling across you. If the apocalypse did happen, you don’t think any survivors would want to stray too far from their abodes, lest something unfortunate happens. While, yes, you could just stay put and build a life out in the wilderness of upper Michigan, the lure of possible companionship is simply too great.
‘This blows,’ that's a good way to sum up your situation. You can feel Carlton slide backwards a bit from under your weight, inspiring you to begrudgingly fix your posture, no longer slouching, but still feeling like a middle aged alcoholic man who just sobered up: achy and tired. Life was much easier when you had the convenience of teleporting across long distances instead of having to walk so much. You missed your portal gun; despite how dangerous it was to keep an object that opens wormholes at will and tries to kill you if you look at it wrong, it was quite fun to use. It probably wouldn’t be much use up here anyway, portals would only open on substances containing moon rocks. Where the hell are you going to find moon rocks other than the moon? You’re not a geologist OR an astronaut— you did go to space, but astronauts usually require training, no?
You can almost still hear the quiet hum of the gun’s mechanicals, buzzing around in the back of your mind. The little “fwoosh” and “pew-pew” as you’d create another mini wormhole. Unfortunately though, you are no stranger to auditory hallucinations; you shake your head, trying to ignore the buzzing sound. You stand upright after another few moments, stretching your aching muscles and popping your bones. “Oh how lovely it would be to fall asleep in an actual bed and not just a pile of grass and dirt.” You sigh dreamily as your symphony of popping joints continues, one of these days, you’re going to acquire a bed. Today is not that day.
You dump a little water on the fire before stomping it out as a precaution. You had to give yourself a crash course in pottery shortly after exiting the facility, seeing as there are no utensils or dishware in the vicinity. Your ugly little cup has proved to be quite useful despite its appearance, even if your water tastes like a river when you drink from it. You snatch the other couple of twigs holding your game up out of the ground, a little treat for the road— if you consider unseasoned trout a tasty little treat.
You eye your makeshift tableware, debating on whether or not you should bring it with you. It'd be easier to take more of your very few belongings if you had something to carry it all in. You currently do not, much to your ire, which makes this little plate situation quite annoying. You contemplate (haha, contemplate. See what you did there? Plate? Comedic genius, that's what you are) for another few seconds before setting it all on top of your companion cube. They’re useful and you don’t know if you’ll have easy access to clay again in the near future.
Woefully though, you do have to pay careful attention to your trinkets, making sure you don’t drop and likey shatter them. Which means no jumping around or running, once again, much to your ire. To circle back to the overarching problem you’ve been thinking about in the back of your mind, you greatly miss scientific advancements. How much nicer would it be to have a car. Perhaps something smaller and built for off-roading, like a quad, since you are one person out in the wilderness and not a family going on a trip into the city.
You stack your dishes on top of Carla the cube— that was probably it’s name— quite expertly, if you do say so yourself. Not to brag to your non-existent spectators, but you were quite the cup stacking champion back in elementary school. You heft your belongings up, holding them against your chest, arms wrapped around the cube like you’re hugging it. Thus, your next journey begins. Will you find civilization? Is real, human, companionship in the not so far off future? Or will you perhaps die alone in the wilderness due to some unfortunate accident caused by your infinite dumbass-ery? Find out all this and more on the next episode of-!
You sigh.
“I miss the internet, Carla. I miss it a lot.”
Your squarish sidekick, of course, cannot respond, nor understand your crappy references. To have no one to quote random videos in tandem with you is truly torturous. More tortuous than having to walk through more wheat and more forests. Physical labor sucks, yeah, but physical labor with no entertainment other than your own thoughts is even worse. Sure, you’ve essentially got Spotify premium playing in the back of your mind, and the ability to quote the entire scripts of both The Bee Movie and various abridged animes thanks to the power of neurodivergence, but that’s not the same. You’re like a feudal lord: you need to be entertained by little jesters all the time.
Better yet, be a real little jester all the time.
Well, you could always belt out a one man musical. Your throat would definitely hurt by the end, considering the past disuse of your voice, but what is a little pain in the grand scheme of Legally Blonde? Maybe you can serenade future comrades into being your friends. Though, let’s be real, unless you stumble across a camp of theater kids, you’d probably get shot at on sight. Given that guns still exist, of course. Ah… guns.
Portal guns…
…you miss breaking the laws of physics, goddamnit!
Fighting for your life every waking second was stressful, but by golly do you crave the feeling of soaring through the air after falling from a height that should’ve definitely killed you. You push past a few bushes, having made it to the edge of a nearby forest now. Being graced with the presence of pine trees does nothing to lift your mood, lamentably. If you correctly recall being grilled by the fire department and forestry services as a kid, aimlessly wandering around the woods is actually a crazy, bad, and extremely dangerous idea. Especially this time of year.
While you don’t necessarily think it’s winter at the moment, it’d be significantly colder if it was, you’re well aware that it’s definitely not summer; you’d be fanning yourself otherwise. Which means you’re smack dab in the middle of fall and staying in a vast forest for too long could definitely be the cause of your death. You’re not trying to morph into the Donner Party Two: Electric Boogaloo. The only difference between you and them right now is that you’re completely and utterly alone. They all cannibalized each other and starved to death because winter in the mountains was so bad, but you wouldn’t even get the chance to be a cannibal, you’d just starve. Not like you want to cannibalize anyone either way, but the point still stands.
Running around the wilderness in general is a straight up death sentence. If you’re dissociating and pretending the world is just hyper-realistic Minecraft, then you’re on hardcore mode. Which means, there are no respawn points. If you die, then you’re dead; and you’re very much not in the mood to die right now. You’ve had too many close encounters with the reaper to die to the likes of the cold or a wolf, perhaps, of all things. You’d almost forget what your initial internal debate was about if not for the mildly unnerving forest ambience echoing in your ears and snapping you out of your thoughts. Was that the sound of crunching gravel and sticks, or are you just crazy? It could very well be both.
Right, this is still the wilderness and getting too deep into an internal monologue could end badly for you. Focus, you fool! You waltz past a few trees, and then a few more. From where you’re standing you can see the enclosed plains behind you, yet still have the ability to gaze into the expansive woods before you. You’re going to have to cross them eventually, so you might as well do so now before winter hits for real. You’d sigh again, but even you are beginning to get annoyed by the frequency in which you do. The eerie silence of the world seems to permeate this forest far more than any other area you’ve traversed thus far— though wheat fields and plains aren’t very eerie to begin with. “Might as well just full send it. Let’s go, Charlotte.” You mutter to yourself, stepping over a few rocks and branches. You’d better keep track of where you’re going, it's easy to get turned around in a forest.
