literature

Aperture Afterlife: Wheatley's Story - Ch. A1

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I was born in 1945 as Wheatley Pendleton to a modest family in London, England. For my entire life, people have shamed me because of my poor thinking skills and social awkwardness. All I wanted was to be accepted by someone for who I am. But whenever I got the chance, something went awry.

My father was an engineer, and my mother was a flight attendant. I was particularly fond of my father, who was willing to help me improve my behaviour in public. My mother, on the other hand, was very overbearing on me and scolded me for my clumsy mistakes.

I had gotten my first job when I was 17, but a lot of my work landed me in hospital from time to time. I kept bouncing around different jobs until I flunked out of university in 1968. Fed up with not making ends meet, I bought a ticket for a flight to Toronto, Canada to start over.

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After arriving in Toronto, I found a newspaper on an airport bench. The front page story was about an applied sciences company in Michigan that was being interrogated by the US Senate about missing astronauts. The article highlighted a large number of charges against the company related to slacked safety standards and controversial research.

I realized I might have a chance of sustaining a career thanks to these guys. Over the next several months, I did as much research as I could. I watched news reports about them, I searched phonebooks for employees who worked there, I looked for Aperture Science ads in the newspapers… I looked at everything I had at my disposal.

I was finally able to find where it was in July 1971. The following week, I was standing at the entrance of the place where my hope of redemption lay.

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I was dressed in the best clothes I could afford: a jacket and tie, black trousers and shoes, and a grey fedora with a brown band.

The security booth was empty, and the gate was left open. I quietly made my way inside, and hiked down the long road to the entrance.

When I got there, all I could see was a small aluminium gardening shed. I at first believed I had gone the wrong way, which would’ve been disastrous since I could only see hills in all directions. But I was able to confirm that I did find what I was looking for, since I suddenly heard the sound of a motor running coming from inside of the shed in front of me.

I polished my glasses, took a glance at the reflection in my pocket watch window, and cowardly knocked on the door of the shed.

The door threw itself open quickly enough to send me falling backwards. When I recovered, I saw what appeared to be the inside of a lift. I was mesmerized by the decorations inside, and I stepped in for a closer look.

As soon as I touched the furthest wall, the door slammed shut behind me. Everything went black, and I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. Then, the lift plummeted downward as if the cable had snapped. I grabbed what I presumed was a railing and held on for dear life.

It was about five minutes before I stopped falling. The doors opened to reveal a vast underground cave that appeared to be abandoned. I cautiously stepped out, unsure if the lift would go back up without me.

Thankfully, it didn’t. It was then that I decided to just lie down against one of the walls and let myself die. It seemed to me that no one would miss me or care if I just disappeared.
Yeah, with the number of people who have seen my work, sometimes I have the same thought as Wheatley at the end.

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