Aperture Science Extended Relaxation Center
- Not to be confused with the Relaxation Vault in Portal.
The Aperture Science Extended Relaxation Center is a section within the Enrichment Center, in which test subjects will be accommodated via long-term cryogenic stasis before and after they are put through their respective testing courses.
Although the section was never mentioned nor seen in Portal, it is the first location in the single-player campaign of Portal 2.
Overview
The Relaxation Center serves as a housing bay for dedicated test subjects, where they are put through long-term cryogenic hibernation within their Extended Relaxation Chambers (cargo containers housing a hotel-like room).
In Portal 2, the Extended Relaxation Center appears to be a large compound with thousands of docked containers housing test subjects in their respective Extended Relaxation Chambers. The Relaxation Chambers consist of life support generators that can be powered entirely by the facility's overseer, GLaDOS. With the destruction of GLaDOS, these chambers slowly depleted in life support over the years and as a result, thousands of test subjects had died overtime. Chell was able to last an extensive, unnatural amount of years in stasis after the events of Portal due to the intervention of Doug Rattmann, who had cut all cryogenic supplies from the entire facility and re-directed them into Chell's Relaxation Chamber. These Extended Relaxation Chambers possess a hotel-like interior design, meant to comfort test subjects during their years of stay.
Under protocols, test subjects would regularly be awakened every 50 days in the Relaxation Chamber to prevent physical and mental deterioration. Either GLaDOS or the Announcer are connected into the Relaxation Chambers to guide test subjects through their rough awakening after a long-term stasis. In Portal 2, due to the lack of GLaDOS' control on the facility, the Announcer will take up the role of awaking test subjects instead. Once test subjects are awake, they are asked to perform physical and mental awareness exercises. In a typical Aperture Science mindset, posters are made nearby the Relaxation Center in the Portal 2: Lab Rat comic to promote usage of cryogenic stasis, claiming it to be "safe & fun". Ironically, a warning label can be found nearby which states that long-term relaxation is not entirely fail-safe, and that test subjects may die in the process.
The cargo containers housing Relaxation Chambers can be moved by personality cores, in which they are to enter the premises of the room and begin maneuvering the rails lifting up the Relaxation Chamber away from its docking bay and into a testing track. Once the chamber has been brought near a testing track, the subject will be deployed into a short-term stasis bed housed inside a Relaxation Vault. From there, test subjects will be awakened immediately at the start of their testing course.
In terms of arrangement, the Extended Relaxation Center as a whole appears to spot a "document stack" order, where Relaxation Chamber containers are randomly stashed against, above, or beside others without proper arrangements.
Portal 2
The Extended Relaxation Center is the first location in the game's single-player campaign. Set 50 days after the events of Portal, Chell is awakened by the Announcer for a mandatory physical and mental awareness exercise. Chell is then asked to return to her sleep, and instead, ended waking up about 50,000 years later.[1] At this time, she meets Wheatley who came knocking on the door to Chell's Relaxation Chamber.
When Wheatley enters the premises, he immediately opens a hatch on the ceiling and takes control of the Relaxation Chamber to maneuver it across the Extended Relaxation Center, away from the docking bay. He then mistakes a wall as a testing track docking bay and proceeds to slam the Relaxation Chamber against it, despite a sign on the wall stating that the actual docking bay for the testing track is 500 feet below it.
See Also
Appearances
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References
- ↑ "One way to further differentiate Portal and Half-Life was to set the game far in the future—at least 50,000 years." — Portal 2 - The Final Hours, The Power of Paint, page 5