Portal's Technology in real life (Creative Writing)

Christian David Bauza Gomes

A01375193

English IB Group A

How would Portal’s technology work in real life?

As a fan of video games with great stories and gameplay mechanics, the Portal series by Valve are some of the most original puzzle games I’ve ever played and some of my favorites overall. The premise is simple: You are a human experiment trapped in a laboratory by an A.I named GLaDOS, who forces you to complete a series of tests using a gun that generates a blue portal and an orange portal when in use and at the end of the whole trial, you’ll be rewarded with cake. Once both colors of portals are placed onto a flat surface, the subject can pass through one of them to go to the other place with the opposite color without the need to walk around or the hassle of climbing from one floor to another. It’s also capable of grabbing and carrying nearby objects. Such technology has sadly not been invented yet so we still have to go through stairs, climb up ladders to go to another place and pick up heavy objects when cleaning or when moving to a new home. However, as I played through both games of the series, it made me wonder how it can be created in real life and how it can work to help transportation across a place.

The gun, dubbed Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device in the games, isn’t capable of generating portals in every existing surface (water and glass for example are two of the incompatible terrains). The surface has to be smooth and flat like a road or a concrete wall and the subject operating it has to be careful on how to move across them if he or she wants to prevent a serious fall. Speaking of falling, in the games the character could jump from serious heights and put a portal of the other color to teleport with greater velocity to the other place and land safely because of her boots. In real life, however, that risk ends up with the person suffering incredibly painful consequences. For instance, the person jumping from the serious height could die if imprecise on where to land and even if he or she did manage to get across the other portal to the other side, without a proper landing space or equipment, the person could turn out severely wounded because of the amount of speed he or she caught while falling on a flat surface. Finally, one of the main consequences if used incorrectly is what is called the “infinite falling”, which happens when putting one portal up and the other one down it and then dive, could cause the user to get stuck in a high speed limbo, falling down each portal forever. Oh, and if you think that you could just generate another one on another surface to get off the limbo, the risks are still there: You could end up injured because of the speed or you could get stuck between portals with no possibility of getting out.

Now, these things happen only if the device is used incorrectly. If used correctly, with proper heights and patience while walking through them, the user could get quicker to his or her destination. It can also be used to transport things from one place to another without picking them up. Say for example you have a heavy box because of all the objects in there; with the device you can generate portals to get closer to your destination, as well as picking up the box with the object (But make sure you don’t have anything between the device and the box when lifted or communications will be interrupted and the box will be dropped). It could be a huge improvement on how people move across a city or through home without generating much pollution because of cars and buses (Just don’t try to use it to go from one country to another since it’s rather impossible).

This technology is only fictional for now and it could take hundreds, even thousands of years of research to develop it, since it acts as a zero gravity manipulator, a feature that only occurs in Earth’s atmosphere and with astronauts at the International Space Station. The zero-g experience is limited to users here on the ground and it would be even more complicated to transport it to a small device. Also, the main feature of it is to generate linked portals for safe travel from one place to the other. How are researchers going to make the material to generate them in flat surfaces? It’s hard to know, even for extreme hardcore fans of the series. Nobody knows what are they made of exactly or what powers the gun itself. Some say it’s plasma or some kind of fluid from the second game, but it’s still a mystery. Since the material is unknown, the way to create it is also unknown. The design can be created according to the game, but the way to operate it can take years to develop and tons of changes from one source to reality based on what actually exists for transportation. So, for now, teleportation is only a thing that can be enjoyed with this wonderful franchise of puzzle games.