Portal Man: A Rational Quest (Original)

[Kiba]

As you sat browsing the web on your computer, a door-sized portal randomly and suddenly opened up in your bedroom. It shimmered with sunlight, almost blocked by tall corn stalks, inviting you to cross over.

What will you do?

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This is a rational quest. Your decisions affect the world, and action has consequences. This is mediated by your characterization.

Plans are free-form. Please indicate your plan via [X] Plan: _name_, with description below.

Voting is done by approval voting.

 

[Kiba]

This is the character sheet.

Character:

Name: ???
Age: ???
Occupation: Computer programmer
Gender: Male

Characterization: Skeptical
Budget: 16599.10 Canadian Dollars

 

[Kiba]

This is a reserved post for rules.

 

[Kiba]

This is a reserved post for everything else.

 

[Kiba]

Chapter 2.1: Baby Steps​

It was something out of a science fiction story. Or was it fantasy? It didn't really matter. This shouldn't be happening to him.

A door size portal appeared out of nowhere next to his desk, while he was programming.

The portal shone with sunlight from a textbook definition of a cornstalk field. The stalks reached heights taller than any man on Earth, full of grains ready to be harvested. It could be any cornfield in North America, if not the world. There were some darkness, but the sunlight filtering through was enough to illuminate an even darker bedroom.

The programmer stared at the portal for a good thirty minutes, trying to discern what in the world he was seeing.

"Interesting!" he finally exclaimed. "I must have read too much portal fantasy. Maybe I am hallucinating."

Was it a portal? He wasn't quite sure. It could be a window into another universe? Maybe it was a wormhole, a shortcut to somebody's farm thousand of miles away. Or maybe it was all these things.

Nonetheless, he fired up his email client, and wrote a letter about a new view/portal/wormhole thing to his friend and family, timed to be sent a few days from now, with a warning that he is probably insane. After all, what he was observing can't possibly be real, but yet he couldn't deny it. A copy was sent to his own email's account. But before he did all of that, he made sure to attach a picture that he took with his webcam as visual proof.

"Huh, the hallucination must be very persistent," he mumbled to himself. "I am seeing it on my monitor as well. Very consistent and convincing."

Next, he took a broomstick, poking from the side of the portal. Then he poked from the back of the portal.

"Observation number one: The back of the portal was completely black, almost as if it was completely two dimensional. There's a solidity to it no matter how hard I pushed. I also tried to poke to the side, but it seemed that I am sliding on one side or another of the portal rather than hitting anything, even though there's a very thin black line to target."

Then he threw a crumbled paper through the portal, causing a ripple.

"Observation two: Hey it's a portal! I think? I threw a paper ball and it landed inside the field of vision I am seeing. I wonder if I can get something back here?"

For his next task, he fashioned a steel hangar into a hook and tied it to the end of a broomstick. He also took off the soft fibers used for cleaning. Then he experimentally grabbed one of the cornstalk and pulled it in.

The plant bent through the portal horizon and into the programmer's bedroom.

"Whoa! This is so cool!"

Finally, he shone a light, illuminating the shadows.

"OK, I guess if you can transport things both way, light can go both way. I wonder why I don't feel any winds though?"

The computer programmer wrote his observations down in a plain text file on his computer, which was then promptly backed up into the cloud.

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What will he do now?

 

[Kiba]

Chapter 3.1: Science The Shit Out of This​

After the experimentation with unknown cornstalks, all he could think was, "ah".

"Shit! Shit! Shit!" A thought occurred to him.

Like a man possessed, the programmer yanked his chair out of the bedroom. Everything else followed. Objects were dumped into the living room, transforming it from an unlived space to a pile of junk. The only thing left inside was his desktop computer and a webcam, which was left to monitor the portal.

Next, he implemented several security measures. He blocked the window with bookcases. The entry to the bedroom was to be blocked with another bookcase unless he or someone else was in the former bedroom.

"There, that should do it for now," he said. "Next, I need to get a lock. And of course lab rats and sealants...and..."

He muttered the rest of the items as he sat down on a couch, grabbing his macbook pro. He surfed to Amazon.ca and promptly began an uncharacteristic massive shopping spree.

Predictably, his phone rang afterward.

"Hello, this is-"

"I know what you're calling for. It's all legitimate purchases by me. Nobody took my credit card," he uttered the words as quickly as he could. "Sorry. But I need to buy a lot of things really fast."

"We still need to verify you."

He sighed as he sat through customer service.

-o-

There are things you couldn't buy on Amazon, such as the UV conversion kit for a camera, which almost cost as much as the camera itself. Amazon certainly didn't sell pets. What he failed to realize is that the cages and food should be bought on the same day as you buy the pet, otherwise you wouldn't have food to feed your lab subjects.

He grumbled as the cashier scanned extra cages along with the birds and the mice.

-o-

The problem of buying online is that you have to wait a few business days for goods to arrive. In hindsight, he should hadn't done that. He could have bought everything from the local big box retailer instead, but he got really impatient and ended up in this suboptimal situation. In the meantime, he returned to his former bedroom with experimental objects for testing.

There was a tiny edge that he could perceive, and he wanted to know if it was sharp.

"Test object number one, a worthless book," he vocalized, before carefully wracking said object against the outside edge of the portal. "Huh. It looks like there's no cut." He tried wracking the book on the inside as well. It still didn't do anything.

"There's an apparent mass?" the engineer pondered.

He tried various objects, everything from papers to steel rods, and yet there was no cut.

"Hmm. What if I try to pull on it?"

He grabbed fabrics from one of his window and fashioned a rope around the portal. With a tentative pull, it didn't move.

He strained harder. It still didn't move.

Then harder still, until it finally broke, sending him stumbling backward until he collapsed into the floor.

"That was extremely unsatisfying," the programmer said. "Maybe I should get a better rope? Or maybe I am doing it wrong? Maybe you're supposed to will it to move? Why did a portal appeared here, rather than some other place? Maybe this place is special. Or maybe I am special?"

Move, he thought. The portal shimmered for a bit before returning to normal. It wasn't the kind of shimmer that came from the farmland. It was more of a faint neon-like glow.

---

What's next?

 

[Kiba]

Ok, so suggestions and questions:

1. Portal responds to our thoughts. Creepy, and probably exploitable. Should definitely test (try thinking a variety of things at it)
2. of all the things we purchased, how many of them have arrived?
3. Does our character have any real motivation? Like, what do we want to get out of the portal? Financial gain? Making the world a better place? running around with super powers? An escape from reality? Just do some independent research? The answer to this will heavily change what we ought to do.

Click to shrink...

The programmer took a notebook and pencil, and sat down on the couch in the living room. It was old fashioned, but there's a feel that you couldn't replicate on the computer. The notes will have to be typed up later.


Why didn't the portal move?

Maybe he was too vague, or maybe the portal shimmered on its own. If the former, he could be more specific. After all, he didn't say where it should move, only that it moves.

If he got the portal to move, maybe he could issue other commands, such as closing and opening the portal. However, if the engineer thought it to close the portal, there's a possibility that he wouldn't be able to open the portal again, which was frightening...but there's other risks. The farmland is clearly owned by somebody, and the corns appeared to have reached maturity. Sooner or later, a combine harvester will mow down the corns and...The programmer didn't want to think about the consequences.

Also, he may want to write down some ideas of what he want to try next, beyond opening, closing, and moving the portal.

Logistics. What do we have on hand and what we should we do with it? Is there anything else he needs?

Only pet supplies and pets were purchased locally. Everything else was brought on Amazon, thus he will have to wait for a few days before stuff arrived. He supposed he could do something with the pets, perhaps let them taste the atmosphere to see if it's breathable. He thought the atmosphere on the other side was breathable, right?

One thing to note, he may enter the other side. So it may be important to gather supply for the eventual expedition. He has some significant saving left in the bank, but for now he will limit his spending to twenty thousand dollars(You have 16599.10 dollars left). But anything beyond that, he will have to think much more seriously about how he will uses his money.


Motivation.

He wondered what he wanted to do with the portal. Is it money, curiosity, or escape from his current situation. Will he keep it secret? Probably?

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Please write an action plan under 400 words, answering at least the bolded questions.