In a remote part of a kingdom, Jarek lived alone with his mother Elara in a small cottage, just outside a village. The whole area used to be occupied by orcs, but the armies of the kingdom had driven them out. It had been many years since an orc was sighted, and people had begun to forget about them, mentioning them only in fairy tales for their children. Elara's husband had turned into a worthless drunk shortly after the...

"You're not gonna believe what I just saw," Tim, the night shift intern at the observatory, exclaimed as he burst into the break room. His eyes were wide with excitement, and a hint of fear. Marla, the veteran astronomer who had seen it all, took a sip of her coffee before looking up from her book. "Tim, you say that every night. Did you finally spot your alien spacecraft?" "I'm not kidding," he said with a trembling voic...

"You sure you wanna do this?" The woman's voice echoed through the stark, white-walled room. Heather had taken off her blouse and bra in front of her, and was covering her breasts with her hands, with nervousness clear on her face. She was shaking and standing where the camera couldn't capture her. "Move to the center, stand firm, and smile a little," the woman ordered. "You look sad. We need to brighten up a little." Hea...

Emilia regained her consciousness and opened her eyes slowly. "We done?" she asked, as she looked around and searched for the members of her team. But none of them was around. A single unknown young woman was staring at her in confusion. The room she had woken up in wasn't even similar to the sterilized lab where the test had started and was supposed to finish. She recognized the room. It was used for robot repairs, and s...

1958 - The 5-year-old Emilia Conly was taken to a science exhibition by her mother. The exhibition was held by a company called "Aperture Science Innovators". She was extremely fascinated by the things on display, which seemed magical to her. A part of the floor was painted with some kind of orange gel. The visitors were allowed to push special cubes on it to see how fast and far they go with just a little push. A little...

In a beautiful house on the outskirts of a large city, the six-year-old Benjamin was playing with his grandfather. Benjamin was the kind of kid who could never sit quietly. His active imagination made an adventure out of everything. That day, Benjamin was an Indian warrior, and his grandfather a cowboy who was taken prisoner and tied to a column in center of a room. Benjamin, with a feather in his headband, was dancing ar...

1943- Cave Johnson was a successful businessman. His company, Aperture Fixtures, was making a fortune selling shower curtains, particularly to the U.S. armed forces, during the world war. He was chosen as the Shower Curtain Salesman of 1943, but as he was holding his shower curtain shaped trophy, he felt incomplete. He thought about the huge world out there and the small scale of his victory. He thought: "Who will remembe...

Back when I was in high school, there was a boy who was two years younger than me. He liked to tell on everyone. I never understood his motivation. Maybe he thought telling on people was funny, or made him powerful, or maybe he just thought being a male version of Candace (a character from Phineas and Ferb animation) was exciting! He never gained anything because no one took him seriously. That is, if we assume gaining so...