We Do What We Must Because We Can
Sixteen years ago this company sold shower curtains to every branch of the United States military except the Navy. Today it punches holes in the fabric of space for a living and it still sells the curtains, because a man does not walk away from a good curtain. This is the 1959 edition of our public record. Read all of it. Especially the small type.
A Word From The President
Welcome to Aperture. My name is Cave Johnson and I own the place. Not a board, not a bank, not a committee of gentlemen in New Mexico who need three years and a federal grant to boil water. Me. I own it. That means when I decide this company is going to spend its entire first quarter on a machine that makes a hole in one wall come out of another wall, that is what happens, and nobody sends me a memo about it.
People ask what business we are in. I tell them: the business of finding out. That is not a slogan the advertising men gave me. That is the actual answer. We started in shower curtains because the Army needed curtains and I needed money. We are in quantum tunnelling now because one of my physicists spilled something on a curtain and the curtain was briefly in two rooms at once. You do not walk away from that. You put a man in front of it and you take notes.
The gentlemen in New Mexico will tell you science is careful. Science is a lot of things, and careful is one of the ones it can be, on a slow afternoon, when nobody is watching. But science is not about why. It is about why not. Why is the moon not made of something useful? Why is a man not able to fall through a floor and come out of a ceiling? Why not, we said, and then we spent eleven million dollars finding out, and now a man can, and we have the footage.
You will find, in the pages that follow, a complete accounting of what we make, what we are looking into, what we pay, and what we are legally required to disclose. You will also find some things we are not legally required to disclose, because I put them in myself and Legal only reads the pages with numbers on them.
Now go read the catalogue. And if you are between the ages of eighteen and sixty and are in general good health, the Enrichment Center is accepting volunteers, and the Enrichment Center pays cash.
Cave JohnsonPresident & FounderDictated. Transcribed by C. — do not correct his grammar again.
Presently Accepting
Astronauts. War heroes. Olympians. Men of demonstrated physical excellence and no immediate family obligations. We want the best, and if you are reading this, there is a reasonable chance you are it.
“You’re here because we want the best, and you are it.”
What We Make
Twelve product lines, four research divisions, and one shower curtain that has outsold every other item on this list by a factor of nine hundred. The Materials Department has been informed. The Materials Department is taking it poorly.
Portable Quantum Tunnelling Device
Aperture Fixtures Shower Curtain
Repulsion Gel
Conversion Gel
Weighted Storage Cube
Aperture Sentry Turret
From The Bulletin
March 14
Shaft 09 Opens Ahead Of Schedule
The ninth and deepest test shaft accepted its first volunteers on the eleventh, four months early. Mr. Johnson credits “not asking the engineers how long it would take.”
February 28
Lunar Procurement Completed
Materials confirms receipt of the full consignment. Cost per pound is not printed here, on the advice of everyone.
February 2
Commissary Reopens
Following the incident, and following the second incident, the third-floor commissary has reopened with an entirely new ceiling and the same menu.
Cut Here — Present At The Gate
Sixty Dollars, Cash, Same Day
For one afternoon of your time and the ordinary use of your body. No experience necessary. No references required. No next of kin notified.
Cave — the sixty is now forty. Accounting changed it Tuesday. Please stop having it printed.
Notice to the reader. Every figure in this publication was accurate at the moment it was set in type. Aperture Science Innovators makes no representation that any figure remains accurate, that any product described herein exists, or that any volunteer described herein remains available for comment. Participation in the Enrichment Center testing programme constitutes waiver of every right you presently believe yourself to hold and consent to the retention of tissue samples in perpetuity. The Enrichment Center is not responsible for loss of property, loss of limb, or loss of the conviction that the world is arranged sensibly.