Springtime

Estimated Difficulty: A walk in the park.

Listen up investors, I’ve got news. And if you’re a coal magnate, oil tycoon, or grease peddler -- which, let’s be honest, is most of you -- you’re not gonna like it. Last few months, I’ve been personally pestered day and night by a band of clingy tree-huggers calling themselves MANURE. Nope, they’re not self-pitying sadsacks, it’s a forced acronym: the Michigan Administration for National Usage of Renewable Energy. Yeah, I know. I’d bet the entire contents of your offshore oil rig’s offshore bank account that they spent way too long coming up with that.

Anyway, according to these so-called environmental experts, our facility’s been coughing up enough pollutants to choke the entire planet’s human population into extinction by the year 2000. Sounds like the far-off future, right? Well, I’ve asked our greatest visionaries about that future and they’re promising flying cars, pocket computers, and busty lady robots who break into your house and climb into your bed. Wow. Actually, that last one might’ve been a movie. Point is, that’s a future I don’t wanna miss out on. Do you?

Now, if you’d told me all this twenty years ago, I would’ve told you MANURE is full of… well, let’s just say full of themselves. But lately I’ve been thinking, and you know what? Maybe, just maybe, they have a point. No more humans, no more test subjects, no more returns on your investments! Oh, also, no more you. So…! I’ve had Aperture’s most hard-boiled eggheads working on a solution, and I’m proud to unveil that solution now.

Introducing the world’s first lunar powered test chamber! Absolutely beautiful, only works at night. Flawless! Also, ceiling-less. Complete with picturesque waterfalls! Someone suggested using those for power, but no, that’s ludicrous. Far too safe. No, I insisted on the moon. You wanna keep MANURE off our asses, that’s how! Hell, we’ve got exomining expeditions up there twice a month now, we practically own the thing! It’s my space rock, and I’ll use it however I damn well please. Cave Johnson, we’re done here. Oh, and Caroline? Make sure the were-mantises can’t access the lunar chamber. Keep ‘em to the simulated daylight sector at all costs. We don’t want another 1952 on our hands, now do we…?

---

Credits:

Original Puzzle, and above message by Demon Arisen.

MrRogers: Extremely dedicated support and brilliant ingenuity via code to make static prop scaling work in Portal 2, I would not be here without his efforts. Assets include the “observation station” overlay. Teamspen210: Hammer addons + srctools, that made MrRoger’s work possible. Allison: Assortment of assets including sqaurebeam textures, gantry models, control desk variants, and some walkway bits. Ada: Visually pleasing and convenient wall vent models and combined 80s cardboard box props. Stract: Orange aperture logo, tolerating theft, as well as some inspiration :) Practical Problems: Curved backpanel model. Roy Berardo: Smol orange stripes.

All other additional assets from: CS:GO, Half-Life 2 (ep2), TSP, Alien Swarm, and Portal Stories: Mel (waterfall particle effects).

Special thanks to MisterLambda, Mystical Ace, and Ossy Flawol for playtesting and feedback.