Portal 2: Lab Rat

"You can always ignore your conscience."

- Doug Rattmann

Portal 2: Lab Rat is a comic made to bridge the gap between Portal and Portal 2. Expanding the history of Aperture Science, its main protagonist is Doug Rattmann, also known as "the Ratman". This is his first formal appearance after indirectly appearing in Portal and the Portal ARG.

Overview
The first part of the comic was published April 8, 2011; the second part was released April 11, 2011.

Lab Rat is a full in-house production that was entirely supervised by Valve. It was drawn by Andrea Wicklund (the main story) and the project leader, Michael Avon Oeming (the layouts and the flashbacks), while Portal 2 writers Erik Wolpaw, Chet Faliszek, Jay Pinkerton, as well as Ted Kosmatka (who did most of the writing), made the story.

Characters

 * Doug Rattmann
 * Weighted Companion Cube
 * Chell
 * GLaDOS
 * Two unidentified Aperture employees
 * Henry
 * Cave Johnson
 * The Party Escort Bot

Part 1


Part 1 follows Doug Rattmann as he is tracking Chell through the Enrichment Center. He is having a monologue about reality and how the mind sees it, and is shown to be psychotic, forced to take ziaprazidone [sic] to curb the effects of his schizophrenia. Through the story, he carries a Companion Cube that talks to him and gives him advice due to his schizophrenia. The main story is also intersected with flashbacks of the period during which GLaDOS was still being built, showing Rattmann's involvement in the project.

Soon after discovering Chell, it appears he has not taken his medication for a while, and he takes his two final pills, against the Companion Cube's advice not to take them. A first flashback is shown, with a younger Rattmann overhearing two colleagues saying they put cameras in the cameras, something that an unidentified person is not to suspect. While he runs through the facility and makes another mural, Chell reaches Test Chamber 19, and finally GLaDOS's chamber, where she destroys her.



Then another flashback set in GLaDOS's chamber is shown. There Rattmann is seen working with his colleague Henry, who compares their breakthrough with GLaDOS to Einstein discovering relativity and the NASA reaching the Moon. Rattmann expresses his doubts about GLaDOS's reliability, since she always attempts to kill everyone when being powered.

Back to reality, Rattmann reaches for the surface, where he thinks Chell is. When he finds her, the Party Escort Bot is dragging her back into the facility.

Then a third flashback has Henry showing Rattmann the newly designed Morality Core, which is supposed to tame GLaDOS's urge to kill.

Again back to reality, the Cube tells Rattmann to run away while he is outside, but feeling he is responsible for the whole mess, he prefers to get back inside, and save her.

Part 2
Part 2 opens with Doug Rattmann traversing the innards of the facility. The Companion cube is telling Doug that the medicine he took in Part 1 is starting to work, as he slowly fades away. Doug finds Chell in her Cryo-chamber, where the Party Escort Bot placed her. He decides to try to save Chell by getting to the Cryo-control, but the Sentry turrets block his way. Finding a panel in the wall, he quickly realises that GLaDOS' destruction blew the main power grid, and that all the cryo-chambers have gone offline as a result, including Chell's. Doug attempts to run past the Sentries but is struck down.

A flashback begins and it's after GLaDOS's activation. Doug is one of the few left alive and is being taunted by GLaDOS about his schizophrenia, during his daring escape from the main testing facility. He manages to find Chell's file, declaring that she's "the one", drags her name to #1, and then saves it. Back to the present, Doug is lying on the floor, wounded by the Sentries, reaches out to his Companion cube but loses consciousness. Another flashback begins and it's Henry having a conversation with GLaDOS, unaware that her replies and intentions were more malicious than he was aware.

Doug regains consciousness, and his schizophrenia has come back. The Cube can talk again and asks about Chell being "The one" and how Doug knew she was. He admits it was just a hunch. The Cube tells Doug to put her Cryochamber into the reserve grid, which activates and keeps Chell in an everlasting sleep until she is woken up, but will keep her alive.

Exhausted, Doug crawls into the bed at Test Chamber 00, where the events of Portal first take place, where he's assumed to have died peacefully in his sleep. On the floor, Chell's file is shown on the page as "abnormally stubborn".

Trivia

 * The binary code shown in panel 8 can be translated as "The cake is a lie".
 * In panel 8, a book titled "Art Therapy - The Bennett Way" can be seen.
 * Panel 13 features the first visual appearance of the Party Escort Bot.
 * Panel 13 also features several references to the Half-Life and Half-Life 2 story arcs: an HEV and Health Chargers from Black Mesa can be seen on a wall, a Gravity Gun can seen on the table where Doug is working on an ASHPD, and a Combine Health Charger can be found is on top of a shelf. Whether these have a canonical significance or were just put there as Easter eggs is currently unknown.
 * In panel 23, the "both alive and dead until someone opens the box" is a reference to Schrödinger's cat. This in itself is also a referance to Chell's cyrogenic state while inside the cryo-chamber.
 * While "Lab Rat" is originally a reference to animal testing, it is also a Portal achievement, requiring to acquire the fully powered ASHPD.
 * It could be possible that Rattmann has Heterochromia Iridum - A condition in which each eye has a differnt colour iris. This condition is seen more clearly in the flashback segments of the comic.