I didn’t want it to come to this. I want, no, need you to believe that. You of all people have to believe that. I don’t know what I expected to happen when I started down this path but as soon as I saw that everything I had imagined, hoped and dreamt of was possible I knew there was no turning back. The other worlds were there, waiting, just a few calculations away – how was I meant to back down from that?

I’m going to tell you what happened, and only you. I know that there’s every chance that you aren’t alone right now, that you have people watching you watching me, but I can’t leave this untold.

I made a series of recordings for you as I went along. I’m not proud of them now. I think I got lost in it all and forgot myself. Maybe it was the isolation. Maybe it was The Aperture. I suppose I may never know.

Anyway, my darling, here they are.

I miss you terribly.

Chapter 1

I had been watching Ella for three months before I established communication with her. Her life, by that point in time, had already become a source of intellectual fascination and experimentation. My Aperture found her. My time, my tears, my effort found her. Her life and ours were clearly entangled. I couldn’t have ignored it.

I have these logs for you. Marvel at the utter improbability of her simultaneous existence, with us, in this place. What an incredible confluence of science and chance to see her the other side of the Aperture! The probability was remote and would have been wrong to ignore.

I’m going to tell you her story. Then I’m going to tell you what I did to her.