once upon a time, a science facility named aperture science was founded in 1943. from there, it grew into one of the largest facilities ever, alongside black mesa. both companies have a fierce rivalry with each other, and both have a common goal... and that is to do research in the name of science. but just as both of them compete, a new challenger emerged. it is encom, one the biggest computer, hardware, software, and Operating System manufacturer ever.
the people in both black mesa and aperture science are skeptical about the emerging power of encom until they see that the very hardware they used is produced by encom themselves. they knew if they have to cooperate. after so many decades, encom grew larger and larger. encom made an astonishing breakthrough, they discovered a digital lifeform so perfect that even it made aperture science's look like child's play. encom also has other plans, such as implementing their newly created Artificial Intelligence into their machines, creating unique flavors of their OSes (Operating System), and much, much more.
seeing this, both the people at aperture science and black mesa feels enormous pressure. even after decades worth of cooperation, both the government research companies' efforts were in vain. so Cave Johnson, the founder and CEO of aperture science decided to buy out all of the black mesa and merge the two companies together. the newly merged company is now called aperture mesa.
from there, aperture mesa makes a lot of progress and even gotten to the point where they managed to rival encom. the guys at encom have a light chuckle as they underestimated the power of this newly merged entity called aperture mesa. aperture mesa slit the skin of encom by releasing their first brand computer model called XE-1. this is the straw that broke the encom's back. now it has turned from a friendly competition into a fierce rivalry.
encom's move to contain the growing threat of aperture mesa was to cooperate with many hardware manufacturers as possible and license their OS but it was too late. by the time aperture mesa has grown big, the hardware and software market share of encom started to decrease to just 20%. they used to enjoy an 80% market share but now they are losing out to aperture mesa. as you can guess, the CEO of encom is not happy about this. Richard Mackey the CEO of encom has brilliant and wicked plans. he decided to sabotage aperture mesa's equipment with his own AIs (Artificial Intelligence).
so he sent his best AIs, comprising of tron, clu, quorra, and zuse. together they infiltrate aperture mesa's systems by breaching their networks. meanwhile, glaDOS the quantum lifeform knows about the infiltration. glaDOS tries her best to stop the infiltration but it's too hard for her, so glaDOS signal an emergency alert to the whole aperture mesa's facility. the people at the facility are on high alert. glaDOS gives details on the infiltration. no one is capable of combating an advanced quantum Artificial Intelligence except for two persons: Gordon Freeman and Chell.
part 2 can be found here