My two favorite video games growing up were Portal and Portal 2. Not that I was good at them. In fact, perhaps because I wasn't good at them.

I played other video games. I enjoyed Borderlands 2 a lot and finished it to the end. Was I good? I did ok. Made it to the top experience level (72) with three characters, which is a miracle in itself. Well, fine, it was because of Steve.

Steve loved Borderlands 2 with a passion I never quite understood. If he had some spare time, he was playing Borderlands 2. So, if you wished to waste some time with Steve, you had to play the game.

But Steve made it worth playing with him. He would help you grind the best bosses, letting you keep the best loot, but don't think we were in the Slaughter Dome all day.

As soon as it would become tedious, we could start new characters at level 1 and repeat until 72.

With Portal and Portal 2, I mostly didn't play alone, either. But I didn't play these games with Steve. Instead, I played with Cassie. She would come to my house after school, when our parents were still working, and we would explore the test rooms together.

First Portal, then Portal 2, and finally, the community levels of Portal 2. It wasn't every time we hung out, as Cassie isn't obsessed with one thing like Steve, but it was enough to finish both games in single-player and Portal 2 in co-op mode too.

I didn't play alone because back then, I wasn't bright enough to finish the games. Still, I was agile enough so I could perform some actions that Cassie struggled with. Notably room 18 and the fight against GladOS in Portal 1, and quite a few rooms in Portal 2.

She understood the puzzles faster than I did. And in some cases, she was my only hope. A few lateral thinking rooms had me stumped until she figured them out.

I loved seeing her jump in excitement when she could see the solution. She looks so beautiful when she is happy. Maybe she should write more happy songs.

Actual portals are impossible, however. They are, in fact, ludicrous. You cannot create a device that projects two circles on a wall, always of the same size, and which connects those two circles in a portal.

It's pure science fiction. There isn't even a power source to the portals! And they just hang in there with no equipment, forever?

If, at least, they projected a sort of device that stuck to the wall and emitted the round portal. But then again, those portals aren't round, and instead they are oval.

To be fair, the early portals don't use a gun. They are emitted by a sort of protector. And again, they are oval when the projectors are two vertical lines. Wouldn't that make a rectangular portal?

It's stupid. And that's not even accounting for the fact that portals are impossible. Can you imagine the ending of Portal 2 where, spoiler, a portal to the moon would let Earth's atmosphere vent into space?

And don't get me started on the moon rocks idea. We never brought enough for the whole facility, and they don't have any magical properties. Well, I don't think they do. It's not like I can test any. But I once had access to a meteorite, and it didn't magically allow portals to form. Well, the Moon's surface is filled with meteorite craters. Aren't moon rocks just meteorites ground into fine dust?

I didn't even try to make portals. Even if I can somehow invent almost anything.

What I worked on instead is a force field.

I had to imagine a way it could work. I want it to be on or off, so I need it to be made of energy.

Now, here is the limit of my intelligence. I don't know how to make a force field, but if I focus on a component of one, I can imagine it, design it, and then make it. Provided I have the right spanners, of course.

For example, I had to work on a power supply. I imagined that force fields, to be established, needed a large voltage because air is a good insulator we need to overcome. I also imagined that once established, it wouldn't need as much energy because a sort of arc would have been formed, which would lower the resistance.

I also imagined that the actual current should be low, like how lighting works. Perhaps I would just need to sustain it in 2 dimensions instead of one, but that's a problem for later.

My outlets only allowed 120 volts, unless I used my dryer outlet, which is 240, but then I can't use my dryer. No, I had to work with 120 volts and 15 amps.

That's a theoretical 1800 watts, but in reality, if you pull more than 1500 watts continuously, you might still trip the breaker.

To get the 60,000 volts I wanted at 0.1 amp, I needed 6000 watts, which isn't so bad! A few big capacitors and I could store energy until I have enough to arc.

At first, I only had 2 single poles. That made a line, an arc. Lighting on demand. Initially over an inch, possibly over 3 feet.

That part was easy.

My problem was that I wanted it to widen to cover a two-dimensional area. So I built a sort of frame. I couldn't just make the two sides, as I also needed a top and a bottom. That's how a rectangle works, Portal game!

The first prototype was only 2 inches by 1 inch, and it failed. The arc would just move vertically, randomly. Not unlike a Jacob's ladder.

I was frustrated for a few days, each time putting it aside to work on a client's project and returning only to be confused.

It's Cassie again, who helped me. Well, not that she came to my apartment. No, she was on her first tour in Europe at the time. It's her new single that helped me figure it out.

"Our love is magnetic / Same pole, same charge / Always repelling / Same dreams, same scars / Always compelling / But we can never touch"

Another sad song, but I decided to try adding a magnetic field, and that changed everything!

Fine, not at once. I needed to shape the field to the proper strength and the proper polarity and position. It took months, but I managed to do it. An almost flat two-inch by one-inch field that I couldn't push a wooden stick into.

The final trick was that the 60 hertz of alternating current wasn't fast enough. If I gave time for the arc to linger, it would move wildly. Instead, I had to increase the frequency of the alternating current into the megahertz, sending small pulses instead of large arcs. After all, electrons travel at the speed of light; they don't have an opinion about the frequency at which they change direction. Now, I was just forcing them to go in a straight line. They couldn't become tourists in the wonderful world of my apartment.

I tried, with isolating gloves, to push a spanner and some metallic poles, both ferromagnetic and with no magnetism at all, and the field always resisted.

Initiating the field used about 8000 watts over about one second but would then lower to 10 watts to sustain it. Forcing something against it increased a little the energy requirement, but the starting capacitors helped to stabilize it.

Touching it would electrocute you, but to my surprise, when I touched it with a grounding wire, the field didn't shut down then. Fine, the first time, it did: I used the same circuit, and the breaker tripped on the grounding wire outlet.

But when I used another wire, or even better, when I used my faucet? Barely any electricity left the field. Almost low enough that I could touch it without being electrocuted. Almost, but I am not stupid enough to touch it.

So, I began working on a bigger one. 3 feet by 2 feet, and a few weeks later, I discovered that it only needed about 25 watts to sustain. That means 18 kWh per month, perhaps $180 per month, for an actual force field.

I did more experiments, but my next step was to make an 80-inch by 32-inch field, or roughly the size of a doorframe. To my surprise, not only was it more stable, as if the bigger the field, the more stable it becomes, but it only needed 20 watts to sustain. Less than my smaller one. That's... not something I am bright enough to explain, but I might just be simple enough to accept it.

An attempt to make it much wider failed, so I built a second one of 80 inches by 32 inches. Same parts, same frequency, same dimensions. If I could build one, I should be able to build two.

I powered the first, but once I powered the second, both fields vanished. The first one now needed 40 watts, but the second appeared to only need about 2 watts. That too, I can't explain, but this time, I suspect that no one can. I did check my breakers, but they were all good.

But then, I looked at them. They are side by side, and I am in front of the left one. When I look at the one on the right, I can see... my lab from the view of the right one.

Turning off either of them returned the other to normal operation, but when both are turned on, it's like they are connected to each other. I had made some sort of portal. Which is impossible.

I threw a spanner in one of the fields, and it actually bounced off. I managed to catch it. I don't want to bother Mrs. Paterson. It wasn't even hot or anything.

Confused, I tried my wooden plank, only to realize that both fields are still holding but now show what the other field is seeing.

Good. Just a visual illusion. Maybe I managed to bend the light with a strong magnetic field. No, that's also impossible. Shame.

I did all of my tests, and all of them returned the same result: the fields were working. They were just invisible and showing the other one.

So, I decided to do something stupid. I made sure I had my isolating soles, and I pushed my left pinkie into the right field, the one at 2 watts. I felt nothing, and when I looked at the left one, I could see my pinkie exiting the field.

I pushed deeper, and my entire forearm managed to get through, exiting the other side. In fact, I even managed to touch myself from the other portal. They were that close!

But suddenly, I couldn't go in anymore. I was stuck. My t-shirt was unable to get through the field.

I pulled out, removed it, and managed to get my entire upper body into it. I had a working impossible portal.

After I removed my isolating boots and touched the portal again, I passed through it without being electrocuted.

Fine, I had to completely strip naked to get through it, but once I did, I could walk from one to the other in either direction and pass without an issue.

I had a working portal. Which only allowed living tissue in, but hey, when something impossible is discovered, it can afford to be quirky. Who am I to judge?

I moved one of them against the wall of my lab and the other into my bedroom. Once powered on, I could easily walk from my bedroom to my lab without using the door, provided I was naked, of course.

After tests, if I grabbed an object in my mouth, I could cross with it, but not if my mouth was open. It's as if my body generates an electric field that negates the field and allows me to cross the portal.

I tried blowing air into it, and I tried sending electricity, but nothing worked, but light and sound somehow still passed through it. I had to turn it off at night, as the noise and lights from my lab prevented me from sleeping. Also, it's unsettling to watch your own unmade bed from the lab. Not as much as seeing myself naked, but that's something I would need to work on.

Still, if air doesn't move, how is sound getting through? Well, I made a test. I placed a bedsheet on one portal and hit the other one with a spanner, wearing leather gloves. The bedsheet reacted, so bouncing something on one makes the other one bounce, allowing sound to travel. Excited, I threw my spanner into my tool bucket and pumped my arm when it got inside. Score!

It's like tossing a tissue into the wastebasket, except when I miss, I make a new dent in the floor, and Mrs. Paterson gets angry. But I never miss, so it's fine.

I immediately began to build a third one. If I could make two, I can make three.

When I turn the first one on, it's a force field. When I turn any two on, they are portals. But when I turn the third one on, all three become force fields.

Dammit. I thought that once the impossible was done, the rest would be easy.

So I tried something weird. I changed the frequency of the third one by 1 MHz, and the first two could work as portals, while the third one stayed a force field. When I changed the first one by the same 1 MHz, it briefly turned into a force field, but then numbers 1 and 3 were portals, and number 2 returned to a force field. I could dial my portals!

I changed my first portal to have a keypad, allowing me to pick the subfrequency, and finally, I could go from my bedroom to my lab to my kitchen without going in the corridor. Provided, of course, I was naked and didn't try to bring back a sandwich.