Wow, so you made it all the way to the Outpost! Sorry to sound so surprised, we just don’t get a lot of customers out here.

It’s alright though. I spend most of my time writing my memoirs and chatting to the occasional freight captain who stops by to use the restroom and have a coffee. There’s plenty of worse jobs out there!

Maybe don’t tell anyone I said this, but that whole ‘premier outpost‘ thing is all just marketing guff — anything related to the Portal comes with that little tagline attached, it’s kind of a branding thing I guess. I mean, you could say we’re the premier outpost & cross-dimensional gift shop, but that’s because we’re the only outpost & cross-dimensional gift shop around here… not really a hard accolade to achieve when there’s no competition. I heard that marketing are doing a whole thing back on the station to try and get people out here, but most just exit the ‘quick’ way. I suppose I can’t blame them really.

In theory, it’s supposed to be quite dangerous to make the exit leap by terminating your connection with our reality so abruptly. Something about ‘scrambling the existential boundaries’. They reckon you can end up getting fused in the space between the two realities for all eternity or something, which sounds like it might just be a load of contrived nonsense to get people to come here and spend some money. Maybe I’m just cynical.

Whether that’s true or not is for smarter cats than me to decide. Either way, they slapped the gift shop right here, just in front of the ‘proper’ exit. Why is it proper? Wow, you ask a lot of questions don’t you? You do realise i just work here, right? Do you go asking deep and profound questions concerning the nature of existence of retail workers in your own reality? Thought not.

Ha, I’m just yanking yer chain. Perpetual boredom has that effect. I can’t profess to know the intricacies of it all, but the reason this here is the ‘proper’ exit has something to do with ‘transitional polarity’. Y’know like when you try and walk up an escalator that’s going down? I know, I do it all the time as well. But yeah, it’s kinda like that. Think of it like an interdimensional one way system. You gotta go through the proper door otherwise indeterminate negativity might befall you. Probably. If you ask me, I’d say it’s more than likely you’ll be fine either way.

If you do want to leave our reality the ‘proper’ way, the door is just there, next to the shower curtains. It’ll bring you out on City Road in London, which is where our extradimensional offices are, but from there you’ll have to make your own way back to wherever it is you came from. Oh, and if you see Matt while you’re passing through, can you remind him he still owes me a tenner? I’d ask him myself but the reception here is pretty terrible.

Anyway, if you could do me a solid and buy something, it’d be much appreciated. Not that I want to make it your problem, but I have my two-cycle review coming up this month and my sales record isn’t exactly stellar. Which is funny when you think about it, given how we’re in the middle of outer space. That is funny, right? I think I need to start spending more time around real people, those service droids will laugh at anything…

The name’s Merle, by the way, in case you feel like leaving some feedback. Maybe you could talk me up a bit? I’d appreciate it.