In Portal, veteran writing duo Andrews & Wilson take the ultimate tactical fantasy of point-to-point teleportation and turn it into a horrifying, interdimensional meat grinder. It’s punchy short-story that won’t set you back more than two hours.
If military sci-fi has taught us anything over the decades, it’s that whenever a government scientist claims a new prototype offers instantaneous, risk-free travel, you should immediately run in the opposite direction.
The premise behind Project NIGHTCRAWLER sounds like a dream for modern warfare. Tucked away inside a classified hangar at Groom Lake, the portal promises instantaneous infiltration anywhere on the globe. Need to drop an assault team onto an enemy aircraft carrier in the Pacific or bypass months of planning for a fortified jungle compound? Just step through the glowing blue ring and materialize on target in the blink of an eye.
Except there is a massive, stomach-churning catch. While observers back on Earth see instantaneous transit, the travelers themselves do not skip across space. Instead, the portal disassembles you at the atomic level and forces a physical “layover” inside an unmapped alternate dimension, dubbed an Other Earth (OE), while the system processes your transfer. If you are only jumping thirty meters across the test hangar, your layover is a relatively manageable three hours in a barren desert. If you are jumping across the globe to Hawaii, your layover is an eighty-one-hour survival mission on an alien landscape.
The narrative is the first person perspective of Captain Glover, a delightfully cynical Marine Raider who quickly realizes he and his squad were recruited primarily because they were expendable bachelors with zero family to ask uncomfortable questions, the narrative shifts gears rapidly from slick military techno-thriller to pure biological horror.
Andrews & Wilson do not hold back once Glover’s team enters OE Delta One. What was supposed to be a routine drop on a cartel camp transforms into an encounter with a collective ecosystem operating like a predatory hive mind. Between lamprey-faced flying parasites, neuro-invasive burrowing worms, and crab-armored primates slicing through body armor, the carnage is relentless and deeply unsettling.
What makes Portal work so well is the friction between field operators and bureaucratic arrogance. Program Director Brian Barker embodies the dangerous hubris of defense contractors, treating catastrophic team casualties and existential biosecurity threats as mere engineering quirks to be swept under the rug. The chemistry and tactical trust between Glover and lead scientist Dr. Cara Neils grounds the plot, building toward a frantic, defiance-fueled escape that leaves the portal in ruins and the two protagonists leaping blind into an unmapped world.
Portal Verdict
Portal is a punchy, clever hybrid of tactical ops and creature-feature terror that moves at a breakneck pace. It serves as a reminder that whenever a top-secret shortcut promises the world, the fine print is almost always written in your own blood.
I enjoyed Portal a lot and could definitely see this working out as a TV series. It had that Dark Matter vibe to it, mixed with just enough Stargate that it could take advantage of Stargate reboot cancellation.
It also has a synergy with Orson Scot Card’s Wakers. And I could not reccomend that book, trilogy in fact, enough to any one who enjoys young-adult sci-fi.
Portal is one of a raft of short-stories that Andrews & Wilson have been dropping lately. They are proving able to deliver a diverse range of stories. If you’ve not read any Andrews & Wilson yet, or perhaps have only focused on their Tier One series, then I encourage you to check out their complete catalog. You are likely to find something to pique your interest.
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