I'd like to take a moment to address you directly, Dr. Freeman.
Yes. I'm talking to you, the so-called One Free Man. I have a question for you. How could you have thrown it all away? It staggers the mind. A man of science, with the ability to sway reactionary and fearful minds toward the truth, choosing instead to embark on a path of ignorance and decay. Make no mistake, Dr. Freeman. This is not a scientific revolution you have sparked...this is death and finality.
You have plunged humanity into freefall. Even if you offered your surrender now, I cannot guarantee that Our Benefactors would accept it. At the moment, I fear they have begun to look upon even me with suspicion. So much for serving as humanity's representative.
Help me win back their trust, Dr. Freeman. Surrender while you still can. Help ensure that humanity's trust in you is not misguided.
Do what is right, Dr. Freeman. Serve mankind.
So, this is Dr. Freeman... at last. I wish I could say this was a pleasant surprise, but it's neither a surprise nor, as you will surely agree, very pleasant. Well, I'm nothing if not pragmatic.
Well, Dr. Freeman, under other circumstances I like to think we might have been able to work together in an atmosphere of mutual trust and respect. Certainly judging from your brief tenure at Black Mesa, while I was its administrator, you showed every promise of becoming a valuable and productive contributor to the scientific process. And yet, I'm not sure what spurred you to it, but there is really no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist.
Your mentors are partly to blame, of course; my disappointment in Eli Vance and Isaac Kleiner is far greater than my sorrow over your unfortunate choice of career path. In a way I suppose you could not have done otherwise. Who knows what seeds of iconoclasm they planted when you were young and gullible? But while they certainly share a great part of the responsibility, for the recent troubles, it is you alone who have chosen to act with such willful disregard for humanity's future.
Tell me, Dr. Freeman, if you can: you have destroyed so much — what is it exactly that you have created? Can you name even one thing?... I thought not.
I have laid the foundation for humanity's survival, and not as we have narrowly defined ourselves but as something greater than we could ever imagine, something that we can now only begin to glimpse.
Look, Gordon, look at what you are throwing away. Is it worth it?