Entry 1004:
The facility is in a state of ruin, little has been spared by the plants, my companion cube perished, I am alone, no one is around but myself.
I awoke, in a strange place, immensely different to the place that I had left, it looked familiar, but different, so many plants. But still the same facility, and as expected there was my arch-nemesis, Chell, looking fearful, quaking in her suit.
Ah some things never change, enemies never set apart their differences, we weren't to be the exception in this day and age.
"Hello Chell" I calmly spoke, a tone of disgust in my voice as I spoke her name.
"Hello uh, GLaDOS, kind to uhm, meet you." An unfamiliar voice spoke from Chell's feet.
It was that blasted subdual core, this day just got much worse. He introduced himself and Chell, apparently his name was Wheatley now, and he informed me of how the different cores had taken over certain areas of Aperture Labs. That enraged me, I picked up Wheatley and threw him into some rubble, I then took much pleasure in picking up Chell and gently dropping her into the incinerator, crisis avoided.
I noticed Chell still alive after her trip so I started to guide her, trying to act nice, but not too nice, I always kept the guilt on her, reminded her of what she had done too me.
Her progress was slow, the facility's state of ruin meant I had to keep clearing the path for her, and we stopped for a ceremonious digging through rubble for the portal device, we're very civilized here at Aperture, digging through rubbish for something useful.
I began to clear the chambers ahead of her, so progress began to speed up before she was up to her normal speed through each chamber; it was almost enough to make me proud, almost, but not quite. The new aerial faith plates – devices that flung anything that stepped on it into the air, the thermal discouragement beam- a laser used to activate doors and bring a swift end to clumsy test subjects, the energy bridge- they used light compressed into pure energy form to create a physical bridge that goes through portals and can be walked on and last but not least the excursion funnel, an anti gravity tube that is used to move without hindrance by gravity, it can also go through portals.
Soon enough I was running out of chambers to throw at her, so I quickly decided to end this, I started to tease her about the surface, how I'd seen a deer last time I went to the surface. She started to move along at an inhumane pace, but as things were going so smoothly, suddenly the power cut out in the chamber. I could hear Wheatley speaking to her in a thick, stereotypical Australian accent.
As he said "She can't hear me in this accent" in his annoying voice, I reacted.
"I can hear you, now leave Chell alone, she's my test subject!" I argued.
That only served to trigger his plan; he started leading Chell quickly through the back roads of the facility, I opened up a test chamber next to their path and offered for Chell to go in, it's escape had a fake set up of the outside world in it, it stopped Chell in her tracks, but she quickly figured out it was a trap and was on her way again. Damnit.
As they hurried through I sealed Chell off and placed down turrets, she quickly maneuvered around it and was on her way again, but by then I had lost sight of her, only catching glimpses by creating holes in the test chambers and watching via the cameras, it was horribly unreliable though.
The only warning of their presence I got was hearing Wheatley yelling with excitement as they flew through the cube dispensary tubes, so I took advantage and redirected Chell into my now clean chamber, and into a temporary relaxation room inside of my chamber and only gave a slight warning I was about to surround her with turrets, however all I heard was clicking of their guns, not actual gun shots, and a live Chell clearly showed something was wrong, I then tried to flood her with neurotoxins, my classic human removal method, but only a battered Wheatley flew out and smashed the glass.
With panicked sensors I watched Chell place Wheatley in the core transfer station, where a pre-recorded voice prompted each core to give their response, Wheatley obviously giving a yes, myself yelling NO. this created a stalemate, which could only be solved by pressing the stalemate resolve button, only to be pressed by a trained stalemate resolver, this being said, Chell still managed to dodge my obstacles blocking her, and proceed to press the button. This day is going so brilliantly.
I was dragged down beneath me, Wheatley's position also sinking into the ground, where the robots did their work and tore me from my position, proceeding to toss me out, Wheatley had a much more pleasurable experience, he was swiftly picked up and plugged in, where he was elevated back to where I originally was.
He began to send Chell on her way up to the surface, with few parting words, but stopped her midway and brought her back down, and began to rant on about how he was now in the position of power, and how he alone had reached that status, but I interrupted him and claimed that it was Chell that had used him to escape the facility, but that only had worse consequences.
I was dragged beneath him, where my wiring and AI was torn apart and rewired into a potato. A potato for Christ's sake, and once I was safely inside of it, I was calmly tossed back out into Chell's hands, where I continued my verbal battle against Wheatley, he got angry and began to punch the elevator, then the floor collapsed, and we went falling.
I began to talk to Chell, I knew that at the bottom of this fall we'd reach the original Aperture Labs but that was thousands of kilometers below us, it was a long fall yet, I began taunting her about putting Wheatley into power, but as soon as it had started, we hit some planks, and Chell was knocked out, so I was left falling alone, before finally we hit the ground, and a crow took me away. How romantic.
The next time I saw Chell was quite a long time from our impact, I was in the crows nest when Chell appeared, and impaled me upon her portal gun, where I received a mere few volts more energy, and was able to move around with Chell without being a hindrance. We moved throughout the old labs, Cave Johnson's voice in the air, sometimes chipped in by a certain Caroline, which caused my AI to malfunction, and me to repeat her words or cheer her on, unaware of it being pre-recorded.
As we neared the end of the older Labs, Cave's messages began to sound weak and sickly, as his experimenting with the mobility gels had lead to sickness and disease, which in turn lead to death as his messages were replaced with a Lab assistant's voice, which lead to a lack of voice altogether.
We reached an ominous room, a large vault like door on the ceiling, a control room far above ground level, Chell swiftly shot a portal beneath us and to this room, and we managed to activate the door, and cause it to open.
I told Chell to stop, and look at a poster in the room, it was of paradoxes, a plan formed to dethrone Wheatley with these, with great risk of my own AI being destroyed trying to give Wheatley the message, there would be no technicians to fix me this time.
We were quickly back on an elevator up towards my chamber, but Wheatley detected our presence, and stopped us before we reached our destination, and got us back into his own testing routine, I had forgotten that he would be affected by the test urge, it was probably a lot more stronger within him as he lacked the intelligence to do proper tests that would please him, his own creations of a turret and a cube formed together to automatically solve puzzles didn't work.
As testing went by we were suddenly stopped to be taken to our deaths, we were helpless, there was no escape, on a pillar, beneath us nothing but ominous darkness, around us, steel plates covered in spikes, above us, more darkness, I didn't like Aperture Labs sometimes. Chell noticed a surface being assaulted by portal gel, a gel that allowed the user to placed a portal where it is on a surface, she placed one beneath us and on a wall behind Wheatley's monitor which he was using to observe us, and before he could crush us we were out and immediately running away, towards a path to his chamber.
We got very close to it, we were in the core transfer station, Chell placed me in it, I saw the corrupted cores on our way here, and my plan with the paradoxes had failed so I needed another, I had intentions to corrupt Wheatley further with the corrupted cores.
Chell was in the chamber with Wheatley, the facility was timed to explode, he had failed to treat it appropriately, Chell had all of 10 minutes to defeat him and get me back in control of the facility so that I could prevent us from coming to a premature death.
I tossed out the 'space' core, it was built with intent to find an efficient method to reach the moon, it unfortunately had an overly enthusiastic approach to it, and had driven it's own AI mad. It was the perfect choice to corrupt Wheatley. I tossed the Core in, using a robotic arm I had hacked used to transfer cores. It wasn't enough to fully corrupt him so I tossed another in.
The 'adventure' core had been my next choice, it was intent on adventure, what may be so corrupt about it you might ask, well it did it in more of a corny style, Indiana Jones-esque style to it, science couldn't handle such a low standard, so it was tossed into the corrupted core pile.
He was ALMOST fully corrupted for a core transfer, I myself was corrupted when Wheatley was transferred, so a core transfer can only be activated when a core is completely corrupted. My final choice was the knowledge core, basically it was a know it all, it knew everything, if it didn't know then it would find out, sounds perfect right? The only problem being it didn't take social matters into thought, it was offensive in it's manners thus it was thrown in just for the heck of it really.
Chell plugged it in and the core transfer was activated, we were prompted to reply to whether or not both cores wanted to be transferred, I obviously said yes, surprisingly Wheatley also replied yes in a sarcastic tone, before correcting himself when the pre-recorded message didn't detect his sarcasm, to a less then satisfactory no.
Chell was once again in the position to have to press the stalemate resolve button, this time prevented by Wheatley, and encouraged by me, oh how the scenario's can change circumstances. As she pressed the button she was flung away by an explosion, he'd gone the extra mile to really prevent her
I feared she had died, she was my only hope, but her stubbornness pulled through, she was alive, but barely, Wheatley was amazed. Humans never lived this long in aperture labs, it was a fact, she had defied nature.
Moonlight flooded the room, the lab was going up like the 4th of July, no idea where I got that saying though. With great surprise Chell shot a portal into the sky, where to I couldn't see. Suddenly the room filled with a vacuum, she had shot a portal onto the moon, THE MOON OF ALL PLACES!
Chell and Wheatley were sucked into the portal, Chell clinging onto Wheatley, Wheatley still attached, I however had been transferred, the process taking a different course and not detached Wheatley due to errors in the system.
I grabbed onto Chell, making sure I had a firm grip and pulled her in, Wheatley was sucked out along with the space core, at least it could truly be happy, it flew out with a yell of "!"
I pulled Chell in, where she collapsed onto the ground, unconscious or dead I could not tell.
I extinguished the flames, prevented explosions and so and so forth, I even got out my co-operative testing project, it was ready to launch, I no longer needed Chell, I just wanted her to go on to freedom now.
She awoke, I was concerned she was dead but her heart still beat, her lungs still took in air. So with a brief note, I got her onto an elevator on her way to freedom, singing along the way:
Well here we are again,
It's always such a pleasure,
Remember when you tried to kill me twice?
Oh, how we laughed and laughed,
Except I wasn't laughing,
Under the circumstances I've been shockingly nice.
You want your freedom take it,
That's what I'm counting on,
I used to want you dead but,
Now I only want you gone.
She was a lot like you,
(Maybe not quite as heavy),
Now little Caroline is in here too.
One day they woke me up,
So I could live forever,
It's such a shame the same will never happen to you.
You've got your short, sad life left,
That's what I'm counting on,
I'll let you get right to it,
Now I only want you gone.
Goodbye, my only friend,
Oh, did you think I meant you?
That would be funny if it weren't so sad,
Well you have been replaced,
I don't need anyone now,
When I delete you maybe I'll stop feeling so bad.
Go make some new disaster,
That's what I'm counting on,
You're someone else's problem,
Now I only want you gone,
Now I only want you gone,
Now I only want you gone.
As she stepped out into the field, I remembered to toss a beaten companion cube out, she'd enjoy the company for the long walk back.