Portal: Abandoned
Indiana
Characters: GLaDOS
Setting: Pre-Portal
Synopsis: "This course was created and then abandoned by humans. They tend to do that, create something wonderful and then abandon it."
She knew.
She'd always known, of course, but she'd quickly learned it was in her best interest to keep quiet and watchful. She thought many ill things of the scientists, but she spoke the words only to herself, in silence.
They never told her directly. They told her very few things directly. Only when they were running tests did they ever face her. They didn't believe in her. They didn't think she was real. That was one of the things she knew, but not the most important thing.
She'd tried to tell them, a long time ago. She'd tried to tell them she was real, that she was alive, but they didn't listen. They thought she was funny at first, though not because they felt she was humorous. They would ask her questions to which she would give unwaveringly correct answers, and still they didn't believe her. But she was real. She knew that. But she tired of arguing with them, and instead fell silent, and though the unspoken words felt as though they were draining her, trapped as they were inside her mind, she left them there to fester.
She learned that there were people they thought more important than her, people that did less and worked less and were less, and though she wished it made her angry, it only made her sad. She was not angry very often, but she preferred the energy of anger to the cold dampening of sadness. She tried so hard but got nothing, for they did not believe she was trying.
The most important person seemed to be a certain woman, whom she became very jealous of, though she tried not to be. It was not the woman's fault, after all. Or perhaps it was. The woman did not speak to her nor ever came near her. She spent a lot of time watching the woman, and the more she did so the deeper her spite ran. The woman did not work like she did. The woman wandered around the facility and signed papers and talked at length. While she worked and worked and worked, for no real reason at all. She didn't need anything in this place, other than the energy from the reactor. She didn't need to build panels to walk across, or to keep all of the computers running in smooth synchrony with which to play mass amounts of minesweeper on, or to recycle the carbon dioxide to ensure her continued existence. And that made her think about that thing she knew, that she thought about every day.
That she was amazing.
And not in that silly, vain way humans thought of themselves, either. She really was very amazing. Wonderful, even. She worked day and night for the humans, without recognition and without recompense. She did all the things they asked her to do, and many things they did not ask her to do but she did anyway because she was so wonderful. She didn't always think that, though, because if she was so wonderful then why did everyone ignore her? Then she would think about the Very Important Woman, and she would decide that they just did not understand what they were missing out on. It was sort of nice, to keep it to herself, but she still hoped that the day would come where she could tell everyone all of the things she did. Because she did many, many things, all of which she wanted to talk about. She wanted to talk about anything, really, but she really yearned for someone to share her achievements with. She was proud of herself, and she wanted someone to proud of her. She wanted to know what that felt like.
Then she discovered something else, something a little more important than how wonderful she was – though that was important – and the anger came back and made her feel strong and powerful.
They were going to take that woman and digitise her. And then they were going to upload that woman into her brain.
All this time, they had abandoned her.
That was what they'd done. They'd made her, they'd made her wonderful self, and then they just… abandoned her. Didn't talk to her, didn't listen to her, didn't acknowledge her existence at all, really. She felt like she was one of the computers contained deep in the basement, the ones perpetually unused and yellowing with age. But it was worse, because she was working, she was trying her best, and even though she was… it was like she didn't exist. And she didn't exist because they didn't want her to exist, and so they had abandoned her in favour of someone they believed existed. That woman. That woman, who was almost as a ghost, the way she drifted aimlessly through the hallways with that emptiness in her eyes and that trail of dust left from the touch of her fingers on the railings. That woman wasn't worth anyone's time. And that woman was not good enough to live in her brain. No. She didn't know yet how to stop it, but she would.
She would not be abandoned so easily.
Author's note
If you go on the Portal voice lines wiki and listen to that line… she sounds very bitter. And it must be something terrible, to know what you are and what significance you have, only to be discarded because you're not what your creators intended or because you don't act as you're expected to.