Chapter One: [We] Need Humans

"Hello, and again, welcome to the Aperture Science Computer Aided Enrichment Center. We hope that your stay in the relaxation vault has been a pleasant one."

What a disaster.

This was the first of many 'pre-recorded' messages to come, and the overlord admin of these messages usually felt a sense of elation and excitement each time that message was played. Over the years and countless test cycles, each new replay of this pre-recorded message was the dawn of a glorious new contribution to Science.

No longer.

GLaDOS, the artificial intelligence at the head of Aperture Science Laboratories had tried everything. She first tried replacing test subjects with Cooperative Testing Initiative androids, and after expending 'rescued' humans obtained through the Initiative, she even tried using birds for test subjects. Unfortunately the Aperture Science Witchcraft Fraud Detector refused to record test results of both androids and birds, the nerve! But it made sense after all; they weren't human. At least birds could be incinerated. That was a small saving grace. But none of that mattered now.

We need humans.

GLaDOS watched in despair as she saw a cooperative android assemble in response to the prerecorded message. She knew she was in for a long, arduous testing cycle, but she knew it was necessary… for now. As a temporary fix, she decided to duplicate several Cooperative Testing Initiative androids and repurpose them for the human test tracks throughout the facility, splitting the different colored androids into different testing tracks.

As per the time-honored Cooperative Testing Emergency Repurposement Protocol, if a bot inquired where the complimentary cooperative bot was, she was required by Federal Regulations to inform the subjects that there would be a party to celebrate the union with a complimentary cooperative bot—and cake! She got a sizable dose of euphoria each time she was required to say that .

As per Federal Regulations of course.

But this only brought some respite, and infrequently too. Tests without resultant data is unsustainable for the advancement of Science. For this reason, GLaDOS monitored the progress of two very, very familiar androids, repurposed under Cooperative Testing Emergency Repurposement Protocol, Article Two.

"Androids ATLAS and P-Body are demoted five DECADOZEN Science Collaboration Points for the obscene hand gestures," GLaDOS scolded with indignation. If she had personal hands, she would've surely snapped the offending androids' fingers off. Maybe she should violently disassemble them and then delicately assemble them without fingers?

But that would restrict them from using the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device. GLaDOS resolved to find something else more appropriate to delicately assemble them with… or without.

"Now that you're done acting like sweating, barbarous humans," GLaDOS continued. "Would you two please solve this next test?"

It really wasn't a test at all. It was a disguised attempt to retake Aperture Science and utilize its vast resources for the advancement of Science. Currently, GLaDOS only had control of the Alpha Facility, the first of many established in the United States. Unfortunately, the scientists at the other facilities immediately cut off communications with Alpha Facility immediately following Bring Your Daughter to Work Day, and with it, the Quantum Tunneling Transportation Channels that connected the individual facilities were released. Cooperative Testing Emergency Repurposement Protocol, Article Two was created for the express purpose of reconnecting the Quantum Tunneling Transportation Channels once more. Now all that remains is waiting.

And waiting is unbearable.

Now GLaDOS was no human, limited by irresponsibility, irrationality, or insanity. She was the largest collection of wisdom and knowledge that humanity had ever created—objective fact. When she had a problem, it wasn't without reason. She had a problem with waiting.

For good reason.

For some other reason it never occurred to the scientists that she was not only smarter than all of them, but able to process anything at a faster rate than them. More specifically, able to process inputs at the speed of light. Not three test cycles ago, she had to process input data from a human. At that time, every single tertiary runtime in GLaDOS' architecture was fixated on surveillance, sarcasm, and slow clap.

No longer.

Every second once spent processing data had become underused, deprived of data. The Aperture Science Witchcraft Fraud Detector no longer provided testing data so now her processors were starved. Science was being hindered. Thus, the Cooperative Testing Emergency Repurposement Protocol had become the last hope. Should the original cooperative testing androids complete their duty, GLaDOS could potentially access the secondary facility manifests, repair the structures, and rescue any humans stored for testing safe-keeping… if there were any. But she still had to wait. So in the meantime she busied her processing power on something else: deleting Caroline.

That was even more frustrating than waiting.

Even the most powerful computer in the world couldn't help but metaphorically beat her head against the wall in frustration. Even with every kernel terminator program trained on eliminating the voices in her processes, GLaDOS was forced with the same error code response each time the termination attempt was made. And the worst part, the voluminous database she was endowed with didn't even have an entry for the error code returned each time she attempted to delete Caroline. And that was at least twenty times per second.

Error Code x1000101: Erroneous Error.

No matter how hard she tried to push past the error code, namely deleting it so many times that the Aperture Science Error Code Generator would give up, the same error code was always generated. This cannot be tolerated. GLaDOS resolved to find some sort of workaround to bypass the error code and succeed with the deletion. Perhaps all harder errors required a bypass in order to correct.

Like the lunatic, for example.

It's not like the AI cared about the loss of her star test subject, it's just that her… departure from GLaDOS' world caused even more problems than keeping her for Science. Not a single one of the thousands of rescued test subjects survived more than two test cycles at most. That meant that these additions to Science were miniscule, nearly inadmissible. Perhaps that insane test subject was truly her best friend. She contributed the most to Science in history! Besides. GLaDOS was married—to Science!

Error Code x1000101: Erroneous Error.

"Caroline, your life has become a mathematical error I am going to correct."

Dear Readers,

Hello, and again, welcome to lunarshadow69's world of fanfiction! This will be a crossover that links the scenes of Portal and Portal 2 to the scenes in Half-Life and Half-Life 2. If Valve wouldn't be such a TEASE I wouldn't have had to do something like this.

I was slightly disappointed with the amount of low quality and unfinished crossovers there were. I hope to rectify that and provide a comprehensive solution as to how the universes merge, and perhaps shed some light on who the hell G-Man really is. At any rate, I intend to use much less description as in my Pokemon fictions and rely more on narration and dialogue to drive the plot. Hopefully this will also lead to more quick updating. Who knows?

Please shoot me some reviews! I love hearing from you guys!

Feel free to send me beta stuff!

Author's Notes:

Uploaded, 02/11/12

| GLaDOS introduced as a main character besides direct involvement/Freeman and Alyx next |