Please Hang Up
Abandoned. Not wanted.
She is not stupid; they are hints. In GLaDOS tongue, that means she should miss them.
So she explores the shadows of that past she never thinks of, just to realise that deep down, in the tangle of her feelings, nothing responds to anything like this.
There is just silence and willingness to go on – no matter where, just on, until it ends.
Chell treads on the fallen confetti, uncaring, with the pace of a puzzle-solving machine. She can almost picture GLaDOS up there, hidden on the other side, most likely disappointed with her unexpected lack of misery.
She loves it when the computer shows her true nature, so much smaller than her own boundless ego believes. She is an open book to her – she plays with her plot lines and finds the words, clearer than the neon lights, all written in her grumpy silences.
She portals to the other side of the room, trying to find a reflection of those faces in the acid smokes. As she suspected, her mind is a blank page. Not that she doesn't remember having parents – she sure did, sometime, somewhere. Still, she bears no memory of anything that GLaDOS implies parents to be.
They must be connected to love and affection; something like that. She sees it, in the tone of her voice.
But what should parents matter when they are one with the crowds, without a name and without a meaning, and when their features mingle with any other shade of black in the night of your memory – this she does not know and does not understand, especially when GLaDOS' aim is to make her sad.
Sadness and love are feelings; Aperture shall never have any of hers. They never asked, they never offered.
And if she is sure of anything about this wicked world that has gone to die, it is that no one, nothing, will ever happen to love her in this place.
She is worthless, and perfectly fine with that.
She almost enjoys her usual teasing at the end – at least it breaks the monotony of the test chambers, always fresh and sharp as it is. And, as dangerous as GLaDOS may be, she can never hide anything from her.
Chell can show off – she takes good advantage of this.
She steps forward to the open door, proudly aware of the fact that she herself, of the two, is the one to have the best weapon.
Unlike her, Chell has a face.
And when it stays unchanged through a non-existent phone call, with the sweat drops and the heartbeats a block of ice can have, GLaDOS savours the thousandth small defeat.