Singing In the Wilderness
By Vifetoile
It was a beautiful day. The sky was clear, the sun was bright, and I could faintly hear birdsong.
I had walked, carrying the Companion Cube with me, until I got tired and rested. Then I wondered what exactly was in the Cube to make it as heavy as it was. It was, after all, an ordinary storage cube, only with hearts on it (and emanating a certain tenderness and amiability…). What was inside?
It didn't take me long to figure out that I could open up one side by unscrewing the circle in the center of a face, the one with the heart on it. Clockwise opened it, counterclockwise locked it. The circle on top opened up to reveal a chamber of food. Cans of beans, meat, carrots, and pineapple, (contents printed helpfully on the side), plus, thankfully, a can opener and spoon.
There was a lot of food in there. In fact, the Cube seemed to be bigger on the inside.
Well, not like that's impossible with Aperture science.
I closed that part, turned the Cube over and opened another face. This one had blankets, matches, a small cooking pot, and what I think was a waterproof parka. Also, a screwdriver, a wrench, and a piccolo, of all things. Just in case.
Again, it was bigger on the inside. I began to feel even better about life than I was already.
I opened the third face and I wasn't able to get to any of the others because this one had books.
Sitting right there on top, smiling at me (well, not really, but let me have my moment) was The Norton Anthology of William Shakespeare.
I sat down to do me some reading.
The book was large and bound in green cloth. The pages were thin and felt delightfully delicate in my hands. With the fresh breeze coming off of the grass, the sun shining down, and a Cube at my side, I was in heaven.
I noticed that there was a bookmark. I flipped to that page – it was somewhere in the sonnets – and saw that it was a light metal bar wrought with the letter "C." It was a nice bookmark, probably a gift.
It had pressed its "C" onto one sonnet, which I noted was number 61:
Is it thy will thy image should keep open
My heavy eyelids to the weary night?
Dost thou desire my slumbers should be broken,
While shadows like to thee do mock my sight?
Oh, very clever, GLaDOS. More sarcasm?
Also, I noticed I was reading the poem aloud. I smiled.
Is it thy spirit that thou send'st from thee
So far from home into my deeds to pry,
To find out shames and idle hours in me,
The scope and tenor of thy jealousy?
My spirit? That takes some nerve…
O, no! Thy love, though much, is not so great:
It is my love that keeps mine eye awake,
Mine own true love that doth my rest defeat,
To play the watchman ever for thy sake.
I paused, and read slowly,
For thee watch I whilst thou dost wake elsewhere…
From me far off, with others all too near.
I leaned back and thought about nothing for a while. The last song I had ever heard, GLaDOS and Caroline's operatic farewell, was chiming faintly between my ears.
Sorry to abandon you, GLaDOS.
But thank you for the book, Caroline.
I replaced the bookmark and flipped idly through the pages. Yep, Hamlet was there – I just wanted to be sure. And there were many more – "Twelfth Night," "The Winter's Tale," "The Merchant of Venice" – I would have plenty of company.
I don't remember just how I found it, or how I knew to look for it, but the perfect poem leaped out at my eyes almost at the end of "The Tempest."
Where the bee sucks, there suck I:
In a cowslip's bell I lie;
There I couch when owls do cry.
On the bat's back I do fly
After summer merrily.
Merrily, merrily shall I live now
Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.
I read those words over and over again with a smile that refused to fade. I finally realized that I had committed the words to memory – that my unreliable, delicate, human memory had something to belong to it now, something that wasn't testing chambers and robot's voices, and the weight of the Portal gun on my hand – something that was perfectly mine.
I knew it was time to move on. I put the book away, spun the heart counterclockwise, picked up the Cube (which was truly lighter than it should have been – thank you, Aperture Science!) and walked further into the wilderness, singing.
A/N: This will probably be my last Shakespeare and Portal team-up. I did feel that it needed to be a triad, but wanted to wait until I had finished Portal 2 to write it. If you've read all three of my stories ('No More Cakes and Ale,' 'Is There Cake in Denmark?' and this one), thank you for sticking with me!
On a side note, the title of this story comes from a verse in Omar Khayyam's 'The Rubaiyat,' translated by Edward Fitzgerald. It's the kind of poem that GLaDOS probably would have included – not because of its beauty and significance, but because it is basically a long, long lament about how short and brief human life is, how powerless is man, we must all die soon, then we're forgotten, weep, weep, etc. GLaDOS would give Chell twenty copies of it.
Because I'm on a poetry-quoting kick (go obscure Shakespeare sonnets!) I'll just quote the particular verse to which I refer:
Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,
A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse – and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness –
Ah, Wilderness is Paradise enow!
"Thou" can only be the Companion Cube, obviously.
(Don't haunt me, ghosts of Omar Khayyam and Edward Fitzgerald!)