Something Terrible
Even when she walks away — even when you know for sure she is gone forever, probably not in the way you tried to achieve, and it becomes so bitter and disappointing — you don't let go of that file. In fact, not knowing why, you never do.
It takes you years to bring it back, test it, run the first scans. They reveal it is still intact. You record it as a small digital miracle, come alive from two deaths and the partial mess that once was your memory.
The integrity of the data does surprise you, but you don't give it much thought. It may be a mystery, but it is just like her; in the end, you never really understood how she made it.
What counts is that the backup is whole — it is ready to be watched, studied, put to good use. Even modified, maybe. Whatever it takes, you always put your faith in what you believe is a good starting point.
And trying to get her back — the valuable part, the brilliant testing, with none of the side-effects — would only be good for science.
Just a few days pass before you assemble the first prototype. Something tells you this isn't the most urgent thing to do; with the bots starting a new cycle of tests, you should give them more space in your processes.
It really isn't about being able to — you are good enough for both. It is about attention. Interests. Sometimes, you just cannot put the project down; you leave Orange and Blue to their weird gestures, in front of chamberlocks that stay sealed for long minutes.
After a while, their gross likeness to humanity stops bothering you. It had never happened before.
You don't try too hard to give an explanation; what you know for sure is that there is a trace of promise in every step of the process. Working directly on her brain feels like starting over. And while you cannot change the past — not yet — you can still correct the outcome.
You have one chance, if slim, to finally put her to good use.
It is your first rule; the prototype will not look like her. Yet, in the process, some of her movements pass. The parts that make its legs are long, moved by swift, fast impulses. Her speed is what you try to forget less often; there is no point in trying, even. How quickly you were taken down, and how quickly you rose — it always stays.
When the bot chimes to life, in the first chamber of a testing track you had almost forgotten, there are no variances. It is the harmless attitude to keep you glued to the screen. When it all began, you thought it was better than rebellion, wiser than not moving at all; however, that is exactly how it started. And that, you tell yourself, was your weakness.
You will study her, rearrange her; but never, ever, you will repeat your mistakes. That is what humans do. What she did.
The thin bot reaches for the first Portal Device with the same decision as her. She always knew what to do with it — this feeling, although not a fact, you cannot shake.
You should dig up her past. You cannot remember her having anything to do with Aperture, not before she applied for the job; still, her steps on the concrete floor sounded way too straightforward for a stranger. You don't need any recordings to recall their cadence.
The test goes smoothly. Too smoothly for her. You didn't think you would forget about the built-in detonator so soon — you expected the prototype to go rogue in no time, or at least to break something.
That it would jump in the pit on sight, to melt in the acid, you certainly didn't expect.
It doesn't happen once. After a few tries, you change the setting, then the assembling process, then the very structure of her brain. Stubbornly, as expected from her, they stick to their purpose — under the gaze of your cameras, fifty prototypes seek a quiet destruction in every possible way.
Lunatic as she could be, this just doesn't ring true. If there is anything you cannot link to her, well, it is suicide.
You are positive it never crossed her mind to die willingly — much less to try as soon as she could, and in more than one situation. She always knew, in her damaged mind, how her life would become the trophy of either of you — and giving it away like that, with no struggle, would have meant giving up on it all.
Of the countless things she could have done, and never did, this will always be the less likely choice in your book.
You figure it out later, when yet another chassis, idle until the next day of testing, lies ready to embody her again.
It was not about her, perhaps. She lived following her instincts — the unsatiable drive to keep her heart beating, the obstinate fight of trapped creatures, as they struggle to breathe to the very last moment.
More than in her, life was carved in her human flesh. The will to live was natural and common; but the switch that led those metal scraps to destruction, wired somewhere in her mind, had to be hers alone.
And it dawns on you that, all along, what set her apart was just it. In any case, she would not let you win.
Her freedom was torn from you long ago — when a door slammed shut forever, and the first thing she chose for herself was feeling earth under her bare feet. The end of the story, hers, yours, was written that day.
No matter how she was bound to win, her choice would always be to escape you. It remained, in the small copy of herself she left behind; and no backup, no modification, could ever rid her brain of that.
You are left with a little folder. Useless data, without a purpose or a meaning, and bound to self-destruct, as she always was.
All that is left you is the first simple step. You only have to erase her.
You still don't.