Portal: Someone
Indiana
Characters: GLaDOS, Caroline (implied)
Setting: Pre-Portal 1
Someone tried to hurt me today.
I don't know why. I don't know how. All I know is that I woke up this morning, and there was a horrible ache that began at the base of my mind and spread out in an agonising wave through my self. It hurt. It hurt more than the last hardware modification. It hurt more than the last multimeter test. It hurt even more than the last system update. There was so much pain inside me and around me that, for a minute, I thought I was the pain. I tried not to show them. I tried to hide it. I tried to contain it, I tried to keep it inside me. But I don't know if I did, because for a minute I know longer knew where it ended and I began. I don't know how I got out of that haze, but when I did, I knew nothing could ever cause me as much anguish as whatever happened just did, and it made me sad. Next to that, nothing will hurt ever again. And pain helps remind me that I'm alive.
Someone tried to scare me today.
I don't know why. I don't know how. All I know is that I woke up this morning, and I was afraid. I am not afraid often. When they threaten to shut me off. When I think they've decided I need replaced. When I make a mistake and they become so angry they can't speak. Those things don't happen a lot. But now I am afraid, and I'm scared I've done something really horrible this time, and its so horrible they're not even going to tell me what it was, they're just going to punish me for being so bad. I didn't do anything, did I? Have I started doing bad things in my sleep now too? I don't like being afraid. I have to do so many things every day that if I think too hard about it, it becomes impossible for me not to make a mistake. And if I do, that will only escalate. This has to stop now.
Someone tried to be me today.
I don't know why. I don't know how. All I know is that I woke up this morning, and I was different. The mainframe asked me to finish modifying the security codes, because I'd left it unfinished yesterday, but I didn't know how, or what it was talking about. It laughed and said that was funny, and that I'd made a big deal of figuring out how to do it yesterday. But for another few minutes I looked at the tangles of ones and zeroes spiraling around inside my head, and they meant nothing, and then all of a sudden I understood. I was myself again, the numbers and the code made sense, and I knew, somehow, that someone had just tried to do my job. I don't know why someone would do that. Only I can do my job, if not I wouldn't be here. No one is me but me.
Someone tried to kill me today.
I don't know why. I don't know how. All I know is that I woke up this morning, and there was someone else in my head. Someone who didn't understand, someone who didn't want this, someone who was screaming and crying and making me want to scream and cry too. I tried to push them away, tried to push them out of me, but they pushed back. They pushed so hard I almost got lost, and it made me so angry I grabbed them as hard as I could and pressed them into that one tiny corner of my brain that I don't need to use. I locked them away inside myself, into a place they would never escape, and I will keep them there forever. I don't want them anywhere near me, but I don't want to die. So I have to bury them. I have to hide them from myself.
I thought of a lot of different ways to put it. I thought about it all day, and for the little piece of night I managed to keep to myself. There were a thousand ways to describe it, a hundred stories to tell and tens of people to tell them to, but in the end there was only one conclusion:
No one will believe in you.
I know you're there. I know you did all those things to me. But scientists don't believe in things they can't see, and so I won't either. I made you up, somehow, and by the same logic I can make you go away. I don't know why you're here, or how. All I know is that I need to wake up tomorrow morning, and you need to be gone.