Count your Blessings
Zero to nineteen, doors in pairs. She rarely reaches the end, for betrayals throw her back to square Chell never gives up on counting – numbers are one of the few things she has left.
She pays the most attention to the living things. As rare as they are meaningful.
She would count four of them, but she can't bother. There is not much to be done with painted messages of who knows how long ago. The fourth is a ghost, and not the only one, as countless died so she could keep on living.
Three are the actors, then. Three survivors of this maddening sequence. It is an odd digit, and bringer of imbalance as such. The moods of the game may swing, but the result is the same – it is always one against the others. Nothing can last.
Thus, for a while, two are left alone. In the end, depending on the odds, two will have to go or to stay. If three means war, two is a truce – it gives the gift of silence and security, maybe a spectre of alliance. It is a temporary comfort, in a place where all beliefs are useless.
One must be the winner, anyway. It is the only possible outcome, whatever she predicts. Of the two robots, either has to win – all she wants is to leave unscathed, and equally alone in mastering her life.
One and complete. She is lucky enough to end her fight like that. One is the final choice that sends her away, and one is the hand that runs through the wheat. One sky and one world, bowing at her feet.
No regrets and turning around. No master plan to conclude now. She is going to walk on in solitude, until she returns to zero.
That's the way of the world. All things begin and end like that – she is no different.
But it is fine, as long as she is free. It is really fine.