POWER MAD
The door falls forward.
"I honestly, truly didn't think you'd fall for that."
You hear the voice, and a peal of doom rings in your chest. The panels behind the trick door spring to life and open forward, staring you down with their single blue eyelike lights. Then you feel the room moving, writhing beneath your feet; a wall shambles forward, then another, then a third, as she speaks: "In fact, I devised a much more elaborate trap further ahead for when you got through this easy one. If I'd known you'd let yourself get captured this easily, I would have just dangled a turkey leg on a rope from the ceiling."
You jump as a straight crack appears in the floor, and back against the wall, heart pounding, as the crack widens, the floor disappearing. Soon there's not enough left to stand and you're falling. . . .
. . . onto a new surface. It's much too familiar. It's an old glass chamber, complete with unusable toilet, just like the one you used to live in before this nightmare began.
"Well, it was nice catching up. Let's get to business."
The chamber slides forward to a section of a wall that opens with many flashes of blue optic lights and blank shuffling of panels . . . to reveal her.
She swings from her pedestal, a massive, tangled bundle of black cords and shining white metal, her single orange-yellow eye trained on you, punctuating her sentences with little flips of her rectangular white head. Her lair has been completely rebuilt from the last time you saw it; where once were dripping wires, overgrown foliage, and nonexistent walls now stood a flat, grey floor and sectioned walls, like the inside of the queen bee's honeycomb. There are no traces of the outside world. It is neat, orderly, and your new tomb. Your heart pounds, and your hands shake with dread. It's over, you think.
"I hope you brought something stronger than a portal gun this time. Otherwise, I'm afraid you're about to become the immediate past president of the Being-Alive Club. Ha ha," she adds tonelessly, no humor at all in her robotic voice. The glass room stops once it has fully entered her chamber, directly in front of her. She towers over you.
A metallic hiss sounds overhead as she says smugly, "Seriously, though . . . goodbye."
Giant claws, identical to the one that had plucked you and him from the ground once before, descend from the heavens. They bear burdens in their silver talons. You tense-
A red eye finds you and locks on, but not from a white body like you are used to, no. These are mismatched and unfinished, rejects from the turret line. Your plan had paid off. You relax, but only the tiniest amount.
The overexcited rejects begin to chatter in triumph. Meaningless clicks fill the air as they unsuccessfully try to fill you with bullets, bullets they lack. "It's my big chance!" one crows happily. Another cries out in simulated pain as flames engulf it, and it explodes with a deafening crash. You flinch as the glass around you cracks. ". . . This is trouble," the formerly happy turret mumbles, as it too explodes. One by one the turrets self-destruct, shattering and breaking the clear glass surrounding you, until it becomes hard to see anything outside.
"Oh . . . you were busy back there," she says monotonously. She swings to the side, not looking at you, but at the floor. "Well, I suppose we could just sit in this room and glare at each other until somebody drops dead, but I have a better idea." A square set of panels behind her retracts to let a curved clear tube protrude into the room. It rotates down until it sticks itself through a section of the room's broken glass. "It's your old friend, deadly neurotoxin. If I were you, I'd take a deep breath . . . and hold it."
You let out a determined exhale. If phase one of his plan had worked, then phase two should as well-
"Agh- Ugh- Ooagh- Agh- Ow- GAH- Ungh- Enh- Unh- OW-"
Instead of green noxious gas, a small round object is sliding down the tube, emitting grunts of alarm and pain with a very familiar and welcome voice. He hurtles out of the tube, his light blue optic eye wheeling, locking on you as he passes, and he bursts out a frantic "Hello!" before he slams through the glass on the other side of the chamber, breaking it fully and setting you free. He rolls to a stop a little bit away, blue eye small and scared, locked on her.
". . . I hate you so much," she says tonelessly, a slight stiffening at the end of her sentence the only indicator of genuine loathing. You waste no time. You dive out of your former glass prison and grab him with the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device. You back up against the wall, eyes locked on the swinging supercomputer that has made your life a living hell. She watches you relentlessly wherever you go.
A familiar male voice suddenly speaks over the intercom. The announcer says, "Warning: Central core is 80% corrupt."
"That's funny," she says almost wistfully, "I don't feel corrupt. In fact, I feel pretty good."
The announcer interrupts with, "Alternate core detected."
The core in front of you takes a while to realize. "Oh- that's me they're talkin' about!" he says excitedly, as though being the subject between a deranged madwoman and a non-sentient prerecording is something to be happy about.
"To initiate a core transfer, please deposit substitute core in receptacle," the announcer says.
"Core transfer? . . . Oh, you are kidding me," she says, sounding almost stunned at the exchange taking place. Your eyes dart between the speakers as they talk, slightly bewildered at all of the official science speech. Core transfer . . . wait, could it mean. . . ?
"I've got an idea!" he says, his optic eye widening. "Do what it says, plug me in."
At his words, she lurches toward you, her eye burning into yours. "Do not plug that little idiot into my mainframe," she says angrily, using the most emotion in her voice that you've ever heard. It alarms you. You glance at him, looking for an answer.
"No, you should plug that little idiot into the mainframe!" he says, and nods at you reassuringly. You relax. He's your friend. He's gotten you so far, and now, because of him, you could finally have a way to deal with her forever. You stride forward, aware of her scathing eye burning into you, and hold him up to the plug. He latches on automatically with a burst of sparks. The receptacle rotates to face you as you back away, the distance between you and him making you nervous once more.
"Substitute core accepted," the announcer says. "Substitute core, are you ready to start the procedure?"
"Yes!" he says firmly, more boldness in his voice than ever before. His resolve strengthens yours. He is ready to face the unknown for a chance to get you and him to the surface. You smile at him, and he winks back at you.
Friends, you think, are a good thing to have. Especially in a place filled with nothing but horror.
The announcer interrupts your musing as it says, "Corrupted core, are you ready to start the procedure?"
She jerks her head forward defiantly. "No!" she says.
He raises his lower metal eyelid in a robot grin. "Oooh, yes she is!" he says, cocky as he has never been before.
She spins in her pedestal, obviously irritated and maybe a little alarmed. Good, you think. How does it feel? "Nononononononononono," she repeats like a childish mantra, swinging to and fro. Her white metal back gleams as it passes.
"Stalemate detected. Transfer procedure cannot continue."
Your heart plummets as she cries out a triumphant "Yes!" and he begins to panic, trapped in the receptacle. He shouts fearfully, "Pull me out pull me out pull me out pull me out pull me out pull me out-"
". . . unless a Stalemate Associate is present to press the Stalemate Resolution Button."
"-pull me out pull me out- Leave me in, leave me in! Le- go- pre- go press it!" he calls to you, and you turn at the sound of screeching metal. A set of shallow stairs and a new small room has opened off the main chamber, a normal black-paneled room with two white walls . . . and a bright red button on a white column in the middle. You start forward eagerly.
"Don't. Do it," she says, a dark threat like thunder lacing her voice. You flinch instinctively, slowing, but then he says, "Yes, do do it!" and you pick up the pace.
As you near it, however, a floor panel springs up, the black cover flying off to reveal the see-through base. It blocks your path. "Not so fast," she says behind you. "Think about this. You need to be a trained Stalemate Associate to press that button. You're unqualified."
You step back and test the floor beneath you as he babbles about how you don't need the qualifications. A narrow strip of it is pure white. You raise the portal gun, finger the right trigger, and fire a blue portal at the ground. A blue orb shoots out and bursts against the white surface, revealing a shimmering blue oval in the ground. You raise the gun and press the left trigger, and an orange orb fires from your arm to stick to one of the white walls of the stalemate room near the button. As the orange portal forms, you glance down at the blue at your feet. It now holds the image of the button directly in front of it. You step casually into the ground and disappear-
-only to reappear in the room out of the orange. You see her, farther away now, begin to swing about in agitation, her orange eye shining in the dimness. You stare her down defiantly as you step up to the button, the button that will end it all, end this madness-
A semicircle of panels spring up, completely blocking your way. You try to circle around them, but more rise to deter you. You pause, thinking, then shoot the two surrounding walls with consecutively colored portals. Then you turn and dash through one as fast and as suddenly as humanly possible, knowing that your life and his depend on this one final trick.
The panels, confused in their semi-sentience as to where you went, pause. By the time they realize where you are, you have already emerged from the other portal and pressed the button.
She cries out and rears up to the ceiling, her head twitching as smoke and sparks burst from it. She writhes, her cords bundling and head rolling, before she suddenly goes completely limp, her eye on the ground.
Beside her, the receptacle begins to descend into the floor. "Here I go!" he calls excitedly, then his eye dilates to a smaller size as he becomes frightened. "Wait, what if this hurts? What if this really hurts?" He squints his eye and shakes it, his voice now trembling. "Oah, I didn't think of that." His receptacle is much lower now, almost completely below.
Her head moves ever so slightly as she says grimly, "Oh, it will. Believe me it will."
Your eyes widen, and you start toward him uncertainly. You didn't put him in there to be in pain, you think. What would happen to him, after he sinks below the ground? You don't know if you can bear the thought of causing him harm.
"Are you- are you just saying that or is it really gonna hurt? You're just sayin' that, aren't you, you're just- no you're not, you're right, it is going to hurt, isn't it?" he babbles, voice and eye shrinking as his platform sinks completely below the floor. Triangular panels circle and close over him. "Exactly how painful are we t- AAAAAAHHHH!" His faint voice cuts off to a loud yell of pain. You wince, run forward, try to peer through the cracks and call his name, but you can't.
Whirring raises your head. The white circle below her is raising to a pedestal size and opening. The lights in the room dim down to almost complete blackness as a large number of tiny metallic arms reach out of the red-lighted hole and latch onto her eye. "Get your hands off me!" she chokes out, beginning to rotate again. "No . . . stop, NO!" Her head is jerked to the side with a shower of white sparks like a neck snapping. The arms unlatch her eye and force themselves into her head. A white curtain rises out of the ground to mercifully cover the procedure. "No! NO NO -"
Her desperate pleas give way to an earsplitting shriek of agony as her huge body writhes and spins, her head pinioned by the arms behind the curtain. Your hands fly to your ears as the tortured sound assaults your sanity. You look up. The body has gone completely slack again. Around you, the panels lining the room are slumped and limp, blue eyes flickering without a power source.
Then you hear a metallic thud as something falls to the ground, and you gape as you realize what it is; her rectangular head, lightless and lifeless, looking extremely out of place on the pristine gray floor.
The dim room suddenly bursts with hazy light as the panels on the walls rise to their normal positions and flex. The white curtain retracts, and the chassis spins up swiftly and smoothly, not jerkily like you're used to. You scramble back in alarm. Then you realize what's controlling it.
"WHOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAH!" he yells in delight, his blue eye wide and happy. He whirls, taking in the walls and panels from his new high perch. As he turns, the panels rise in a wavelike motion. "Check me out, partner! We did it! I'm in control of the whole facility now!" You stand there, stunned. Seeing the little core who could so easily be held now attached to a giant robotic body is disconcerting, to say the least. "Whoaahoho! Would you look at this?"
He stops turning, finally, and focuses on you. He keeps his body to the side, looking down at you from an angle, showing off his new form. The sides of his old core body disconnect and space out, like a kitten puffing itself up to look larger. You smile, then can't help but laugh with him in relief and happiness. She is defeated, powerless, you have won, you are safe, you can finally, mercifully leave, what could possibly make this moment bad?
His sides puff out. "Not too bad, eh? Giant robot, massive? It's not just me, right, I am bloody massive, aren't I?" His movements are the complete opposite of hers. Where she is jerky and slow, like a stalking spider, his are quick and smoothly energetic, like a dog finally off of a leash. You walk closer, smile at him. Where would you ever be without him? He, who had selflessly risked everything to set you free? And now you are!
He drifts lower to the ground, more to your level. His voice echoes in the large chamber. "Oh, right, The escape lift. I'll call it now," he says, swinging over to the side. A hole in the ground rotates and opens, and a glass elevator rises out of the depths. Her head is right next to it. You trot over to it, step into it eagerly. The glass closes behind you.
He swings forward. "Let me tell ya, I knew it was gonna be cool to be in charge of everything, but . . . wo-how, this is cool!" He swings back, turning so his back is to you, watching as a shower of colorful confetti bursts from the ceiling and three testing cubes are catapulted around by two floor panels. Random wall panels lift and pulse with their new master's elation.
He turns back to you. "And check this out: I'm a bloody genius now!" He suddenly becomes rigid, moving side to side, and his pupil dilates to a minuscule size. He recites in a voice not his own, "Estas usando este software de traduccion de forma incorrecta. Por favor, consulta el manual. I don't even know what I just said, but I can find out!"
You smile, now with a strain, happy because he is happy, but at the same time impatient for your escape. You want to get out of here, right now.
He seems to sense your impatience, because he bows his head meekly and says, "Oh, sorry, no, the lift, yes, sorry, keep forgetting."
The lift ascends. You stare upwards, yearning, reaching for the outside. You can practically taste the sunlight you're about to be bathing in, can feel the wind and its sweet smells caressing your skin-
"This body's amazing, seriously!" he exclaims, spinning and swooping, his eye rolling. "I can't get over how small you are- and I'm huge! Eh heheh, heh . . . heh. . . ."
You're not even paying attention. Your head is back, your face turned heavenward, as you rise to your victory, to your sanctuary, to anything but this hellhole. . . .
". . . heh. . . . Ahahahahahaahahaha-"
You see something moving, something wrong out of the corner of your eye. The wall panels are lifting and waving, like they're waving you goodbye. Their erratic movements match his . . . his laughter. . . .
"-HEHAHAHAAHAHAAHIAAAUGH! Ah heh heeh. . . ."
Then he stops. Completely. Stares into space. Frozen, like an epiphany has struck him, a new and brilliant idea. "Actually. . . ." he starts, voice low and casually informative.
The lift stops.
". . . Why do we have to leave right now?"
And with a shudder, much like the one that runs down your spine, the lift begins to descend. . . .
The open hole under the chassis glows red again, lighting his white underbelly with demonic glow. "Do you have any idea how good this feels?" he inquires, his normally so comforting blue eye now cold as ice. You stare at him, bewildered, asking, praying, demanding to know, silently, why you aren't leaving yet. The lift reaches the bottom- and with a start, you realize how much the glass traps you.
"I did this," he says firmly, towering over you, his sides spread, his eye narrow. "Tiny little me . . . did this." His head tilts and jerks mockingly, like this is an old insult that still haunted him. He spins away, like the situation is below one such as he.
". . . You didn't do anything," a voice gasps. You search around for a moment before your eyes alight on her, she who should be dead, she who was lying at your feet, defeated and forgotten. "She did all the work!"
He whirls to face you again. "Oh, really? That's what the two of you think, is it? Well, maybe it's time I did something, then. . . ." As he speaks, a mini arm from below rises and grabs hold of her motionless head.
"What are you doing- Stop! No! No!" she cries fruitlessly as she is dragged into the red light. The circle closes above her like narrow teeth. He watches, a sick pleasure in his dilated eye that sends horrified chills down your nerves. Every single instinct, every primal command that has kept you alive the past few days is screaming RUNRUNRUN.
You shrink back, portal gun raised as some meager form of protection. But then you blink, straighten up. This is him, your friend, your companion, your light in the darkness. He woke you from your forced sleep and guided you to a way out. When the pitch black came, he gave you light. When the way grew dangerous, he gave you reassurance. And when the smothering silence of the forgotten laboratory threatened to overwhelm you, he gave you a voice to listen to. He's been the only friend in this factory of fear you could have, and he's made this horrid nightmare a slightly more bearable dream. How could you doubt him so? He would never betray you. . . .
His head snaps up. "And don't think I'm not onto you too, lady." His eye narrows as every single panel on the walls suddenly snaps forward, their normally blue eyes now a bloody red. They stare, silently judging, the worst kind, surrounding you. He leans forward. "You know what you are? Selfish. I've done nothing but sacrifice to get us here, and what have you sacrificed? . . . Nothing. Zero." He shuts his eye, shaking his head. "All you've done is boss me around . . . well now who's the boss?" he demands, optic a slit, accusing, sides spread in a show of intimidation. "Who's the boss?" he asks again, drifting closer, to the side. Then he swoops forward, impossibly close. You jump back in alarm, portal gun clasped to your chest. His icy optic is shoved in your face, only a thin slice visible, tilted to the side. He stares you down.
"It's me."
And you think, I don't know you anymore.
A cheerful ding sounds, making you jump in surprise. He leans back with an expectant "Ah!" You gasp, relieved and ashamed that the eye contact has been broken. He stares down into the depths of the red aperture below him as a robotic arm spins out of the hole and comes to a stop before you, holding a small round object studded with wires. He lurks behind it, a gleeful expression in his eye. "See that? That is a potato battery. It's a toy . . . for children." The arm lurches to the side, pounds the glass elevator door with its cargo, revealing its other end. A white plastic base has been embedded in it with a dull orange circle nestled within-
"And now, she lives in it."
You can't help but gape when you realize that she - the seemingly immortal queen of science and testing, the madwoman who had forced you through hell and back - is the potato battery, stolen from her blocky head and jammed into a vegetable. In any other circumstance, you would have laughed. Now, you feel nauseous as he wheels around, giggling madly to himself at his mockery, at the height of power now, with nothing to oppose him-
"I know you."
She speaks. Her voice is distant and tinny, like she's speaking through a soup can, but audible nonetheless. Her tiny optic flares with every syllable.
He whirls to face her, eye narrowed skeptically. "Sorry, wha- eeehheh . . . what?" He holds her up to see her better. You watch, mesmerized.
"The engineers tried . . . everything to make me . . . behave. To slow me down. Once, they even attached an Intelligence Dampening Sphere on me."
At these words, he shrinks back almost sheepishly and looks away to a corner of the room, rocking shortly back and forth. He seems unwilling to listen, but unable to tune her out.
"It clung to my brain like a tumor . . . generating an endless stream of terrible ideas. . . ." she goes on, her words enunciated carefully.
"No, not listening, not listening!" he insists, rising to the ceiling, as though desperate to be anywhere but there.
"It was your voice."
"No, y- no, you're lying, you're lying!" he sputters, staring at her accusingly from the corner of his eye.
"Yes," she goads, "you're the tumor. You're not just a regular moron . . . you were designed to be a moron."
At the word, he winces, tenses, his eye a slit as he wrestles with some memory from his past. His icy blue pupil shrinks to a dot as he shakes his head from side to side, enraged. "I AM NOT a MORON!" he shouts, and the arm lashes out; it strikes the glass, cracking it. You flinch, covering your face with your hands.
"YES YOU ARE!" she screams suddenly, her optic glowing orange-hot, furious at being rebuked. "YOU'RE THE MORON THEY BUILT TO MAKE ME AN IDIOT!"
"Well how about NOW?" he bellows, his sides spread to their full extent, eye impossible to go any smaller. The arm strikes, and you can't help but scream as it lobs the potato right through the lift door, creating a jagged hole and shattering more sharp glass. "NOW who's a moron? Could a moron PUNCH-"
The arm raises, and blurs. Your wrap your arms around your head and cower as the robotic arm slams into the top of the lift.
"-YOU-"
The lift lurches downward, broken shards of glass raining on your head and arms-
"-INTO-"
The sound of shattering glass and crunching metal, you can barely hear anything-
"-THIS-"
You scream again, screaming for help, for safety, anything to let this nightmare end, because this is much, much worse than anything you've been through before, worse than being denied that which was promised you, worse than being trapped with no solution, no puzzle piece to find, because nothing is worse than a betrayal of trust from the madness of power-
"-PIT? HUH? COULD A MORON DO THAT? . . . Uh oh."
Through your arms you see the bolts working themselves free. You realize you're gone a second before it happens. And as the elevator floor collapses under you and the glass pours down, and as you begin to fall, you find your voice.
"WHEATLEY!"
And then you're falling.
The sound of rushing wind fills your ears. Pipes and concrete blur by at breakneck speed. None of it matters. None of it makes sense.
An object catches your eye. You glance up. A tiny potato battery.
"Oh, hi," GLaDOS says dryly. "So, how are you holding up? Because I'm a potato."