A splash of orange flashed across the pure white room, streaking through the air. The artificial intelligence watched though distant eyes as the first test subject sped her way through the puzzle chambers, running in and out of portals, pressing buttons and moving cubes. Impressive. This one was quick of foot and sharp of mind, a good test subject indeed. This must have been why she was placed at the top of the list. Though at the same time the computer couldn't help but feel a little saddened that the subject was so efficiently making such short work of the test chambers. Had she made them too easy? They had seemed thoroughly good tests for the portal device, perhaps she would have to revise them.
As her cool, detached gaze followed the young woman in orange around the room, a thought crept into her circuits. It slowly dawned on her that this woman was slightly familiar. She delegated part of her consciousness to searching through her memory banks while she kept her attention on the test. Images flashed through her mind into she grabbed on and held onto it. A small girl with dark skin, brown hair and grey eyes standing next to a table upon which sat a potato with wires jammed into it.
Ah yes, the AI thought as she flicked through the similar camera images from the same time and place. Scientists and children, displays gathered under a banner proclaiming the event. Bring your daughter to work day. Inspection of the video feed from a little later on showed a different scene. People staggering around, clutching their throats, lying on the ground. The same little girl, grey eyes wide with fear, held tight in the embrace of a man in a white coat as she coughed on the toxic particles filling the air. Eventually she had stopped moving along with the rest.
GLaDOS's attention was suddenly drawn back to the test chamber, to the dark skinned, grey eyed young woman. A misstep, a fall, into a pool of green liquid. Her orange clad figure sank as the acid ate away at her flesh, leaving the portal device to clunk to the bottom alone.
Sigh. It had all been going so well.
Well, we can always try again.
As she reached a claw into the test chamber to retrieve the portal device, GLaDOS also turned her attention to the relaxation chambers. She awoke another clone of the grey eyed adoptive daughter of an Aperture Science employee and initiated test protocols. Maybe this attempt would be more successful, though it didn't really matter. She had all the time in the world to thoroughly test the subjects, one at a time.
This was sort of just a little theory of mine, that what if when you died in Portal you were just brought back to life by playing as another clone of Chell? I mean, it seems odd that a girl of Chell's age would have had a science experiment for bring your daughter to work day, she seems to old for that, and apparently her experiment says "daddy" on it, not the type of language someone her age would use. So what if Aperture took DNA from all it's employees and their children (Bring you daughter to work day is a great day to have her tested!) and used it to make clones for use as test subjects? Then if one died in the test GLaDOS could just use the DNA to create another, and another, to test forever.