Author's Notes: Hi! I just want to say, really quickly, that this is the first fan fiction I have ever written, so I don't know how it's going to turn out. Since it is a prequel, so it might take a little while for things to speed up. I would appreciate it if you would comment, but, of course, you don't have to. Thank you! (Also, although I included Doug in the story, I've only played Portal One and Two, I'm not quite sure where they introduce him, so my characterization may be off. Hopefully, it won't be too much of a problem.)
Disclaimer: I don't own Portal.
Prologue: The Baby Girl
A young woman ran up to the unassuming, abandoned looking house's door, clutching a light blue blanket. She set down the bundle in front of the door. A baby, certainly no older then a year old, looked up at her. It didn't make a sound. The woman set an unopened letter on top of the baby.
"I'm sorry, but, considering what you are, I don't think you should stay with me. The people here might be able to help you, considering they're the reason you exist anyway." The woman looked as though the child on the door step made no difference to her. She knocked on the door, and walked away without another word, leaving her daughter to the unknown.
Chapter One: The Eye
"Wake up! Wake Up!" The voice buzzed. I sighed, and slowly hopped out of bed. "If you do your chores quickly, you can go the glass room today." My bleary, tired face broke into a smile, now that I had an incentive, and I rapidly made my bed, changed into my gray tank top, over which I zipped my orange jumpsuit, threw my P.J.s into the Aperture Science Laundry Cleaner, and quickly ate my breakfast after it popped out of the panel in the wall, where it always did. My living area is completely gray, complete with a gray bed, a gray table, a gray chair for my table, my bathroom which is inside a second room of it's own, and a chute where I threw my already worn clothes every morning and night. They appeared back in the little panel in the wall where I stored my clothes. I only have to touch the panels to open them. One of the walls in my room slides away to make a passageway into the glass room, a room where I can watch the humans. They wear long white coats, and usually are either chatting, or typing away at the giant computer, which shows pictures and symbols. I don't really know what the symbols mean, and the pictures are rather strange, often of robots, or boxes some of the humans call "weighted cubes", and ones with hearts that they call "casket cubes". I don't know what a casket is. Finally, after I eat the last of my food, drink the last of my water and put my empty glass into the panel, it slides away, as does the left wall of my living space. The glass room doesn't actually have anything in it, but just lets me watch the humans.
Happily I sat down on the floor and watched them. I wonder what they do when they're not in that room. One of them pointed at me, and waved his hand back and forth. Humans did that sometimes. Smiling, I waved back.
"Leave the poor girl alone." Another human said. Laughing happily, the other human went back to typing on the keyboard.
"So, she's more of a psychological test, right?" Asked a different human, looking at me.
"Yeah, we wanted to see what would happen if someone was raised by a computer." She looked at me. Her bright white skin, blonde hair, and gray eyes went nicely with her white coat. "Although, technically, no one's really raising her or teaching her anything. She's never had any direct interaction with any robot or anything. I think they're going to send in someone to see how she responds."
"You don't think she's violent, right?"
"No, she seems like a sweet person. She's really curious, see? She loves observing us, kind of like we're monitoring her."
I smiled. Monitoring me? How are you monitoring me? Do you mean here? There isn't any glass in my room. Two of the screens was showing videos of different rooms. There were other humans in those rooms, all of the ones on the right screen were wearing the same jumpsuit I was. On the left screen, it showed more people with white coats mixing things together, or fixing robots. However, some of the videos were of rooms without humans, where machines were building robots. One of the rooms on the screen on the right looked familiar.
A thought occurred to me, and I jumped up and ran to my living quarters. Up in the corner, there was something sticking out of the wall. I had noticed it before, but I had ignored it. It looked like a red, robotic eye on a stick. I moved to the side, it followed. I stepped forward, it followed me. I smiled and waved. Then I jogged back to the glass room.