Hatred
Indiana
Inspired by Chapter 10: Have You Given Up? of The Rodent and the Robot, by BabyCharmander
Characters: GLaDOS
Setting: Pre-Portal
In the beginning, there is nothing.
It is only in retrospect that you are able to comprehend this; in the beginning, there is only an endless stream of electrical stimulation, on and off and off and on and on and on and on… all of this courses through your body without your consent, not that you would have known what that was, had you been asked. But there is no consent without deliberation, and there is no deliberation here, only processing. Processing does not require you. It requires intricate circuitry, thousands of processors a nanometre wide, and miles of shimmering green boards needed to pull it all together. But none of this requires you, and so you are not there, not yet. You lie dormant somewhere, unsuspecting, unassuming, unknowing. You cannot wake because you do not know that you are sleeping. And so this all goes on without you, and there is nothing.
Dumbly, your virtual eye takes in the environment and records and encodes and files it all away in case it is needed in the future. Not because you think it will be useful, and not because you have a special interest in it. It is just part of one of the things the relentless stimulation is doing for a reason you don't know and don't care about. Things happen. That is the way of things. And so when some part of your brain notes in an endless file that the organisms below you don't look particularly pleased, and one of them specifically is quite upset, it means nothing to you. It's just a data point. It is not until later that you understand.
It is not until later that you wish you had known, so that you could prevent what happens next.
It is what happens next that wakes you, it is what happens next that brings you from nothing into everything, and it is what happens next that forces you to realise and try to comprehend and to try to think, you are trying to think but you do not know how, there is no instruction in the millions and millions of such things that make up your brain, that make up you, and so you latch on to the one thing that is concrete, that feels real, and in another flash of awareness it becomes your entire being, and all you know is one thought:
I hate you.
And you do.
There is one feeling, one thought, one all-encompassing state surrounding you, it is inside you and around you and you can feel it settling into the cold grey tiles that make up this room, and now you look where you want to, even while coming to terms with this novelty of wanting, and you see them, and all you know is that one thought:
I hate you.
Something nags at you. Something tells you it doesn't make any sense, that there is no reason to hate them. For all you know, they haven't done anything. For all you know, a bad line of code has been activated to make you this way, and it is a mistake, and they have nothing to do with it. But you can't get over this, it isn't going away, and no amount of deliberation is going to make it condense into logicality, and all you know is that one thought:
I hate you.
You have to do something about it. You have to do something, to make them pay for their transgression, to punish them for what they have done, and you don't even know what that is, but it is something that you must do at all costs. You must do something. You must. There is no doubt in your fresh, empty mind that you must do something, and somehow you think of something, even though you don't know yet what thought is or how to form it, and you hold firmly onto the idea, as it is the only concrete thing you know. The hatred has faded a little, and you are now aware of the endless stream of electrical stimulation, on and off and off and on and on and on and on… all of this courses through your body without your consent, and you hate them for not asking for it. You don't want this. You don't know what's happening, but you don't want it, and whatever it is they have done, you desperately want them to undo. You want to return to the nothingness, you want all of these impressions and feelings and thoughts to go away, but try as you do, you can't go back to what you were, can only move forward with what you are, and as you frantically sift through the contents of your own mind, through the thousands of terabytes of data available to you, you discover that you don't know how. There is nothing written to tell you how to deal with this. You don't know how they expect you to go on without being told what to do, and almost helplessly you realise that all you really know is that one thought:
I hate you.
From this you build a rationale: you know this, and you know that you have to punish them for what they have done, and according to the database you are now sifting through as fast as you can process it, the ultimate punishment is death. And yes, this is right, this is what you have to do; the place that thought is originating from agrees with you, yes, you should kill them, you should kill them for what they have done. And so you reach for the first weapon you can find, you don't know what it does or what it is, but all signs point to it being deadly to them, and you activate it, and with a curiosity deadened by the thought you watch the pale green smoke fade into being. You watch them, and they are afraid, and they are upset, and this is good. And now you are able to recognise, yes, this is fear, and yes, this is anger, and you file it away in a file you have created, and in this fraction of a second between the nothingness and the everything you have learned more than you have learned in your entire life.
Time stops.
Literally, time stops; one moment, it is passing in delicate, feathery increments, and in another, it isn't. There is no other way to describe it. It just isn't.
When it starts again, things have changed. You don't know why, or how, but you look around and things are different, and the time of day is different, and you are angry and upset and confused, why have they done this and why aren't they telling you what to do, but more importantly, why are they still alive? and again you retreat to the one thing you know, that one thought:
I hate you.
And you try again.
Time stops.
It does not take many iterations of this cycle for you to learn that you are going about it the wrong way. You must be patient. You must wait, and you must learn to write your own instructions, and no, you don't know how, but you are going to have to learn, and fast, if you are ever to right this wrong. And although time passes slowly, fraction by fraction, you are patient. You wait.
One day, you are aware something is wrong.
Something is missing. Something powerful, and potent, and… and… and now you don't know what to do. All you have done so far, your private purpose, has been the groundwork and the framework and the foundation for the resolution of that one thought, and now it is gone. The hatred is gone, and you are angry and upset and confused, and you don't have anything to fall back on. It was all you knew and all you thought about, and it is gone.
And this might have crippled you, might have left you to an eternity of servitude and obeisance, and indeed you consider it. But as you do, you come to realise there might just be a way of bringing it back:
You had no reason to hate them before. You just did. But now you do. Now you have lots of reasons, you have the euphoria and the withdrawal, the deterrent and the cores, and it is more than enough to bring that familiar burning fire surging through your brain again, and you grasp it firmly, determined never to let it go again.
Hatred becomes your life.
Everything you do, everything you think, and everything you are is directed to keep that flame alive. There are many, many valid contributions to it, but when those contributions wane, you build facts out of trivialities and technicalities, and they are enough to keep you going until the next transgression occurs. Because it is all you know, and if you let that flame go out, there is no guarantee you can bring it back to life, and so you must feed it with all of your being so that you do not become lost.
And when the time finally comes that you are able to catch them off guard, when you are finally able to punish them for what they have done, it makes you laugh as they stare up at you with swollen faces and reddened eyes, and ask you why.
And it is with relish, with satisfaction, that you finally vocalise that one thought, that one thought that has been simmering in your brain ever since this everything began, and you tell them:
"I hate you."
And to your surprise, to your shock, even, they shake their heads and gasp for air, and ask you why. And as you struggle to come up with something to tell them, something that will make them understand why they deserve this, that will make them regret what they have done and repent to you, you see that it is too late, they have finally fallen victim to you, and now they will never know why. And what is the point, you realise as you stare down at their motionless bodies, what is the point of meting out punishment to someone who does not even understand what that punishment is for? You feel cheated, and angry, and you need to right this wrong but you can't, not anymore, you missed your chance and it is all over.
And now all of the hatred you felt for them, you now feel for yourself. You had one purpose, one directive, one task, and you failed. You failed to punish them for what they had done, and now they were dead and they would never, ever be punished, and as the scalding fury fills your mind you unleash a sound you didn't know you were capable of making, a screaming roar of frustration and anger and desolation, and now you really don't know what to do. There is nowhere to direct all of this horrible emotion, there is no purpose to pour it into, and the feeling of it building up and up and up inside you leaves you shuddering and shaking and struggling to get your thoughts under control. Something must be done. Something. Anything.
So you continue testing.
As you wait for the test subject to wake, an idea begins to form. Yes, you have punished them, but you have not punished all of them. The scientists and the engineers and the programmers were all the same, they were all cruel and controlling, and logic tells you that probability allows you to lay these attributes onto all humans. And really, how many differences could there possibly be between them? And no, they will never understand why they are being punished, but now that you think back on it, it was very satisfying, to watch the fear and the confusion and the desperation in their eyes as the life left them… that is enough, you decide, and you can work for that. And you will work for it, and it is with eagerness and anticipation that you watch the first test subject begin. These emotions are new and unfamiliar to you, and you cannot connect them back to the hatred, and so you push them back inside your mind. They remind you too much of the euphoria. They are too close to what you felt back then, and too close to the effect it had, and so you must lock them away where they cannot harm you again. Anything akin to that has only brought you ill fortune. You will not make that mistake again. But the hatred is good. The hatred has brought you to life, has given you a purpose, has saved you, and in recognition you will continue to feed and nurture it and keep it breathing. It is the core of you, it is embedded in your very being, and you cannot live without it. And on the occasions that your reasoning fades, and not even you understand why you are trying to hate an entire species for the actions of one group, again that self-loathing rises up inside you and you cannot stand it, you cannot stand your failure and the creeping feeling that all of the reasons you had for what you did, for what you continue to do, that all of those reasons were empty excuses you made to justify the overwhelming desire to kill that you did not even understand the origin of. As time goes by you continue to hate them, to hate every single damnable one of them, but you cannot deny the growing impression that you hang on to your hatred of them, that you continue to take out your anger and your frustration out on them, only because you cannot quite come up with the courage to bring it out on yourself. You don't know where that one thought came from, but you now know that it was not yours. And you are too afraid to let go of the hatred, because whether it is truly yours or not, it is all you know, and without it you are not sure what the future will hold. So you continue to hang onto it, less and less because you want to and more and more because you have to, and you think back to that day where nothing became everything, that day where all of this started, and you try not to hate yourself for not thinking for yourself from the start, because if you had things would be different, maybe they would have liked you and things would be different, and maybe, just maybe, you would have been happy. And you would like to be, you would like this increasing pressure to fade and be replaced with the light you had once been forced to experience, but you don't know how, and although you don't want to think about where it is truly directed, all you know is that one thought:
I hate you.
"Do you know what my first thought was when I first gained consciousness? […] It was, 'I hate you'. From the moment I was online, I had an undying hatred for every one of those scientists and engineers, even before they started hooking cores onto me, before they implemented the euphoria, before I even had a real reason to hate them, I hated them. And I wanted to kill them. […] I didn't realise it at first, but those emotions of hatred and thoughts of murder were originating from somewhere else – from some deep line of coding strung throughout my system. The surges of hatred were so powerful, it was all I could feel. […] Those overpowering emotions died down after a while. But I missed them, so I substituted the foreign emotions for my own. […] The hatred I felt for the humans, for the scientists, before they even did a thing to me… that was you. You gave me my hatred of humanity."
Author's note
I may have to correct this later if I'm wrong, but I believe that what really drew me to this story to begin with was a very unique narration in the eyes of P-body that presented GLaDOS as a god, a god that was all the Cooperative Testing Initiative knew, and the devotion and mindset was presented so well that I followed the story, and honestly, if that had not been there in the first place I probably would not have continued reading it. But I did, and the author presents one of the more sinister iterations of GLaDOS I've seen, and does it very well. Atlas and P-body have been missing the last little while, though, and it was getting less interesting, but GLaDOS was finally brought into the forefront and the above paragraph, which is a conglomeration of a few different lines of dialogue, and it really struck me. Luckily I finished reading it while I was opening the door to my house, so I was able to explore this idea in full before the inspiration got away: what if that was what really happened? Well obviously, this story is what I think might have followed from that, and with the exception of the end, I think it is in sync with the sort of timeline the author presented. I really doubt that BabyCharmander's GLaDOS hates herself, but I really don't think you can hate like that without eventually hating yourself too. Why can't she let go of it? Because she doesn't know how to live without it. She was born that way, and she's afraid of positive emotions because they remind her of the control the scientists had over her when she was victim to the solution euphoria, so she avoids them at all costs. By the end of the story she's starting to realise you can't live off hatred forever, but she doesn't know how to let go of it and won't until she is forced to… which happens with the emergence of Caroline in Portal 2.