Perpetual Motion
Whenever she finds them, she brings the radios along.
She doesn't think much of it, at first. They make for a little company – and here, in this concrete desert, what can be wrong with wishing for some?
Even so, with the flow of the chambers, she finds herself missing that tune when it isn't there. It does not take her long to understand – her drive to collect them lies farther than idle loneliness.
Within the vast guessing game she is trapped in, their perpetual motion guides her like a cryptic philosophy.
The more she listens to their song, the more it reminds her of what she is going through. Its cheap excuse for cheeriness is no less fake than the facade of this place – and the way the electronic tune loops, so artificially seamless, is the mirrored image of her struggle.
It is just like that, she thinks. Always the same, and more irritating with each repetition. Each end melts into an unchanged beginning, right through identical doors that never change.
She deludes herself, from time to time. She hopes to put together their frequencies, in a long-awaited twist – she dreams of finding a hidden signal, a final trace of salvation.
Not that it changes anything, her pragmatism repeats shortly after. There is nothing to wish for in here.
That is why, with the same precision she has in picking them up, she throws them straight through the emancipation grids.
To seek help from anything in Aperture is an illusion – there is no path left but destroy everything. She has the power to end things. So she does.
In their unhappy fizzle, she finds new resolve each time. If the music has a choice but being stuck in its loop, that mustn't mean it is the same for her. She can decide.
And she isn't giving in before she finds a way out.