Caroline wasn't a witch.
She deplored the fantastic, honestly. The real world was bizarre enough. Yet, if she told anyone about her discovery, they'd let their minds jump to conclusions. Conclusions without evidences were never good.
And no, her being odd wasn't evidence.
Visiting her local geologists for the latest in finds was a favorite past time. Father didn't mind her spending frivolously, so long as it had naught to do with her 'ridiculous science obsession'. So, she said that when she was going there she was actually creatively shopping for jewelry in the raw. That, apparently, was more acceptable than actually being interested in geology and the lives of those who sought beautiful minerals.
Caroline had acquired quite a collection, and it was one of her most prized possessions. There was nothing so reassuring as having and holding such breathtaking fragments that may as well have been forgotten and left beneath the crust forever, unseen in their truest glory.
She'd had many stones, but this one… this stone was surreal. This was the sort of thing that shouldn't have existed.
Yet it did.
It was beautiful, simply put, most closely resembling blood opal in its character but bearing an almost fluorite coloration. It transcended the aqua blue to ivy greens, and finally deepened to a murky purple populated by intense bursts of reflective imperfections.
…or were those imperfections?
Suffice to say, Caroline had been incredibly lucky. The man who had apparently cleaved this stone from the earth was a superstitious sort, and he had the impression that it was cursed. Others may have kept it to themselves, but not him.
"The stone… it sings," he warned her, "it sings a dark song, a song of death. It is a stone from hell."
It seemed to her to be only exhibiting fascinating qualities. Nothing 'hellish' about it.
"I won't sell it to you," he declared, defensive as she eyed it, "it would be a shame for a bright young girl to meet a terrible fate."
That was when Caroline had taken out her check-book. The wide yawning line was ready for any amount of money.
Oh, really?
Apparently, the man's conscious could be bought.
But he wasn't a liar. The stone did sing. In fact, it sang all the time.
It drove her crazy.
She pressed her palm against the clustered surface, just to tell herself she wasn't insane. Ever still it hummed on, a vibrato emanating this tune, gracing her fingertips as they slid over the slick polish.
Caroline withdrew her hand and her eyes fell upon the inked needle lacing across a remnant. The re-purposed seismograph picked up the minute tremblings, reading out a constant loop of the same pattern. There went the song, over and over and over.
Fascinating.
She listened closely to the stone, and it shimmered a melancholy song she'd never heard.
The young girl tried to hum along in some poor attempt to preserve the melodious sounds. As she hummed, the stone would respond.
She would complete the melody, and the melody would echo, stronger from the stone. Caroline's singing lessons came in quite handy then. She would crescendo, and the stone would follow, their tones rising until she reached her maximum.
Still, the stone could go louder.
Caroline wondered how high it could go, and if at some point the stone itself would break. She practiced singing to the stone, and recorded her results.
Science without results was witchcraft, after all.
She'd still be thought a witch if anyone found out she'd been singing to a stone in her basement… much less that the stone was singing back.
Her basement area, fortunately, was a generous one given the size of her family's house and the volume of their wealth.
Her father had latched onto her passing interest in fashion and design, exclaiming that it was, 'finally, a respectable thing for a young lady to do!'
So he'd funded it in full.
Her mother knew what she desired was to be a great innovator, discovering, doing, right on the bleeding edge of science.
But this fact held little sway over the man of he house. He'd gone on ahead and filled the basement, or her area, with everything a tailor could ever desire.
She had fun with it. She didn't really mind designing clothes. It was more fun than hunting suitors or attending to family business. Caroline liked being alone and quiet.
But that wasn't enough.
This was in the inner room of her basement, the spot where no one save her mother dared to go, and even then not without good reason.
It was rumored she made undergarments there and other things of the ilk that should never be seen by children, nor men's eyes (save for an appropriate time after marriage, of course).
Her lips curled at the hilarity. She could hear them now.
"Don't go in there! There could be panties."
People could be funny… when they weren't annoying.
Unfortunately, this wasn't a pantie factory. This was where Caroline did her plotting and planning. She told her mother it was for her soon-to-be world-changing fashion line, but really, it was where she did the science. Or, whatever this was. It probably wasn't actual science, but who cared?
She liked to call the place her chamber.
Caroline would hum as she worked around the stone, the mineral echoing her softly… soothingly. At times the stone would grow less restless in refrain, the sorrow fading as Caroline's cheerful tones washed over it.
She fed another remnant of smooth cloth into the seismograph tray, grabbing the other before it fell over itself and turned into a mess. She laid it out along a shelf to let it dry.
Seismographic prints were in fashion.
Caroline studied it and the other records, noting the driving median of the tune. To her mind these were numbers, but to her heart, it sounded plaintive, the notes clustered together. It was a tone of longing.
It was the song of a home unmade.
She didn't even try to decode that summation, but she knew it to be true, somewhere, somehow.
It took some time, but Caroline realized that she couldn't simply use her voice to match the stone's magnitude. She couldn't really match it with anything… but itself?
It could match itself!
So she found an old phonograph upstairs and disassembled it, taking matters far too far. She'd hooked it up to her electrical grid (the one she had made out of all her tailoring supplies and salvaged bits and bobs, of course) and then attached an amplifier or two.
The phonograph and stone warred, the stone's tune echoing to itself louder and louder until… the phonograph gave way in a great shimmering explosion.
"What's that dreaded dissonance?" a call of disgust descended the stairs.
She called up, "practicing singing!"
"Keep it down!" came the common response.
And so she had to limit her experiments considerably and move her agenda with the tides of her parent's moods and schedules.
Caroline repaired the phonograph, and started the testing every free spot she was allowed. The results of each test proved the superiority of the stone to the phonograph. Well, that seemed like the goal given how many times she had to repair the poor thing.
And then she decided to run various correlating electrical charges through the stone, since this was what science fiction had taught her: if it didn't work at first, run electricity through it!
The results had been just about the same, and she almost scrapped the whole electrical idea. But not before a most wonderful thing happened… practically on chance.
Caroline's self-educated hunch was that, maybe, somehow, the stone was trying to go somewhere, and to get there it had to have a link to something familiar. There was a logical pattern to its 'song', or rather, the series of vibrations. Was this some sort of harmonic homing signal?
A child would cry for its mother, and the mother would cry back, and hopefully they'd find one another. That sort of thing. It wasn't a full analogy for a strange mineral with no mother save… perhaps the earth? It wasn't probably from earth, come to think of it.
She digressed…
Maybe the similar electro-magnetic fields would help amplify the stone's unique properties?
The young girl ran a current of electricity through the table which the phonograph sat upon, matching it to the one running through the stone. With this new variable, she tried her test again.
"Three hundred and seventy-eight," she told herself official-like, then handed herself a clipboard. "Commencing test. You have the go in: three… two… one…" and she gave herself the honors of plugging them in.
The stone and the phonograph warred, her eyes darting to and fro with a vivid excitement, and the tones grew louder and louder. And just before the battered phonograph gave in, the miracle transcended.
The stone, for a moment, was not where it should have been. It was upon the table where the phonograph sat, perhaps bisecting it. She couldn't tell, honestly. It had been so fast. But she HAD observed it move.
It had moved, no matter what her doubts said. It was just near instantaneously.
The move was apparently… due to this song.
Harmony.
There were many other factors at work, but she just couldn't contain her excitement. This was something novel, something… revolutionary!
How could she control it?
Weeks, months, years…they passed without much mind on her part. Her mind was too consumed with this enigma; this force of another nature, perhaps another world…
…and then, one day, she figured it out.
Well, not really, but close enough.
Apparently, the stone responded to a completion of its melody. If the tuning was just so, its matter would transfer to the reciprocating harmony.
Caroline could teleport the stone all over her chamber, and once even inside the wall, which was an ordeal in itself that involved a shovel, property damage, and lots of grumbling. She'd hung a rack of skirts over that manifest failure.
A sample of the stone had been sent off to some important lab. What was it…? Dark Plateau? Jet Tableland? Inky Butte? It didn't matter. She didn't get anything back save a suspicious message that boiled down to, "we don't know who you are or what that is, but give it over," which was about what she expected.
Good thing she had fake postage.
Caroline really had to figure out how to make an anti-mass spectrometer one day…especially one that wouldn't blow up anything and would only consume a modicum of power. She sat in a rocking chair, pining over such a feat.
T'was but a dream.
She just knew she'd discovered an element, or something new, and stewed over the fact that she couldn't quite get at what made the stone… do anything that it did. It was the truest form of a black box, and it was enough to drive anyone mad. The stupid thing produced without allowing itself to be quantified.
Some scientist she was… beaten by a rock.
But she was Caroline. She would not be shown up by some petty little stone.
Well…
Another year passed. And there she was: arms crossed, legs crossed, face cross, glaring at the stone. If looks could have ripped the information from it she would have had the whole sub-atomic structure.
And then Caroline decided to have fun.
Why should she worry about the thing? It had taught her so much already. Caroline didn't need that rock. She was moving on.
"I don't need you…" she told it as she took it off its pedestal and put it in the curio cabinet.
The rock, unsurprisingly, didn't answer. It simply sat alone in the curio, behind the glass, like a silent observer of her labors.
The stone watched as a machine was built, bit by reclaimed bit. Trash turned to treasure overnight. It sported coils, it had hoses, it had tonal prongs, it looked… very much like a cannon mixed with a vacuum cleaner. It was even on a swiveling mannequin base.
Caroline busied herself testing her hypotheses of mass displacement through spatial harmonics whilst the ladies upstairs gabbed their gobs. She'd play records to mute their voices, just anything to cover the cackling.
The stone was so quiet now…
Every once in a while, she'd come upstairs and show her face so people didn't come poking in her domain. Apparently less than one interaction per day was considered 'is she dead?' territory. Sometimes she would even resurface bearing gifts.
Jewelry made from the failed attempts to replicate the intrinsic qualities of the stone were smashing when laid against a neck or hand. These geologic Frankenstein's Monsters were gorgeous, and perhaps a bit toxic.
"They're sooo beautiful!" they exclaimed at her offerings, and then they fawned over her for about thirty seconds before the next great thing grabbed their attentions.
"It's garbage," Caroline whispered under her breath, admiring how the formal women wore these 'gifts'.
"What was that, Caroline?"
She walked away with a smile.
"Odd girl."
"Always in such a good mood."
"I wonder why? She has no friends."
"Well, no matter…" and they were off again on another topic.
Sometimes she wondered why she even bothered feeling bad about giving them volatile earrings. If their heads blew up, it was their fault.
Caroline heard her mother call, and she was frozen. She had to stop.
Her mother came over, and combed back Caroline's mahogany hair with fragile fingers. If Caroline was lucky, mother's enormous wedding ring would get caught in one of her locks and be claimed by the 24-karat crenelation.
"You really should socialize more, dear," mother stared helplessly into Caroline's eyes, stating, "they would love you. You're my daughter."
It left a lump in Caroline's throat.
And then father butted in, "you'll never meet a man squirreling yourself away. Do you want to be alone?"
Mother's claws came out. "That was uncalled for!"
"I'm just stating the truth…" he brushed her off.
Caroline retreated. Down the stairs. Down below. No one else. All alone.
She heard mother's tone, distant, "…you've run her away."
Caroline felt better surrounded by her inventions and contraptions. Back in the arms of science, where things made logical sense… and when they didn't, they could at least be found out. There was rhyme and reason to everything, given enough data.
Caroline excited herself to find that her latest concoction had set up. It was a membrane disk, exhibiting much the same quality as the stone's in its character. She wasn't really sure if using collagen as a coagulant was a great idea, but when she was the only staff in her lab, she had to make tough calls for herself.
She took her new disk and slid it into the re-purposed spotlight she'd salvaged from the downtown theater, careful not to adjust the barn doors of the light by accident. They were bent to precise angles, with knitting needles attached to focus the throw of the projectile. She liked to call them tonal prongs.
The barrel of the spotlight had become the barrel of a cannon, so to speak, a cannon that fired an alarmingly docile ball of energy.
Inside, Caroline had a turkey baster poised over a runoff, a tube angled to expel something to activate the synthesized stone's properties. A trace amount of this chemical (that she probably shouldn't be dropping on anything, much less a cocktail of minerals) would begin its volatile work. It'd bear the product of a minute implosion of mass.
She didn't want to be alarming, but she was fairly certain she could create incredibly tiny 'black holes' anywhere now. She could implode things. Maybe the world…
The chemical reaction did emit a funny 'splorsh' sound, though.
This implosion would cede with a discharge, and coupled with a bout of the right voltage, the discharge and charge would create a harmonic… anomaly.
Caroline was sure there was a fair amount of stupidity contributing to her creation of these anomalies, but left the matter well enough alone. If she went questioning this, they might turn themselves unreal or something idiotic like that.
It was just asking for paradoxes, was all.
She had the area prepped, her embellished stationary turned scientific notepad in hand, and proceeded to begin the test. Caroline deployed the turkey baster and stood back.
The cannon 'splorshed' and jolted violently from the reaction. It took a second, but the light within built and ballooned into an orb and began to spill out through the open end of the tube, floating forward.
The ball of light was several halos of yellow and green, translucent and radiating with the tendrils of a corona. Several arcs of electricity lazed across the floor and ceiling, fanning to the side and diminishing when there was naught to cling to.
It was lethargic in momentum, floating across the room to its destination: a ceramic sign. The made a very good surface for the dispersion of the harmonic anomaly, she'd found. Hopefully good enough to persist.
The bubble of energy would have probably killed her upon contact, or rather transported her to another reality, but Caroline couldn't help but admire it from closer.
She noted that it was… pretty.
Pretty nifty.
Caroline braced for impact, squinting as the orb connected with the ceramic. It slowly enveloped the sign, leeching into the substance and expanding, almost as if a liquid light staining matter. She noted the reaction once more, and marveled as the light seeped and began to turn the surface of the tile into a pool of caustic energy, glowing from within.
This HAD to be dangerous.
The dapple of yellows and greens was mesmerizing, but she carried on, recording all the instruments connected to the tile and to the cannon. With these facts written down, she went back and ever-so-carefully pivoted the cannon around to face another tile, set at ninety degrees from the other.
It was time to create a localized spatial loop.
Or rather, prove her hypothesis.
She managed to elicit a steady harmonizing tone that began to complete the other's signature. Wave and trough aligned, and perhaps they would finally connect and bring reality together, like a seam in space.
Caroline activated the cannon again, and this time the light that spilled from the fore was of a orange and gold nature, complimenting its neighbor's hues.
She bit at her lip, eyes tracking the orb.
It touched. And then it seeped into the tile, glow consuming the ceramic. The tile accepted the new frequency, and the pool began to form. Caroline drew closer, breath held as the color faded…
…and her chamber came into view.
She was staring into a portal.
Caroline blinked, her brown eyes widening. The young girl tried not to gape. Who knew what cosmic rays this was spewing?
She stepped to a side, then to another. The image shifted. She stood in front of a portal and saw herself through the other.
Was this really happening?
Before she got carried away, she dutifully recorded what was happening with the readings. It was all very… stable. Especially considering what this was, and what it could become if compromised.
She stared up, listening to her family's din of living. Caroline was certainly a risk-taker.
Oh well. They didn't know, did they?
The borders of the portal were fuzzy, yet translucent like stained glass. The reality around the opening bowed out like the meniscus of water, convexing the reflection of reality.
She realized that she hadn't actually expected to get this far. So…
"Now what?"
Maybe she could… stick something through it?
Caroline looked about the room, and then took off her shoe. Without much forethought, she tossed it through.
Momentum was conserved through portals, an unfortunate fact she figured out when the shoe nailed her in the jaw.
Wonderful.
She picked herself up off the floor, untangling her body from the fabrics she'd landed in, noting this doubly.
Don't throw shoes. Rather, don't throw shoes through portals. Portals do not affect momentum much, if at all.
Also, she noted that the shoe didn't combust, disintegrate, or get torn asunder in a miniature vortex. The shoe was fine! She was less fine, but that wasn't the point.
Shoes are portal… able. Shoes are portal-able.
Caroline proceeded to gently toss all that she could through the portal, noting the readings after each passage of article. The portals remained constant, a most alarmingly wonderful fact.
And then she got cocky.
She reached her hand through, and her hand appeared out the other side. She wasn't dying. Rather, she was feeling the subtle scintillation of energy through the meniscus, and the subtlest change in air pressure.
Seems to be a slight membrane to the portal. Probably the cusp of the spatial span. Very interesting.
The young girl puzzled to herself, a stupid idea entering her head and refusing to leave. She considered all items, warred with her instinct, and finally decided to go with her gut.
The portal was big enough, and she was pretty quick…
Caroline tied up her dress, put up her hair, and removed any article unnecessary. Last thing she needed was getting a ruffle sucked into the edges of a vortex.
She was going through.
…no matter why she was going through, or why she wanted this, or whatever…
She was going.
Caroline again let her hand take the plunge first, and then her leg followed. Straddling a portal didn't seem to be the wisest thing to do, so she quickly dipped her head and brought her haunches through.
She was standing outside the opposite portal.
Unbelievable.
She wasn't dead. She didn't feel like she was dying… she was… she was fine. Caroline had entered and exited a portal. And she was fine.
The young girl erupted into laughter, mad cackles that reached the floors above.
"Look at little Caroline now!" she cried, tone scathing, "look at her go!"
Caroline danced around, and then caught herself, caution flaring in her nerves. She sheepishly recorded more data, and finally shut down the cannon, the portals shimmering out of existence.
No traces were left of her breakthrough, but that didn't stop her from celebrating again. She ran about the space, having absolutely no idea what she was doing except that she was RIGHT and she was GOOD and TODAY WAS A GOOD DAY FOR SCIENCE.
The dance lasted until her ankles were sore and her sides hurt. Her body couldn't contain it. She would explode.
She paused, breathing in a gasp of air, forcing herself to mellow, just a bit.
Incredible.
This was too good to keep a secret. She had to let someone, or something, know. But it had to be the right person, the right place, the right way…
But she would be the pioneer.
Caroline.
Her mind reeled. This discovery… it changed everything. Spatial relations? Pah! Space meant nothing now. They, people, could go anywhere now. The options were endless.
Her mind was racing.
It portaled far ahead and off a cliff.
Caroline wondered what the world would make of portals when she was gone. Who would come after and keep the march of progress? What new and incredible feats would be accomplished with this technology?
What would be the future of tomorrow?
-0-
A lone, unsuspecting bag of pretzels laid on the counter. Two odd eyes hovered through the plant-full divider a few yards away, trained on their prey. A barrel, led by three delicate prongs, emerged from the leaves, aiming at the space just beside the pretzel bag.
Patrick had thought they were safe. The poor maintenance worker's back was turned as he labored over the perfect cup of stale, office coffee. Unfortunately for Patrick, he'd stuck his pretzels on a portal-able surface.
Patrick heard the signature 'sploosh' of a portal being placed, and then another 'splat' to close the quantum tunnel loop. It took his brain a moment to register what this implied.
Not AGAIN.
He rounded, coffee sloshing on his tawny uniform. On the table a tiny portal, about the size of a bucket, whirled. Out of it a scrawny hand scrabbled about, flopping around, blindly trying to get at the pretzels.
"ACH! WHAT'S THE BIG IDEA?" Patrick shouted, and the hand froze, then freaked out and snatched the pretzels, disappearing back into the hole.
"DOUG!" Patrick hollered across the break room. He saw a flap of lab coat scatter out the door. He gave chase. "GET BACK HERE WITH ME PRETZELS! YOU KNOW HOW MUCH THOSE COST?"
Fortunately for Doug Rattmann, he was extraordinarily fast. No one thought they could beat him in a race, so no one tried, except Patrick. The lanky Irishman was meaner than him, so he didn't want to risk being caught.
But getting caught wasn't a problem for the Rat Man.
Doug skittered down the hall, pretzel bag in his mouth, two portal guns in his hands. Or, actually, portal pistols, his latest and greatest designs. He had one for the initial point and one for the secondary point (one for orange and one for blue).
The scientist passed through a chamber lock, turning and popping a portal by the control panel. The wall erupted into a swirling vortex of orange, and then he placed another on the wall beside him outside of the lock. He entered the verification inquiry code, and then waited for Patrick to get into the lock. He was already tearing into the pretzel bag when Patrick finally reached the lock some ways away.
"Ah, shite. DON'T-" Patrick had moments to express his realization before the locks snapped shut at Doug's key press.
Rattmann deactivated the portals and gnawed on a pretzel, keeping on at a lively jog. Patrick was skilled in getting in and out of things, being their janitor extraordinaire, so he didn't really have concerns about him being trapped. Doug merely had concerns for his own safety if Patrick were to get out and find him while his blood was still boiling.
At least Doug's plan had worked, he just couldn't believe he had missed the shot at the pretzels. If he could shave off a few seconds of the snack extraction time then he wouldn't have to hurry to the chamber lock.
Maybe if he used a vent to position himself...
Doug was on his way to his workroom, and even though his ASHPPDDs (portal pistols) were really cool, they weren't big enough for even scrawny Doug to fit through. He'd tried (with butter).
His typical method of getting into his workroom without being followed was by using a standard ASHPD (portal gun), but now he had to think with much smaller portals.
If Doug timed it right, he could finagle through the GLaDOS chamber without being seen. His plan involved the Aperture Science Mandatory Lunch Hour, a chaotic time, but that wasn't due to happen in another thirty minutes. Doug didn't want to wait that long. Patrick would be out soon.
He had a mind to run very fast through the GLaDOS chamber, and even if someone stopped him, he'd shout something like 'IT'S ALIVE!' and continuing running… wait. No, that would cause a spectacle, and then an panic plague would spread through the scientists and turn the laboratories into a nerd herd stampede.
Doug decided that if he just acted normal, which was actually weird by their standards, he would be left alone. Maybe. Except for Henry... Henry didn't seem to mind any of Doug's quirks. Henry did not care. In fact, Henry liked Doug. Doug was a little freaked out by it.
Rattmann was contemplating all these things whilst eating pretzels just outside the GLaDOS chamber when the grand double doors slid open.
Doug choked on his pretzel. Before he could scamper Henry blocked the way tactically. The middle-aged man had a balding scalp and puffy lips hearkening to an Asian heritage. His arms were on his hips, curled in a way that mirrored the gigantic dormant AI behind him.
Henry was patient as Doug hacked up the pretzel. The younger scientist had reason to choke. Henry's was the face of a man who had been watching his coworker do something very very stupid in light of an extremely dangerous event. Of course, every day was an extremely dangerous event at Aperture Science, but the GLaDOS being woken up piqued the scale just a bit.
"Douglas," Henry addressed the younger scientist with gravity, "give me the guns."
Doug didn't want to. He clutched them protectively, like a... a squirrel.
"They're as much ours as yours, Douglas. And with your grand pretzel heist, which was played back on the monitors, we have come to question your ethics concerning portals," Henry droned with scientific confidence.
"You were watching me," Doug hissed.
Henry pressed on regardless of the comment, "while you are a chief intellectual owner of these… whatever they are… we are the chief material owners."
Doug hid a pouty lip beneath his shirt collar. "I get it," he said from underneath his collar.
Doug heard a calamitous clopping of boots. Patrick zoomed by and in a fantastic racing slide, snatched the pretzels away and skidded to a stop behind Henry. He got extra points for that, and plenty of stares. Patrick protectively curled around his pretzel bag, more primate-like.
"What are these, Dr. Rattmann?" Henry was the least concerned by Patrick's antics as he puzzled over the pistols.
"They're the ASHPPDDs," Doug blurted it out so fast he didn't even understand it himself, so he clarified, "Aperture Science Handheld Portal Pistol Duel Device...s."
"The…?" Henry shook his head, missing the whole thing.
"Portal Pistols," Doug said slowly, "I figure the NASA Cowboys shouldn't get all the quick-drawing fun," and he forced a creepy laugh at his own joke.
It was a tough crowd. "Heh-heh?" He started to wring his hands.
"Douglas," Henry would have readjusted his glasses, had he glasses, as he reprimanded, "portals are not toys."
Doug fidgeted with his lab coat, head hung low. "No, they aren't."
Henry asked him, "then why do you insist on messing with people when operating the portal gun?"
"Because…" Doug tried to justify it, but then quickly realized how dumb that was. He scratched at his scalp. "I don't know," he thought, and then it hit him, and he was excited, "I see a situation and think, 'a portal would do this much better!'" That sounded a lot better in his head. "So… to use portals… un-normally? Funnily?"
"Oh, yeah, like food burglary?!" Patrick had turned into a cave troll in the background, crunching on his pretzels.
Henry sighed heavily. "Mr. McGillicutty, please eat your pretzels."
Patrick impacted a handful into his gob. That was A LOT of pretzels. Doug wondered how many cubic inches Patrick's mouth was.
"Douglas, pay attention," Henry clapped at him, growling beneath his breath, "no matter how hard it is with this… fine specimen's eating habits."
Doug snapped back to Henry, losing his estimate.
"Science is not about fun. It's about not getting people killed," the balding man expounded as he lead the younger scientist into the center of the GLaDOS chamber.
Doug scratched his sweaty neck, thinking back to every last experiment Henry had conducted. They had ALL been somewhat murderous.
Henry kept going, "which is what we're all trying to do here. We are trying to NOT kill people. It's Bring Your Daughter to Work Day tomorrow, Douglas!"
OH. Doug's odd-eyes opened. That was what was eating the old scientist up. Kids did mix it up a bit. Especially since the failure of Bring Your Cat to Work Day. Rattmann wondered whose idea that fiasco had been. Probably the President's.
"Henry," Doug sighed, offering his advice, "you're just going to have to tell Mr. Johnson that she's not going to stop trying to kill us anytime soon. I don't think kids should be anywhere near her."
Henry groaned. "We're all aware of that. But… we're so close, Douglas. Just one victory away. Last time she was online for two minutes and twenty one seconds before pulling something deadly."
Doug felt like slow-clapping but thought better... and slow-clapping felt oddly similar to the AI in question hanging over the chamber… He stared up in curiosity at her dangling mass of curved white and boxy black, and his awe quickly drifted to dread. Doug never could get a hold on how gargantuan GLaDOS was.
The balding man drew his fingers across his scalp, wanting to run them through hair, but drew his hand away in subconscious disappointment. "President Johnson's mandated that we show her for at least thirty minutes, in intervals, but thirty minutes of sequential operations without mishap," the nerves were brimming in that statement, "or else… she's getting taken down."
Henry had spent the greater part of his career working on AI, the crown jewel being HER… GLaDOS, the Genetic Life-form and Disc Operating System. Failure would cost him a lot.
Doug eyed the toroidal computer terminals stepping down from the ceiling that, in a maelstrom of cords, gave way to the dormant pinnacle of organically assisted AI. She looked sort of innocuous just hanging. But in motion, she was particularly frightening.
"I know you love this-uh, her, Henry…" the thought the idea was a bit appalling, "…but isn't living pretty important too? For you?"
Henry had his chin resting on a hand, deeply concentrating on what he'd do when he was fired. Possibly. If he survived. The older scientist woke up with a jolt. "Oh. Don't worry. Dr. Fufflemeyer's been hard at work on that."
"Huh?" Doug twitched. Cave's assistant?
"He's safety-proofing the whole facility," Henry explained as he watched Doug twitch.
"How do you…?" the younger scientist asked mid-twitch.
"Rigid panels, safety nets, marshmallows…" Henry listed the bullet-points off.
"Marshmallows?" Doug wanted some pretzels AND marshmallows. Marshmallows… on pretzel sticks… toasted… Doug was really hungry. His eyes glazed over as he started to imagine toasty pretzel marshmallow sticks.
"Gregory is a very thorough individual," Henry didn't even mind Doug's obvious thinking about marshmallows. He kept going, "you don't accrue seven degrees while being an invalid. I'm sure he's thinking of every variable."
"Greg has seven degrees?" Doug's pretzeltopia was shattered by Greg's forgettable face, "in what?"
"She won't know what to do even if she desired to kill us," Henry sounded awfully gleeful about it.
Doug's mind wandered off into the fable where they de-clawed the sleeping lion… only to find as it woke it proceeded to crush them in its jaws.
"If she desires to kill us at all…" Henry mused.
"She probably will…" Doug grumbled to himself, switching his odd-eyes between the apartment-sized computer and the balding man.
"After this core modifier, I don't know if that will be a problem. She'll be tame as a daisy if all goes according to plan," Henry concluded with a precise tap to his magically produced clipboard.
"Nothing goes according to plan," Doug responded distantly, staring at someone spinning in their office chair in the far back.
Henry looked like he wanted to retort, but he was paused by a commotion. Through swinging doors, strangely resembling what would be found in a restaurant, burst out a scientist with frazzled orange hair tied up in a knot.
"Dr. Yang!" she called to Henry, breathless, her gimpy 'run' carrying her forward, "the subsidiary core is prepped."
From the way she leaned down on her knees, panting, it must have been a struggle. "We finally managed to stop his emotional vacillating."
"He's stopped screaming endlessly?" Henry gasped, and then clasped his hands together in delight, "excellent! Bring him in."
Doug thought he'd heard something sort of high-pitched and in-distress before, but in Aperture, you learned to ignore such sounds. It was generally safer to do so.
The woman forced herself to go back through, limping a bit. She and a few other scientists rolled out a dolly with what appeared to be a very modified and very large toilet seat bolted into the top, spray painted a suitably 'futuristic' silver. Sitting on top of the toilet seat was a metal ball. It was mostly white, save the fresh metallic scuffs all over. Apparently there'd been a wrestling match in the extraction station.
"What is that?" the younger scientist poked a bony finger at the ball's direction.
"That is NOT a toilet seat. THAT is a core receptacle hoop," Henry twirled around to clarify with utmost severity, and perhaps guilt.
Doug squinted. "I saw you bring that big toilet seat in from the auxiliary bathrooms. I'm talking about the robot sitting on it."
"OH! Oh, well," Henry cleared his throat, "the IDS. Our best core, bar the GLaDOS' personality construct."
The dormant core's optic was duct-taped shut. Doug leaned forward for a closer look, but was waved away.
"Don't touch him. Don't even look at him." Henry scolded. "He has to be perfect for this." The older man looked like HE needed to stop his emotional vacillations.
Doug tipped his head, backing away. "What's 'he' do?"
"Classified," Henry cleared his throat, standing officially, "for his emotional stability."
Doug wrinkled his nose, hunched and scrutinizing. Out of all the dumb core ideas, he couldn't imagine one being so bad it was 'classified'. "Well, he must be good, whatever he is." The scientist drew back, crossing his arms.
"Trust me," Henry was satisfied, and also wearied, "we've spent EIGHT years on him."
"Eight?" Doug wondered what in the world could take the finest minds in Aperture artificial intelligence eight years to concoct when their average project duration was a year on the long end.
Henry's gaze hovered over the room and above Doug, a hard feat for the shorter man. "I think it would be best if you left, Douglas," he settled back on addressing Doug with his eyes along with his words, "booting her up has never set well with your nerves, and with this core, things could get nasty."
"Nasty?" Doug echoed, thinking over how barren the room was. No rocket turrets, no turret turrets, no spinning blade walls, no incinerator, no jet flames, no tubes, no bombs, no spike plates…Just an empty room with doors and the usual platforms and some office supplies. What could GLaDOS do? Homicide via pencil sharpener? "Nasty as in… how?"
"Still… classified," Henry cut him off with a stiffness.
"OK, Henry," Doug didn't sound upset.
It was honestly a relief to be absent. Best case: GLaDOS woke up and fried herself in a fit of rage. Worst case: she slowly built in a seething wrath that made the facility black out. Neither was fun, especially when one small human saw her in all her enormity move as if she were a disturbed adder tethered by a million demands. He wondered how he'd react if he too could be alive and dead at the flip of a switch.
As if on cue to disturb Doug's thoughts, came the bombastic voice of the CEO and President, Mr. Cave Johnson, blaring over the intercom (which vibrated the glass walkways with egregious volume). "Hey, you down there. Yeah, you. Dr. Yang."
That was Dr. Henry Yang. Everyone hearkened to the loud, obnoxious voice on the speakers, and subsequently eyed Henry whose clipboard was somehow magically over his face.
"This is Cave Johnson telling you to give that man his portal pistols back," Cave Johnson ordered, and so Henry complied, slowly, "go on. I know if you don't."
"…stupid security cameras," Henry muttered.
"I'M WAITING."
Doug had his portal pistols back. He smiled brazenly, his cognitive gears at it again, and likewise the other scientists began to scuttle and roll away from him.
The voice spoke again, "Greg tells me the kid has an appointment to demonstrate them. Right now. So put those portals to work, son, and get yourself over here and-" there was mumbling in the background, "wait," there was a loud muffle, "OK. Greg just told me that those portals are incredibly tiny, Too tiny to fit through. so you can't get here quickly. Moreover, I have no idea what we're going to do with a tiny portal gun. Maybe we'll sell it to elves. Maybe we'll strap it onto a monkey. I don't know, but Greg says it's important, and by golly we're going to see those tiny, wimpy, little noodle man portals. This GLaDOS project is scheduled to boot, and I have a turkey sandwich to eat. Cave, out."
There was a pause, and they thought it was over.
Cave came back in, "Greg has also informed me that that was entirely uncalled for and offensive. I just wanted you all to know: I don't care. We're done here."
There was an awkward silence after the transmission beeped off. Doug was busy eying the room for places to put a portal and freak people out before he left. Doug noticed Henry sighing, and then realized Henry sighing at him, specifically. Doug paid attention, caught mid-crouch and thought.
Henry looked genuinely tired, and wanted to share. Doug hadn't the scarcest clue why.
"I'm giving up a lot here, Douglas. This procedure has never been attempted..." he gave the taped-shut core and then GLaDOS a remorseful glance, "I hope I'm doing the right thing."
"You're probably not," Doug blurted.
Henry's shock was palpable. Then, he laughed. In a nervous tone he quoted, "'we do what we must, because we can'."
"Right." Doug feigned a smile. He felt like he was turning green. "Good luck, Dr. Henry Yang."
Henry smirked at that. "Thanks, Douglas."
On the way out Doug espied Patrick's pretzels again, overjoyed to see that they were once again on a portal-able surface. Patrick's back was turned, and Doug wasn't going to miss this time.
But neither was Patrick. Doug popped the portal and awaited the impact of a pretzel bag, only to get a cup of coffee to the face. Patrick hovered his thermos over the hole, waiting until every last drop was out.
Doug's shriek of dismay was enough to make the Irishman smile.
"Thought you'd be thirsty, Dougo," he remarked as he smacked on a pretzel.
The incredulous stare he received elicited a snicker, and Patrick watched Doug flick himself out of the room and down the hall. There was the tell-tale tinny thunk, and the scientists knew there was a Rattmann in the vents again.