Chapter 1: Apple
It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards.
~ Lewis Carroll
For Chell, life was depressing.
After GLaDOS released her from Aperture, she started to run. She tried her hardest to outrun all of her problems, her worries, and him.
Wheatley.
She didn't realize how much she liked him until he was gone.
She missed the snippets of encouragement. She missed his idiotic speeches. She missed his blue optic, which was always a friendly sight.
She had taken it all for granted. And now, he was gone.
He was stranded in space, with that other core, who was crazy about outer space.
Tears felled from her face, and she stopped. She threw herself into the wheat. That made her cry harder, for wheat was his namesake.
Wheatley.
She wanted to kick herself for being so stupid. How could have she had thought that Wheatley wouldn't become corrupt from Her mainframe? Wheatley was quite friendly, but that made him vulnerable.
Vulnerable enough to become corrupted.
And she didn't do anything to prevent it.
It was all her fault.
She led him to his doom.
She grabbed her companion cube, and laid down in her little bed of wheat. The stream of tears running down her face, eventually slowed into a occasional drip. Her sobs became quieter, until they ended up as soft breaths. Her heartbeat slowed down and the ex- test subject felled asleep.
She woke up a few hours later. Her throat was tight and her stomach was making noises. Her crotch area was very sensitive and she cried out in pain.
She never had to find her own food and water in Aperture. But then, this wasn't Aperture. This was the real world where people had to do things for themselves.
After taking care of a few "personal" needs, Chell began to look around for anything that may be edible.
At Aperture, the only food that she ate that didn't come in a powdery form, were potatoes. Chell hated potatoes, especially potato batteries. There was another type of food at Aperture, though. She never tasted it, but she heard of its wonderful taste from GLaDOS. The AI was always bragging about eating a delicious food called cake. She wasn't sure how GLaDOS could even taste the dessert, for the robot had no mouth.
Chell decided to try to taste test a few things. She was too frightened to pick up a piece of wheat, for it would remind her of a certain core. Instead, she saw a tree with things hanging off of its branches. The round objects glistened in the sunlight. She approached the tree and a somewhat familiar word popped into her head.
Apple.
She heard that word before, but from who?
Suddenly, she felled down. Her companion cube and the wheat field vanished. She was in a dark bedroom, and there were alarms playing. Thats when she noticed the blue light above her head. She was back at Aperture, with him.
She wanted to move her arms and grab him, but she couldn't. She urged herself to scream, but nothing happened.
The British core began talk to her, like if they just met,"Most test subjects do experience some, um, cognitive deterioration after a few months in suspension. Now, you've been under for - quite a lot longer, and it's not out of the question that you might have a very minor case of - serious brain damage. But don't be alarmed, all right? Although if you do feel alarmed, try to hold onto that feeling, because that is the proper reaction to being told that you've got brain damage. Do you understand what I'm saying? At all? Does any of this make any sense? Just tell me, just say yes.
Chell had this part inside of her that was so stubborn. It was sending messages to her brain, that the only way to really resist GLaDOS was to ignore her and never answer back. The same was with Wheatley too, but she actually wanted to answer back. The words would form in her throat, but would never escape her mouth.
So, she did the only thing that she thought he would understand.
She jumped.
Apparently, he was so stup-, no he just had a lack of common sense, (or any sense, a dark part of Chell's mind commented), that he didn't even process what Chell was trying to tell him.
"Okay, what you're doing there is jumping. Uh, you just jumped. But never mind; say apple. Apple!"
She jumped again.
"Okay, you know what? That's close enough, just hold tight."
He moved along his rail, into the ceiling. The room started to slowly move, like awakening from a deep slumber. Chell held onto a wall as the room started to move faster. He hit a wall, which he claimed to be a docking station, and she felled down.
Then the world turned black.
When Chell slipped back into a conscious state, she realized she wasn't in Aperture. She was still near the apple tree in the lonely wheat field.
It was all a dream.
No, not a dream. Almost all of that stuff had happened to her. And she didn't usually remember her dreams so clearly. It couldn't be just a mere dream.
It was almost like an illusion, or flashback.
Still, she got to see and hear Wheatley again. It was nice to see him before he got corrupted.
She sat up and sighed. It was time to climb an apple tree.
Then she had an idea. It would be dangerous, and tiring, to climb into the tree's high branches just to retrieve an apple. So, why couldn't she just use her portal gun? After all, GLaDOS had given her a small bag filled with the different types of Aperture gels.
She shrugged the white bag off her shoulder and opened it. She picked up a medium-sized container with a white gel in it. After spreading a some of the gel on the the highest point she could jump up to and the ground next to her bag, she shot her first portal outside of Aperture.
The portal glowed a magnificent orange. Her next portal shimmered a deep blue. She jumped into the orange one, and came flying out of the blue portal, to the top of the tree. The surprisingly soft leaves cushioned her landing, making it feel like she had fallen onto a pile of pillows.
She grinned. Sometimes, thinking with portals could be useful.