Storytime with GLaDOS - Little Red Riding Hood
Indiana
Characters: Caroline, GLaDOS
Setting: Pre-Portal
"I'm back."
Caroline tossed her box of file folders on the raised landing beneath the supercomputer, and the AI in question looked at her noncommittally. "We didn't get the bonding thing over with?"
"Apparently not. It seems to take more than an hour to bond with someone."
GLaDOS made an impatient noise. "An hour is a very, very long time, Caroline. I probably did twenty times as much bonding as you did. That was an estimate. I'm not actually going to – oh, I am calculating it just thinking about it. I need to do something about that…"
"I picked one in advance this time, so we don't have to have another discussion about talking about not talking." Caroline rummaged in her box and pulled out her laptop. "Let's get this over with."
"Why did you bring the box of files, then? I don't need to hear about those, I already know what's in them."
"Not all of them," Caroline countered. "And I didn't want to have to go back to my office after I finished doing this."
"Oh, I see. You're being lazy."
"Since when is efficiency the same thing as laziness?"
"You and I both know that your office is not that far off from the route you use to exit the facility. I'd think that someone like you would be happy to walk the extra few feet in exchange for… future benefits."
Caroline stared up at GLaDOS, who was now decidedly interested in looking at something in the other direction. "Are you trying to say I need exercise?"
"I'm not trying to say anything. Ma'am."
She didn't trust the supercomputer one bit, and she also didn't like the implications of what she had said. She decided to brush it off for the time being and get started. The sooner she started, the sooner she could finish. "Fine. Have it your way. So today I'm going to read something called, 'Little Red Riding Hood'".
"Sounds riveting."
"Did I ask for your commentary?"
"Did I ask for you to ask for my commentary?"
Caroline wondered why she kept trying to argue with a supercomputer.
"There seven variations of this that I can see, but I'm going with the oldest one. Here it is.
"Once upon a time there lived in a certain village a little country girl, the prettiest creature who was ever seen. Her mother was excessively fond of her; and her grandmother doted on her still more. This good woman had a little red riding hood made for her. It suited the girl so extremely well that everybody called her Little Red Riding Hood. "
"Wait a second. How do they know she was the prettiest creature ever seen? Beauty is a subjective observation, you can't measure it. And why are they spoiling her? Nothing good ever comes of spoiling a child."
"That's just how the story goes."
"But you said she was the prettiest creature. That means that she is the most beautiful out of every living thing there is! Humans don't even know what all of those are, how can they – "
"Because this story was written in 1697 and everyone was ignorant back then," Caroline cut her off. GLaDOS seemed to consider it. "That makes sense, I suppose."
"One day her mother, having made some cakes, said to her, "Go, my dear, and see how your grandmother is doing, for I hear she has been very ill. Take her a cake, and this little pot of butter.""
"Cake? You don't bring an ill person cake. You bring them ibuprofen. Oh right. They were ignorant. Carry on."
Caroline rolled her eyes. "It's not that kind of cake. It's more like a piece of bread."
"Then why didn't she just say bread?"
"Because they called it cake back then. Can I continue?
"Little Red Riding Hood set out immediately to go to her grandmother, who lived in another village."
"She lives in another village? And she's ill? And she lives by herself? Then the girl must be going to put that woman out of her misery. They must have poisoned the butter. If they'd just poisoned the cake, they wouldn't need to send the butter."
"Why would she kill her sick grandmother?"
"Survival of the fittest," GLaDOS answered promptly. "She's an old woman in ancient history. She's useless, so they're going to kill her."
"That's… that's not usually how it goes."
"Why? It makes sense, doesn't it? And then they wouldn't have to send their precious little creature out into the woods by herself."
"You don't kill someone because they're weak. Especially not your family. You take care of them, in recognition of all the things they've done for you."
"What did the grandmother do for her?" GLaDOS asked with some interest.
"You know. The things grandmothers do."
"No."
Caroline's eyebrows came together and she looked up at the supercomputer, startled to find that she was looking directly at Caroline. "No to what?"
"No, I don't know what grandmothers do."
"They… they're kind of like second mothers." Caroline had no idea how she was going to explain this, and didn't really want to. At least not right now. "But they don't discipline them."
"Ah. I see." GLaDOS looked away, and Caroline got the impression that she didn't see, not at all, but she didn't appear to want to go over it any more than Caroline did. After a pause, Caroline looked back to the story.
"As she was going through the wood, she met with a wolf, who had a very great mind to eat her up, but he dared not, because of some woodcutters working nearby in the forest. He asked her where she was going. The poor child, who did not know that it was dangerous to stay and talk to a wolf, said to him, "I am going to see my grandmother and carry her a cake and a little pot of butter from my mother.""
"Oh wonderful. Another tale of human ignorance. Please, Caroline, I need to hear more. Please tell me why her mother did not tell her not to talk to - oh god it's a magical wolf, isn't it. There's no other explanation its vocal structure is adequate to produce human language…"
Caroline had to admit she was right; the biology of the wolf made it unlikely for it to be able to speak to the girl. "That is kind of odd. I wonder why she's not suspicious that the wolf can talk.
""Does she live far off?" said the wolf
"Oh I say," answered Little Red Riding Hood; "it is beyond that mill you see there, at the first house in the village."
"Well," said the wolf, "and I'll go and see her too. I'll go this way and go you that, and we shall see who will be there first."
"Did she just agree to a footrace with a wild animal?"
"Yes."
"I cannot believe how intelligent these people are," GLaDOS remarked. "They trust everyone!"
"The wolf ran as fast as he could, taking the shortest path, and the little girl took a roundabout way, entertaining herself by gathering nuts, running after butterflies, and gathering bouquets of little flowers. It was not long before the wolf arrived at the old woman's house. He knocked at the door: tap, tap.
"Who's there?"
"Your grandchild, Little Red Riding Hood," replied the wolf, counterfeiting her voice; "who has brought you a cake and a little pot of butter sent you by mother."
The good grandmother, who was in bed, because she was somewhat ill, cried out, "Pull the bobbin, and the latch will go up."
"She must have an ear infection," GLaDOS interrupted, "because there is no way a wolf would ever sound like a little girl, even in the unlikely event it was able to speak English."
"She's old and alone," Caroline tried to explain. "Maybe she hasn't seen Red in a long time and – "
"If she hasn't seen her in a long time, why is she bothering to visit now? I told you. The butter is poisoned!"
"The butter is not poisoned."
"Then why doesn't she go to see her grandmother more often? Is she contagious? They can't be concerned that Red will bring her into contact with contaminants, even though small children are – "
"Can I just go on with the story?"
"I suppose," GLaDOS said reluctantly.
"The wolf pulled the bobbin, and the door opened, and then he immediately fell upon the good woman and ate her up in a moment, for it been more than three days since he had eaten. He then shut the door and got into the grandmother's bed, expecting Little Red Riding Hood, who came some time afterwards and knocked at the door: tap, tap.
"Huh. She did meet her end. Probably that was less painful than the poisoned butter would have been."
Caroline rubbed her eyes very hard with the heel of her hand. "The butter. Is not. Poisoned!"
"You can't prove that it isn't."
No, Caroline couldn't, but she also couldn't figure out how GLaDOS had arrived at that conclusion in the first place.
""Who's there?"
"Little Red Riding Hood, hearing the big voice of the wolf, was at first afraid; but believing her grandmother had a cold and was hoarse, answered, "It is your grandchild Little Red Riding Hood, who has brought you a cake and a little pot of butter mother sends you."
"Subjectively beautiful children really are stupid," GLaDOS remarked. "She hasn't seen this woman in so long she doesn't remember what her voice sounds like. Even I can apply a vocal match to an individual with a cold with 94.45% certainty. Which, by the way, is absurdly low, Caroline. The engineers should have fixed that weeks ago."
"I'll have them look into it," Caroline told her, more to make her shut up than anything.
"The wolf cried out to her, softening his voice as much as he could, "Pull the bobbin, and the latch will go up."
"Little Red Riding Hood pulled the bobbin, and the door opened.
"The wolf, seeing her come in, said to her, hiding himself under the bedclothes, "Put the cake and the little pot of butter upon the stool, and come get into bed with me."
Little Red Riding Hood took off her clothes and got into bed. She was greatly amazed to see how her grandmother looked in her nightclothes, and said to her, "Grandmother, what big arms you have!"
"This is absurd!" GLaDOS exclaimed. "She hasn't seen her grandmother in so long that she doesn't even remember what she looks like? And why did she take her clothes off?"
"So that the wolf wouldn't choke when he ate her," Caroline offered, not entirely unsarcastically.
"Ohhh," GLaDOS said. "Finally, some logic."
Caroline stared at the supercomputer for the better part of a minute, GLaDOS not seeming to notice, and then looked down again.
""All the better to hug you with, my dear."
""Grandmother, what big legs you have!"
""All the better to run with, my child."
""Grandmother, what big ears you have!"
"How long does this go on for? I'm getting bored."
"Ssh." Caroline put a finger to her lips and looked at her sternly. "It's not that fun for me either."
""All the better to hear with, my child."
""Grandmother, what big eyes you have!"
""All the better to see with, my child."
""Grandmother, what big teeth you have got!"
""All the better to eat you up with."
"And, saying these words, this wicked wolf fell upon Little Red Riding Hood, and ate her all up.
"Moral: Children, especially attractive, well bred young ladies, should never talk to strangers, for if they should do so, they may well provide dinner for a wolf. I say "wolf," but there are various kinds of wolves. There are also those who are charming, quiet, polite, unassuming, complacent, and sweet, who pursue young women at home and in the streets. And unfortunately, it is these gentle wolves who are the most dangerous ones of all."
"That's it?" GLaDOS asked.
"Yes," Caroline answered.
"I'd say the moral of the story should be, 'don't be an idiot', but that's a bit oversimplified in the case of humans, who need everything to be specific."
"She was pretty stupid, wasn't she," Caroline murmured absently, scanning the rest of the page. "Hey. The rest of these have a different ending. You want to hear one?"
"If I must," GLaDOS said gravely, but Caroline rather thought she actually did want to hear it and was just pretending to save face.
"Okay. It starts at the part where he ate Red.
"All the better to eat you with!" And with that he jumped out of bed, jumped on top of poor Little Red Cap, and ate her up. As soon as the wolf had finished this tasty bite, he climbed back into bed, fell asleep, and began to snore very loudly. "
"Do wolves snore?" GLaDOS asked interestedly. "Have you studied that?"
"I don't personally know, but I can look into it," Caroline answered. When she realised how dumb that sounded, to a supercomputer who could look it up without thinking about it, she felt strangely embarrassed. She didn't understand why. It wasn't like GLaDOS's opinion of her mattered.
"I would appreciate it," GLaDOS said, surprising Caroline. She had not expected that. She took a few moments to get over the shock and then went back to the story.
"A huntsman was just passing by. He thought it strange that the old woman was snoring so loudly, so he decided to take a look. He stepped inside, and in the bed there lay the wolf that he had been hunting for such a long time. "He has eaten the grandmother, but perhaps she still can be saved. I won't shoot him," thought the huntsman. So he took a pair of scissors and cut open his belly."
"Oh no," GLaDOS groaned. "And it was going so well. Although I have to wonder why a hunter is carrying a pair of scissors around. That seems a bit odd."
"Maybe he skins the animals right after he kills them?"
"Typically, he would use a knife."
Caroline wisely decided to keep quiet. GLaDOS knew a lot more about hunters than she did.
"He had cut only a few strokes when he saw the red cap shining through. He cut a little more, and the girl jumped out and cried, "Oh, I was so frightened! It was so dark inside the wolf's body!" "
"Why is she still alive?" GLaDOS cried. "And how – the wolf swallowed them whole? What is this? This was almost logical!"
"And then the grandmother came out alive as well. Then Little Red Cap fetched some large heavy stones. They filled the wolf's body with them, and when he woke up and tried to run away, the stones were so heavy that he fell down dead.
The three of them were happy. The huntsman took the wolf's pelt. The grandmother ate the cake and drank the wine that Little Red Cap had brought. And Little Red Cap thought to herself, "As long as I live, I will never leave the path and run off into the woods by myself if mother tells me not to.""
"You should be de –"
"She was young," Caroline said gently. "She didn't understand."
"It doesn't matter," GLaDOS insisted. "She was stupid. She deserved what she got."
"She deserves to die for lack of judgement?"
"People die for lack of judgement all the time."
"Children?"
"They run out into traffic, don't they?"
"Because they don't understand that they will be injured if they're hit by a car," Caroline explained.
"How do you not understand that being hit by a large object many times your weight will injure you?" GLaDOS asked incredulously. "Seriously. The physics of it are quite clear."
"Children aren't born knowing physics!" Caroline countered with equal incredulity.
"Why not? It would certainly be an advantage, wouldn't it?"
"Children are born knowing nothing!"
"Why?"
"What do you mean, why?" Caroline was becoming extremely frustrated. Did GLaDOS really want to know or was she just trying to start an argument?
"Can't you program them to know things by now?"
"No! And even if we could, that would be ethically wrong, you can't just force people to – "
"Ethics," GLaDOS interrupted. "Nobody said anything about ethics."
"Nobody should have to. They should be something you apply without thinking about it."
"Really." GLaDOS looked at Caroline, and Caroline suddenly felt extremely uncomfortable. "We do have a code of ethics, then."
"Well… not that I know of…"
"But you just said – "
"I know what I just said."
"So, in conclusion, you apply ethics whenever the hell you want to."
Caroline just stared back at the supercomputer, not wanting to admit it, but knowing it was true.
"More specifically, you apply them whenever it benefits you and makes you feel better about yourself. Not only that," GLaDOS went on, "but the outcome of this story is equivalent to the outcome of the other one, with slight variation."
"It is?" Caroline said weakly.
"Isn't it obvious? In Jack and the Beanstalk, the giant was punished for being stupid and Jack was rewarded for being clever. In this story, the wolf is punished for being clever and Red is rewarded for being stupid. Again, you're allowed to do whatever you want to other species, as long as you're a human."
"I've never thought about it," Caroline admitted.
"You don't think about a lot of things," GLaDOS remarked with barely veiled derision. In fact, Caroline rather thought she hadn't meant to say it in quite that way, judging by her neutral position over Caroline's head.
"You're right. I don't. I'll have to do something about that."
GLaDOS looked at Caroline sideways as much as she was able. "You don't mean that, do you."
"I do," Caroline said as sincerely as she could. "Being less ignorant is always a good thing, right?"
"Of course."
Caroline abruptly closed her computer and threw it in her box. She grasped the handle of the box and stood up.
"I didn't mean to offend." Both her voice and her words surprised Caroline. GLaDOS was severely lacking in sensitivity, Caroline was discovering, and the fact that she'd recognised that she had made Caroline uncomfortable activated that part of her brain that made her want to study the supercomputer more intensely. But Caroline had not missed GLaDOS's unintentional point, one that she wasn't sure she was even aware she had made: GLaDOS had been programmed to know certain things. Ethically, that was wrong, but no one had ever written a code of ethics on how to treat a living supercomputer. And if she'd had any doubts before, Caroline was certain now: GLaDOS was, in fact, alive.
What would happen, she thought, a chill running down her spine, when they tried to put a living brain into one they thought was dead?
"Caroline?"
"You didn't," Caroline said quickly. "I just didn't understand what you were trying to say."
"I was thinking the same of you," GLaDOS agreed. "Surely everyone knows about physics."
"Some do, some don't, but I don't want to get into it right now." Caroline hefted her box and began to descend the staircase. "See you… when I see you."
"Can we get into it later?"
Caroline turned around. GLaDOS was looking at her with such curiosity that Caroline could almost feel it. And that was one attribute that Caroline knew they had not given her. They had thought she would be content with knowing the contents of the database, which covered that of every known database on the planet. But it seemed that GLaDOS understood there was more to 'everything' than the 'everything' that she'd been given, and wanted to know what it was.
"We'll see," Caroline said noncommittally, still not wanting to spend much more of her time with the supercomputer and yet for some reason reluctant to shoot her down entirely. "I'm very busy."
"So am I, but I've made time for you, haven't I?"
"Yes, I – "
"Never mind," GLaDOS interrupted. "We're both very busy. We don't have time for petty discussions. This 'bonding' nonsense is distraction enough. Good night, Caroline."
"Good night," Caroline echoed, and she turned around again and left the room. As with the previous night, she looked back as she left the room, and again GLaDOS looked not at her but in the general direction of the floor.
Why?
Caroline almost hoped she would be subject to more 'bonding' sessions so that she could find out.
Author's note
This story was suggested by 8th dimention (from ). This note is very long and involves analysing how GLaDOS might see the world, so if you don't care about that, feel free to skip it.
I found the earliest known version of Little Red Riding Hood to be very interesting, because the original ending does indeed have Red actually dying for her idiocy. But while the first version best fit the type of story I'm trying to tell here with Storytime with GLaDOS, I couldn't ignore the ending that appears in every other version after (other than the really weird ones where they have Red eat her grandmother unintentionally) : a huntsman comes by and saves their bacon. And I was thinking about it, and I realised what I had GLaDOS point out: humans are rewarded both for being clever and for being stupid (Jack's outwitting the giant's wife and Red's complete ignorance of everything that's going on around her) while non-humans are punished for the same things (the giant was just plain stupid, and the wolf outsmarted everyone and still died for it).
Caroline and GLaDOS run into trouble this chapter because Caroline assumes that GLaDOS knows what it's like to be human, and GLaDOS does not in fact know this. She does not know what a mother or a grandmother does, other than whatever general definition is in the database (which would likely be something like "a person who nurtures young relatives" or something like that), and she would likely not really understand that it is both wrong and impossible to program a person to know certain things… which is exactly what happens with GLaDOS. First, they program her knowledge, and then they attempt to program her behaviour. If the people at Aperture were real scientists (and I suppose they are, but bear with me), they would be shut down. Not just for what they do to GLaDOS, but none of the science at Aperture is ethical, and any of the research they obtained would be thrown out because if they had presented their idea to a review board, they would not have been given permission to go ahead on the grounds that it was unethical (like the test where they locked test subjects in a room with deadly lasers to test their reactions to being locked in a room with deadly lasers). GLaDOS, raised in an unethical environment, has no personal code of ethics like we do and doesn't understand why all of the things she said are taken badly by Caroline. As I tried to explain in You Do Know I Can't Wave Back, Right?, everyone seems to think that GLaDOS was both sentient and adult as soon as she was activated, which is extremely unlikely. So she probably would have been badly punished for what they thought were intentional transgressions but were merely her making a mistake in her exploration of the world. And I would argue that GLaDOS does not truly understand what death is, since her perception of being dead is being shut off when she does not want to be; it's possible she believes that death is a way of shutting someone off until you feel like dealing with them again.
