CHAPTER TWO-Transforming into a Computer
It happened a few days after the coding was completed, Cave Johnson was sitting in his lush velvet chair. Caroline had just delivered his favourite coffee and started stirring in the sugar. Cave opened up his newspaper and read a page of it. He grunted and Caroline came to his side.
"What is it mister Johnson?" she asked, tapping the spoon on the cup of coffee.
"Nothing Caroline. It's just Black Mesa's new invention, the so called Large Hadron Collider. Too expensive for us. We're so close to being bankrupt. Black Mesa can kiss my bankrupt-"
"Sir, not again. You know very well Black Mesa is now a respected partner of Aperture. You said so yourself!" Cave Johnson took a sip of coffee and read on. Soon after, Cave started screaming. Caroline rushed to his side and fed him a pain pill.
"No good! Caroline, bring me to the chamber! I think it's time!"
"No sir! It's not time yet! It's not complete!"
"To the heck with that! Do you want me to die or not? It's time!" Caroline called the lab boys into Cave's office. They picked up the screaming Cave Johnson and carried him into the chamber. The scientists looked at Cave and opened the door to the Personality Transfer room. As they locked the door, Cave called Caroline in. Cave started to tell her about how much he will miss holding her hands. As the scientists pushed the Transfer button, Cave started screaming again.
"AGH!" he screamed painfully. His vision blurred and soon he couldn't feel his body. His consciousness seemed to be painfully ripped out from his body and stuffed into the robot. Around him was fog that stung him painfully. The weight of the universe poured onto him like loads of sand. Once his consciousness settled in the mind of the body, he felt a relief and soon he felt like before. He started up his body, gears whirring and setting off circuitry. The scientists started nudging each other and pointing to him. Jolts of electricity shot down his body. He opened his one yellow optic. He blinked and started moving around in the giant GLaDOS body. The scientists cheered each other and high-fived Cave Johnson. One sent a lab boy out for a bottle of champagne.
"Oh, this feels good!" called Cave Johnson. He started spinning around and booming out a great deep laugh. He tossed confetti into the large Chamber. Soon, Cave Johnson noticed the pop of a cork and champagne streams flying in the air. The scientists soon started making confetti angels in the sticky champagne covered confetti. Cave Johnson saw his dead corpse, being lifted out of the Transfer room, Caroline following it. Cave had an idea and sent all the scientists out of the room. As Caroline was about to exit, he called her back. Caroline sat cross-legged on the floor, as she always did when he made a big speech in front of the scientists. He lowered down the robot body and met Caroline at eye level.
"Caroline, now would be a good time to tell you something. Caroline, I, uh, since you arrived here, I saw you as a beautiful smart lady with a passion for science. But recently, I saw you as my love. I loved you Caroline. Since your first day on the job I had feelings for you. I always said you were as pretty as a postcard, but now, your beauty is past compare. But, now in my new body, we can't have any plans anymore. But please, do me a favour. When you have a child, name her Chell. It has been in my mind too long, Chell seems perfect for a girl."
"Yes sir mister Johnson!" Caroline smiled. She was dismissed by Cave.
Cave loomed his body over some computers. He ran some passwords and soon the computer was on. Brilliant! Now he could automatically keep track of all the test subjects. He deleted all the pre-recorded messages, except for his lemon rant. That was genius. He had triumphed over death. He looked at the monitor and an idea hit him. If you couldn't get test subjects, why not make them? He ran a few programs and ordered the men to create a robot body for him. He could see the men running around the facility using whatever they could to build the robots. Cave looked at his own coding and copied and pasted it into the robots' coding. He deleted a few applications such as complete control over the facility and added teamwork intelligence. And he made them use the turret head for advanced motion detection and ranged sight. But who would test the robot body?
"Hey Wheatley Adams, get your butt up here!" he called over the PA system. Cave waited for the employee to appear in the Chamber doors. He opened up a few panels to send him to the Chamber immediately. The panel rose up to Cave Johnson's head. Wheatley was completely on all fours being scared like the wimp he was. Ah Wheatley, moron he was, was Cave Johnson's favourite employee. He was Aperture's guinea pig, and he tested Caroline's prototype handheld portal gun.
"Ah mister Johnson sir? What is it?" Wheatley said getting up from his panel.
"I need you to do me a favour, very small, nothing special. Just something about robots and you."
"Eh, wot? What do you mean?"
"Um, how do I start? Um, I want you to turn into a robot for testing." Awkward silence. Cave could see Wheatley with his mouth open.
"I would love to, but, what about legal limits?"
"Who the hell cares about legal limits! We turned the inside of humans into gasoline! We sent a man to the moon! Without the government knowing! I think that we can bypass the stupid government once more!" Wheatley put on his 'thinking face', as Cave Johnson saw him put it on a couple of times. In the end, Wheatley agreed to turn into an android.
"Remember if you feel any pain during this experiment, just remember that it's for science." Cave Johnson hooked up Wheatley into a glass chamber much smaller than Cave's Transfer room. The glass chamber contained a chair which Wheatley sat on. Cave pumped some sleeping gas and anaesthetics into the chamber. He reminded Wheatley to sleep or else it would cause a lot of pain. After that he saw Wheatley snoring in the chamber. Cave felt sorry for Wheatley. Soon Wheatley would be experiencing pain like he'd never felt and will never feel again. He flipped the switch and Wheatley started screaming. The wires that were connected to Wheatley started twitching. The robot body started turning on and moving around. The arms snapped off the handles and the robot stood up by itself. The optic turned on. It was the same colour as Wheatley's eyes. Bright, icy, blue. The robot looked at it's palm, and rotated it's hand in a circle. It started jumping up and down. Wheatley ran out the door screaming.
"It worked! It bloody worked! In all my life I've never dreamed that I would live forever! Oh I need to tell my mom!"
"So, how does it feel?"
"Amazing! Look, I can run into this wall and come out unharmed!" Wheatley demonstrated his point and rammed the wall.
"Hah! Point officially made!" Cave laughed at Wheatley running around. He knew that once Wheatley went out of the Chamber and into Aperture that testing would be back in action.