And, in today's episode, we discover that Caroline feels slightly lonely, GLaDOS has an android body, and Chell's Extended Relaxation Vault wasn't the only one that Doug Rattmann hooked up to the auxiliary power upon GLaDOS' initial defeat. Enjoy!
~Lagiacrus
Our time at the facility had been pleasant, although slightly lonely. If you didn't count the robots, it was only my mother and me, after all. The testing chambers were a good way to pass the day quickly without thinking much of your troubles, but afterwards it always came back to haunt me – it was only me and mom. We'd be alone forever, I guess. Sure, Sergei and Wheatley had been great companions so far, but at the end of the day it just wasn't the same. I'd never met another human who wasn't mom, but the desire to do so was becoming hard to ignore. I'd brought it up with mom before but she'd told me it was just my age and that it was perfectly reasonable – however, when I asked if she thought anybody was still alive out there, at least nearby, she dodged the question.
I did my best to ignore it and continue testing, but soon I was so wound up about it that it started to severely affect my performance ratings, to the point where I was even 'failing' tests when I accidentally dropped a weighted storage cube into toxic waste, or fell into the toxic waste myself by accident, or misjudged the placement of a portal and went careering over the Faith Plate that would have sent me to the exit. Eventually, GLaDOS withdrew me from testing altogether, replacing me with P-Body to help mom finish the tests. She hauled me up in front of her great white face and narrowed her piercing yellow optic.
"What on earth has gotten into you?" She growled. I couldn't think of how to respond; how to explain it to her. She wouldn't understand – she was a computer, I was a human. There was a lot of significant differences between us. When I remained silent, her optic seemed to relax and she loosened her grip on me.
"If you won't tell me what's wrong, I can't offer you any counselling on the subject." I nodded, gulping down the saliva that had gathered in my throat. My voice was raspy from the fear of my most recent rescue, but I just managed to blurt out;
"I feel lonely here!"
Her optic widened in surprise and she set me down on the chamber floor, looking down at me with a slightly wider optic and a tilted head that seemed to suggest she was curious.
"…I'm afraid I can't help you with that," She admitted with an almost sheepish tone that was quickly washed away by her normal voice. "Why do you feel lonely?"
"The only other human I've ever met is my mom," I did my best to make it clear to her. "I've seen other humans from afar before but… all my life, it's just been me and my mom. I want to meet somebody else, hear somebody else's voice! It's weird, I know and you probably can't sympathize, but…" I drifted off when her optic flickered.
"Oh, I know how you feel. I just don't let such petty things bother me." She spoke but a slight break in her voice gave away that she wasn't exactly telling the truth. However, she seemed to be in the middle of something so I decided not to bring it up.
Indeed, mere moments later, a squealing Wheatley descended from the ceiling of the chamber and slid down a forever expanding management rail, until he was hanging in front of me. GLaDOS must have brought him here.
"Hello!" He greeted me worriedly, his optic narrowed in fright.
"Little ball," She demanded his attention and his optic spun around to the back to look at her. "I want you to take her and do a thorough search of the Extended Relaxation Vaults. Anybody who is still alive, if any, wake them up."
My eyes widened and a ghost of a smile flashed on my face for but a moment.
"Are you being serious!?" I screamed and she gave a gentle nod.
"Yes. Now go, before I change my mind." My legs propelled me forward and I crashed into her, wrapping my arms as much as I could around her face. She glared at me with her optic, which was now blinding me and tried to shake me off.
"Not this again," She groaned. "Please let go of me."
When she did finally get rid of me, I carried Wheatley to the nearest management rail and hooked him up, allowing him to guide me back to the Extended Relaxation Vaults that I had originally entered the facility through.
GLaDOS had made a feeble attempt to tidy the big warehouse up for us arriving, but the vaults remained just as scummy as they had been before. Some of them had collapsed in on themselves, exposing the wrecked room within. Others were beat up or squished (probably an error on Wheatley's part), but others were perfectly intact. We made the choice to search them first. It took us some time and much trial and error to get to one of the healthy ones, only to open it and find that it was empty. The second one we reached had a skeleton wearing the orange jumpsuit lying in the bed. The third was much the same. The fourth one was the best-looking we had found, with the lights still functional and the furniture still intact. However, the announcer was broken, doing the '999999' thing that it usually did when somebody had been in stasis for much longer than was recommended. The stasis room was apparently also the only one we had found which was still actually on and much to my relief, somebody who appeared to be intact was lying in the bed.
"Now what do we do?" I asked the Personality Core hovering beside me.
"Umm, well, I'll initiate the wake-up process and it should hopefully (note that hopefully) only take a few minutes for him to wake up."
He zipped off to do so and I crept into the room to examine the new person. It was a man, I think, with chestnut brown, jagged hair and a rather large build, despite looking so young. He didn't have the peaceful expression that you would expect on the face of a sleeping person, but instead he looked angry, like he was having a dream about somebody he disliked. Curiously I ran a hand through his hair, causing him to shift uncomfortably and I snapped back. It moves! I was overwhelmed by a sudden feeling of shyness, something I had only ever felt once before and retreated to the outside of the door just as Wheatley returned.
"Alright, I've set all the activated Vaults into wake-up mode. That means, if there are other people here, they should lead us right to them!" He explained and I patted him on the side.
"Good job, Wheatley!" I felt like I needed to acknowledge the one good idea he'd had in about a week.
The announcer's voice suddenly started again as there was movement in the bed. My breath hitched and I tried to hide behind Wheatley to little success. As this human began to sit up, I must have looked pretty amusing – a human body with a Personality Core for a head. Although, underestimating the fact that being in stasis for a minimum of sixty years will have severely fucked up his brain and drained him of his vital fluids, I really should have expected it when he sat up drowsily, glanced over at the open door, and then screamed as loud as his croaky voice allowed. I dived into the room and grabbed him before he charged into a wall and hurt himself.
"Calm down, Man! It's alright!" I grunted in annoyance – this is what I had been so excited about? - although my restraints were doing nothing. He was dragging me along behind him as he made for the door on the opposite end of the cabin. "Don't!"
He crashed through the doorway and nearly fell straight down into the bowels of the facility. If I hadn't pulled on him so harshly, both he and I would be dead. We crashed back into the floor, and all I could hear was his heavy breathing and Wheatley sliding along his rail, until he was hovering above us.
"Are you okay, luv?" He asked me, and I nodded breathlessly. I sat up, helping the strange man support his back against the wall. Wheatley dropped into my arms, and we sat in front of him, observing him quietly. For a moment he only looked downwards, as if readjusting himself to being awake. After silence for what seemed like forever, he looked into my eyes and did his best to speak.
"Is it… over?"
"What is?" I replied immediately.
"GLaDOS… is it safe? Has she… been stopped?"
So, that's how long he's been asleep. He must have put himself into stasis to protect himself from GLaDOS' murderous rampage. I guess he didn't expect to be sleeping so long though.
"Yeah, that happened about sixty years ago. She's cooled her jets by now, I hope." I said jokingly.
"Sixty years…!?" He breathed. "How am I not dead…!?"
"You're asking me?" I replied with a smirk. Slowly, he seemed to be regaining his voice, and he coughed to attempt to clear his throat.
"…How did the incident end?"
"I don't know much about it," I said honestly. "My mom was involved. Apparently, there were few survivors."
"How many…?"
"I think… five survivors, in all."
"Oh my God…"
I felt Wheatley's handles twitch anxiously and I gave him a reassuring pat. It was a sensitive subject for him, and I suppose this new guy as well.
"Uhh… Aperture Science Protocol requires me to tell you that it is normal for test subjects to experience some… minor Cognitive Deterioration while in stasis for fifty days… you've been asleep for the best part of sixty years, so technically you should be a vegetable." I told him and he nodded.
"Don't I know it." He gave me a weak smile. Something about his smile was… well, nice. It was like a breath of fresh air. I couldn't help but smile back and I felt my cheeks heat up. Of course, Wheatley noticed…
"So, who are you?" He inquired.
"Like I said, I'm the daughter of a survivor. My name's Caroline," I held out a hand and he shook it.
"Eric."
When Wheatley shifted wordlessly on my lap, I remembered my manners and held him up for Eric to see.
"This is Wheatley. He was one of GLaDOS' personality cores." I introduced them but I could practically sense the one-sided tension between them.
"Hello." Wheatley growled – yes, that's right, growled – in a typically very un-Wheatley-like style.
"Hey, Wheatley." He seemed oblivious of the accented core's venomous voice and simply smiled at him.
I withdrew Wheatley and placed him back in my lap before he tried to lunge for the boy's throat. I'd never seen him act like this before, Wheatley was not evil by default. The only occasions he had been were because of GLaDOS' influences and he had never been like that since.
Suddenly, there was an unknown human voice in the distance, somewhere outside this particular vault.
"H-Hello!?" It was a young female, possibly a child's voice. I shot to my feet, threw Wheatley onto his rail and darted outside the vault, looking around for any signs of another life form.
"Hello!? Where are you!?" I called out and she was quick to respond.
"Up here!" I looked up and saw a petite teenage girl hanging dangerously from a broken steel beam just above my head. "I'm slipping!"
"Just drop, I'll catch you!" She looked fairly light, nothing that I couldn't handle. In the next moment she had dropped from the beam and I caught her hands in mine, pulling her back into Eric's vault. She was clearly younger than me, was at least a head shorter and her limbs reminded me of a skeleton's. I guess her vault must have malfunctioned recently - if I hadn't woke her up, who knows how she would have ended up. Eric looked up and his eyes widened.
"Vic!?" He shouted with his weak voice, and she snapped around to look at him, although she lost her footing in the process, falling against me.
"You know her?" I questioned him as he struggled to his feet, using the wall as a support while he made his way over.
"Her name is Victoria," He confirmed. "She was the daughter of my Department Leader. She was there the day GLaDOS…"
He seemed unable to continue. I simply nodded – I could already piece together what had happened. Not only had he saved himself, he had also saved her.
"Y-Yep, he's right," She gasped, her voice rough. "He saved me f-from her…"
"So, you've both been in stasis for sixty years. This is nothing short of a miracle!" I told them, and Eric nodded.
"I wasn't expecting to survive the ordeal, at all. I thought she would flood the Extended Relaxation Vaults with neurotoxin too, but I guess it must have slipped her mind at the time."
There was more movement from outside. I gently passed Victoria to Eric and stepped back outside.
"Hello!?" I called out and this time, I spotted somebody emerge from a relaxation vault directly across from us. She was a tall yet curvy woman, with bedhead dark brown hair that reached down to her waist. She was clad in an Aperture scientist's lab coat with a blue turtleneck and grey pencil skirt with tights and black dolly shoes underneath, all of which was extremely dishevelled. A pair of squint glasses shone in the light. It looked like she had just emerged from a battleground.
"We're still alive!" She called to us. "I don't believe it!"
"Rosie!? Is that you!?" Eric shouted back with a laugh of disbelief.
"Eric, you bastard! We did it!" I could see her beaming smile from here.
"Wheatley, can you bring her over here?" I requested and he snapped out of his one-way staring contest with Eric to look at me.
"Oh, hang on, I'll send a request to Her to build a bridge!" He replied and after a few moments, several large sturdy panels emerged from the bottomless pit, connected and then linked Rosie's vault to Eric's. She realised instantly who had sent those panels and was hesitant. I began to walk over and stopped halfway across, holding out my hand.
"It's okay. You've been asleep sixty years – GLaDOS has had time to think about what she did. You're perfectly safe." I told her, her eyes widening.
"Are you serious…?" She gasped, and I gave a smile.
"Yep. I swear GLaDOS isn't the same evil robot she was." I couldn't stop the slightly joking tone I used, which put her slightly on edge – but eventually she relented and followed me across the bridge to the others.
Vic was in a bad way. Wheatley had a hunch that her Extended Relaxation Vault hadn't 'stopped working' as such, but the part of it that kept her in stasis malfunctioned earlier in the year, keeping her asleep but allowing her to slowly fade away. We had to get her fed as soon as possible.
I decided I wouldn't tell GLaDOS they were here yet as they still seemed shaky when I mentioned her. Instead I took them straight to the cafeteria room downstairs nearby the bedrooms and gave them all the food they could manage. GLaDOS was handy as she actually had the ability to generate real food for us – the fridge was filled with all manners of things, including a beautiful Black Forest cake. They managed to scoff it all, and Vic had perked up immediately after the food was gone. All that was left for me was a slice of the cake, not that I minded.
"So, what are your stories? How did you all end up in stasis?" I asked all three of them. I heard Wheatley smashing something in the kitchen and curse.
"I was a scientist directly involved with GLaDOS' creation. Most of the research into creating the Personality Cores… was my doing." Rosie spoke almost reluctantly, her eyes glinting with an ancient sadness.
"I was a scientist too, but I worked more with the evaluation of Test Subjects than GLaDOS. I was involved sometimes, but not much." Eric explained his own story, and I next looked to Vic who smiled sheepishly.
"I'm nobody special… just a girl who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, I guess." She said with a shrug.
"What about you? Who are you?" Rosie asked, crossing her arms suspiciously. I wouldn't be surprised if they thought I was one of GLaDOS' minions, or something ridiculous like that.
"Do you two remember a girl who was at the Bring Your Daughter to Work Day called Chell?"
"Yeah, I do! She showed me how to make the potato battery!" Vic piped up, nearly flying out of her seat. Rosie seemed to think for a minute.
"…She was the kid with Rattmann, yes I do remember her." She finally announced and I nodded.
"Yeah… She's my mother."
Their jaws hit the floor while Eric looked on, amused.
"So it really has been sixty years. You weren't kidding." Rosie pressed her fingers against her temple, grunting.
"It's kinda cool in a way though, right? We get to see the future!" Vic tried to assure her, but I shook my head.
"There's not much to see. Humanity's nearly gone. There isn't many of us left."
All three of their faces dropped and Eric seemed to jump to conclusions, his face twisting in anger.
"Was it GLaDOS!?"
"Of course not. I'm not that homicidal." Suddenly her voice echoed around the room and their expressions turned to fear. They froze up and didn't dare move. Rosie was looking at me like I was crazy, there was an urgency in her eyes – You shouldn't look so calm! she seemed to be saying. I sighed and looked to GLaDOS' residential camera, begging her for guidance.
"Do I need to come down there?" Her voice echoed around us for a second time.
"It might help – wait, you can leave that room?" I questioned and she scoffed, taken aback.
"Of course I can, you simpleton. I'll be there in a few minutes."
So I waited patiently, observing the others with indifference as they slowly became snivelling vegetables, dreading the moment when something – most likely neurotoxin – entered through the cafeteria door. I wasn't sure what I was expecting – perhaps GlaDOS opening a giant portal into the cafeteria that her chassis could fit through, or her somehow squeezing through the door after extending her cables and slithering like a snake all the way from her chamber. What actually happened was not what I expected at all.
The sliding doors of the cafeteria opened and what I saw was indeed GLaDOS, but not in any form I recognized. She was in an android body, that much I could tell – but whoever it was based off of I could not identify. Her artificial white hair spread down just past her shoulders, her skin was a bright, pastel blue and her yellow optics, which resembled almond-shaped human eyes, glowed slightly in the dim light of the room. She was leagues taller than the average female, at least 6'2" but this was exaggerated by the high heeled long fall boots she was wearing. The rest of her outfit matched the boots – a combination of black and white. She was wearing a zipped sleeveless jacket that stretched out along the back, giving her something of a tail, and underneath that were pure white skinny jeans with a thick black stripe sliding down the outside of each leg. They were held up by a surprisingly normal-looking brown leather belt with a red buckle. She wore black fingerless gloves that reached her elbow, and last but not least, her body seemed to be covered in odd, luminescent yellow markings – most prominent were the tiger stripe markings on her face, one stretching along each cheek. My jaw nearly hit the floor – I never pictured an android form of GLaDOS looking so young.
"Stop gawking. It's like you've never seen a woman before." She spoke snidely as she strutted over to us, the picture of perfection and grace.
"Not besides mom." I confirmed and she merely sighed again, before reaching over me and picking up a now completely paralysed Victoria, holding her roughly by the scruff of the neck. I felt a twang of fear in my heart – she wasn't actually planning to hurt them, was she?
"Y-You're GLaDOS? I thought you were a big robot?" Vic shuddered with a half-functioning voice.
"Under normal circumstances, I am. But this is not a normal circumstance." GLaDOS responded, and raised her hand – for a minute it really looked like she was about to punch her – then she clicked her fingers, which activated the rest of the lights in the room, and set Vic down. Then, she glided over to the kitchen in a stream of fabulous, and opened the fridge.
"…I see you all enjoyed the baked goods I placed in here," She sounded displeased at first, like it hadn't been for us. However, her voice quickly softened. "I suppose I'll just need to make some more."
At this, Rosie and Eric seemed to relax, and after eyeing up GLaDOS nervously for a few seconds, turned to Vic and chattered excitedly.
"She didn't kill you!" Eric pointed out and Vic nodded in a combination of relief and fear, unable to form a reply.
"You were right!" Rosie's head darted to look at me, eyes wide and glasses lopsided on her face.
"I told you – she's had time to simmer. She's more like you designed her to be now," I lowered my voice to a whisper. "However, she's still a sarcastic, homicidal bitch."
"I heard that." I looked over to see her grinning at me like a hyena, her stunning golden optics narrowed maliciously. With a nervous gulp, I sat the others down again and I helped the three catch up, explaining to them all that had happened since their stasis, while GLaDOS and Wheatley worked on baking a cake for us through in the kitchen. It was a weird, almost unreal scenario – I remember pinching myself several times to make sure I was awake - but it was one I was content with.
I'm not sure what I was going for with this one. In order to fully utilize an idea I have for later in this story, I had to introduce some new, human characters. I've tried not to make them feel too out of place, but with a series like Portal it's quite difficult to fit humans in properly. So I'm really not sure how well I've done with this one. Please feel free to let me know.
Rosie is actually something of an alter ego self-insert - I made her a mature, feminine, intelligent, science-loving, glasses-wearing version of myself. Eric and Vic are based off of characters I use in another, original series of mine. I will be careful to go into more detail about their lives in Aperture before GLaDOS later on, but for the moment it was just introducing them to Caroline AKA. their new mistress. :D
Although, I do wonder how Caroline will deal with the new folks now that her curiosity has been satisfied? Will she shun them, or will she let them in to her life?
~Lagiacrus