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Chapter Eight: A Warm Welcome
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The subway was full of early-morning commuters. Everywhere, hands were full of cups of coffee, cell phones, and copies of the Lunar City Times emblazoned with the headline 'AI-Brighter Future: Mayor Reveals Ten-Year Plan Set To Revolutionize'. The racing, metallic ring of the subway's tracks was loud even over the muffled treble emitted from someone's ear buds that were turned up too loud, and the wheezy coughing of several chain-smokers. One or two of the passengers were talking on their phones, their conversations kept shallow and distant for fear of being overheard—and a ragged-looking man at the back was taking swigs from a strong-smelling, amber liquid from inside of a big glass bottle.
Suddenly, a blazing ringtone belonging to a young woman seated by the window near the end of the train went off loudly. Her dark complexion was filthy with grit and dust and her hair was mussed with sweat and dirt. Her eyes were sunken with tiredness but beneath all of this she had a kind, good-natured, but very determined look about her. Unlike most of the passengers, she was not fresh from her morning shower and professionally clad; she was doing night-shift tunnel work these days, and tunnel workers worked in the dirt and foul smells and grime. It was no place for a suit and tie.
She didn't recognize the number. "Hello?" she answered, trying to keep her voice quiet to attract as few eavesdroppers as she could.
Her companion seated beside her inclined his head slightly, trying to listen, but she didn't seem to mind. Apparently he was the only person on the subway who was allowed to listen in. He looked to be only a few years younger than her, although that might have been because he was quite short in stature despite his decent build. He also had dark skin and eyes that greatly resembled his friend—for the two were siblings, similar in appearance but opposite in sex and personality. While she was quite bubbly and friendly, he was moody and surly—but the one thing they had in common was their unconditional love for each other.
"Good morning, Ann," said the voice on the phone. "It's been ages since we last spoke."
The woman's expression changed immediately. Her face split into a wide grin for she had recognized the voice as belonging to a very old friend.
"Who is calling?" asked the boy, who had retained more of his heavy Portuguese accent than his sister, who had adopted an urban drawl from how long she'd lived and worked in the bowels of the city.
"Clifford!" exclaimed Ann into the phone. "I thought ya'd forgotten about me, it's been saaach a long time, ya'know. How ya been, darlaang?"
"Good, good. And you?"
"Oh, we been excellent, working graveyard shift, building tha subway uptown, working maintenance. And Jose is here, too."
"Ah! As I suspected. Perfect. Listen, I know it has been a long time…"
"Too long," she interrupted.
"Too long, yes. But say, I could use you and your brother's excellent knowledge and expertise with something that has come to light. There is a slight problem…"
Ann listened carefully as Clifford explained the situation at hand. Potential danger loomed in the near future, and that was exactly what she loved about it. It had been forever since Clifford had given her a job, and dangerous jobs were her favorite kind. Working in tunnel maintenance was fun, but it wasn't a challenge. It wasn't a thrill. She missed the old days back when she used to be a part of something much bigger.
"So, in short," Clifford finished his story, "I'm assembling a team, just in case things do go awry. I'd be honored if you would join us."
"I've missed ya, Clifford," she said, her voice full of fond nostalgia. "'Course Jose and I will be there, you don't even have to ask. It'll be just like old times."
"The reunion party is tonight at six o'clock. And if everything goes correctly, I think you will be seeing a lot of recognizable faces. Be sure to pack for a few days, okay?"
"Sure thang, 'Cliff. I can't wait!"
They bid each other a cheerful goodbye, and Ann turned to her brother. "That was Clifford, on tha phone," she told him. "He wants us to come to a party he's havin' tonight! It sounded like they need help. They gonna need our help with somethin' big."
"Zomefing big?" Jose frowned. "What kind of fing?"
"I danno. But whatever it is, we're all gonna meet at his house. Sounds like a'latta tha old gang'll be there."
And with that, it was decided; the two of them would go home to catch a few hours of rest, and then make their way over to old Clifford's house.
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In various other locations around the city that morning, the cell phones of various VIPs and engineers alike buzzed, rang, beeped, and vibrated as the invitations were sent out; all were answered promptly and the majority with affirmatives. High in the top of the highest tower, the Mayor of the sprawling city sat, having just confirmed his own invitation.
The two had been communicating quite a lot within the past week. One day, Clifford had simply called him up out of the blue. At first, he had been somewhat taken aback to hear from his old friend—it had been many years since they'd last spoken.
Clifford had not said much during that first phone call; he'd simply told him that his laboratory was receiving strange signals originating from some place called Aperture Science. This did not mean much to Mayor Jacobs at first, so Clifford had had to explain further about the nature of the signals, and what he said had eventually caught Jacobs's interest.
The conversation in question had concluded with a warning. At first, Mayor Jacobs had not heeded this warning, and had ignored the situation for the start of the week. It wasn't until his own crew had alerted him to a plausible problem did he decide to take his advice and inspect further.
Clifford had been correct. He had called him back up in an instant, and the two had talked for a very long time, discussing everything that had happened within the past week on both men's ends and what, together, it all meant. It was a deeper conversation than they'd had together in years, and indeed it may have been the closest they'd been since they'd had a falling out fifteen years ago.
Mayor Jacobs sipped at the last cold dregs of coffee in his mug, and looked out through the high window over his city and heaved a troubled sigh. Back in those days, artificial intelligence was the way of the future. Everybody knew it, because he'd been foolish enough to let the media in on The Plan as soon as it had existed—it had been his idea. He'd gathered up a group of the smartest, strongest, most skilled people he knew, and they'd set to work—this was the birth of The Coalition, a union between the city's government, military, and the very best of its working class. He envisioned a future where computers not only held the answers to everything, but where they were physically capable of assisting humans in their day-to-day lives.
He didn't just want an AI—he wanted robots. But if he wanted robots, he would need a mainframe capable of controlling enough robots to serve the city. It needed to be strong, powerful and fast, and impervious to malignant attacks. He didn't just need a mainframe—he needed a supercomputer.
At first, The Coalition had operated smoothly. The finest architects had laid out the plans for the great buildings that would function as a power source, a brain, broadcasting station, etcetera… and he had the best engineers on the market build it. It was perfect. All that was needed was the supercomputer itself.
That was where things started to get difficult. He had pressured Clifford, perhaps a little too much, for he knew that he had access to a perfectly good supercomputer, and for reasons Mayor Jacobs did not understand, he had outright refused to help him acquire the machine. They had quite a terrible argument after that, and Clifford swore that he would never let him or his men anywhere near Aperture Science again, and he left The Coalition.
Initially, Mayor Jacobs had meant to go behind his back and break into the Laboratories anyways. He still remembered how shocked and frustrated he was when he realized that Cave Johnson's will had stated that the company be left to a woman named Caroline, who, in turn, had left it to Clifford. He was not sure if Clifford had ever found out about this (he doubted that the paper trail would have interested him much) or if he had just informally assumed ownership of the wheat field and the Laboratories. But, it didn't really matter either way.
Clifford was the sole heir of Aperture Science.
That posed a problem for the mayor; he could not legally acquire anything from the facility without Mr. Johnson's permission and, well, that certainly was out the window.
And so, for many years The Coalition operated on its own, and began to build him his towers and the basis of his supercomputer. They hit snag after snag; until one day, he broke down and tried visiting Clifford. He'd grudgingly let him in, and they'd ended up coming to an agreement; he was allowed to send his men into Aperture Science to collect anything they could find that was useful, but only with Clifford's explicit supervision, and they were not to remove anything he told them not to remove.
Mayor Jacobs' men had done just that under Clifford's watchful eye. They had brought back many fine pieces of technology that had served as the basis of his build. Progress crept along at a snail's pace it felt like, but with each passing day they got closer and closer to their goal, and less and less personnel were needed as part of the project until finally, only a crew of his closest and most brilliant comrades remained.
And now, the Mayor was faced with yet another snag, this one perhaps the biggest one of them all. But the good news was that, for the first time in roughly ten years, the key personnel of the original Coalition were about to reunite.
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The pasta and orange juice that Chell had for dinner that night tasted better than anything she'd ever tasted in her entire life. The sauce was thick and creamy and the chicken was fresh and tender—not that she'd had much to compare it with. She ate at the big oak table in the dining room that was located toward the front of the house; and when she'd finished, she'd been shown upstairs by a nicely-dressed man named Felix who introduced himself as something called a butler.
Her room was nothing too fancy, but it was comfortable. The bedstead stood in the middle of it beside a small nightstand, and she was sure that when she lied down in bed she'd have an excellent view of the tallest of the tall buildings in the city below through the small window. Under the window there was a cute writing desk, with a single vase of flowers upon it. She thought the flowers might have been lilacs.
The first thing she'd done was not fall asleep, but have a shower. It had taken a minute—in which freezing cold water poured over her, making her skin scream like it was on fire—before she had figured out how to work the tap, and then adjusted the temperature to one she'd liked.
Then, smelling nice and nearly tripping over her own feet with exhaustion, she'd fallen into bed and slept for a good ten to eleven hours.
The sleep was so good that waking up felt almost impossible. She must have dozed on and off for a good fifteen minutes before she finally convinced herself to get out of bed. It felt so nice, the soft bed and the warm, fresh linens and the big comfy pillows beneath her head—Aperture had had none of these things. When she finally did open her eyes, the first thing she saw was the window, and the pale grey, morning sky through it. It was a cloudy but crisp kind of day that hinted of coming fall.
On the desk was her freshly washed jumpsuit and tank top. She guessed that someone must have come in during the night and taken it and washed it for her, probably Felix. She hastily pulled off the night gown Clifford had supplied for her and got dressed.
When she made her way downstairs, the first thing she saw was Wheatley, who was in the sitting room with two younger, identical boys whom she had never seen before. All three of them were deeply immersed in some kind of space-age video game, but as Chell entered the room, Wheatley leapt up off the couch.
"You're awake!"
Immediately he lunged at her, tripping over his own feet. Before she could take even two steps forward, she had been entangled by his many limbs in a colossal hug.
"Slept well, did you?" he said finally as he broke away. "Good. Excellent. Smashing. Now, there's someone I'd like you to meet, if you please."
His excitement was infectious. Chell couldn't help but grin as he led her to the front of the couch and introduced her to the two boys. "You're not gonna believe this, but these are actually two completely different people. Who look the same. Exactly the same. I know, I know, I wouldn't believe it either," he said, misreading Chell's look of amusement for one of confusion.
"I'm Brayden," said the boy closest to her, jumping up from the couch and shaking her hand a mere millisecond before his twin did the same. "And I'm Bradley."
The two were identical; aged about nine years old, they both had the same straight, sandy-blonde hair and bangs, brilliantly blue eyes, and adorably pale freckled faces.
"Mister Wheatley says your name is Chell," said Brayden politely. "He's been waiting for you. We saved you a seat. Look." He gestured toward the heavily-pillow-laden couch, to a space near the end where Wheatley was sitting. "Do you want to play with us?"
"Oh, oh oh, yeeees," said Wheatley excitedly. "Yes, she does, right Chell? Come on, come on, I'll even let you use the blue controller."
She was saved having to answer by Clifford, who poked his head into the room a second later. "Would you mind if I had a word with you?" he asked, and she shrugged apologetically at Wheatley and the twins.
"I just wanted to make sure you are doing okay, after yesterday," he said, his face full of concern as they entered the hall. "That was some ordeal you had to recount."
She thought it might have been something like this. It was true that parts of it had been difficult to talk about, and that parts of it had been difficult to hear—but none of it had been that difficult compared with actually going through it.
That was the silver lining, she was beginning to realize. Whatever the worst was that this new world could throw at her, she'd probably already faced worse back in Aperture.
"Did you have a good sleep last night, at least?"
She nodded, making a mental note to thank Clifford as soon as she was able to. She was actually sincerely grateful—it had been so nice to be able to rest somewhere where she knew that she was safe, for once.
Clifford was watching her closely. "There is one thing I wanted to tell you," he said, smiling excitedly. "Tonight, I have invited some very old, dear friends over for a party. You and Wheatley will be welcome to join us, of course, but you should know one thing… the celebration will be a reunion of sorts, but the reason behind the reunion is a little bit dark, I'm afraid."
Chell's interest was piqued. A party? She had never been to one. Or, not that she knew of, at least. Had Aperture had them, when she worked there? She supposed she must have been to one, at some point. Surely they had had Christmas parties. But why on earth would the reasoning behind a party be dark, she wondered?
Before she could think of how to ask what was on her mind, however, one of the many guests of the house went rushing past them with his arms full of decorations and Clifford held his arm out to stop him. "Hold on a second, Marcus, I want to go over the plans for tonight with you…"
He walked away, leaving Chell alone in the hall with nothing but the sounds of Wheatley's space game, still coming from the sitting room.
"I didn't leave the blue one for you for nothing, you know!" Wheatley's voice floated out toward her, clearly affronted.
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As the afternoon wore on, the atmosphere inside of the grand house became more and more infectiously cheerful as everyone began to anticipate the arrival of the guests. Chell, who had not previously had ample time to explore, was pleasantly surprised by how beautifully decorated it had become in just a few hours—the downstairs hall, with its many lit candles and hanging portraits, had been trailed with sparkling silver streamers; a wide banner had been hung from the top of the bannister in the entrance hall, that read 'Welcome to The Johnson House', and the roof was obscured by many helium-filled, multicolored balloons; and the kitchen was jam-packed with more kinds of food than Chell had previously imagined had existed, all ready to be taken upstairs.
The current occupants of the house who were not currently busy doing other things had been enlisted to help with this. Chell and Wheatley, who didn't have anything else to do and had no fancy clothes of their own to change into, grabbed a platter each and followed Jammers—who looked just plain weird in a suit versus his military-style uniform, in Chell's opinion—up the winding staircase and to the left through a set of huge, double chestnut doors and into a room she had never been inside of before.
It was, quite obviously, a mini-ballroom. At the head of the room sat the table on which all of the food was being placed; Chell, Jammers, and Wheatley all followed the throng to place their dishes on the table. The room was large enough to take up an entire quarter of the top floor of the house, and the outside walls had been decorated with many wide windows with velvet red curtains that had each been drawn back by a golden sash. In front of each window was a round table set beautifully for four, each complete with a polished, ornate kerosene lamp and shining cutlery. At the center of the room was a beautiful oak dance floor, and a huge, crystal chandelier hung from above.
She'd hardly had much time to finish looking around, however, when she was ushered from the room by the sound of the heavy doorknocker downstairs. She and Wheatley watched from the top of the bannister as Clifford threw the main, double doors wide open, and allowed the first arrivals of The Coalition inside.
"Welcome," he said to the room at large, "and welcome back to The Johnson House!"
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