Allan flattened himself against the floor the best he could in hopes of getting lower than the downed filing cabinet in front of him. He laid both palms flat beside his chest and lowered his body till his chin was resting on the floor. Lifting his eyes, he could see Madison across the room, hiding in the leg-cubby of the office desk. She was peering out from around the corner of it at him, and even through the dim red light and fifteen feet of space between them, he could make out the sheer terror in her eyes. He motioned for her to get back into the cubby as he tried his best to tell her it was going to be OK with his own eyes. She disappeared behind the corner of it.
Allan noticed his breath was coming too quickly and sharply. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath through his nose and slowly released it through his mouth. Whatever was heading to the room they were in, he was sure he'd need to be calm to face it.
Outside the room, the bowling balls were drawing close. Allan was sure there was at least more than one of them. A memory, isolated and foggy, drifted into his head; Throwing bowling balls down "Modern Lanes" bowling and recreational center; Losing to his friend by an embarrassing margin; Getting sick off one too many "world famous" Modern Lane Chocolate Milk Shakes. The memories made him smile a little, but they also made him sad. He was a million miles away from "Modern Lanes", and another trillion from those world famous shakes.
The sound had rose up a crescendo and was now reaching its climax just outside the doorway of the room.
Peaking his head slightly over the top of the downed filing cabinet, Allan watched them come in. Two more MATs like the one from Madison's room rolled in and came to an abrupt stop and pop in the center of the room, propping their oval-shaped, egg-white bodies above their stretching, tripod legs.
"Hello?" One of them spit into the room, childish and computer-like.
"Where are you?" The other followed in a pitch-perfect imitation of its counterpart.
Two red lasers, thin and straight as an arrow, shot onto the wall to Allan's right. He held a breath and stared at them wide-eyed. They danced there, swaying back and forth and up and down, but what they were really doing (and the thought of it terrified Allan in a strange way he couldn't quite place) was searching. Searching for Madison and himself to riddle their bodies with bullets.
"Hellooooo," One of them cried out melodically.
How seemingly happy they were was offsetting. If he didn't know they were fully-armed with machine guns, he'd swear they really did only want to play. It was the kind of voice you'd overhear at a child's playground.
"Room cleansing?" A MAT asked.
"Room cleansing." The other answered.
Allan wasn't exactly sure what those words meant, but their implication was pretty clear. When the sound of gears and machinery quickly floated over from their location, Allan was damn near positive the two rolling eggs were about to pour bullets into every inch of the room. His filing cabinet might provide some much-needed protection, but Madison's measly paper-thin desk would be torn to shreds. He needed to take action. Out of his peripheral, he spotted Denise: quietly sitting in her cube-formed patience. Her reddish-pink heart smiled cheerily at him, and then the decision was clear.
Adrenaline-fueled and anxious, Allan slid his body across the floor towards the locker. He gripped Denise around her edges and brought her up with him as he got to his feet.
"I see you." One of the MATs piped up.
"AAAAAAH!" Allan let out a primitive war cry and, without another thought, charged it, holding Denise in front of himself as a makeshift shield.
"Aaaaaaah!" The MAT echoed in its childish, comical way.
Denise collided with the MAT, and the little turret went flying backwards: its tripod legs looking silly and awkward as they flung up in the air. When the little eggshell finally hit the floor six feet back, its turrets exploded, raining bullets into the ceiling and wall beside its downed body. It rip-roared for five seconds before finally giving up.
"I don't blame you." It's voice came small and sad, and then its laser shut off and the red circle on its face waned to a black hole.
"Hello? Are you still there?" The other MAT called out. It's voice seemed to carry a nervous fear in it.
Allan was standing beside it holding Denise and still high from his adrenaline rush. He could see its red laser going wild off to the side he was on, almost being able to spot him but coming just inches off. He was outside its peripheral. Not knowing really what else to do, he took a step at it, pulled Denise back, and gave the thing his best baseball swing. The MAT flew into the wall. Homerun.
Like the first, it went into a frenzied, bullet-showering rage before finally accepting its defeat and shutting down. He watched the eye go black and another memory came to him. This one, however, was much fresher in his brain.
"Madison!" He called to her. "I did work here."
She slowly stood up from behind the desk, still wary of the MATs, but seeming to be calming down.
"You remember?"
"I remember. That eye. The eye on that little turret. I remember speaking with something like that…"
"Then you did sign the contract?"
My hand signed the paper. The paper was a contract.
"Yes. I can see my hand signing it. What was it? What's going on!?"
"Allan," She stepped out from behind the desk and approached him, "I think we're going through the exact same thing here. There was an ad. A newspaper ad. It was offering really good money, and was even tied to college credits somehow."
"Flexible scheduling… weekly pay… the only catch was…" Allan intervened, remembering the article now.
"No questions asked," Madison finished. "I thought it was some sort of experimental thing. For that kind of money though…"
"How could you turn it down?" Allan jumped in again. "I went to the building just to check it out, not really knowing what to expect, you know?"
"Same here."
"Only when I showed up. There was nothing there. An abandoned warehouse with a sole computer terminal inside it."
"Yea. Yea, exactly. The terminal had directions to go to a new place. Some sort of… science testing place."
Allan pressed his back against the wall and slid down to his butt.
"Aperture Science. I'd heard of them. The whole thing seemed shady. Wrong. But at the same time… it was so… exciting."
Madison joined him on the floor, sitting cross-legged across from him.
"I didn't think it was so exciting," She added, rubbing her fingers over her hand. "I was scared. But I was broke. It's not easy being a struggling college student. I had to check it out, Allan. What else was I going to do?" Her voice was bordering on tears.
"Hey, it's OK," He said and took her hand in his own. "At least you went for a good reason. I thought I was playing James Bond or something. Following the mysterious terminal and whatnot."
"Well look at us now!?" Madison yelled and the first tears rose to the bottoms of her eyes. "What are we going to do? Who is doing this to us!? WHY would somebody do this to us!?"
"Madison… I'm not so sure it's somebody at all. I mean… I never dealt with a real person. Did you?"
"I… I guess not." She answered, swiping her forearm against her eyes.
"I showed up at that facility - this facility - and walked through the doors. I never saw one person. There was another terminal in the lobby: a questionnaire with my name above it. I filled it out, I sat in a chair… I stared at this red glowing eye that was set into the wall near the terminal. I stared at it until it went black. Or maybe I went black, I can't even remember now."
"But how? How could that voice put this all together?" Madison sounded frantic, desperate for a clear answer.
"The ad in the paper, did it really have to come from a person? Is it crazy to think she could have submitted it. What if she has access to a bank account? A telephone line? Who knows how far her influence spreads. She might be a part of every computer in America: a bad virus with a shit sense of humor and a know-it-all attitude. I don't know what Glados is, Madison. Neither of us do, but I think we can both say with some confidence that she has power. At least here in these walls."
"And where does that place us?" Madison begged him for an answer: her eyes wide and searching. "Powerless? Helpless? Alone?"
"Not alone," He said confidently and squeezed her hand tighter. "Not alone. And I'm not so sure we're all that helpless either." He motioned to the downed MATs with his head. "Look around us Madison. She's not here. And if there's one place Glados doesn't have power, there has to be more. I think we can get out of here. Out of this. But we both need to stay calm and keep smart, because that thing we're battling is a machine. She may sound human and even act it sometimes, but she is a computer. A clever one, for sure, but like any computer, she can be beat."
Madison forced a smile onto her teary-eyed face, but Allan saw sincerity in it. He saw trust, and that was great because they would need to trust each other. He knew that for sure.
"I just don't understand why she wants us." She said, letting out a long breath of air, seeming to be calming down. "What is her goal? Why would she even bother risking someone finding her by putting that ad out."
"Well, don't forget the ad didn't lead to this Aperture Science place, and I'd bet you however she sent that ad in couldn't be traced back to here either. Glados is… calculated, but I think she needs purpose. I think she might need people around."
"Need us?"
"Well, yea. She is a computer program after all. If she's not serving her purpose, she doesn't even technically exist."
"What do you think her purpose is?"
"Make gadgets? Test them on people? Something along those lines."
"Well, I guess we can assume by that mans diary that her 'tests' can be a little extreme."
"Yea. She killed him. She probably killed everyone that worked here."
Madison let out another long breath and scooted over beside Allan. She put her hands behind her head, laced her fingers, and laid on her back. Doing so seemed to calm her even further, which seemed peculiar to Allan, but if it worked it worked.
"I'm scared." She stated as assuredly as ever.
"Me too."
"Well then show it every once in a while, will you?"
"I'll try." He answered, not knowing what else to say. He watched her laying next to him and her prettiness was apparent to him again. It had gone away in the intensity of the moments before, but it was back in full-swinging force now.
"Did you ever have a tree?" She asked him.
He thought about the question, the oddness of it, and decided to answer truthfully instead of ridicule it.
"No."
"I did," She told him and stared up at the black ceiling. "A big old oak one. A real fatty." She grinned and he couldn't help but grin with her. "That tree watched over my whole house growing up. Watched over everything and everybody in it. I really… I really think I maybe loved that tree." She stopped and squinted in remembrance. "I used to lay under it at night, just like this. That was… those were nice times."
Allan decided to go under the tree as well. He let his butt slide out, and shortly after he was laying on his back, hands laced behind his head, and staring up at the night sky as well.
"I have an older sister, but she didn't understand the tree like I did. She didn't understand the importance of it. She didn't understand that if you laid under it at night and stared at the sky long enough the tree became like a real person, you know?"
"Sure." Allan didn't know, but he was enjoying the story so much he just wanted to hear it continue.
"I remember laying under that tree one summer night when the sky was hitting twilight and going all weird-purple and the stars were just barely starting to poke out one at a time from behind it. My dad called me in when the purple turned to black and the temperature dropped and the crickets came out to sing their songs. I pretended like I was going in, but… I never did. I slept under the tree the whole night that night. That's… that's a really tree-bonding experience I guess." She laughed. He laughed with her. "When I woke up my skin was really itchy, I had gathered about three dozen little bites from all sorts of things in the grass. I didn't care though. The tree was there watching over me. He kept all the bad bugs away."
"That is a fat tree." Allan piped in. "You can't even see the top of it either."
Madison smiled at him, thankful he was playing along.
"Nope. Not this tree. You can see the constellations though, and if you squint through the branches and leaves, sometimes you can make up your own."
"Oh yea?"
"Yep."
They laid there in silence, each drawing up their own imaginary sky in their head. Though Allan wouldn't dare say it out loud and ruin Madison's picture, he couldn't help but keep seeing a big, floating red eye.
"I want to see that tree again." Madison whispered.
She rolled over to her side rested her head on Allan's arm. He heard her breathing change to the slow, calm sleep-pattern, and probably within seconds she was out. He hadn't realized how tired he had become himself, and just listening to her breathing was sending him into an impossible-to-resist daze. Sleep was at his door.
"I would like to see that tree to," He whispered back.
He fell asleep.
