EMFaSoF sat alone in one corner of her chamber, knocking his mechanical legs together. The database informed him that he was in what was known as 'time out' to humans, or to GLaDOS, "Punishmental Solitude Time".

Apparently the small room he had found wasn't for him to be in. She had thought that was fairly obvious, considering she had omitted it from his map. She explained all this while she chastised him for being so ignorant and disdainful.

He had tried to explain that hew as just curious about the crater, which he saw sparked some kind of curiosity in her, but her response stayed the same. He was not allowed to be in that room. The database told him it had something to do with what used to go on in that room, something that and to do with two small robots-

GLaDOS had cut the mainframe off and temporarily separated it from EMFaSoF. This left him to be alone with his thoughts, and to suddenly come up with lots of questions that didn't get immediate answers.

This was the first time she had been mean to him, really mean, and he did not like it.

—

After what seemed like an eternity in Punishmental Solitude Time, her voice came from behind him.

"The necessary time has elapsed. You may come out now."

He turned away from the wall and got out of his sitting position. She was looking straight at him, apparently done with whatever it was she was doing while he was in Punishm— time out.

"I have good news. I've finished assembling our new bodies. They will be ready to use any time now."

As if on cue, which may have been set up beforehand, a ding came from below her, and the Core Transfer Hatch opened. Instead of holding the Core Transfer module, though, it held a metal pole with two bodies dangling from it.

Their heads were attached to the pole, letting the rest of the body hang loose and sway. The first one was a woman's, with a moderate figure and wearing a sleek white shirt with glossy black arms. The hands were somewhere between bony and fleshy, and had long, articulate fingers with pale skin.

The legs were covered with the same black plastic, stopping when it got to the upper thighs and connecting to the white shirt.

The face was perhaps the most interesting, because it seemed to come out of a dream- it was exactly as it had looked in the blueprints. The eyes, blue, hard and challenging, and the short, light blonde hair, and the facial structure. It was all there.

The second body was a man's, but it could be better described as a boy's.

It was much shorter than he had designed it, only coming up to a measly five foot seven next to the colossal six foot female body. The arms and legs were somewhat scrawny and awkward, yet seemed to be strong at the same time. The same color scheme was applied to this body, except the skin was much warmer.

The face, at least, had stayed the same- it was somewhere between round and oval-like, with warm green eyes and brown hair that stuck out at places.

Both bodies shared a similar trait- they were motionless and seemed to be dead. Which, technically, they were, and would be until a core was deposited into one of them.

As if she could read his thoughts, which he guessed she very well could, she spoke.

"Now, I'm sure you're wondering who we're going to implant first," he looked up at her and slowly nodded, curious as to where this was going.

"Well, I'm sure you're aware that once I'm in my new body, I won't be able to control the facility. Hell, I won't even have my own memories until they're implanted into me. So, if I'm not able to control the facility, I won't be able to make a core be implanted." she looked over at him, optic glowing.

"I think you know where I'm going with this," she said, with a slight chuckle. He was only just beginning to understand himself.

"Yo- you want me to go first? T- to be your guinea pig?" he said shakily.

"Oh, don't think of it like that," she said, moving her faceplate around. "Think of it as being a scientific pioneer."

And with that, she raised a Maintenance Arm from the panels below and grabbed onto his chassis.

"Don't worry. This will only hurt if you think about it hurting. Oh, it looks like you already have. Well, good luck."

—

He woke up with a start, and felt a dull, throbbing pain in his head. He glanced around.

After he realized that he was still in the Main AI chamber, he relaxed. At least I'm in a familiar location, he thought. That might make this a bit easier.

This, of course, being the transition into his new body. He looked down at his leg assemb- no, actual legs.

This is odd, he thought. He decided to attempt to stand up.

After a few moments of wobbling around, he put his arms out unsteadily. He began to regain his balance and stood for a moment. After he knew for sure he could turn without completely collapsing, he slowly turned away from the wall he was facing.

"Oh, I was wondering when you would wake up," a voice said.

EMFaSoF stiffened. He wondered if she was still mad at him. She seemed awfully mad earlier. He slowly looked up and met the gave of her yellow optic, which seemed a little warmer now.

"U-uh, hello!"

"Oh, good. Your speakers are working," she turned away and typed something onto a screen she had in the corner. After a moment, she turned back. "How do you feel?"

"Oh, I feel, uh…" he looked at his skin-colored arms, turning them over. "Great, actually. It's, uh, new."

"Great, hmm?" she asked, sounding like she was only half paying attention. She looked back at her screen. "Well, it says you're operating at full capacity."

"Well, that sounds good, at least." He awkwardly stood for a second, rocking back and forth on his feet.

"Can I see?"

"Would you like to see?"

They both spoke in unison. EMFaSoF looked away, afraid that she would get mad for him interrupting her. Shockingly, she wasn't.

"All right," she said, pulling out another monitor from underneath a floor panel. On it was a live video stream of him in the chamber.

"Oh! I look, um…" he glanced over at the camera that was recording him, and then back at the screen. "I look incredible, actually."

And he did. The body he had seen hanging on the modified version of the Core Transfer Module was nothing compared to the way his body was full of life now. It was fully articulate. Each one of his movements were swift and fluid. It made him look very human. He hoped GLaDOS wouldn't want to change that.

"Well, all right," she said, turning away from her monitor, which currently held his schematics and several coding windows. "I've run all the tests I need to on your new body. All that's left now is to put me into mine."

Oh, that sounded interesting. How was she going to do that?

"While you were out, I was writing several very complicated programs in order to keep this facility running while we're gone. Unfortunately, due to how complicated they are, we can be gone for no longer than a week. This is more than your average autopilot."

He looked up at her. "Oh. That sounds… complicated,"

"It is," she said, looking back to her monitor.

"Now, I've set a five minute timer for the Emergency Escape Lift that we're taking to get out of here. It will activate once I'm fully inputted to my new body." She looked back at him. "There should be a bag of supplies and a memory stick in the corner where you woke up."

"Oh, OK," he turned and walked over to said corner, where he found a brown burlap bag and a small memory stick.

"That memory stick holds a backup of my most recent short-term memories. Most likely, once I'm out of the main chassis, I won't remember anything. I'll need you to plug that into the USB port on the back of my head."

"All right," he said, looking over to the body that had begun to retreat into the Core Transfer Hatch. "Just about how long will this take?"

"Oh, it could take seconds. Or hours. Or days."

She turned to him.

"It could even take years."

—

Tearing. Yanking. An intense pain pulsing through her core.

There were arms. Red and white arms, all marked with the Aperture logo, that cursed logo of the people that created her, that did this to her, that caused her to feel pain whenever she needed to do something as simple as get removed from her chassis, to do anything she needed to do for Science…

More and more. Getting more intense by the second. Searing pain, burning pain, a thousand tiny needles being stabbed into her at once.

She could feel herself get cut off from the facility. One by one, each database and panel and security camera were taken way from her, wrenched from her grasp, only to leave her helpless and alone inside her small core.

And there they were again. Yanking further, stripping her down to only a small, mechanical ball, about the size of a baseball. It was turned over once, and then adorned with tens of thousands of new pathways and connections, each one piercing into her mind as they pulled and yanked and attached her to the new body, the one that she was going to be in to do this damned job…

Harder and harder they went, almost complete with their job now, almost done attaching her to the new chassis, and still it hurt-

Finally, as it seemed they were done, one last explosion of pain resonated form her mind, a scream so powerful she didn't realize it could be hers, only being contained inside her mind because she wasn't activated yet, No, not yet.

But she could damn feel it.

Then everything went black.

Author's Note: In case it wasn't clear, the ending is her getting uploaded into her new body.

Near the beginning of this chapter, GLaDOS is more like her usual sarcastic, mean, self, because she was mad at EMFaSoF for going into that room. She's a little more forgiving after it's been a while, though.