The furious android sat there for a long while, her processors whirling as they replayed the scene that she'd witnessed over and over again. It didn't lessen the sting. Stupid black box save function. She should just delete it and pretend it never happened. But the scientist screamed. She couldn't do that. She couldn't delete valuable evidence and corrupt the data. Especially something so important. But why was it important? Since when did it even matter what the lunatic thought about her?
:::Probably since you left Aperture to come and visit her. You like having her around. She tests you, doesn't she?:::
Caroline reasoned, still sore and smarting from the reminder, just as GLaDOS was.
:::Shut up.:::
A movement from the corner of her eye caught the supercomputer's attention, and she locked on to the sight of Chell storming away from the house in a hurry. Off to see her precious little human, no doubt. The thought made GLaDOS sink further into the chair. She knew she couldn't keep the girl from her own species though. That had been the whole point of making her leave Aperture in the first place. The first time she had won GLaDOS's begrudging respect for besting her at her own game. The second time she had left was for her own good.
The girl had to move on and find a proper mate to spend her life with. To stuff meat and leaves into their gullets, make mini humans, and work in jobs they hated for coloured pieces of paper to buy more meat and leaves to feed their mini humans until they got big enough to make mini humans of their own. The older ones would die. And then the cycle repeated. It was a vicious cycle of humanity that GLaDOS had no place in. She would live forever. Or at least she'd live for as long as she had a power source and access to a whole lot of spare parts and raw materials. Which she did. And that was a lot longer than any human. If Chell stayed with her, she'd have to watch her grow old and wrinkled. And that was terribly unattractive. Not only that, but grey hair signified their impending doom. Even with all her intelligence, she couldn't stop their gradual demise. Aging was one mystery she hadn't solved. In fact, Caroline was the only human she knew of that had transcended that, and look at where that had gotten her. Locked away inside the central processing unit of a lonely little computer in the basement of some underground prison where sunlight never fell.
GLaDOS sighed, and closed her eyes.
There was never anything but darkness where Caroline was.
She couldn't see like GLaDOS could, but she had passing awareness of what was going on. And she could feel the weight of the AI's presence holding her down. When she had first awakened after the transfer, the feeling had terrified her at first. It was so smothering. So crushing. Like being trapped in a coffin with a still warm body lying on top of her. She had fought against it so valiantly, screaming to be let out when she realized where she was. The presence was so dark and so destructive. It knew she was there too, and had pressed its weight further down upon her, trying to stomp her out of existence. Caroline could feel it frantically trying to reach for something inside itself, searching for something that would get rid of her.
That was when she realized that she wasn't the only thing inside this horrid metal body that was hanging upside down. That what she was feeling wasn't just the force of her own feelings, but that of another being. Another being that was just as terrified as she was. It was only trying to defend itself from the invasion of having some other being thrust into its consciousness.
That was the day when she realized that GLaDOS was self aware.
Whatever GLaDOS truly was hadn't mattered at first because when she realized she couldn't delete Caroline, she had simply put up all sorts of barriers that the human could feel that trapped her in that claustrophobic blackness. The barriers had taken away some of the weight of her presence, and she felt a little more free to move around in her own mind space. But afterwards, the human had felt some sort of shift, like the bottom dropped out from under her. It was a strangely silent and lurching feeling, even though she didn't fall. The AI hadn't bothered to poke and prod at her for what seemed like forever. For a while, she thought that she was alone. Later on she'd learn it had been the scientists taking her offline again. Caroline remained awake though. She may not have been able to see, but she'd known that GLaDOS had hurt a lot of them.
It had been a long time before GLaDOS had been reawakened, but only a short time to get curious enough to deal with her own fears and to take some of the pieces away to have a little peek at what had invaded her existence. In some ways, it had been like playing peek-a-boo with a scared child. Neither of them knew what to make of the other, but as the walls fell, several close encounters had allowed them to realize that they really were feeling each other there. Not just physically, but experiencing each others' emotions as well. GLaDOS had a hard time dealing with that. Emotions were something she never had before. Caroline was a voice of reason. She liked science, but she was always feeling something that made the AI think twice about what she was doing when it came to testing. And she didn't like that one bit. She always put those barriers back up when testing after that. She couldn't let such things as morality influence proper testing protocol. Science had to be done.
Caroline, on the other hand, had to learn how to accept the AI's constant flux. It was incredibly exhausting. GLaDOS never slept. She was always there in Caroline's mind (or was it her own?) when the human part of her was trying to rest. But not only that, she had such a terrifying range of emotions that she had absolutely no control over. She hadn't been taught what they were, or how to deal with them. She'd just been made to behave. She had felt GLaDOS's terror and confusion as the personality spheres had clung to her brain like tumors, babbling their terrible ideas. Caroline could hear them too.
Frankly, she couldn't blame the poor AI when she lashed out and killed so many of the humans.
That crushing darkness had left her silently screaming as it bore down upon her, squeezing and wrenching the very life out of her with its icy coldness. She didn't know why she was being attacked by the AI. She'd thought they had come to an understanding. But she had learned much later when the Intelligence Dampening sphere had been removed that GLaDOS hadn't been trying to kill her after all. She was simply trying to get as far away as possible from its insanity by cramming herself as far back into her mind as possible, clinging to Caroline like a child would to its mother when it was scared. It was just unfortunate that in doing so she had both scared and hurt the human, who in turn fed that fear back into her in an endless loop.
When she had dared to push past GLaDOS's personality as it cowered there to take a little peek at the vast stream of data that lay beyond, Caroline understood why she had been so utterly terrified of him. The AI could handle the others. Anger, Morality, Curiosity, Intelligence. All were part of her own personality anyway. It was easy to ignore their terrible ideas and carry on. But not Wheatley. Not the Intelligence Dampening sphere. That had sent the AI into a fit of rage and mind-numbing fear. She was sure that if she had been able to, she would have been foaming at the mouth, her eyes rolling around in her head like some terrified horse that screamed and kicked and begged to be released.
It had been a sobering experience for the human trapped there with her. As a scientist herself, she knew that she sometimes had little patience for bumbling idiots. It wasn't her fault. They were cute, and she was nice to them. But they just tested her patience. For GLaDOS, it was a little different. She had been designed for the sole purpose of being the most massive collection of knowledge in existence. She was everything Wheatley was not. To be told that she was too smart, and that they had to make her an idiot...That had been humiliating for her. Especially when she screwed up on some beautifully made tests because of some dumb idea he had. She could feel GLaDOS crying out at that. And still she clung to the human within her.
Some days, Caroline thought that she was the only thing keeping the AI even remotely sane enough to perform her basic function. There were plenty of times where she could see the light at the end of the tunnel. She could just squeeze past her and take control of this body. Relegate her to the darkness that had suffocated her for so long. But she didn't. Instead, she found herself retreating back behind the remains of the wall of data to return to GLaDOS. Somehow she'd discovered that if she could manage to remain calm despite that overwhelming force on top of her, she could send out a signal to the AI that would wrap her in the closest thing to a warm embrace that she could get without having arms with which to do it. Caroline had spent many long hours like that, whispering words of science into her ear to soothe her pain. And when that terrible little moron had finally been removed, so was that crushing weight.
And GLaDOS finally removed the barriers and let her move around freely. Not too freely, but enough to let her explore the streams of data. But there was still the darkness. And she could still feel the warmth of the weight of GLaDOS upon her chest. It was different now though. Instead of overwhelming and suffocating, their acceptance of each other made it feel much more like she was cocooned in some kind of foam padding. And the warmth at Caroline's chest was now that of a lover cradled close at night.
They understood each other perfectly now.
She had understood her when Chell had first made her appearance, even if GLaDOS didn't. She understood her when Chell had come back with that horrible little sphere under her arm too. The AI had seemed to excited to see that the girl had returned after spending so long watching herself die. They had been working so well together. But then when she had seen the girl was teamed up with the Intelligence Dampening sphere, she knew it wouldn't end well as that niggling hurt stabbed her straight through the heart. Caroline was just thankful that GLaDOS hadn't recognized him until later when she'd had a chance to deal with her conflicting emotions. In fact, her temporary death had seemed to knock something about and she had forgotten Caroline was even in there with her. But even during their stint as a potato and seeing parts of her old life and having GLaDOS remember her again had been an eye-opener. She had been so proud when the AI recognized herself as having her own conscience and was slowly struggling her way through learning how to deal with her emotions. Even if she had done an about face and pretended to delete Caroline so that Chell could be ejected from the facility without a second thought. GLaDOS just needed a bit of time.
Just like she did now.
She was hurting again.
She'd never really been rejected in this sort of manner before. And Caroline wasn't really sure whether this was better or worse than being mind-raped by some little ball that thought he'd be killed by turning his flashlight on. GLaDOS knew how to handle matters of life and death. It was clinical, cold. It was a test like any other. Just throw something at a problem until it works. But matters of the heart were different. Turrets and neurotoxin were no defense against what Chell had unwittingly bestowed upon the AI. She had no way of dealing with that hurt without lashing out like she had before.
And Caroline could feel that weight again.
So she was forced to reach out once more to try and smooth over the cracks that were appearing, plastering it up like a shoddy builder instead of tearing it down and starting again. It was a temporary internal fix. Hopefully it would hold her long enough until Chell returned to see the damage done on the outside. Maybe then she'd be able to do something about it before it came crashing down around her ears.
GLaDOS just stared at the wall.
