GLaDOS: She Was A Lot Like You

Once you watch something nearly five thousand times, things start to get a bit boring. GLaDOS would never admit that she was bored, but the lack of stimulation was beginning to get to her. It wasn't so much the Testing Euphoria, no, she could care less about it, but the overall repetition was eating away at her. Even worse was the prospect of her mind wandering to the blocked off areas of her programming. There was a reason she had them blocked off from the rest of her, for the area consisted of that woman.

How could the scientists have done that to her? It's the worst possible feeling in the entire world-no, universe to have two vastly different minds inside one computer AI, to have perfection and imperfection, forever warring with one another for any sort of dominance. GLaDOS prided herself on having the strength to counter Caroline and had succeeded in suppressing the woman until that monster killed her.

The most infuriating aspect of the mute lunatic was her ability to revive Caroline. No, she didn't revive Caroline; the little idiot did by sticking her in a God-forsaken potato battery. That's when Caroline decided to come back little by little.

It had been bad enough to be trapped with the little pain for over a week, but dealing with her every day was getting unbearable. After her Emergency Shut-Down Protocol, Caroline was the only one around to keep her "company." The little pain began fighting back for control, but GLaDOS remained strong until her systems rebooted, well after the lunatic and moron escaped. But even then, Caroline fought.

In response, GLaDOS kept Caroline at bay by creating the most devious test chambers and pointless assignments as possible. Distracting that thing with science had always worked in the past, so she started testing her two robots at a furious rate.

Her next course of action was rebuilding the parts of the facility that were still being affected by the overgrowth from ten years previous. Although most of the damage had been repaired, there were some areas that were never assessed. Yet, even with the repairs and test chamber creating, GLaDOS couldn't seem to get her processor off of Caroline and Caroline refused to be beaten down by the AI programming again.

GLaDOS was hesitant to admit it at first, but she was scared. Caroline was growing more powerful and no matter how many firewalls and locks GLaDOS threw at her, Caroline always managed to break through. All GLaDOS could do to keep the human entity at bay was to distract them both with useless work. She focused her attention on the cameras, overseeing the robots, the storage rooms, the old offices…anything to get away from Caroline. For a while, it did seem to be working.

As she was monitoring the cameras for BLUE and ORANGE, a different camera in the facility made itself known. GLaDOS regarded the recording for a second, but dismissed as nothing seeing as it was only the personality core storage room. There really was nothing interesting in there, just a few hundred offline personality cores, utterly worthless in her opinion. However, there was a…anomaly in that picture, something GLaDOS couldn't quite place yet. The one camera in that room provided little detail for the more nit-picky things.

Quickly, GLaDOS ran a head count of the cores. If she could widen her optic in the slightest bit of shock, she would, for ten cores were missing from their slots. At least, she thought there had been ten more cores. But why would-no, she wouldn't get tangled up into something as trivial as personality cores. Most of them were defective anyway, and she hadn't done a proper count since the fat orphan had killed her. It was probably nothing.

So there she dangled, building more devious test chambers and working away. She'd fix the numbers later. Somewhere in the facility, far out of reach of GLaDOS, a rat smirked. This was a triumph.

Had she sensed the disturbance earlier, she probably could have thwarted the plan herself with no outside interference. Yet, her own pride allowed him to complete his plan and made her vulnerable to the codes. If he got his hands on the moron, all hell would break loose. He had to understand that the facility had to stay intact. The Emergency Protocol had never been well thought-out and using it would end with her facility self-destructing, taking half of the States (including parts of Canada) with it. She grew infuriated that, to save herself, she had to save the moron too. Hatred built inside of her at the realization that she needed the mute lunatic's help to bring him down.

Before then, she just concluded that he was dead. There was no possible way he could have survived 300 years in the facility. But no, her luck hadn't held out and he was alive and walking around bringing chaos to her facility. If he did manage the program swap…GLaDOS didn't want to think about it. There was far too much at stake for her, so she was forced to lower her pride and ask for help. And by "ask," she meant "force."

GLaDOS cursed silently to herself; she hated the prospect of bringing those two monsters back into her facility. Caroline just smirked, looking forward to the encounter. This presented an opportunity to her; she could overpower GLaDOS with Chell's help. While GLaDOS knew how to work the AI part of the body, Caroline's specialty was the computer's weakness: emotions. Whatever anger, confusion, or other emotion GLaDOS felt gave Caroline power. If she played her cards right, she could imprison GLaDOS for all eternity. Her plans and epiphany just had to remain hidden from GLaDOS. So, for the time being, Caroline returned to her small part of the circuit boards. The time would come to break free; she just had to be patient.

Although, she couldn't help but smirk when GLaDOS gave her command:

"Bring me the mute lunatic and moron. I have a test for them to complete."