Chapter 4

You really don't want to because of her attitude, but you're giving her the benefit of the doubt.

You took a deep breath, and you said your name out loud.

"Oh, that's interesting," she mused, turning away with a nodding gesture.

Huh, maybe she isn't so bad after all. You sigh in relief. She snapped her head back in your direction so quickly that you yelped this time.

"Did you think I meant your name? I could care less.

Honestly, I still can't tell what gender you are, I mean what kind of name is that?

Your parents or most likely your adoptive parents did not love you enough if they gave a name like that to you."

You scrunched your face in a grimace. "That's mean," you protested.

"I know," she replied, turning her chassis to face you again.

"It was very mean of them to name you that. I will give you a better name to go by."

You gave an exasperated sigh.

"That's not what I―never mind," you huffed, extending one hand out then both up in frustration.

She continued, "What's interesting is…that I now know you have the capacity to talk.

I was beginning to wonder if all homicidal orphans were mute, but it seems to only apply to one so far.

You on the other hand are apparently the verbal kind of homicidal orphan."

You're getting tired of her bull crap. "Ma'am one, I'm not homicidal, I was scared when I drew out the gun, and two, I am not an orphan," you said.

"That doesn't explain the pocket knife you drew.

You tried, albeit humorously, to stab me even though I am a good 1.5 meters high above you."

You grit your teeth. "I was angry. That's―" before you could finish, she interrupts.

"In any case, I would like to move on with the profile completion process.

Human, your identification is Test Subject #105312.

Hobble and wobble your way into the elevator as I begin briefing you on the testing procedures."

Groaning, you walk towards the elevator once the floor opened and the elevator tube slipped back into the chamber.

"Hmph, hobbly-wobbly my ass," you mumbled under your breath as you went inside the elevator.

"I agree," GLaDOS chimed. "Your ample posterior does have a tendency to do that."

You decided not to say more lest she one-ups you again.

As soon as the elevator closed, she said, "And by 'briefing' I meant beginning at once in a test chamber by dropping you in.

Like a stone. Made of lead."

The elevator then began descending.

Once you were out of sight from her, you did a razzberry in her general direction.

You came to a room just like before that's cylindrical that leads upstairs to a closed door.

Once the elevator stopped, GLaDOS begins speaking again as you leave the elevator.

"Before we begin any proper testing, you will be required to run these simple, non-lethal test chambers as a trial run for compatibility to perform these tests without any discrepancies."

"Non-lethal?!" you exclaimed as you stepped through the door and into the testing chamber.

"I know, I'm disappointed too," GLaDOS said in a saddened tone.

That is not what you're worried about.

The room was very simple and small with a giant floor button to your left and a metal cube to your right.

To the top right corner of the wall you're facing with the closed exit door, there's a camera trained in your direction.

"Due to the nature of this chamber's preliminary testing procedure, I am permitted to direct you in completing this chamber.

Please place the Weighted Storage Cube on the Fifteen Hundred Megawatt Aperture Science Heavy Duty Super-Colliding Super Button."

You stood for a minute, waiting for her to say anything else.

Is she mental right now? "Uh, is that thing heavy?" you say as you look at the camera and point to the box.

No answer. Whelp, you proceeded to walk towards the 'Weighted Storage Cube' as she calls it.

You bend to pick it up, anticipating its heaviness, but actually it's a lot lighter than it looks.

You take your time inspecting the design of the cube, tracing its crevices before walking over and dropping the cube onto the button.

"Well that was easy," you said proudly.

"Congratulations," she started to say. You beamed.

"You have achieved the testing record of wasting the most time to complete a simple test, even after I told you how to solve it." GLaDOS finished upon the exit door opening.

You frown. "Can't you just encourage me without throwing snark into it GLaDOS?" you complained as you walked out of the door and into another elevator room.

You hear what sounds like an emulated tired sigh. "Why do they always call me that?"

You decide to be the bigger person and simply explained it to her. "GLaDOS is your acronym.

I mean it would be tiring if we kept saying Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System."

"That's not what I meant," she responded.

"They normally pronounce it as 'Gladys', to which I don't understand that either."

A chill ran up and down your spine when she said that. "Um, who's 'they'?" you said a little softly.

"The scientists, of course," she added.

You swallowed hard to ask the next question, because it's been on your mind the moment you got here. "So, what happened to them?" Long pause.

"They were…terminated from employment here."

You received hot and cold shivers coursing through your body.

"You know: let go, thrown out, discharged, gotten rid of. Fired.

I could go through the entire thesaurus of similar terms, but those are my favorite."

You chuckled nervously. "Right," you said, pretending to play it cool.

There was a long pause as you stood in the elevator room.

Then she broke the silence, "Hey, remember what number I gave you as your Test Subject Identification Number?"

You paused before getting into the elevator to really think about it.

Before you could answer her though, she reminded, "105312, it's Leet speak."

You walked into the elevator and it started to descend once the door is closed.

"Basically, Leet speak is the form of communication in which alphabet letters are replaced with numbers.

105312 spells out the word 'loser'.

The one is an L, the zero is an O, the five is an S, the three is an E, and finally the one-two forms an R.

I thought it'd be nice to tell you that."

Forget everything you thought about being the bigger person.

Turn to page 7.