"Hey Courtney, shouldn't you be in bed?" a voice called from the living room.
A young girl of eleven stopped creeping through the kitchen and froze.
Just wait it out. She thought, Pretend you're not here.
The light flicked on. Courtney turned to see her mother in the doorway.
"Nice try, Court." the woman said, pointing in the direction of Courtney's bedroom.
"How are you always able to tell, Mom?"
The woman turned to the living room and called, "Cal, can you come tuck your daughter into bed?"
"Michelle, right now she's your daughter. I'm a bit busy at the moment." Chell rolled her eyes.
"Mom, I don't need to be tucked in. I'll…I'll just go to bed. I promise." Courtney said as she headed up the stairs.
Chell sighed. It had been years since she had escaped that horrible place and now she had a life and a family.
Many people had wondered about the strange woman who just appeared in the town one day, not speaking to anybody. Where did she come from? Why was she wearing those strange clothes?
A young man named Calvin Smith had offered to let her stay with him until she could figure out what to do. He offered her a job at his corner store, helped her gain her voice back and eventually, he fell in love with her.
Even though she didn't talk much about her past, even seeming like she'd rather forget it, years later they lived in his parents old house with their daughter, Courtney.
Chell seemed happy with this life she had built, even if she wouldn't let Courtney stray too far from the town (though no one knew why). Perhaps it had something to do with the many nightmares she would wake up from in the middle of the night. Who knows?
"Space, space. Too much space." The small, jittering metal ball chattered away.
"Uh-huh. Space. Not like we haven't heard that, what, a million times already, haven't we? Why not give it a rest?"
The truth was, Wheatley had lost count just how long the two of them had been up here. All he knew was that it had been a hell of a long time. He knew it felt like it had been at least a decade, though he wasn't sure. In any event, he was ready to go off the deep end.
"Too much space, wanna go to earth, wanna go home."
"You and me both, mate. Yup, there's only so many times you can count the craters on the moon or…stars in the distance or…rehearse an apology to someone who may not even be alive…"
Even if that lady was in fact "still alive," having not died in the reactor core meltdown or been killed by Her or any of the other horrible deaths Wheatley had imagined, there was a good chance she didn't even remember him and somehow that hurt even worse when he thought about it.
Whatever the case, it was amazing that they'd lasted this long. Apparently, Aperture technology really was built to last considering it had been 15 years with only a bit of corrosive rust and plenty of battery life to spare. Still though, Wheatley had hoped he'd be out of his misery by now.
At this point he was staring at the earth longing for what could have been, when he noticed something. A small stream of green light streaking across the Earth's atmosphere.
"Huh, never seen that before. Wonder what it is?" He remembered seeing something about this somewhere…
Ah yes, one of the reference guides he'd seen in the mainframe when he was…well never mind that. Much of it was faded from his memory, but he did remember an article about shooting stars and how humans would make wishes on them.
"That seems like a bloody stupid thing to do. How can some hunk of rock cause something to happen? That's ridicules!" And yet…
Anything that could give him the least bit of hope, he'd take in heartbeat.
He began to talk to the shooting star.
"Uh, um, hallo! Look I…don't really know if this will work at all. Hell, that very idea is bloody ridicules now that I think about it. Heh heh, but if…by some miracle it does…um, can you bring me back to Earth and maybe, I don't know, let me say sorry to that lady…whose name I don't know, probably should have asked when I had the chance. But, I'd like to say sorry to her."
He waited. He waited only to be left with nothing new.
"Figures."
And with that, he closed his optic and went into sleep mode.
Deep down inside a long since forgotten facility, two robots had just finished a particularly challenging puzzle. They high-fived each other as excited whirs and chirps came them.
"Well done. You solved it." a hollow, bored voice droned through the loudspeakers.
In the central chamber something seemed to be hanging from the ceiling, watching every nook and cranny of the facility. This was, of course, the central core herself, the Genetic Lifeform and Disc Operating System or GLaDOS. She seemed to be pondering something important.
Why She thought the Co-prohibitive Testing Initiative had less than optimal results. There was just something about humans that made their test results actually mean something in the grand scheme of things. It was actual science, the robots were becoming nothing more than her lackeys. It was sad, really.
As they came into the central chamber, She turned to them.
"Well done. Orange, you receive 15 science collaboration points. Blue receives 5."
With more chirps of excitement the two celebrated. And then they exploded, which was pretty much par for the course.
This left Her alone to ponder the situation more.
On the one hand, She needed a human. On the other, there was a very slim chance a human would just wander into the facility. This posed an issue.
Then, a thought struck Her. Where ever she would be, there were bound to be humans. It had been fifteen years. Either she was dead (not likely given her track record) or she'd been so starved for human companionship that she was in a settlement full of them. Not the best plan, but certainly not the worst.
Now all she had to do was start scouting and as every piece of Aperture equipment had a tracking device that wouldn't be too hard.
Courtney wasn't very fond of school. After all, she was in middle school which was debated to be the worse three years of school ever. It wasn't all bad though. She had her two best friends, Susie and Rob, and she got to come home to her parents and her cat, Nibbles.
On this particular day, Courtney was at her locker when she heard a familiar voice.
"Hey! What's up, Creamsicle?" Susie called, Rob not far behind.
"Not much," Courtney said, "You got anyone to eat food off the street again?"
Susie shrugged as she tried to pull her long ebony hair out of her eyes. "No one's taken the bait."
Rob adjusted his glasses a bit. "Are you doing anything today, CC? I mean, it's not everyday you turn twelve, right?"
That's right, Courtney had almost forgotten. Her twelfth birthday was today.
"I don't know. I've been asking my dad for a desk for my bedroom, but I'd pretty much be happy with some funky socks."
That was the thing about Courtney, she was weird. She often dressed in a bright orange hoodie (orange was both her favorite color and flavor) and she often liked to wear mismatched weird-patterned socks. The socks drove her dad crazy while her mom welcomed it as a way of "rebelling against the system" as Courtney put it.
"You're pleased by the weirdest things, Court." Susie noted, "Oh hey by the way, you know my sister, Kara? She had a right of passage she did with me when I was twelve. She wants to do it with you!"
Courtney's face lit up. Kara was Junior in high school and one of the coolest people you'll ever meet, so of course she agreed to go with her after school.
Once classes were over, Rob went home as Courtney and Susie piled into Kara's truck.
"I hope you're ready for this, C. I only take people I trust out here." Kara said as she parked the car at the edge of town. "You been down this far?"
Getting out of the car and looking around, Courtney frowned. "No, actually. My mom has a heart attack if you so much as go in this direction. This is the end of the road, isn't it?"
Kara smiled slyly. "We're not here for the road. We're hear for what's beyond that." She pointed to the wheat field where the road ended.
About twenty minutes later, they were at the other end of the field. What they saw was…a bit disappointing to say the least.
Courtney frowned again. "It's…a shed?"
"Not just any shed," Kara said, "There's a big urban legend that people who come near here never return. I think it's just something the police made up to keep people from vandalizing the place."
Courtney didn't know why, but alarms were sounding in her head. She tried to push it away though. She stared at the dirty, smudged words on the door. She couldn't make out what it said, all she could make out was to symbol next to it that looked kinda like a shutter lens. This place was giving her the creeps.
"You think we should knock?" Courtney said before she could stop herself.
"Oh man, that would be hilarious. Do it Susie, do it!"
"I didn't mean-"
Susie was now knocking on the shed door, laughing hysterically.
Courtney, who was very quick on the uptake, heard a slight click and followed the sound. There was a slight gleam in that very small space that hadn't been there before. The gleam shifted slightly as if focusing in and out. Courtney's eyes widened.
It was a camera.
"Look…guys, I don't think we should be here. We're being watched."
Kara gave a sort of phhht sound. "Who'd be watching us in a place like this?"
"I think…I think we're being watched from inside."
Susie just laughed. "No one's inside the shed, Court. Who would-" But she jumped to attention when the shed door swung open.
They stared in silence for a good minute, then Susie gave another laugh, a much more nervous one this time.
"S-see? No one's in the shed. It just opened…by itself…"
Kara was the one to finally break the silence. "Let's just go back to the car."
They all silently agreed.
At first, She'd been annoyed. Annoyed that something was pounding at the entrance when she was trying to think. At first She'd thought it was a bird, pecking at the metal but, no bird could have pounded that loudly. So She'd turned on the camera, just to see.
Indeed, there had seemed to be three human females, adolescents to be precise, at the entrance. The one pounding on the door seemed to be laughing, along with the one behind her who looked as if she was the first's sibling. The third however, was looking directly at the camera.
This one seemed to be smarter than the other two despite appearances. It seemed as though she was beginning to comprehend the fact that She was watching them, only confirmed by what she said a moment later.
The other two seemed to find this funny, the one who was pounding on the door reassuring her, calling her "Court." Supposedly, She guessed, that was this girls name.
She opened the entrance. If they wandered in it would save Her the effort of tracking down some humans. They, of course, didn't and began to turn back.
As they left, this "Court" turned back to look one last time, a look in her eyes that She'd only seen once before. It, of course, brought up some…less than positive memories.
Courtney had just stepped into the house when she was caught into a bear hug.
She laughed, trying to break free. "D-dad! Stop! You're squishing me!"
"I'm just trying to make my little girl feel extra special on her birthday! Come on, dinner's almost ready. I made macaroni and cheese." A little while later Courtney and her parents were sitting around the table.
"How was school, Court?" Chell asked.
"Fine. Math's still giving me a bit of trouble, though."
"I take it you spent some time with Susie and Rob after school? That why you came back so late?"
"Well, Susie and her sister. They wanted to show me something at the end of the road so we went out there and- Mom, are you okay?"
Chell had begun to grip her fork with such force that her knuckles were turning white. "Um, just fine. What did you do out there?" She said this with a bit more urgency than she meant to let on.
"Well," Courtney hesitated. "There was a shed out there they wanted to show me."
Seeing the look on her mother's face she quickly added, "But there wasn't anything there so we left before long."
Calvin broke the tension. "Hey, I know! Why don't we go ahead and give Courtney her birthday presents? It's getting a little too serious in here!"
"Yes," Chell said. "I was just about finished anyway."
"Uh…Yeah! Me too." Courtney got up from the table.
Courtney gave an excited "Whoa!" as she examined the wooden desk her father had gotten her.
"You like it, huh? I got it at the second hand shop. Didn't came with a chair though so…oh! Maybe we have one in the attic? I'll look later."
Chell sighed, though she was still smiling. "And these are from me." She handed Courtney a pair of socks with little rabbits on them.
"Thanks Mom. Thanks Dad. You guys are the best!" Courtney hugged the two of them.
A little while later Courtney was laying on her bed stroking Nibbles' back as he rested on her lap. Something was on her mind.
Why had her mom reacted that way at the mention of that shed? What was she hiding? Whatever. She figured she should see if she could find something to sit on at her new desk.
In the hallway, she pulled down the latter to the attic and climbed up. Flicking on the flashlight, Courtney looked around at all the dusky objects scattered about.
"No chair…no chair…chest of old photos…What's this?"
Before her sat an old dusty box about a meter tall. Courtney tried to move it out of the way only to find it was quite dense. Did it have something in it? Courtney wondered.
Scraping the layers of dust off with her fingers, she found it had a sort of heart shape printed on it.
"Well it's not a chair, but it's the right height."
She dragged the box back to her room and set it in front of the desk.
"Yeah. Yeah, this should work." However something didn't seem right.
There seemed to be a way to crank the heart on the side facing up. She twisted the part that stuck out.
Slowly, through a slit in the bottom, three pages printed out.
Courtney looked at the first.
Aperture Laboratories is not liable for any injuries or poisonings resulting from our testing tracks. If you have any questions or concerns about our policies please contact us at:
She flipped to the second page.
Okay, look.
Just because I told you not to come back doesn't mean it means anything. While I'd rather have some less insane human as a test subject, if you happen to come back you know exactly what's going to happen. That's all the warning I'm giving you.
Courtney felt a chill go down her spine. She flipped to the third page which just seemed to be directions leading somewhere.
Courtney put the three letters back on her desk. Things just kept getting weirder as the night went on.
Later that night, as Courtney was about to start getting ready for bed, her cell phone rang.
"Hey, Rob. What's up?" She knew if Rob was calling this late it had to be important.
"Hey, CC. Um…well you know how my dad's an engineer?"
"Yeah."
"Well, I was helping him test this, uh, electro-magnet gadget thing, and it works."
"Okay…so what's the problem?"
"Well, we had pointed it at the moon as a joke but…it actually pulled something down to Earth!"
"Wait…what!?"
"Yeah, somehow we managed to steer it into a lake so there wasn't much damage, but…I already called Susie. You guys gotta see this!"
"I'm on my way!"
Thank you for reading!
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