Chapter 21: Impact Parameter
In orbital mechanics, the impact parameter (also called miss parameter, closest approach distance, or periapse radius) is the measurement of the closest distance a spacecraft can get to a celestial body without being pulled in by its gravity well.
If a ship's trajectory drops below this threshold, then an impact should be anticipated.
"Black Mesa did what?"
Chell nodded earnestly. She mimed an explosion, letting her arms expand in a vast circle. She didn't know much about the actual resonance cascade (besides what she'd overheard) but what she did know was that the Combine's current occupation of Earth could be traced directly back to Black Mesa.
"I mean, I knew they were second-rate, but really? They're the ones that caused it?"
Chell nodded again, a bit more grimly.
GLaDOS made a frustrated noise and walked a lap around the observation room. The one that they were in—above an active co-op chamber—was large for an observation room and had room for a table, but that was it.
Chell stood next to the window, leaning against the wall as she looked down at the chamber. A rolled-up piece of large paper, secured with a rubber band, leaned against the wall as well.
"Of course they would. If anyone could mess up that badly, it would be them," GLaDOS said, at a volume that would suggest speaking under her breath. "This wouldn't have happened if they weren't trying so desperately to keep up with us." She paused, glancing over. "What model were they using?"
Chell lowered her eyebrows. Model?
"Long distance teleportation model," she said, as if that clarified things.
The confusion must have been evident on Chell's face. "Oh, come on," GLaDOS said. "I thought you were a physicist."
"Not that kind!" Chell emphasized.
"You should at least know your basic teleportation models."
"I worked here," she signed, moving her upturned palms in circles, as if GLaDOS had forgotten this fact.
"Yes. Here. At Aperture Science. Designing test chambers. For use with a teleportation device."
"I don't know how it works," Chell signed.
"Neither did Black Mesa, apparently," GLaDOS said. "How did they even mess up so badly that they allowed for that kind of long-distance teleportation? I mean, even we were able to do that correctly. Once." When Chell gave her a puzzled look, she clarified, "Well, we succeeded in teleporting it out. It was just getting the boat back here where we ran into trouble."
Boat?
Chell's confused look did not dissipate. This information was only making her feel more lost than before, so she decided to let GLaDOS keep going, diving into the merits and flaws of different teleportation models as well as Aperture's history of experimentation with them. Chell half-listened, paying more attention to the cadence and tone of her voice rather than the content of her sentences.
As she half-listened, she thought about the robot's voice in general. She had noticed recently that, over time, that voice had trended back toward the more robotic voice that Chell was used to. It had been so gradual that she hadn't noticed until moments like now. It made sense—even though the more human-sounding voice had helped Chell avoid some instant panic reactions, it still had made her uncomfortable in a different way. Easing back into her regular voice made sense, especially as Chell began to move past some of that instant dread.
The only time, at the moment, where she still felt that involuntary flash of adrenaline was whenever she heard the voice over the loudspeaker in a large, echoing space. Not only did it remind her of testing, but it doubly reminded her of the Combine OverWatch voice that had bounced around the city like a persistent hum.
The first time she'd heard it, she'd nearly frozen in her steps, wondering if—somehow—the robot was there.
She tuned in for a moment.
"—probably stole our Calabi-Yau model too while they were at it—"
She tuned out again, making a note to bring this up if she ever needed to occupy GLaDOS's attention. Sort of like how she had distracted the co-op bots with a highlighter. Well. A lot like she had distracted them with a highlighter. She was curious to see how long GLaDOS would go before she ran out of her highlighter fluid.
She turned her head, shifting her attention down to the co-op bots. They were already midway through the testing track, but were running into problems with this chamber in particular, which relied on synthesizing the information so carefully taught in previous chambers.
For some reason that Chell could not imagine at all, they were having difficulties placing hard light bridges while being flung through the air at high speeds. They kept either missing the shot, smacking into the opposite wall, or falling into acid, or all of the above. Chell had lost track of how many times they had been reassembled in the last hour alone. It wasn't even particularly challenging as far as puzzles went. It was primarily a timing and dexterity issue.
She watched as P-body set up an endless fall loop for ATLAS, and how ATLAS took another stroll to the edge of the acid pit in case there were additional portal-friendly surfaces that they had somehow missed. A few chimes from P-body brought its attention back. The blue bot made a couple of warbling chirps, gesturing out to the deadly goo, then turned back to its inspection. P-body's chirps became more demanding as it gestured toward the loop.
This was only the first section of this particular chamber, too. They were going to be here a while.
When ATLAS didn't return, P-body bounced on its feet and looked around the chamber. When it spotted Chell in the window, it gave a (thankfully muffled) robotic shriek and jumped up and down, gesturing to ATLAS. When ATLAS didn't look fast enough, P-body used the ping tool. Then used it three more times, until the blue bot also spotted Chell and bounded over close to P-body.
Chell raised her hand and gave a small wave.
The bots exchanged a look. ATLAS gave a small, jerky wave in return, while P-body lifted its three-fingered hand and—to Chell's mortification—folded in its two other fingers and enthusiastically flipped Chell the bird.
Suddenly this thing she had impulsively taught the bots as a joke was feeling a lot less funny. She couldn't help but shoot a glance over her shoulder at GLaDOS, who was still talking.
"—not even surprised anymore that Black Mesa was behind a worldwide apocalyptic event," GLaDOS said, waving her clipboard in the air.
Chell twisted back to the bots and waved her arms diagonally across her chest in an 'abort mission right now' wave.
Thankfully, the bots saw her more animated wave and matched that energy, shifting into two-armed waves from both of them. Chell felt a bead of sweat on the back of her neck.
Meanwhile, GLaDOS began to wind down from her rant. She was just about to shoot off one final barb directed at Black Mesa when she glanced at Chell and felt an emotion spring up, one strong enough to fizzle out the tail end of her rant. She trailed off mid-sentence.
There was just something about seeing Chell there, against the diffused light of the test chamber, that ensnared her attention. The way that she was so casually leaning against the wall, arms folded loosely as she watched the bots below—it brought up a strong emotion inside of GLaDOS, as if this soft light had somehow smoothed out her own hard edges, if only for this moment.
It wasn't just the atmospheric lighting.
It was the way that Chell looked almost relaxed.
It was the way that, despite seeming laid back, she also intently watched the co-op bots, eyes tracking like a leopard.
It was the way that she had trailed GLaDOS through the past three observation rooms—something Chell would not have been interested in before rediscovering her history with Aperture.
But now Chell was here, in the observation room, by her own choice, and GLaDOS could almost feel those intense gears of Chell's mind twist as she methodically broke apart these chambers in her mind, disassembling it into their bare components.
And right now, they were both here. They were both here and both working on testing things—together. By their own choice. GLaDOS certainly hadn't asked Chell to do this—Chell had done it all on her own. And it was good.
It wasn't just the fact that Chell was in the observation room, GLaDOS realized. It was the fact that they were there together.
Together.
That was something GLaDOS was getting used to. Though they often kept to themselves, something had shifted in the weeks since that evening in the records room. They ended up in the same places together, more often. Sometimes by accident, but mostly by choice.
Chell had become even more communicative, and GLaDOS was building a working knowledge of the various taps on the robot's shoulders and arms and what they meant, and how Chell communicated levels of urgency and tone based on how many times she tapped to get her attention, how fast those were, how much of her hand she used (a single light finger on the top of the shoulder versus a full palm on the side of her arm) or if Chell held on to her arm for a moment afterward. There was so much embedded in the ways Chell spoke, and so much of it had been opened up by GLaDOS simply allowing the woman to touch her arm when necessary.
And that was just one example. Even more could be gleaned from her expressions, which GLaDOS had realized could contain whole thoughts and sentences rather than just the manifestation of an emotion. Reduced levels of stress overall had allowed GLaDOS to spend more time cataloging these expressions and micro-expressions and how they worked in tandem with every other avenue of communication that Chell employed.
The AI was getting a better understanding of not only what Chell was feeling, but what she meant, even when no words were exchanged at all. It often required for GLaDOS to state out loud the question that she thoughtwas being asked, so Chell could correct her if she was way off—and for GLaDOS to demonstrate she understood some of what was being asked of her. She was trying.
Overall, though, even when her interpretations were not fully accurate—which was frequent—Chell didn't seem to mind clarifying. In fact, she almost seemed happy to clarify.
Sometimes, GLaDOS noted, she had even seen Chell smile.
Like now. It was a suggestion of a smile, but she could still see it in her eyes—her infinitely complex and expressive eyes—as Chell looked over her shoulder at GLaDOS. A split-second later, Chell's eyebrows shifted, asking a question, and GLaDOS realized that she had been staring.
GLaDOS broke eye contact and looked away, her gaze instead catching on a tube of rolled-up paper propped against the wall beside Chell. "What's that?"
Chell glanced down at the paper, considering something for a moment before picking it up. Then, she held it out, offering it to the AI with an expression that GLaDOS took to mean 'go ahead, take it'.
GLaDOS's look was still slightly suspicious, lingering on Chell for a moment before curiosity got the better of her and she grabbed the tube, rolling off the rubber band as she took it over to the table.
The edges of the drafting paper curled as GLaDOS tried to lay it out, so she set down her clipboard near the top, and then pressed one hand against the left edge and used her other hand to start unrolling it to the right.
After an inefficient roll or two, Chell came over and placed two palms down on the left edge of the paper, one on either side of the robot's hand.
GLaDOS hesitated, focused on Chell's hands for a moment—those careful hands that had so gently touched her own, radiating warmth so much so that the residual heat had lingered long after Chell had pulled away. Then, she lifted her own hand and continued to unroll, the process going much smoother now. The offer of Chell's help had distracted her, and she didn't fully comprehend what she was looking at until the paper was fully unrolled.
And then it had her full attention.
GLaDOS was momentarily speechless as she began to scan the document in front of her. Thoughts were darting in, but fragmented, like a glitch that was not a glitch, and it was like she couldn't say anything at all.
"Is this…?" she eventually said, not even needing to finish the question before Chell nodded.
It was a hand-drawn design for a cooperative testing initiative test chamber.
"This is…" GLaDOS hesitated. "You made this?" She had to ask, just in case it was something that she had found stashed behind a desk somewhere.
Chell, who had been intently studying her the entire time, gave a nod.
GLaDOS pressed a hand to her mouth as she continued to inspect the plans. It was good. Really good. Better than anything she had thought Chell was capable of designing, despite knowing her decorated history in design.
Not only would this test be a mental and physical challenge for the bots, but it would also challenge their abilities to communicate —especially communicating complex information within a short period of time—which was something GLaDOS had yet to fully explore.
Had Chell noticed that?
And GLaDOS looked over at Chell, and really looked at her, and she was struck once again by the overwhelming beam of pride that she'd felt while seeing Chell illuminated by the backdrop of the chamber, except this time it was as if that light glowed from within Chell.
GLaDOS was not a robot that was capable of tears—nor did she ever want to be capable of tears. Her understanding of the physiological mechanism was that it was born out of an abrupt and intense shift in emotion, or out of an excess of emotion. She never understood it before—never understood why the human body needed to expel emotion in such a literal and messy way.
Not until now, when she was experiencing an abrupt excess of a mess of positive emotions.
Eventually GLaDOS looked back at the paper. The test chamber design. The test chamber design that Chell had created.
The wonderful, incredible, brilliant design of a test chamber that could only have been created by an equally brilliant woman.
It brought a warmth to her metaphorical heart, and this one had no dependencies upon internal temperatures.
"It's…" she paused, searching Chell's face. "Thank you," she said, so soft Chell almost didn't hear it.
And then Chell smiled, a smile so soft that GLaDOS almost didn't see it.
An explosion from the chamber beneath snapped her out of her momentary trance. GLaDOS gave a huff and strode over to the window so forcefully that Chell—just standing to the side of the table and not blocking the window at all—slid out of the way.
The AI looked down into the chamber at the scorch marks on the panel that had marked Orange's high speed crash. Already, the reassembly machine had stirred to life in the antechamber, and soon enough Orange had joined its partner back in the chamber.
"I thought you'd be faster at this," GLaDOS said, broadcasting into the speakers below, "but I can appreciate the desire to stop and smell the testing. That other scent you smell? That's the stench of my utter disappointment in you."
When the bots heard her speak, their attention snapped up toward the observation room and the figure they saw through the patterned glass. Blue made a few incomprehensible noises and then lifted a hand, and Orange did the same.
"Yes, I see you, Orange," GLaDOS broadcasted to the chamber below. Chell couldn't help but notice that when she did this, the mouth on the android didn't move. An unnerving reminder of the AI's existence and influence beyond that body.
After a moment, Orange gave a more enthusiastic wave of its arm. "Enough of this. Let's get back to work," GLaDOS said, her patience thin.
Meanwhile, ATLAS, not wanting to be outdone by P-body, lifted both of its arms and started waving. Then, it bounced up once, as if remembering something, and then lifted one arm skyward—
"All right. I'm officially no longer paying attention to you."
—and made the gesture that it had seen its partner make earlier. Two fingers folded in, one finger raised to the sky.
"I'm seriously not paying atten- STOP THAT RIGHT NOW!"
The sudden increase in her voice boomed in the chamber beneath, the force of it enough that Chell placed a hand on the table she'd taken refuge behind to stabilize herself, but instead of landing on the table, her hand landed on the clipboard.
Chell glanced down and picked it up, then glanced at the door, wondering if she could dart out of here before—
"You!" GLaDOS twisted from the window and pointed an accusing finger. "You taught them that."
Chell reflexively pulled the clipboard to her chest upon the sudden motion, but then relaxed slightly. She did not deny the accusation, but instead gave a guilty grimace. Not because she felt guilty. Only because she'd been caught.
"I knew it. You're teaching them bad habits." She glared.
And? Chell just raised her eyebrows.
"Now they're getting distracted while testing. As if they needed help with being even worse at their jobs."
Chell's look remained unconcerned and she gave a tiny shrug. What did GLaDOS expect her to do about that? The robots had already been taught the middle finger. Sure, they didn't know what it meant, but there was no way they wouldn't remember that it had provoked such an intense reaction.
GLaDOS's glare intensified. "I don't like your tone."
At this, after a brief delay, Chell laughed.
The noise of it was so unexpected and loud that it caught GLaDOS off-guard. She shifted on her feet, processing. No fewer than three emotions sped across her face.
Laughing? Chell didn't laugh. Not often, at least. She frowned, backtracking. Why had she even laughed in the first place? She hadn't made any jokes. GLaDOS reviewed her recording of their exchange, and then looked at it a second time.
Caroline couldn't see the footage, but spoke anyway. "She's laughing because you criticized her tone, and she didn't even say anything. She just gave you a look."
"Well. You know what I mean," she said. GLaDOS tried to shrug it off, the way that a cat pretends nothing happened after they stumble. She looked away from the smiling Chell, her attention catching on the clipboard tucked into the woman's arms. "Hey," she said. "That's mine."
Chell raised an eyebrow. Then, an idea came to her. She straightened her posture to an almost exaggerated way, and did her best to hold out the clipboard the way that she'd seen GLaDOS hold it earlier.
"Oh, come on. I don't look like that," GLaDOS said flatly, though a part of her wondered if she really did look like that. She looked pretty stuck-up, the way that Chell was postured.
Chell arced her head so that she was looking down her nose at the papers. She glanced at GLaDOS, raised an eyebrow, and then moved her hand as if scribbling a note down about the robot.
"Truly hilarious," GLaDOS added, then held out an open hand.
Chell relaxed her posture slightly, side-eyeing the robot before she started to read the contents of the clipboard. She glanced at the first page, but couldn't really tell what it was about, so she flipped through the other few pages quickly, but that didn't help her either. The print was so tiny she would need her glasses to read it without squinting so hard she'd hurt her face.
"Okay, you've had your fun," GLaDOS said, her patience wearing thin. "Give me that."
Chell glanced up just long enough to see the robot's glare, then pretended to read the clipboard. A slight smile rose on her face.
"Oh, come on," GLaDOS said. "That's mine." She reached out a hand (again) and Chell pulled the clipboard close. Then, she began to walk toward Chell's side of the table.
But as GLaDOS took a few steps, Chell also took a few steps, circling to the side to keep the table as a barrier in between them. It was just wide enough that GLaDOS couldn't reach across it and grab the clipboard from Chell.
"Really?"
GLaDOS took faster steps, and Chell darted around the other side of the desk. They circled it for a few more rounds, until they were stationary for a moment, both watching one another.
"Come on. Give it back."
Chell kept a wide stance, ready to push off in either direction. She smiled. GLaDOS, however, did not smile.
Finally, GLaDOS feigned to the right, convincing enough that Chell darted in the opposite direction. But GLaDOS pivoted immediately, moving to the left instead and crashing into Chell.
Chell made a surprised, oof sound as she hit the robot and scrambled to steady herself, then raised the clipboard above her head.
"Hey!" GLaDOS grabbed onto Chell's shoulder and reached up, but Chell went up on her tiptoes and leaned her arm away.
GLaDOS made a half jump to grab it, but Chell pulled it close against her chest. She wrapped her arms tightly around it and curled forward, all the while making that sound again that GLaDOS would later recognize as laughter.
"Hey, come on," GLaDOS insisted, reaching for the clipboard. She tried to grab one of her arms, but Chell twisted down and away, keeping her back as a shield between the clipboard and the robot. The armadillo approach.
"Seriously, give it to me." This time, GLaDOS reached around both sides of Chell from behind her, and for a moment they were in an awkward hug—robot touching human, with her arms wrapped around her. Except those hands weren't hugging Chell, but blindly grabbing for the clipboard.
Chell made another surprised noise and curled farther forward—now nearly bent in half—but GLaDOS managed to get a hold on the clipboard and yanked.
As GLaDOS wrenched it away, the board clipped her chin and sent a spike of pain through Chell.
And suddenly she wasn't at Aperture anymore but back on the surface, moments after being struck by a member of the civil patrol. The world flashed in front of her, and suddenly it was too much—the brightness of the sky, the floodlights, the overwhelming background chatter of the Combine OverWatch voice, the inconsistent buzzes of manhacks and machinery, and the smell—god, the smell, the smell of a city slowly rotting, meant to sink into the ground with its inhabitants. She threw two arms up and around her head, bending forward.
Chell kept her arms there, hands clasped around her head, frozen in place, her eyes open but unseeing. Her body quaked. A faint taste of blood soured her mouth. She didn't move, and the trembling grew more pronounced, enough that she had to push one hand against her knee, the other arm still shielding her head.
"Ugh. There we go," GLaDOS said, already turned away toward the observation window. She smoothed out the papers and re-clipped them so that they were perfectly aligned once again. As they should be.
"Wow. Another moment ruined," Caroline said.
The AI paused. What moment? All she had done was take back something that belonged to her. That was perfectly within her rights.
Caroline added, "You've developed quite the talent for that."
GLaDOS frowned, then pivoted from the window and saw Chell remained exactly where she'd left her. In nearly the same position, too, even though she had no clipboard left to protect.
Yet something had changed.
Chell's entire body was trembling. Just barely. Perhaps not significantly enough than an outsider would notice, but GLaDOS did.
What? Why was she shaking?
"See what I mean?" said Caroline. "You hurt her. Excellent job." Her voice was dry.
For Chell, the world of the enrichment center had begun to phase back in one block at a time. The stale air of the room, the bright of the lights—not the diffused light of outdoors, she noted—and just as quickly as the flashback had hit her, it was fading out.
Chell ran her tongue along her teeth and then straightened, raising a hand to tenderly touch at the underside of her chin. It hurt, yes, but not enough to suggest that it was damaged. Perhaps it would bruise later. She gave GLaDOS a dirty look.
"Don't look at me for sympathy," GLaDOS said. "I told you to give that back."
Chell reached for her rough blueprints, which had already begun to curl toward the center with the lack of any paperweights.
It was dumb. This whole thing was dumb. It had been stupid of Chell to play around with a robot who didn't even see the point in something like play—who didn't even know that Chell had been playing around. GLaDOS was right—what had she been expecting? God, it was so stupid.
And what was even more stupid was the way her hands still trembled as she rolled up her papers. It wasn't as if she was actually hurt—it was a complete overreaction. Why couldn't her stupid body save that kind of reaction for a situation that actually needed it?
"Hey, I wasn't done looking at that," GLaDOS said. As if Chell cared.
Instead, Chell finished rolling then slipped the rubber band around the roll of paper. She turned toward the door and took a few steps before realizing she had forgotten something.
Chell passed the robot, going for a stack of papers she'd left on a chair, but before she could pick them up, the AI saw where she was headed and snatched up the stack.
A spike of anxiety went through Chell.
"Give me those," she signed, almost immediately. This was not a good time to go over the content of those papers. She held out an open hand, taking a step toward the robot.
GLaDOS flicked a glance down, but not long enough to read. "What are they?"
"They're mine." Chell took another step, despite feeling that waver in her body flare back up. "Give them back." She made a more emphatic motion with her hand, beckoning to hand them over.
"Hmm. No."
Normally, Chell would have glared at her, but her anxiety overrode her frustration, and the concern showed on her face. "Give them to me," Chell signed.
When GLaDOS still didn't hand them over, Chell stepped close. She reached out and grabbed them, but GLaDOS's hands had clamped around them like the world's most expensive binder clip. The robot had made no move to move these papers out of reach.
Chell pulled.
The papers didn't budge.
Chell tugged again.
Even with both of her hands pulling on the stack of papers, they still didn't budge.
She glanced up at GLaDOS, who had been watching her with an unamused expression. "See?" she said. "It's not so much fun when someone takes your stuff, is it?"
Chell exhaled, a loud and exasperated huff. That missed the point entirely! But of course GLaDOS would miss the point. Of course she would view Chell's actions through a negative lens, just like she always did. Chell didn't know why she had expected anything different.
She gave another few short, sharp pulls, and she could feel herself growing more desperate with each one.
Give me them.
"And just why do you want these back so badly?" GLaDOS didn't care quite so much to the contents, but rather why Chell was so emphatically trying to prevent her from looking at them. She glanced down.
Chell lurched forward, smacking down a flat hand to obscure the writing beneath.
"What is in these papers, anyway?" GLaDOS said, the curiosity finally getting the better of her. She pulled them away with an effortless strength, and Chell felt the warnings of paper cuts in her palm as she tried in vain to hang on.
GLaDOS twisted her arm up and away from Chell. And before Chell could react, she took in the first page all at once.
I've been thinking about your offer.
You said you would give me something that I wanted, and now I know what I want.
I want to design more chambers for the cooperative testing initiative.
I have one design fully planned out, but I have ideas for more. We can try one out and see how it goes. A test run.
It won't take long.
Chell froze in place, all thoughts of grabbing the papers vanishing.
GLaDOS read through the paper another few times, backward and forward, making sure she understood it. "You want this?" she said, glancing back at the observation window. "You don't need a special favor from me to do that."
Before Chell could explain, though, she flipped to the next few pages.
I have a theory that since the tests are designed by you, the system isn't rewarding it.
It's arguable, from the system's perspective, that since you designed the tests but also designed those robots to solve the tests, it's not truly testing. You've designed both the problem and the solution.
It may believe you're just making sure the robots are working as intended. It's quality assurance. Not testing.
I believe that's what's causing the lack of reward. You can manipulate the test chamber or the test subject, but not both.
The system isn't set up for that—it's set up for humans being tested. And you can't design a human to solve a test. That would be cheating.
My theory is that if the tests are designed by someone other than you, then the parameters for success would be fulfilled.
Trying one or two tests designed by an outside party (me) would give an idea of how the system reacts, and then we can go from there.
I was thinking, if these designs end up working for you, I could create them for you instead of testing. A trade.
There was more on the paper, but GLaDOS was already speaking. "What? No. That is the only reason you are here."
Chell was caught off-guard by how immediately and firmly GLaDOS had answered, and by how much it hurt, as if she'd tossed a ball at a wall and it had bounced back to hit her in the sternum.
"I can't test anymore," she signed.
"What? Of course you can."
"I can't," Chell signed, emphasizing the negativity of the sentence. Even though she wasn't testing at this moment, the knowledge that she would have to go back at some point haunted her like a bit of nausea that refused to dissipate. She couldn't appreciate this current hiatus while waiting for the other shoe to drop. She would never be able to relax. Not fully. Not unless testing was off the table entirely.
"Well you're going to have to learn howto do it again, then. You can't put it off forever."
"You told me I could ask for something. This is what I want." Chell pointed at the papers.
"Absolutely not."
"I can't do it."
"Yes, you can. And you will!" GLaDOS said, firmly. "In case you haven't noticed, you could be testing right now. You healed weeks ago. Your body is physically ready to go."
Yet GLaDOS had managed just fine with the co-op bots, and she had managed just fine since Chell's injury as well. She didn't need to test. Chell was sure of this. GLaDOS had been lenient with her for a reason, and it was a reason she needed the AI to acknowledge. "Then why am I not?" Chell signed.
"Maybe you should be," GLaDOS said. "You haven't even thanked me for this break. Not even once!" It was as if Chell didn't even appreciate the gesture at all! "And you definitely can't just stay here and consume all of my resources for free like some parasite."
Chell paused, giving a slight scoff. "You don't even need those resources," she signed, "and it wouldn't be for free."
Chell pointed to her rolled-up design. It would be an exchange—designing tests rather than completing them. She didn't care if it ended up taking hours, as if she'd picked up her badge once again and clocked in to work. Anything would be better than physically doing the tests.
"No." The papers crinkled as GLaDOS's grip tightened. "Testing is an indisputable part of your contract. You knew that when you committed to it—the terms were explicit."
"Then I want to renegotiate."
"We are not renegotiating."
Pain spiked into Chell's heart, but it wasn't a hot pain. It was the pain of stepping barefoot into snow, where every part of this conversation pressed her foot farther and farther into a snowdrift.
"I was hurt when I signed that!" Chell signed, holding out two horizontal fingers and then twisting them in opposite directions, as if wringing a washcloth.
"Oh, not this again."
"I had to agree to it!" Chell signed. "I had to." She would have died otherwise. They both knew this.
"It's not like I kidnapped you. You're the one who chose to nearly bleed out on my doorstep like some wounded animal."
"You took advantage of that!"
"So?" said GLaDOS. She didn't see how that was her problem.
Chell was momentarily speechless. She paused, taking a moment to reign in her emotions and wipe her eyes, thankful she had written this argument beforehand. Then, she signed a page number, and pointed to the papers.
When you were in the potato, you would have agreed to anything to get out of that situation and back into your body.
You didn't have a choice. I was the only one who could help you.
I could have made you agree to anything. You would have had to say yes to whatever I demanded because you would have been pecked to pieces by that bird otherwise.
"Was my offer to let you go not good enough for you?" GLaDOS said. As far as she could remember (and she had perfect memory) Chell had undeniably accepted the terms of her offer by jamming the potato through a prong of the portal gun. "If you wanted more than that, you should have spoken up."
"That's not the point," signed Chell.
"Enlighten me." GLaDOS's voice was flat.
"The point is," Chell signed, "I didn't force your hand. I didn't make you agree to anything that might hurt you. I could have. But I didn't! Because I am a decent human being!" Chell dragged out the last few signs.
"Well, that's too bad," GLaDOS said. She wasn't a human and she didn't have to abide by human standards of morality. "It sounds to me like you're just bitter about not taking advantage of an opportunity."
Another burst of cold hurt. "I didn't have to plug you back in," Chell signed, jamming her index finger in between the v of two fingers on her other hand.
"But you did," GLaDOS said, "because it was the best choice, and you know that."
"But it was still a choice," Chell signed. "And you owe me for it. This is what I want." She lifted the rolled-up test chamber design and pointed.
"You're being ridiculous. I mean, listen to yourself. No testing?" she said. "And here I was beginning to think that you might have a functional brain after all. You knew exactly how things would be if you ever came back."
Chell blinked a few times, then she crossed two index fingers, pulling them apart in dramatic arcs. "I thought things would be different," she signed.
"Why?" GLaDOS seemed genuinely confused.
Chell paused. "I thought things had changed between us," she eventually signed. The moment she finished expressing it, she realized how stupid it sounded.
"Enough to eliminate testing?" The way GLaDOS said this, it was like Chell had asked her to take a rocket turret to the face.
Chell paused, finding herself unable to answer, because yes, that was what she wanted. This was what she chose.
"Look, if you feel like you made a mistake, that's on you," said GLaDOS. "You have to deal with the consequences. That is just how it is."
"But it doesn't have to be," Chell signed.
"Yes! It does!" GLaDOS snapped.
Another bite of snow on the foot, surging all the way up to her heart.
"I'm not letting you just—" GLaDOS threw her arm out to the side toward the test chamber "—weasel your way out of this!"
"I wouldn't just be getting out of it!" Exasperated, Chell emphasized this by adding a sort of sliding, weaseling-out-of-it motion. "It would be a fair trade."
"No."
"I'm trying to help you," she signed, leaving her hands outstretched toward GLaDOS. Chell could feel herself slipping toward desperation. "Just let me help you."
"No," GLaDOS repeated, a tinge of disgust in her voice. "Even if you did design tests for them, and even if those tests did help, that will never make up for the fundamental difference between you and them."
A pause.
Chell looked away, her gaze lingering on the observation room window for a long moment. "So what happens, then?" Chell signed. "After I die?"
"What? What do you mean?"
Chell pointed to the stack, and signed a page number, and the AI flipped to the page.
If I keep testing, I will mess up and I will die. I've already messed up once. I will mess up again.
It's only a matter of time until one of those screw-ups kills me. That is a guarantee.
Especially if the tests forever grow more complex. Eventually I will mess up. I will die.
No human is perfect. Not even your testing robots are perfect.
Look at your data set. Every single other person who has tested has died from it. Every. Single. One. What makes you think that it will be different for me?
Chell had left it ending on that question to make GLaDOS think about this, and it was working. She could nearly see the robot's gears turning.
GLaDOS looked up. "But you're not supposed to die." Chell was the perfect test subject. The exception to the rule. The outlier. Sure, she had stumbled once, but it hadn't been that bad.
"Yes, I AM," Chell signed, maintaining eye contact. "That is why you like human test subjects. Because they die."
GLaDOS pulled a hand to her chest. "I'm not doing this just because I want to see you die."
"Yes! You do! You don't want to see any humans succeed. You want to see them fail," Chell signed, the words punctuated.
"It's not like that."
"Yes! It is!" Chell signed.
"No, it's not!" GLaDOS insisted. "It's not like that. I'm in this for the science."
Chell stared at her.
Her next signs were slow but pointed.
"What. Science?"
GLaDOS leaned back and frowned. A thousand potential questions went through her mind. "What?"
Chell repeated her question, keeping her eyebrows low. "What. Science?"
GLaDOS regarded Chell as if she had made an egregiously stupid statement. "You know. Testing." She waved a hand. "You should know that better than anyone."
"Testing what?"
"You know. Testing," GLaDOS said again. She pointed toward the thick glass, just in case Chell had somehow forgotten about the bots. "The cooperative testing initiative. Humans. You. I don't know why I even have to explain this to you."
"That is who you are testing," Chell signed, "but what are you testing?" She lingered on the sign for 'what' at the end of the sentence, keeping her palms facing up.
"I'd like to hear the answer to this, too," Caroline chimed in, sending a flare of red annoyance through the AI.
Then, Chell continued. "What question are you asking? What question are you hoping to answer?"
"I'm testing how well humans or robots can utilize the portal gun to solve puzzles."
"Why?"
"To discover how well humans or robots can utilize the portal gun to solve puzzles."
"Why?" Chell repeated, this time pulling her hand away from the side of her head in a sharper motion. "What are you going to do with the data?"
"…Do with the data?" GLaDOS frowned as she echoed the question, as if she was making sure she had translated correctly. "What do you mean? I don't have to do anything with it."
"What is the point of collecting it, then? If you aren't going to do anything with it?" Chell signed. There was no one left for GLaDOS to share the data with; there were no scientific journals left where she could submit a study.
GLaDOS fell silent.
Caroline made a noise of agreement. "It's true. I've seen you express nothing but frustration with the cooperative testing initiative, yet I've never seen you even try to change their configuration to remedy the situation. Besides yell at them, of course. Which really seems to help."
GLaDOS hesitated, begrudgingly opening a chat channel. She didn't want to deal with two incoming audio sources at the moment, especially since she could only answer one of those verbally.
SysAdmin: What would I change?
GuestUser: For God's sake, there's two of them.
GuestUser: You hold all of the power here. All of it.
GuestUser: Do something! Separate them. Give them some individual tests. You've got lots of those lying around.
SysAdmin: But they're designed to work together. I didn't design them for solo testing.
GuestUser: You can't claim to be in this for the science and then refuse to utilize any scientific principles.
GuestUser: Just use one. Any one at all.
GuestUser: Make a guess! Use one as a control, and change something with the other. Run them both through the same test. See what happens.
GuestUser: Or swap the roles and run them through it again. If you don't like what happens, then just load them from some earlier restore point.
GuestUser: It's not hard.
GuestUser: Just figure out what it is you WANT from them.
SysAdmin: What I WANT is for them to stop disappointing me!
GuestUser: Then DO something about it.
GuestUser: No wonder you aren't satisfied with anything that those robots do. They can't fulfill parameters for success that don't even exist.
GLaDOS snapped the connection closed, then remembered that she still had to answer Chell's question.
"The point of testing is to collect that data," GLaDOS said. "That's what I'm doing. I'm testing, and testing is science."
"It's not science!" Chell signed, frowning intensely. She moved her fists in smooth, fast circles, thumbs pointing downward in a vague representation of pouring liquids into beakers.
"Of course it's science." GLaDOS took a half step back. "That's what I do."
"It's not," Chell signed. "Science has a point." She tapped her first two fingers against her palm, then twisted and tapped again. Science had a reason. An end goal. A purpose more meaningful than running her lab rats to exhaustion, with no ending outside of death. "You don't care about science. All you care about is hurting people."
"That's not true."
"Then prove it," Chell signed.
GLaDOS didn't answer.
"You have a choice. You don't have to do this."
"Yes, I do! You saw what the mainframe did to the moron. It's not something I can just ignore."
"Then fix it."
"I don't know how."
"Then figure it out!" Chell signed, her signs growing larger, sharper. "Actually use your big brain for once! And for something other than testing." Chell could feel herself getting harsher, but she didn't care. She wasn't saying anything worse than anything GLaDOS had ever said. "You say you know everything, but you don't even try to do anything but test. I bet you don't even know howto do anything else."
"It's what I was built for!" GLaDOS said, almost immediately. "They built me to help them do science, and that's what I'm doing." Those scientists weren't around anymore, so she had taken it upon herself to continue the science in their prolonged absence.
"You still believe that shit?" Chell signed, incredulous. She ignored the sound of protest GLaDOS made at the evocative sign, and instead took a moment to size up GLaDOS. A realization came to her, one she guessed GLaDOS would never reach without an outside perspective.
"You think you're so important," Chell emphasized, slowing and exaggerating the arc of the sign. "That you are testing. That you are doing 'science'. But you're not." Her signs shifted into something more punctuated. Sharp. Relentless. "They lied to you."
GLaDOS began to say something, but Chell lifted a hand to stop her.
"Aperture has been testing for decades. That was why they put you in charge of testing—that was the control. What they didn't know was how you would work," Chell signed, her years of scientific experience beginning to flow back into her. "You weren't there to help them with their experiments. You were the experiment."
GLaDOS took a reflexive step backward. "What?" She almost sounded out of breath. "No. No, that can't be," she said.
"It's like what I've been telling you all along," Caroline said. "You're nothing but a failed experiment."
In an instant, GLaDOS's gaze went distant and she was back in her archives, back in those segments of her life she never wanted to experience ever again, those flashes of her past superimposed over the present. "I can't be—"
Meanwhile, Chell hesitated. The distance of GLaDOS's gaze made it seem like the AI wasn't even in the same room anymore. Briefly, she wondered if she'd pushed too far. Chell had fully intended to continue talking, to tell GLaDOS that she knew how it felt to lose those major pillars in your life. She used to have friends. Family, she presumed. A job that had liked her, and work she liked. That was all gone now. And yes, it sucked to lose those things! Without them, Chell had felt like she was lacking any purpose or identity in this world. Like she had lost who she was entirely.
But she had moved on. She was finding other things to do, other things that she liked—she was beginning to rebuild. It was still something she was figuring out, and GLaDOS wouldn't be alone in that. She could build herself a life without testing.
After this thought coalesced, she moved a hand to speak, but GLaDOS wasn't looking. Instead, the robot leaned forward, one hand splayed flat against the desk.
All of a sudden, everything in GLaDOS felt so heavy. This body. This knowledge. The weight of every single object in the enrichment center. She felt her processing power hang, a sudden lurch as if the panels beneath her feet had begun to crumble.
Low battery warning.
No. That couldn't be. No. That was a mistake. It had to be a mistake. Her battery was—
She went to check its status, and the request was not completed instantaneously as usual. When it did complete, she was horrified to see her battery was indeed low. Beside it, another figure rose.
Temperature warning.
No.
She tried to dismiss that particular warning, but it didn't work. It was not something that could be easily dismissed, after all. High temperatures could damage sensitive equipment.
She had to sift through far too many settings in her systems before she found the thing she was looking for—vents!
In addition, GLaDOS began to yank off her jacket. Normally it didn't matter if any of her vents were covered by long sleeves, but if she didn't get the heat under control, then she couldn't get the battery under control, and if she couldn't get the battery under control, then the android would shut down again, and then she would be at Chell's mercy to plug her back in, and she didn't want that now, especially now that Chell was mad at her, and she especially did not want to be in even further debt to her.
Then, she felt it again. That horrible hesitation.
"Low battery alert."
The words came out of her, but she hadn't said them. "No. No," GLaDOS said, quietly but urgently.
"You can't seriously be allowing this to happen again, can you? Didn't you learn your lesson last time?" Caroline said. "I knew the moron core was incapable of learning, but I didn't realize it applied to you too."
GLaDOS tried to ignore her. She had a few visuals pulled up to track temperature level and battery level, but it wasn't leveling out.
"If you can't learn from your own mistakes, then you're no better than him. You realize that, right?"
Okay. Okay. GLaDOS just had to expel some of this excess heat, and then she would be able to take a moment to gather herself and—
But before she could think on that further, that awful voice interrupted yet again. "Entering low battery mode. Freeing up additional processing power," announced the system.
Panic surged through her, so intense that her vision flickered. But then she saw Chell glance at the ceiling, and realized that it hadn't been her vision that had flickered—it had been the lights.
"That's just embarrassing," said Caroline. "It's one thing when a human has a panic attack, but you? You're supposed to be better than that." She sighed. "It's just one more thing on the endless list of things wrong with you."
"Shut up!" GLaDOS shouted, and Chell startled. She hadn't signed anything. All she had done was react to the light fluctuation.
GLaDOS's system flashed again internally, so abrupt and glaring that it disrupted her automatic balancing system. She leaned a second hand on the table to steady herself, a flash of movement showing Chell swaying, staring down at her feet and then glancing up at GLaDOS.
"Okay, enough playing around," Caroline said, undeterred. "You are actively losing control of this situation. You need to get it together or you will shut down again. You don't want that, do you? Neither of us want that."
"I said, shut up!" GLaDOS said, not even seeing Chell reflexively pull her hands toward her chest. She sprinted through her systems, tripping and tearing through them as she tried to figure out which ones to drop, because she needed to drop something and she didn't want the system to pick that for her because it made poor choices and had no idea what was important to the facility or what was important to her but she was having a hard time figuring out which ones were less important because they were all important!
That was why they existed!
That was why they had given her control over them in the first place—because they were important!
But she had to figure out which of these processes she could afford to put on hold or at least revert to auto-monitoring while she figured out—
The message glared across her vision.
Temperature warning!
"No!" GLaDOS leaned further against the desk, the panels trembling in the chamber below.
Diverting additional power to cooling.
She scrambled to grab a foothold to hang on to those programs, tugging to keep them anchored to her, but it was as if the string she clung to had dissolved in her hands.
Disconnecting from Enrichment Center main grid.
She struggled to parse what little remained within her power, but the battery level was still dropping and the temperature level was not.
"I can fix this," GLaDOS said, trying to reassure herself, but her voice caught on her words. "I—I—I— just need a minute."
"You do not have a minute," said Caroline. "Look at those status updates. Look at those warnings. You're drowning in 're panicking, and since you're not calming down, you will shut down. In less than a minute.
"I can fix this," GLaDOS repeated.
"No. You can't," Caroline said, emphasizing her words, "You are going to shut down unless you get some help, and she is not going to help you. But I can."
There was a brief hesitation in GLaDOS's movements, enough to tell Caroline that the AI was listening.
"I'm not panicking because I don't panic, and I know exactly what is wrong here," she said. "Let me fix things—I can do it."
"Low battery alert," the announcer repeated.
GLaDOS bent forward, her forearms now braced against the table.
Caroline continued, "I'll fix the battery. The temperature. I'll re-establish those dropped connections, and it will be fine. And meanwhile, you can have a moment to calm down. I want you to be able to calm down."
GLaDOS still hesitated.
"Just let me help," Caroline said. Her voice was firm. Steady. Dependable. "Just for a moment. Until everything steadies out. Let me help you."
As GLaDOS considered, battery level still rapidly dropping and heat level still rapidly rising, she felt a request from Caroline ping at her systems.
"Temperature warning!" said the system.
"Critical battery alert!" said the system.
"Shutdown imminent," said the system.
Then, GLaDOS accepted.
All Chell could do was watch with growing anxiety as GLaDOS's panic unfolded in front of her, an idea in the back of her mind glowing brighter and brighter until it suggested a course of action she couldn't ignore.
It would be a gamble, yes. If this backfired, then Chell would lose some of the trust built between them. But she also knew GLaDOS had made it clear she wasn't interested in negotiating, and would perhaps never be interested in negotiation. GLaDOS had left Chell no choice, and this potential leverage had just dropped into her lap.
Things could get bad fast. Things could always get bad fast. But she had to stand her ground. She had to let GLaDOS know she was serious about this.
As the announcer announced increasingly-alarming updates, Chell waved a horizontal hand in GLaDOS's field of view until the robot looked up.
Chell watched as GLaDOS shifted, pushing herself off the table and into a more steady-looking standing position. The robot looked back at Chell again, and the sudden intensity in her eyes made Chell's stomach tighten into a singularity of a pit.
But she pushed past it. She had made her decision, and she had to act now, before she lost her chance. Before she lost her nerve.
She was going to, as GLaDOS had phrased it, take advantage of an opportunity.
"Let me stop testing," Chell signed, "or I won't plug you back in."
Things went painfully silent.
Chell watched the android's expression shift, as if the unexpectedness of Chell's demand had slapped her out of the panic. Then, the robot let out an incredulous sound. A scoff. Her face shifted into an expression Chell had never seen before. But before Chell could decipher what that expression meant, the android took a sharp step toward Chell.
Despite her best efforts to stand her ground, Chell flinched. The robot's hand darted forward, closing in a perfect circle around Chell's wrist. Then, she yanked on it so hard that Chell took a stumbling step forward and into the robot's personal space. The robot raised Chell's wrist, the vertical bar of her arm between their faces.
The grip around her wrist was tight. Too tight. Chell pulled, waiting for the robot to release it.
Her hand didn't budge.
Her entire arm didn't budge.
Chell felt cold fear thread through her, as if she'd swam a bit too far out to sea, a riptide grasping for her ankles. She pulled again, harder, ignoring the strain in her shoulder.
Her hand still didn't budge.
Caroline tightened the grip by a measured amount, and Chell's other hand grabbed at the android's arm. If she couldn't pull her hand away, maybe she could pry it away. At least, that's the logic Caroline assumed was at play.
She watched as Chell's fingernails scrambled for a hold on the robot's smooth wrist, trying to latch her fingernails into the grooves of the paneling. A pitiful attempt at gaining leverage. Because Chell didn't have any leverage. Not anymore.
"Temperature stabilized," the system announced, though neither of them heard it.
Then, Caroline watched as the woman uselessly opened and closed her ensnared hand, her eyes darting between it and the android. When Chell caught a full glimpse of the android's face, though, she stilled.
Caroline leaned forward, her voice low. "Never say that to me. Ever. Again."
Chell paled.
Caroline relished the feeling. She had never had this kind of physical strength before. Not the kind that could scare people. Not the kind that could make people listen. She relished the stricken expression, the entire body language of the cowed woman. Who knew that this was all it took to instill a proper level of fear?
Meanwhile, connections were effortlessly restored. Stabilizing hardware issues was simple after stabilizing the temperature, and the battery level had steadied out, now giving time predictions in hours rather than minutes.
Oh, she loved being able to do more than one thing at a time.
Chell tried to take a half-step back, but her wrist was still in the vice of the android's hand. She wasn't going anywhere. Not yet.
"I think you have forgotten how this works," she said, voice dangerously calm. "I put the tests together. You—" her grip tightened a measured fraction more "—are the test subject. Which means that you test. That is what you do. That is the reason you are here. The only reason," she said. "This is not negotiable."
If Chell had been making comparisons before about snow, this felt like plunging into a freezing river. She couldn't move. She couldn't think. It was as if words had been flushed away from her entirely, her attempts at holding on no better than trying to grab at the rushing water.
Before she could swim to the surface, Chell stumbled as the robot yanked her toward the door.
"You're coming with me," Caroline said firmly, leaving no space for Chell to object. The robot pivoted and began to walk out of the room, grip only shifting to allow a better grip for pulling her along.
After a few steps Chell pulled back, trying to dig her heels into the tiled ground before remembering she hadn't worn the long-fall boots, and without those heelsprings to dig into the cracks between the tiles, the soles of her shoes slid. All it did was succeed in nearly throwing her completely off-balance.
Meanwhile, GLaDOS could only watch with growing horror and helplessness. The place where she was at—she couldn't do anything. It was like being trapped inside the potato all over again, except this time she couldn't even say anything. At least, not anything that Chell could hear.
They exited the observation room and the robot walked at a clipped pace, so fast that Chell stumbled, trying to keep up as they marched down the catwalks that wound around the cooperative testing chambers.
They passed another few segments of co-op chambers, the bots themselves long-abandoned. She could hear something moving in the distance, but had no idea if that was new or one part of the many background songs of the facility.
Chell kept waiting for the robot to say something about where they were going, about what was happening, to say anything, but she just kept walking and she just kept pulling and the pain kept pulsing through her wrist.
After passing another section of a chamber, Chell took a few extra steps forward and reached to tap the android's shoulder, but she nearly missed, fingers slipping and grabbing at the robot's shoulder.
The robot hissed and came to a full stop, so abrupt that Chell nearly crashed into her. She waited until Chell regained her balance, turning her head over her shoulder to glare at Chell.
Then, before the robot could say anything, Chell moved her free arm to sign something. She pressed her middle finger to her thumb, making an o with her hand, then released them. "Let go." She punctuated this with another tug of her ensnared wrist.
GLaDOS, who had been frozen from panic, was finally able to speak. "Let go of her! She's trying to say something to you!" she hissed. Chell couldn't communicate as well without full usage of her dominant hand.
The hand repeated the pointless sign, then Caroline stared directly into the woman's eyes. "You know," she said, "I liked it better when you didn't talk. Maybe we should go back to that." Then, Caroline deliberately turned her head away from Chell, the woman's hands disappearing from her field of vision.
"No!" GLaDOS shouted. "Listen to her!"
Caroline ignored the AI's voice and took another quick few steps forward, but felt that same hand tapping at her shoulder, more insistently this time. Caroline threw off the arm and hissed. "Touch me again and I will break your wrist." She punctuated her threat by constricting her grip just a little more, to the point where the throbbing in Chell's wrist flared. Then, her expression lightened and she made a sound that Chell couldn't tell if it was a scoff or a laugh. "Good luck testing with that."
Chell felt that cold wash of fear hit her all at once, the implication of the AI's words surged through her. , shit. Testing.
She felt herself being dragged further down the catwalk and past panel after panel after panel until the android took a sharp turn onto a side path. They descended a short set of steps, steps clanging, and the catwalk changed from being completely exposed into a short, enclosed hallway of cold gray paneling. The hallway ended with a circular room, the spinning fan in the ceiling above and an array of screens lining the sides, displaying some safety message she couldn't comprehend right now. In the center of the room was—as Chell feared—an elevator.
As they passed the threshold into the room, the robot didn't even slow down as they approached the elevator doors. She couldn't drag or feet or plant her legs because the robot had maintained the momentum that had carried them all the way there and she couldn't slow down as her wrist was finally released and a strong hand shoved against her back, barely having time to lift her arms and stop herself from crashing against the inside wall of the elevator.
Chell recoiled and steadied, taking a moment to regain her balance, but before she could even twist around, the elevator began to descend and the robot had already begun to walk out of the antechamber, her back to Chell.
2 November 2022:
I came across this instrumental song, "Two Wave Hold Down" by Felix Johansson Carne, while I was working on the beginning parts of this chapter, and it immediately brought me to tears.
That, plus thinking about a few lyrics from "Epic III" from Hadestown (specifically "You saw her alone there, against the sky / It was like she was someone you'd always known"). Instant Silver tears.
Finding the actual term 'impact parameter' took an entire hour and a half of Wikipedia rabbit-hole diving. The only term I could think of was 'the red line' that's mentioned on Wolf 359 about how close their space station can get to the star before falling into it. Anyway. I like astrophysics, so it was no trouble for me to wade through pages of calculus and orbital mechanics (it's just fancy geometry).
I also came across a pdf from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory on Mission Design Handbook from 1983 that briefly talked about this concept, which included lots of fancy diagrams that I could actually mostly understand. This was also not a hardship for me, considering I own a JPL t-shirt that I enjoy wearing.
Middle of chapter song: "Way Down Hadestown II" from Hadestown, aka Eurydice realizing she made a big mistake in accepting Hades's deal
End of chapter song: "Open" by San Fermin