GLaDOS had let him stay.

She scowled herself at first multiple times for letting the little pest go free just like that.

She couldn't even believe she'd managed to find him someplace to work in the first place too. Manufacturing, that's where she'd sent him. Mostly out of spite, but it was a dangerous job too and there was the slight chance he'd slip into the assembly line and get recycled with the rest of the junk down there. Getting rid of him had been the idea; but as much as she wanted to believe she was thrilled to leave him there, she found herself watching the live feed multiple times a day to see if he was still alive. To her surprise he was enjoying himself down there and if anything he'd found out that he loved to talk. He was talking to everyone and everything that could so much as listen. She would have figured that much but there been something peculiar she picked on too.

He wasn't messing up at all. He'd do mistakes, yes, but he was managing, and well at that. His memory swipe was probably to blame she still couldn't figure out how she'd been so careless enough to have damaged his memory cards during his retrieval from space and repairs at the facility. It saved his life for sure and yet it also done her a favor.

As much as she wanted to teach the core a lesson she knew that it would have been a waste of time and resources. She had much better things to do.

The fact that he was being of use to the Whole facility in the first place and not sitting around like smelly garbage was a huge success. She also liked the idea of having a productive facility and with him working down in manufacturing it couldn't get any better than that.

Those were the standing out data points that showed up in her positive reports and feeds. They were good odds too and she liked it.

What she didn't like were the ones that showed up in the negative feeds.

It wasn't her imagination she'd been "Nice" to the core. What's more, she'd noticed that she'd been going soft.

Soft.

She didn't like that word. Humans were soft. Organic matter was soft. Technology wasn't. Supercomputers weren't. They were supposed to be anything but soft.

They were cold, unmoving and harsh. They told you the facts, held possibilities, and carried out everything to perfection.

Or so she had thought.

She was an outlier, that much she knew now.

She'd been Caroline once.

She shuddered. That was enough. She was done looking over the data reports of the day; there was science to be done.