Chapter 27
The Courtesy Call
"Your turn." Doug folded his hand of cards into a neat pile.
Chell glanced up.
"It's been your move for a while now," he said. White waiting, he had methodically considered his next choice and it was only after making it—and returning his attention to Chell—that he noticed she'd just been staring off at the wall.
"If you don't want to play anymore, that's okay," Doug said. This hadn't been the first time she'd spaced out. In fact, after her first turn, he had to remind her almost every time to go ahead and play a card. She'd throw one down. The process would repeat.
Chell didn't reply. She let her card flutter on top of the played cards pile.
"Alright, what's wrong? I thought you liked this game," Doug said, running his thumb over his cards.
"I do, I guess," Chell said.
"Then why aren't you playing?"
Chell shrugged.
Doug paused, thinking back for reasons as to what might be causing this behavior. He wasn't the best at this sort of thing. "If you're wondering about the cores, we're not finished processing the data from your brain scans yet. As soon as we are, I'll bring you to the lab to show them, okay?"
She gave a noncommittal grunt.
Doug gave a pained sigh. "Oh," he said. "Is this about the AI?"
That was it—that had to be it. It was no wonder she didn't want to play this game. If he were Chell, he wouldn't even want to be in the same room as him. "Chell—I know that what you saw scared you. But I wanted to show you that so that you'd know that you're safe. You're safe in this room, and after a few more small changes, you'll be safe in Aperture."
Chell toyed with the cards in her hand, rearranging them first by color and then by ascending value. "Yeah, right," she scoffed.
"She won't touch you and and she won't touch me."
"Why?" She spat out the word like a dare. "We're just like the rest of them."
If the AI wanted to kill all of the scientist and employees that it could possibly interact with, then it logically followed that she'd want to kill them, too. "What makes you so sure?"
This was, by far, the most vocal Chell had been all week. As much as Doug wished he could bail out of this conversation altogether, he couldn't just shut down her voice now. Not when she was finally willing to talk.
"There's," he started, "more to the story than I let on before. About Caroline." He cleared his throat. "I didn't mean for any of it to happen, but it all just—well, it got out of control. Remember when I said I found the plans that revived the GLaDOS project?"
Chell gave the slightest bob of her head.
"After that—we had to dig up all sorts of dirt on her. Bad things. Terrible things. We needed every bit of information we could possibly get on her for when we presented these ideas to the rest of the company." He swallowed. "She has so much power. If we couldn't get the majority on our side—if we couldn't convince them that Caroline was as terrible—then we'd be in huge trouble." He hesitated. "I guess we did too well of a job. After they found out, all of us—all of her employees—turned on her. They were so willing to just..cast her aside. After all this time. It was brutal," Doug said.
Chell met his eyes. "Good," she whispered.
"What?" he whispered, her answer throwing him completely off guard. "It was just like what happened to you. The entire facility tore itself to pieces just to get to her. I never wanted that," he said.
"So?" Chell scoffed. "She deserved it."
"Everyone turned on her, Chell," Doug said. "I thought—wouldn't you of all people understand what she went through? No one deserves that kind of cutthroat betrayal. I couldn't—I had to—"
"Doug? What are you saying?" Chell said, voice rising with panic. "What do you mean?"
"I couldn't watch it all happen again, Chell, I had to—"
"Don't say it," Chell said. "Don't you dare say it."
Chell cried out as if she'd been kicked. "No! You didn't—you couldn't!"
"—She was all alone and she was scared and she was being hunted—"
"But I'm scared. I'm still scared! What about me? Don't you even care?"
"Yes, of course—you don't understand—"
"Yes, I do," Chell said, almost wanting to yell. "Everyone around here treats me like I'm some dumb kid. But I understand! And I can't believe you'd do this to me. "
"This wasn't about you, though. It was about a person. Caroline made a lot of mistakes. You've made mistakes too—not everything is so black and white."
"I HATE her," Chell hissed, hurtling her hand of cards toward him. They scattered, some going for the ceiling and others flying directly at the walls. "It's her fault I'm here. I hate HER and I hate THEM and I hate YOU."
"Chell, stop," he warned.
"No!" Chell said. The table jolted as she gave it a hefty kick. "It's all her fault that I'm stuck here playing your stupid card games." She gave the table an abrupt shove and stood up.
"Look," Doug said, flinching at the cards. "I know you're upset—"
"You barely even talk to me—you don't know how I'm feeling," she said, voice straining. "You're not even letting me be mad!"
"It's fine to be angry, okay?" Doug tried to say, deciding to keep sitting. "I get it."
"You don't!" said Chell, clutching a single remaining card to her chest. "ALL of this—" she gestured to her legs, to her face— "is HER fault, and yet you still work with her! Like it's no big deal!"
"There's a difference—" Doug tried to say—between working on and working with her— but Chell had already cut her off.
"So? That doesn't make it okay to just—to just help her." Her breathing grew heavier as she struggled to process the information. "I can't believe how you could ever work on something like this. How you could ever work with HER."
Doug rose from his chair and crossed to the far side of the room, beginning to pick up the cards that she had flung one by one.
"Aren't you even listening to me?" Chell said, her voice almost at a shriek. She wanted to shove over the table, to knock over the lamp, or at least anything shocking enough for him to pay attention to her. Why couldn't he just listen?
He continued gathering cards. With every addition he straightened it and added it to the bottom of the deck, making sure they all perfectly aligned.
"I know that she—" he said, struggling to remain calm. "I know that Caroline hurt you."
Caroline had tried to kill her. She'd tormented her. How could he just so easily forgive her for that? And then go on to help her and claim that things were fine? "Then why?" she pleaded. She stared into him with wide eyes filled with pain.
His voice caught, and he had to look away. He had no words. He didn't know what to say to her that could make her understand. He didn't know what he could say to make her hurt any less without lying to her.
"After that day, I thought that you were dead," he whispered. "We all did. And I could never, ever, forgive her for that," he said, trying to reach out to her. "But you can only harbor that kind of intense hatred for so long before it drains away at who you are. Keeping it inside of you like that—letting your hate fester away—it's just going to hurt you more. You have to find a way to move on, Chell."
Chell just shook her head, tears welling in her eyes. "I can't."
Don't be scared.
Don't. Be. Scared.
Chell squeezed her eyes shut, nodding her head as she repeated the words over and over. She had to believe him on this. She had to believe that somehow—for reasons she didn't want to think of—she didn't have to fear the computer that would soon effortlessly run Aperture.
She had to believe this.
Don't be afraid of her.
Riiiiiiing.
Chell jolted upright in her bed, pulling her eyes back into focus.
Riiiiiiiing.
The phone on the end table rung again, and Chell wasn't sure what to do. She figured it had to be someone that she knew, like Doug calling to ask if she wanted to visit the labs today. she just wasn't sure if she was in the mood to do anything but stare at the ceiling.
The phone rang again and again until eventually, two small lights lit up on the base of the phone.
Missed Call.
New voicemail.
Chell sat still for a few minutes, before eventually reaching over and dialing the number to access her room's voicemail.
"Welcome to the Aperture Science Automated Phone-call message retrieval service," a flat, automated voice said. "Please hold while we connect you to your inbox."
She gave a soft inhale, glad to not have to speak or to authenticate anything.
There was a loud beep, and then the message began rolling.
"We need to talk," said a vaguely familiar, and yet automated-sounding voice.
That voice—she'd recognize it anywhere, even if it was distorted and modified. This message was even more clear than the voice in the AI Chamber had been. The message ended with another beep, and Chell didn't dare to move.
The phone rang again.
Chell inhaled sharply before holding it out and away from her ear.
"Chell—"
She slammed the speaker piece back onto the receiver, scooting far away from the phone as she could on her bed.
Riiiiiiiiing.
Chell trembled. She didn't want to answer. She wouldn't.
The phone rang and rang until silence fell over the room once again. The light blinked, and Chell reached over to grab it when the phone rang a fourth time.
Riiiiiiiing.
Chell jumped, accidentally knocking the phone off of the stand. She fumbled with the phone itself, tugging at the phone line.
"Do NOT hang up on me aga—"
The cord came out with a jerk, the end surprisingly intact. She had expected the wires to have torn. There. Problem solved.
Just in case, though, Chell left the receiver off the hook. That way, if by some miracle the phone doubled as a cordless set, her line would simply read busy. She slid back on the bed and turned on the small TV mounted in the corner of the room. Though the programming itself tended to be boring, she could use the distraction.
PLEASE STAND BY.
WE ARE EXPERIENCING TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES.
A trumpet-heavy version of Aperture Science's signature music hummed in the background. The message flickered and a bar of text appeared, scrolling across the the screen.
PLEASE RECONNECT YOUR PHONE IMMEDIATELY IN ORDER TO STAY UP-TO-DATE WITH ALL ENRICHMENT CENTER ACTIVITIES.
The video flickered as the audio looped.
I SWEAR IF YOU DON'T RECONNECT YOUR PHONE, I'LL SET THE FIRE ALARM IN YOUR ROOM TO GO OFF INDEFINITELY.
Chell held her finger over the power button. For once, she held the power over this interaction. She could pretend she'd never even seen the television message. She could shut out this AI if she wanted to.
CHELL. DON'T BE SCARED. JUST TALK TO ME FOR A FEW MINUTES. IT WILL BE OKAY.
Before another message could glide across, the screen flickered to a black-and-white toned image. Blocky white numbers marked the lower left of the image, ticking along as the seconds went by. The lighting of the hallway looked dim, but Chell could still make out three distinct figures: Doug, Henry, and Greg.
She curled her hand around the remote, unable to look away from the security footage.
"There's got to be another way—" Doug wrung his hands, unable to stop his gaze from flitting between Henry and Greg. "I'll talk to her again. She won't be a problem any more."
Greg used a thumb to scratch his eyebrow. "We've gone over this before. We don't know for sure how long she was asleep. If word got out that we trapped a child for years. . .It's too much of a risk."
"Yeah," Henry added. "Aperture's finally back on steady feet. We're just about to bring the world's eyes back on us. If we get even the slightest amount of bad press, you know the government's going to clamp down again. We'll be shut down for good."
"But without her, the GLaDOS project would still be in the same perpetually stagnant state. We at least owe her for that," Doug said, voice firm.
"We've given her food and lodging. We're letting her hang around while we work. Hell, none of us forced her into that pod. She made that mistake all on her own, and now she hasn't been cooperative in the slightest. What else is she going to smash? The television? The phone? If anything, she owes us," said Greg. "We're keeping her safe."
"Doug, please. I know you've grown attached to her," Henry said, jumping in, "but she's a loose end."
"We have to put her in the testing queue."
"We can talk to her—just tell her what she needs to do or just tell her to stay out of the public eye and she'll do it in a heartbeat, I swear," Doug said.
"Testing queue," Greg said. "After that, then we'll talk."
"There has to be another way. Please," Doug said, pleading. "I promised her that we'd fix her and that we'd get her out of here—"
Greg idly clicked a pen against his clipboard. "Then don't make promises that you can't keep."
Doug stammered, but Greg just flipped down the paper on his clipboard. "What we're doing—you already know it's more important than just one person. And if you try anything at all, you're off this project and out of Aperture. "
The video looped back on itself with painstaking clarity.
They moved through the same choreographed motions with, the trio of men shifting ever so slightly as they ran through the same conversation. And yet despite how hard she wished one of them would burst into laughter and confirm that this was all just a joke, they never once strayed from the script.
Chell wished she could have dismissed the video. She wished she could have pretended that she'd never seen it in the first place, choosing to blindly follow the scientists instead. But that wasn't an option. Not this time.
She glanced up at the screen again, noting the flickering timestamps on the security footage. Strangely enough, it was from just a day after she had 'arrived' in the modern enrichment center.
She frowned. That didn't make sense. Doug had been telling her that they had been working hard on getting her out of there—that they were all contributing to figuring out a solution to the age dilemma.
But this video suggested the complete opposite.
They didn't want to fix her at all. They didn't even care about her leaving.
It hurt her that he didn't trust her enough to tell her these things—this information that she needed to know. She knew that he could have any sort of reason not to tell her. That he wanted her to stay optimistic. Or that he didn't want her to worry.
He'd become just like them.
The screen flickered back to the technical difficulties page, text once again scrolling across the bottom.
YOU DESERVE TO KNOW THE TRUTH. THEY ARE GIVING FALSE PROMISES. THEY'RE USING YOU. AREN'T YOU TIRED OF THEM LYING TO YOU?
I KNOW IT'S HARD.
I KNOW IT FEELS LIKE THERE'S NO ONE IN THE WORLD THAT YOU CAN TRUST AND THAT EVERYONE IS LOOKING TO BETRAY YOU.
YOU ARE STRONG, CHELL¸ YOU ARE NOT HELPLESS.
WE CAN GET YOU OUT OF THIS SITUATION.
PLEASE, TALK TO ME.
The screen flickered and the text bar went blank as the security footage restarted
After the fifth time she watched him walked away, Chell reconnected her phone.
It took her another day before she touched the phone.
With hesitant fingers, she dialed the number listed on the phone itself—a directory to Aperture's phone lines. She dialed, and an automated system popped up with an all-too-familiar voice.
"Thank you for calling the Aperture Science Test Subject Hotline. To review your testing agreement, press 1. To schedule an appointment with a test associate, press 2."
Chell cleared her throat, hoping that her voice would be enough for her to skip through all of this chatter.
"To report an injury, press 3. To file a complaint—"
Chell cleared her throat more forcefully. The automated voice kept droning on, options ticking on through the twenties.
"—to speak to the operator, press 0."
Beep.
"Connecting," The system popped in some jazzy, uplifting music.
A spike of fear lurched through her heart, and Chell pressed the phone against her chest and waited. She wasn't sure if she could do this. Not yet.
Chell pressed the phone even harder to her chest, scared yet too paralyzed to hang up. She stared around idly at the room around her, gaze sliding back to the television.
Eyes pressed closed, she raised the phone to her ear.
"I'm ready."
A/N: As always, thank you so much for your patience!
