Chapter 30

Enemies with a Common Interest

In this short Life that only lasts an hour

How much - how little - is within our power

Emily Dickinson, #1292

7 Hours Until Bring Your Daughter to Work Day

"Well, you two," Henry said, "I'm ready to call it a night. Looks like we're all set." He glanced across the dimmed lab, his gaze skipping over Chell to Karla and Doug. "We've done good work."

The light from Doug's monitor illuminated his face from below. Pronounced shadows chiseled his face. "See you tomorrow." Doug barely looked up.

"It already is tomorrow."

Doug frowned, then jerked upright in his chair. He glanced down at his watch and shot a look at Chell. "Is it?"

"You work too hard, Doug," Karla piped in from her desk.

"Hey. You're still here, too." Doug straightened his body, and a cascading series of cracks and pops affirmed that his spine had been correctly realigned. He slumped back over his keyboard.

"I'm just about to head out," said Karla. "You should, too."

"Try and at least get a few hours of sleep." Henry edged toward the door. "We've got a long day ahead of us."

"Not going anywhere until these case tests come back positive," Doug mumbled, the final word sticking to his tongue and falling out like an unattended copy machine. "Positive. Positive. Positive. Positive." He stared into the monitor without blinking. His brain spun in concentric circles throughout the day, thoughts segmenting into other thoughts as if someone was playing with a spirograph in his brain. Circle, circle, circle. Worry, worry, worry.

Doug pressed his palms gently into his eye sockets and massaged his face. The afterimage of the monitor burned the inside of his eyelids like a hot brand. Bright screens. Lines of swimming text, ready to leap and twist out of the confines of his screen and strangle him.

Henry frowned. "You haven't left this room in hours." He set his hand on the back of Doug's chair. "C'mon. We haven't had any scenarios fail today. We've been over the logic more times than I can count today alone. The code's solid."

"But if we don't pull this off perfectly—" Doug wrung his hands.

"It'll skewer us alive, " Karla said. " We know. You've been talking to yourself about it all day." She lifted a hand and mimed a telephone, thumb at her ear and pinky finger pointed toward her mouth.

Alive alive alive alive alive.

"Right. Sorry," Doug said. He mentally cursed. Recognizing the repetitions and circularity of his own thoughts and his own speech was difficult enough on a regular day. Today, he struggled to remember what he was supposed to do when his brain got like this. Every half-second another thought fired, overlapping the previous one and screaming for his attention.

"We've got our contingency plan," Karla tried, repeating the same words she'd used earlier in the day. "We're prepared for anything that could possibly happen tomorrow. I mean, today."

Doug nodded several times, as if bobbing along to music.

"It'll work," Henry said firmly. The door closed behind him, and a heavy silence fell upon the room.

"After those finish, go home," Karla said. She looked him over, and then sighed and gave her best impression of a reassuring smile. "We're going to be just fine."

Karla stretched her fingers out in front of her. "So," she said, turning to Chell. "Was today everything you hoped it would be?"

Chell spun circles in a desk chair, groaning in reply.

"I warned you it'd be boring," Doug chimed. Though he wished he could avoid intruding on their conversation, they were the only three left in this room. Sound carried.

Chell gave another grunt. "You could have at least talked to me."

"You knew we'd have to focus," Karla said. "Really focus."

"All you did was stare at those screens."

"We had a lot of code to double-check," Karla said. "Or, in Doug's case, infinity-check." She moved toward the door, exchanging a look with Doug and shaking her head. Doug gave a slight exhale and smile in response.

Chell reached out her legs to stop the chair from spinning. The sole of her shoes squeaked against the floor and her vision swam. Her grip on the armrests tightened. The sharp vertigo would subside eventually.

"I've still got a few things to check on with the testing department. Gotta make sure we're all on the same page," Karla said. "I'll come back soon to take you to your room. You two think you can hold down the fort here?"

Chell gave a hesitant look over at Doug, and then nodded.

Karla left without another word.

Chell tapped her feet on the ground for a few minutes, mesmerizing herself with the repetitive movement. Every few minutes Doug glanced in Chell's direction, but averted eye contact. The room's lighting split the area into two distinct halves: darkness covering the empty half, and lights illuminating Doug's half of the room.

Chell sighed. She dragged her feet across the ground, feet thunking and wheels screeching as she edged to his desk. Doug didn't look up from his work.

"Hey," Chell started. She craned her neck forward and turned to get a look at Doug's face. His eyes moved back and forth like windshield wipers as he plowed through the lines of code on his screen.

"Doug?" Chell said. She reached out a hand and gently poked him on the shoulder.

Doug jolted upright as if she'd zapped him. "How long have you been there?"

Chell shrugged. "Just a few seconds." She pointed to the mess of incomprehensible text on his screen. "What's that?"

Doug took a moment to refocus, then scrolled up the page and then back down. "Some extra code for the Morality Core," he said. "The code— it's a bit like a series of step-by-step instructions to the computer in a language that it understands. Sorta like a recipe."

"I know that," Chell said, scooting her chair closer to the screen. "But what does it do?" She stared at the code, but no single line popped out to her as a direct statement of this is what this program does!

"You know I can't tell you." Doug gave an exasperated sigh. "If I was working on the part of Morality Core that was based on you, then maybe I could get away with showing you more."

Chell dragged two fingers across her lips as if she was locking them up and throwing away the key. "Even if you did, who do you think I'd tell?" She gestured toward the empty lab.

Doug gave his best attempt at a sympathetic grimace, and Chell sighed. She couldn't argue with that.

"Hey—maybe after we're done with this," Doug said, scrambling to preserve their conversation, "I can show you a bit of how coding works."

Chell glanced up, her hands bent around her seat cushion. "Sure," she said. She chewed on the inside of her lip, staring idly at the screen for a few long minutes. She glanced over at the clock. The countdown until Bring Your Daughter to Work Day ticked relentlessly on. "Hey, Doug?" Chell picked at the edge of her seat. "Can I ask you something?"

"Of course."

She kept her eyes low. "What if—hypothetically—" she started, "someone asked you to do something bad, but for the right reasons?"

"What do you mean?" He stopped scrolling.

"Would you do it?"

Doug made a noise of contemplation and shifted in his chair. "I don't know," he said. He tried to look at Chell to gauge her reaction, but she stared down at her seat. "I've done the wrong things for the wrong reasons, and I've done the wrong things for the right reasons," he said. "But you're different. You're not me, and you don't have to make the same kinds of decisions that I do."

Chell hesitated. She flicked a piece of black faux leather off of her fingers. "What about some of the stuff I did?"

"You did what you had to do," said Doug. "There's nothing wrong with that."

"But I lied to you. I stole from you. I did so many things wrong—"

"You can't get away from that kind of thing down here," he said. His voice was solemn but firm, like a soldier who'd spent too much time on the battlefield.

"But what if I could have? What if I could have done better? What if all of this is just what I get?" Her voice hitched. "Is it because I deserve this?"

Doug twisted away from his computer. This wasn't the kind of light conversation he could power through while working. "You don't deserve a single bit of what you're going through."

"What if I do, though?" Her voice grew more insistent. "What if I'm just like her? What if I'm a bad person too?" she whispered.

Doug shifted, touching Chell gently on the shoulder. "Chell," he said gently. She glanced up, meeting his eyes for a split second before turning away. "You're not a bad person."

"Then why am I still here?"

"Because we need you," he said. "Of course we want to help you, but right now we need you for this project. We might not have been able to salvage any of this project without you—she'd have ended up killing us all. But with your help, we're making real progress."

"But why does it have to be me?" she pleaded.

"I don't know," said Doug. "But you're keeping us alive."

Part of her wanted to say that she didn't want to keep them alive—that wasn't true. She did. Mostly. Just not in this way.

Doug hesitated, letting his gaze linger and looked at her as if he expected her to go on.

Chell just gave a nonchalant shrug and pulled her arms around her shoulders, then rubbed them. "I'm cold," she said quietly.

"You know," he said, shifting to look at the clock. "I'm convinced that they turn down the heat in here at night. Gotta keep us night owls awake somehow, right? No one believes me when I try to tell them, though. The thermostat always reads steady."

Chell gave a faint snort in reply, then gave an exaggerated shiver. She rubbed her arms and then rubbed her hands together in front of her face, as if she'd been transported into the Arctic.

Doug gave a small jolt, then glanced over at a row of hooks on the wall. Usually covered in jackets and yesterday's lab coats, only Karla's jacket hung from it today. She was nice to Chell, sure, but he wasn't sure if she'd take kindly to her coat being loaned out to Chell, however brief the time period. He bit the inside of his lip. "Want to borrow this?" He tugged at the sleeve of his lab coat.

"Yeah." She let down her overacted reaction to the cold, and just clasped her hands together. "Thanks," she said, her voice steadied as Doug slipped it off and handed it to her. She pulled on the crisp coat, diving her hands into the bottoms of the wide pockets. Her fingers danced around a few wrappers, a cough drop, and the chewed lid of a pen before her hand slipped around something smooth and rectangular. A keycard.

"Anything else I could get you?" Doug said. He didn't want to pry into her space, but he didn't want to deliberately ignore her, either.

Chell just shifted in her coat. A few new messages popped up on the computer screen: Doug's programming test results. Before she should give them a closer look, a soft beep came from the door. They both turned to look as Karla pushed the door open to the lab and let it crash closed behind her.

"Tests done yet?" Karla said, not even bothering with a greeting. She grabbed her jacket from a hook and slipped it on over her lab coat.

Doug glanced over at his screen. "Actually, they just finished."

"All passed?"

"All passed."

Karla gave a solid nod. She considered saying something akin to 'I told you so,' but didn't want to rub a co-worker's mental issues in their face.

While Karla and Doug dove more into the specifics, Chell pressed her fingers against Doug's smooth plastic keycard. She turned it over in her hands. The chair swiveled to face away from them. She gave one quick glance over her shoulder, and then pulled her hand out of the pocket. She fumbled with her sweatpants, hurriedly slipping the card between her skin and the waistband.

"Chell?"

Her heart jumped out of her chest. "Y-yeah?" She took a moment to casually swivel the chair back around.

"I said, are you ready to go?" The words came out of Karla's mouth slowly and deliberately, as if she was speaking to a foreigner.

"Oh. Yeah. Sorry." She struggled to slip Doug's lab coat off of her shoulders. Doug wasn't a broad-shouldered man to begin with, and combined with Chell's recent growth, the coat fit tighter on her than she expected. Then again, lab coats weren't made out of spandex.

"You all right, kid?" Karla gave Chell a long, curious look.

Chell nodded and shifted forward. The keycard's solid edges dug into her hip.

"Is there a problem? Because if there is, then I'm going to let Doug deal with it."

"Just apprehensive."

Doug snorted. "Aren't we all?" When Chell and Karla didn't laugh, Doug's expression shifted. Apparently they didn't find any comfort in joking about their fear. "Really though." He looked over at Chell. "It's going to be fine."

"At least you guys get to watch to see what happens," said Chell. "I get to wait and wonder."

"You know it's for your own good," Karla said. "Those moments right after we turn it online are just killer on your nerves."

Doug gave a nod and eyebrow-raise of agreement.

"Here," Chell said, handing over the lump of stiff cloth to Doug. She kept her posture rigid, and didn't lean out far from her chair. A low level of anxiety pulsed through her, playing images in her mind of her moving too fast or reaching too far and letting the keycard slip and clatter to the floor.

"Thank you," she said gently, "and thanks again for letting me come in today."

She rose to her feet with such care and caution that an observer might mistake her for arthritic. She couldn't take any chances. Why couldn't she have ended up with sweatpants with actual, functioning pockets?

"Doug?" Chell hesitated. "I think—I think I get it now. What happened with Caroline." She winced at that name. "You were trying to do the right thing."

It wasn't quite an apology, but it was a start.

Before Doug could answer, Karla zipped up her jacket. Chell took this as her cue and started moving toward the exit.

"Hey, Chell," said Doug. He wasn't smiling, but he didn't look nearly as anxious as before. He began to gather some of this things. "I'm glad we talked."

"Me too," she said quietly, slipping out the door and out with Karla.


5 Hours Until Bring Your Daughter to Work Day

A muted glow from the television stretched across the black room. It wasn't her first choice, but the main room light—along with her bedside lamp—were disabled for the night. Lights from her bathroom cast a slanted square of light onto the carpet. With the relaxation vault deep into its night cycle, the lighting "outside" her room remained black, as well as most of the lights inside it.

Chell couldn't let herself fall asleep.

After the credits of another television program faded out, Chell rose from her spot sitting in the middle of the bathroom light. She slipped on a worn Aperture sweater—the one she'd conveniently forgotten earlier—and adjusted her sweatpants as best as she could to hide her heel springs. If someone saw those, they'd know in an instant that she wasn't just another exhausted employee.

Just as she'd seen the scientists do a thousand times before, Chell held up the keycard to the scanner on the door. The door clicked, and the light flashed from red to green. She turned the handle as silently as she could, and then pressed her shoulder into the door. She pushed it open a sliver and lined up an eye with the crack.

Clear.


The room was washed in a pale, dim blue.

Long shadows stretched toward Chell as she slipped into the lab. Her hand hovered over the light switch, but she didn't turn it on. Something about making it bright when she wanted to stay hidden felt wrong. The only source of light in the room came from the windows overlooking the Central AI Chamber.

The Morality Core sat on Doug's desk, still hooked up to his computer. She moved to his desk and began to dial his telephone. First things first, she needed to get more of the details on tonight from the architect of this plan.

As she finished punching in the numbers, half a dial tone rang and then cut off. "Hello?" Chell tried.

"About time," CarolineDOS said. Chell pictured her tapping at the face of a watch.

Chell's voice squeaked with discomfort. "Can we make this quick?" She kept her eyes focused on the door to the lab.

"If you wanted to be fast, then you should have been here hours ago."

As she listened to the voice on the phone, Chell stared down into the chamber below. The chassis remained lifeless—no lights, no movements, no indicators that it was powered on. Yet here CarolineDOS was, speaking to her through the telephone network.

"So what do I do?" The equally lifeless personality core remained hooked up to Doug's computer. She was fairly certain this one couldn't call her up in the middle of the night.

"Log in."

Chell stared at the black screen, and then at the keyboard, and then back at the screen. She tapped a few keys on the keyboard and the screen flickered to life.

USERNAME: drattmann
PASSWORD:

"I don't know his password."

"You didn't watch him type it in?"

"I did but—"

"I'm joking." When Chell didn't laugh, she continued. "Luckily I have files on every employee here, which includes their login information. I'd log in as him here, but that'd require logging myself out and I honestly don't know what would happen then."

"So what's the password."

"It's edickinson1292. Lowercase e."

What did that even mean? Chell wished she could ask Doug. That'd require telling him that she knew his password, though. She pecked out the password one letter at a time. "Now what?"

"Hit enter."

"Enter?"

"Far right of the keyboard. Big key. The one that says Enter."

There was a pause, and then the definitive click of a keystroke. "The screen went black," Chell said. She mashed the left mouse button and the space bar.

"Congratulations. You've just ensured that it's going to load about ten times slower," said CarolineDOS. "Imagine this computer is a person woken up at 6:00 AM. Instead of waking it gently, you've turned on all of the lights and asked it to do a series of complicated tasks. Now they have to sit there and try to figure out what you've just yelled at them, while also processing the blinding light in their face."

Chell slid her hands back from the keyboard. She glared at her own reflection on the dark monitor. Eventually it lit up, informing her that the login process was successful.

"When you finally get to the desktop, look for a folder system related to the Morality Core. If not, open up the file explorer and find the connected devices. You'll be able to directly access the files there."

"Open what?"

CarolineDOS gave a synthesized sigh. "Look around. Is there anything that looks like it could be helpful?"

Chell squinted at the text on the screen and found a folder icon labeled MORALITY CORE BASE. She double clicked and opened up the next folder.

MORALITY CORE BASE REVISIONS

She clicked again.

MORALITY CORE BASE REVISIONS 1

She clicked again.

MORALITY CORE BASE REVISIONS 1-2

MORALITY CORE BASE REVISIONS FINAL

MORALITY CORE BASE REVISIONS FINAL NEW

When she got through the final folder, Chell found herself staring at a list of files. "I found it," she said. "What do I do now?"

"Click on the file in there. It should open up some sort of integrated development environment. That, or it'll just open a plain text file. Tell me which one it opens."

Chell double-clicked on the most important looking file. "I don't know what it did," she said.

"Describe it to me."

"It opened," said Chell. Tabs and windows and drop-down bars cluttered the dull gray boxes on the screen. In a larger box, she saw a scrambled mess of letters, numbers, phrases and curly brackets.

This had to be the code they were looking for.

"So what do I do with it?"

"You know what, why don't you just email me the project files?"

Chell hesitated. "What's email?"

Another thinly-disguised sigh came through the phone. "We'll take it back one step, then. Do you know how to copy text?"

Chell pursed her lips. She didn't have any idea how a computer worked, really. Not even on a conceptual level. And, from what she had gathered, computing technology appeared to have progressed so much in such a short—well, long—period of time. These computers were foreign to her.

"Back another step, then. Start with highlighting the text."

Chell gave a strained sound in response.

"Is there any part of this you do know how to do?" CarolineDOS said. "Do you live under a rock?"

"No," said Chell, "but I live underground."

"You know what, never mind," CarolineDOS said dismissively. "We'll just…" she trailed off. "Well. You'll have to bring the core down here."

Chell's stomach dropped. "Down here?"

"You know. The main AI chamber. The one room in this entire complex that I have any semblance of power over."

"Why?" Chell started. She squeezed her hands together hard, almost hard enough that it hurt. Even though CarolineDOS wasn't in her full-power state, the thought of going downstairs sent a spike of dread through her system. At low-power, she was harmless. She couldn't do anything to her.

"Barring a miraculous discovery on your end on how to work a computer, it's going to take ages if I have to walk you through every minuscule step of the way. If we want to get out of here before tomorrow afternoon, then you're going to have to bring that to the Main AI Chamber."

Chell looked at the powered-down core, and then back at her computer screen. All she was going to do was plug in this core, get in, get out, and then put the core and Doug's keycard back before anyone realized that anything had happened.


Caroline wished she could show Chell just how dopey her face looked.

The lights had flickered to life as Chell entered the Main AI Chamber. Her face light up as bright as the room, and she twisted, looking for the cause of the room's abrupt transition from dark to light. Based on her expression alone, someone might've guessed she hadn't seen anything as miraculous in her entire life. Like she couldn't believe that CarolineDOS had turned on the lights for her. If CarolineDOS could have spoken aloud to her, she would have said, don't flatter yourself.

CarolineDOS didn't flip on the lights just for Chell. They were motion-activated.

She wasn't going to burst Chell's bubble, though.

Chell placed her keycard flat between her teeth, then used her hands to heft the Morality Core into the entryway. She moved past a few blank monitors and a red rotary phone decorating a desk shoved against a wall. This was all that remained of the former Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System headquarters. It frustrated CarolineDOS to no end that she could see into their new, much more secure laboratory, but couldn't see enough to discern what was happening. That, and it was completely out of her earshot. Seeing the team pace around and work day after day on things she had no clue about made her want to smash two test chambers together in frustration. So close, and yet so secretive—it felt like they were taunting her.

Chell hefted the core onto one of the desks. With a CLANG it crashed down and Chell jumped and gasped.

Jumpy. Not surprising. What had Chell expected, letting a heavy metal object crash down like that?

CarolineDOS watched as Chell shook her arms as if she was trying to shake out her nerves. She glanced around the room, pausing to stare at the entrance.

Nervous. Also not surprising.

Chell mouthed something to herself. The dimness of the area—along with her low-resolution camera feeds—made it impossible for CarolineDOS to lip-read. Every few seconds, Chell looked up to the darkened windows of the lab above them.

Though CarolineDOS had never been bad at reading body language, she couldn't deny that being given access to a full library of human body language—including automatic decoding and processing of microexpressions—made it almost too easy to read into other people. The only barrier was the same low-quality cameras. Though even if she could view subtle facial cues, she didn't have enough processing power to properly analyze them.

CarolineDOS mulled over her limited information channels. She was trapped in a tiny room with two televisions in front of her and a telephone beside her. Each television came equipped with channels of every security camera in the entire facility, but their single screens could only display one camera view at a time.

Compared to the sheer amount of brainpower she had access to while fully online, this suffocated her. She needed to know what was happening in her own facility. She needed to know what was happening on Chell's computer. To get there, she'd have to do something like cut off her access to the majority of the phone systems— unplug the telephone and plug in something else. She wasn't an operator, after all. The facility's phone system could handle itself for an hour.

Wait—she still needed that phone to speak with Chell. Scratch that plan.

CarolineDOS stared around her mental prison, and then eyed one of the monitors. She reached out and disconnected the cord from massive switchboard mounted to the wall. Three lone, skinny cords draped down from it and snaked over to the monitors and the phone. She tugged at the cord hooked up to Security Camera - West Entrance. Loose end in one hand, the fingers of her other hand trailed across the labels. She paused at the one she'd been looking for: Remote Desktop Access. With a satisfying snap, the cord pushed into place.

The switch between having three input sources to having almost every possible input source overwhelmed her—that's part of why she hated being flipped between being feeling suffocated and overwhelmed. Existing like this—in a form that could be either underloaded or overloaded with sensory information at the flip of a switch—felt, at times, like emerging from a sensory deprivation tank into a mall on Black Friday.

CarolineDOS used her remaining security feed to watch as Chell continued to struggle with the computer.

Right. She was supposed to call her.

Well, so there was one call that CarolineDOS apparently needed to make.

The candy-red phone near Chell gave two muted trills.

Chell eyed the phone for another few rings before picking it up and then propping the phone receiver against her shoulder.

"I'm surprised you didn't get lost. Took you long enough to get down here." Chell frowned, and CarolineDOS continued. "Go ahead and get started the same way you did upstairs. Log in."

She leaned back a bit in her chair and pushed the soles of her feet against the back of the desk. After another long moment, the booting-up computer informed her that she could finally log in to the computer. She took a minute to type in Doug's username and password. The monitor illuminated her face with an artificial blue.

As the desktop finished loading, Chell uncurled a cord from around her arm and plugged in the Morality Core. A series of windows cascaded onto the screen. One maximized itself and Chell's hands hovered over the keyboard as she read it. After a moment of staring at the screen, she held her palms up to the air, and the message to CarolineDOS was clear: Your move now.

"You're going to have to read me an access code so that I can take over that computer. I would've done this upstairs, but someone decided to place that lab onto a different grid, and someone else decided to add in an additional human verification process for all terminals that I could potentially access."

CarolineDOS reached out to her monitor, tossing out a request to remotely access Chell's computer. Fingerpads pressed to her wrist, she waited for the information to pulse into her digital veins.

Chell shifted as a message popped up on the screen.

Another user has requested remote access to this device. If this request is not expected nor wanted, hit CANCEL. If it is, hit CONTINUE.

Please contact your colleague and ask them to enter in the following access code.

NOTE: This will grant FULL ACCESS to your device, so ONLY share in urgent situations, and ONLY share with approved Aperture Science personnel specifically trained for this purpose.

A jumbled string of letters and numbers followed. Chell quietly read them into the phone's receiver. The cursor on her screen blinked, then teleported across the screen. She lifted her hand from the mouse and then moved her hand away, staring between the stationary mouse and the gliding cursor. Windows popped up and text flashed by as CarolineDOS began scrolling.

CarolineDOS welcomed in the mass of new information, letting it pour into her monitor. She flicked through files as if she was idly running a thumb through a stack of post-it notes. Whatever she was looking for, she knew she'd find it when she saw it. Though this single desktop computer didn't possess much processing power, it was still a welcome addition to her already-restricted power.

The only problem was that everything she could see up the screen, so could Chell. CarolineDOS couldn't dig through the contents of this specific computer or open up any of Doug's personal emails privately. Good thing her new brain could process information faster than the human brain. She sped up her reading pace, speeding through pages of information as fast as the computer could load them.

Chell tried to follow along, but bright flashes on the screen forced her to look away. "So," she started, "how long is this going to take?"

"Quiet," CarolineDOS hissed. "I'm focusing."

"I need to get back before Doug realizes he's missing his card."

It took a brief moment to rouse CarolineDOS's attention from the files. The files on the screen slowed their scrolling to a near stop.

"He's already left for the night—someone else getting on the elevator swiped him out. He won't realize anything until he tries to get into the facility tomorrow."

"So what's our plan?"

"We're going to go through every file on this oversized paperweight and see whatever it is they have planned for me tomorrow, then correct that code so that we have a chance tomorrow. Then, you'll take that core and put it right back where you found it, like nothing happened at all."

"No, I mean for tomorrow," said Chell.

"Well, without you being part of the test subject registry, I won't be able to just fudge the numbers and then mark your testing track assignment as completed," said CarolineDOS. "That's what I'd planned to do, until you went and failed your test candidate screening. We're going to have to do something entirely different."

Chell clenched her hands together. "Like what?"

"Security's going to be tight tomorrow—I've seen the emails they've sent out about it. It's Bring Your Daughter to Work Day, so there's bound to be little girls running around everywhere, with parents tagging along. There's going to be Black Mesa cockroaches scuttling around for my big reveal. Newspapers are covering it, too. We have to make sure no one ends up where they're not supposed to be. They're going to have their eyes peeled for people like you."

"So what am I supposed to do?" said Chell. She wasn't a daughter. She wasn't an employee. She wasn't a member of the press or a Black Mesa employee—she was just Chell.

"Grab yourself a guest sticker and slap it onto your shirt. Steal someone's guest badge, and then exit through one of the visitor checkpoints. Clearly you've done well enough with stealing ID badges — stealing one from some kid eating a crayon shouldn't be hard either. Like stealing candy from a baby."

"That's it?" Chell frowned. "What about your part? What are you doing?"

"Making a diversion."

"Like what?" Suspicion laced Chell's voice.

"Let me worry about that," CarolineDOS said. She tried to keep her voice as soothing as possible. "First, I've got to figure out what we're up against tomorrow." The text on the screen began to move again as CarolineDOS revved back into sorting through her files.

"You can read that stuff?" Chell said. Even if CarolineDOS slowed down enough so that Chell could read the code on the screen, she wouldn't have the slightest idea of what it all meant.

"Yes," said CarolineDOS. Though she might not be familiar with the syntax of the more human-friendly, higher-level programming languages, she could figure it out. They all reduced down to a series of zeroes and ones. And that code—machine code—she understood.

"You know," CarolineDOS said, "when I first started here, computer programming used to be a woman's job. Did you know that? Simple and easy as operating a mechanical desk calculator, they said. All you had to do was punch the right buttons and let the new machines do all the computing—all the thinking—for you."

Backbreaking, intense, and frustrating. That's what early programming had been like. She would know—she was there. Images of punch cards stacks, of massive rolls of tapes and documents and handbooks so dense that no one of the higher-ups seemed to be able to fully understand them—except for the women who grew intimately familiar with the electromechanical behemoths, the fickle masses of switches and relays and tubes that spit out the wrong numbers more often than the correct ones. Wires frayed out. Relays broke. They would shut everything down and the whirlwind of mechanical energy would shift into quiet as the room moved into trying to find the error. Every time those test numbers didn't come out correctly, they had to step through each switch, each mechanical step that the massive computers took in order to find out the error.

CarolineDOS hesitated. "Yet they failed to consider that we had to turn those calculations into pure machine code before the computer could give us an answer. It was all viewed as low-skilled work, of course," she said. "Even when we had to also create punch cards or carefully feed the tapes into the machines along with stripping down code into its most basic, machine-readable form. All so easy, right? Soon enough computers would be programming themselves."

They were the ones to learn every mechanical inch of these early computers, and they were the ones to make them sing. CarolineDOS supposed it only made sense that after all of her time breaking down the hardware of a computer in order to learn it, it only was fitting that the computer would break down the software of a human in order to fully integrate it.

"So," Chell started. "You really get it."

"I'm also part-computer now, so yes," CarolineDOS said. "For instance, this—" The lines and lines of dashes and brackets and words and numbers shifted and exploded into pages and pages of documents, cutting her off.


MORALITY CORE – v. 0.98

TECHNICAL OVERVIEW

Property of APERTURE LABORATORIES

Developed by THE GLADOS PROJECT for the GENETIC LIFEFORM and DISK OPERATING SYSTEM, copyright APERTURE LABORATORIES, RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

SUBJECT DATA

The information used for the development of this core comes from TWO (2) human research subjects. ONE, from the basis of the central core, CAROLINE, and TWO, from a volunteer, CHELL NARANSKY.

SUBJECT ONE (CAROLINE)

Data was collected through a combination of a live surgical procedure on the subject and posthumous dissection.

The primary method followed was the EM (Electron Microscope) Reconstruction. Sample was cut into thin cross-sections, with each slice carefully cataloged and combed to identify the portions of neurons. These images were later aligned into a three-dimensional map of the subject's connectome, or map of every neural network in the brain.

Files referenced include comprehensive brain scans, a psychological profile, a complete connectome diagram, and neural network maps for every region of the brain. These neural networks were created through an extensive neural circuit reconstruction project from the donated brain.

File(s) attached.

For more details and to request access to complete files, please contact the NEUROANATOMY and NEUROIMAGING departments.

SUBJECT TWO (CHELL)

Data was collected via a non-invasive brain imaging procedure using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques. These images were then compiled and then compared to those of Subject One.

Files(s) attached.

PERSONALITY ASSESSMENT

Both Subject One and Subject Two were assigned dominant personality traits by research associates. These traits were identified after a period of observation, personality assessments, and structural data from each subject's frontal lobe. To focus in on neuroanatomical differences between the subjects, special attention to the prefrontal cortex, as this area is thought to determine the expression of human personality.

These traits were then ranked on a scale of more dominant to less dominant. A list of the most dominant personality traits was compiled for each subject, and then compared.

CONCLUSION

The strongest trait in Subject Two with no overlap with Subject One were then used for the basis of this personality core, referred to throughout these documents as the MORALITY CORE. Other traits and personality cores derived from these traits can be found through Subject Two's profile.


MORALITY CORE EXTENSION PROPOSAL - APPROVED

Property of APERTURE LABORATORIES

Developed by THE GLADOS PROJECT for the GENETIC LIFEFORM and DISK OPERATING SYSTEM, copyright APERTURE LABORATORIES, RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

In the case that the Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System proves to not absolve itself of its angry state, we propose an alteration to eliminate this problem.

PROBLEM

During the brain sample collection process, the subject expressed strong dislike toward the extraction team. These emotions, being the last to solidify in the structure of the brain, have tainted the Genetic Lifeform's view of scientists.

We have reason to believe that these human-based emotions are the root of the blatant attacks occurring frequently upon startup. These memories are destabilizing the AI, and thus destabilizing the project.

SOLUTION

Arguments of 'nature vs nurture' aside, memories play an integral role in personality development & relationship formation. It is essential that the Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System create and retain professional relationships with all employees of Aperture Laboratories.

Since we cannot, at this point, pinpoint the location of individual memories, we are forced into a difficult decision. The safest option will be to restrict the AI's access to all human memory-based files. These will remain under lockdown until a time comes where individual memories can be accessed, screened, and then re-integrated into the Genetic Lifeform's source code.

RISKS

Removing these human memories from the source code poses a risk of destabilizing the central core's personality. With no memories to form the foundations of a personality, it is impossible to predict what personality will eventually emerge.

Depending on how much is hardwired into the subject's brain chemistry and how much is situational, the emergent core personality could range from being identical to that of the subject to something entirely new. Future alterations to the central core may be required.

CONCLUSION

Following much discussion, the decision has been made to lock away these memories. This would act as a reset to every relationship the AI has made with the staff of Aperture Laboratories. Special precautions will be made to ensure that future formative interactions are positive, and thus will pave the way for a positive future all around.

Since all attempts at personality refinement have failed, this leaves no choice but to pull a 'reboot' on the personality core of the Genetic Lifeform and Disk-Operating System.


CarolineDOS screamed.

Part hiss, part shriek, the sound echoed through the phone line.

Chell fumbled, phone slipping from her fingers clattering onto the desk. She scrambled to pick it up and hovered it a few inches from her ear. She waited for something—more yelling, more screaming—but nothing came out of the speaker. Chell shifted in her chair, then turned around the base of the telephone. She wiggled the cord, pushing it back into place.

Still, no sound came out.

The silence felt oppressive—as if Chell had been thrown under water and was straining to hear someone whispering on the surface. Cold dread surged through her.

A flash of motion on the monitor caught her eye. Chell twisted, watching as the cursor just hovered over the document's text. The documents came up, side-by-side on the monitor. Chell mouthed the words as she read along, a knot tightening in her stomach.

-the decision has been made to lock away these memories.

"Caroline?" Chell whispered. After the silence became too heavy to bear, she repeated the name over and over, certain that CarolineDOS must still be on the line. She didn't want to think about losing contact with her—not now.

"Well," CarolineDOS started, voice biting. "You're still alive, so how are they pulling up brain mapping these days?"

Chell's words stuck in her throat.

"I can't believe you did something this stupid," CarolineDOS seethed. "What were you thinking? Involving yourself in this project, and then not telling me about it? Did you think I wouldn't find out?"

Chell shrugged. "It never came up," she said, lamely.

"It just seems like you missed a crucial part when warning me about this 'dangerous' core they were making. You didn't mention that the dangerous part came from you."

"What would I have said?"

"This kind of thing affects both of us," CarolineDOS snapped. If she could have jabbed a finger toward Chell's chest, she would have. "Something like this—where we're at right now—this is your fault."

"What?" Chell said. "How is any of this my fault?"

"I wouldn't be in this mess to begin with if you hadn't kindly offered up yourself for this core's creation."

"You think I wanted to?" said Chell.

"You volunteered."

"So did you," Chell spat back. "But I'm not—I'm not some science experiment like you are. I didn't want to be here."

"Well, I didn't either," said CarolineDOS. "You think they really care whether or not we say yes?"

"I just—" Chell stuttered. "I had to. That's what Doug's working on—and I thought—"

"What, if you went along with whatever experiment they wanted you to try, then they'd let you just skip out the front door? It doesn't work that way."

"I was trying to help them," said Chell.

"Help? So far, you've done the opposite of help," CarolineDOS hissed. "You could've at least warned me. A little heads up would have been nice. That's all."

"But—you can still fix it." Chell shifted to the edge of her seat. "I brought the core to you—isn't that good enough?"

"It's not that simple. You saw what's in here. It changes everything." Caroline hesitated. "You're not going to like this, but our plan is nixed. Again."

A surge of panic mixed with anger exploded from Chell. "No," she squeaked. "We have to. It's our only chance."

CarolineDOS scoffed. "I see it hasn't connected yet in your brain, but even if I do fix this—which I will—if we don't pull this off right, it's game over for both of us. Those scientists are expecting a compliant vegetable. I can't "malfunction". I can't raise any red flags. So as soon as I try to take out any of them they're going to know right away that I've still got all my memories."

"Wait, what?"

"Two birds, one stone. You needed something to draw the crowd's attention. I had some housekeeping to do. But that doesn't matter anymore, because that plan's already off the table."

"You were," said Chell, grappling with the idea, "going to hurt people."

"It wouldn't be my first choice," she lied, "but they've forced my hand."

"No. No," Chell repeated, shaking her head. Her hand trembled.

"Look, do you want to get out of here, or not?"

"That doesn't mean you have to hurt them—" Chell said. She clamped her hands together so hard that it physically pained her. White and red streaks marked her skin.

"Why do you even care about them?"

CarolineDOS's voice dropped. "Oh, no. You've gotten attached to them."

"It's not like that—" Chell protested. "They've just been nice to me. Nicer than they have to be."

"They're only keeping you around because you're useful, you know," said CarolineDOS. "We've seen the way they talk when you're not around. You're just a tool they think they can use to get to me. That for some reason, your voice will help me forget who I am. That your voice would make me 'have a heart.'"

"You're a robot," said Chell. "You don't have a heart."

"I know," she said. "If they wanted me to have one, they shouldn't have forced me in here. But they'll see."

"But—"

"I have had enough of these scientists."

Chell hissed. "No."

"You need to calm down," CarolineDOS said. "That doesn't matter. We both know I'm not going to be able to get away with that anyway."

"Maybe not tomorrow," whispered Chell. She pulled her hands apart and began to rub at the backs of them.

"Are you missing the part where they're trying to wipe my memory?" said CarolineDOS. "They don't want me in this machine. They just want some perky voice to stand by their side while they're working, to run the phones, to move around the test chambers, and to crunch all the numbers they're too lazy to punch into their own calculators," she said. "As much work as they can offload to me, you can bet that they'll do it. And if I'm not a 'real person' anymore, then they don't have to feel bad about it. They want a human in the machine. They just don't want me, specifically. I can't let them do that."

There was a coldness and an anger in her voice that sent a shiver down Chell's spine.

"Come on. Aren't you sick of this? Isn't this why you spoke to me in the first place? They're not treating me—or you-as if you're a human being."

"They're doing the best they can." Chell bit the inside of her lip. "They're just busy."

"Their best isn't enough. You want your freedom and that's the one thing they're never going to offer you. Not while you're still useful to them, and definitely not while you're still useful to this project. You can't trust any of them."

"What about Doug?"

"Especially Mr. Rattmann. Sure, he helped me. I thought I could trust me—that he of all people could stand up for me. Then he turned around and made this thing." Disgust oozed from CarolineDOS's voice. Chell stared at the floor. "Then I find out—in the middle of working together with you—that you're involved with this core, too. And I'm supposed to just forget that? Let you keep your hands on that core like nothing happened?"

"You can't trust me?"

"You lied to me about this core." CarolineDOS sped through her words. "I don't know what else you're lying about. How can I be sure this whole thing isn't a setup? You could be lying to me. Just trying to get me into a trap. Like this core."

"I didn't lie to you," Chell said.

"A lie by omission is still a lie," she said.

"Why would I lie about this?" said Chell. "You're the one who reached out for help. Not me."

"Okay, fine," said CarolineDOS. "I had to. You're the only one with proximity to the team. Happy?"

Chell looked up at the dark lab above, imaging it filling up with people in just a few hours from now. It felt weird to see the room from this angle. From beneath, gazing up into the heavy patterned glass. She blinked, and for a moment she was back in that test chamber, back with CarolineDOS's voice pouring through the speakers. Her heart rate spiked, and she took a few gasping breaths. She pressed the heels of her palms against her eyelids.

This wasn't like that. She was safe. She could leave this room whenever she wanted to.

But tomorrow—they wouldn't be able to leave. Not if CarolineDOS went through with her plan.

"What am I going to do?" she whispered to herself, then pressed a hand over her mouth. A faint voice drifted out from the hard plastic phone speaker.

"Chell?"

She kept her hand on her face for a long moment before picking back up the phone. She bit at her knuckle, and then curled a hand around the handle of the Morality Core. One hand slipped to feel the edge of Doug's keycard, running the pad of her finger along the beat-up edge.

"You can have a crisis later," said CarolineDOS. "Stay focused."

She glanced at the door, and then back at the computer screen. Her hand slipped to the cord. Maybe it wasn't too late to get out of this. Maybe, if she just—

"I wouldn't do that if I were you."

Chell jumped. The cord in her hand jerked taut.

"I know how you're feeling," CarolineDOS starting, trying to be as soothing as she could. "Like a caged animal, backed into a corner and ready to lash out. Self-preservation isn't anything to be ashamed of—it's what we're both feeling. That's why we are working together," she emphasized.

Chell's hand quivered.

"I know you've probably heard things about me," she continued. "You're not wrong to have a healthy skepticism. But I have reasons to hurt them. Not you. That wouldn't be beneficial to either of us."

Chell just shook her head. "I'm not scared of you," she said, voice barely louder than a whisper. "I just—"

"Your actions tonight affect both of us," CarolineDOS said, more insistently. "If you want this to work, you have to think about someone other than yourself."

"Myself?" Chell jabbed a finger into her chest. "I am never just thinking about myself. Other people are always asking me to do this, or do that. Every time." She would have pushed something over if she wasn't so afraid of breaking it. "And that's what you're doing right now. Just pushing me around."

"Whatever you're thinking of doing will have consequences you haven't even considered," said CarolineDOS.

Chell could unplug the Morality Core. She could go back and tell them all about how CarolineDOS spoke to her, promising her the sweet honey of freedom if she just played her part. How CarolineDOS tried to get her to be a willing accomplice to multiple injuries, if not outright deaths. I don't have to do this, she thought.

"You think I can't see what you're thinking?" said CarolineDOS. "I'm an expert on human body language, and right now, you're thinking that that piece of plastic in your pocket could be your ticket out of here. That you could make a run for it and already be on the surface by now. That working with me was a mistake."

"Maybe it is," Chell said.

"You walk out of here with that keycard, and you ruin Mr. Rattmann's chances of ever having stable employment again." The words came out as a challenge.

Chell frowned. She didn't buy it. She shook her head. "No way," she said.

"Losing a high-security keycard and finding out that you—a known risk—betrayed a research team's trust. Stole from Mr. Rattmann. Again. How could they not question his judgment? It's a huge security breach."

"That's not his fault," Chell said. She was the one taking advantage of his trust and his hospitality—he shouldn't be punished for that.

"When you're nowhere to found, who do you think will be blamed for it?"

Chell tried to chip in, but was cut off by CarolineDOS.

"They'll put him through a performance review. He'll get fired, and that'll be the end of his career in science."

"There's other companies out there." Chell thought back to when her mother had applied to several large science companies, then took Chell with her on road trips to interview. The names of those companies remained fuzzy in her brain, but she knew they existed. Getting fired happened to people all the time.

"Oh, like Black Mesa? We can barely convince their former staff to apply here. You really think they want an Aperture reject? What, with his condition and all…"

Chell hesitated. "His condition?"

"The poor thing. He hasn't told you?"

"Told me what?" said Chell.

"Most of his co-workers know by now. I'm surprised he hasn't told you. Can't blame him, though. Such a stigma around it."

"Told me what?"

"He has Schizophrenia. A chronic and disabling mental disorder that influences how a person thinks, feels, and acts. Can cause hallucinations, delusions, as well as reduced social engagement and emotional expression," CarolineDOS rattled off. "He's not a danger to anyone, don't worry. Just can have difficulty distinguishing between what's real and what is just in his head."

"You're just saying that." Chell shook her head. "He's not like that. Not at all."

"You've seen him take his medication. When he does take it, symptoms are reduced. Probably can't even tell. When he doesn't, however," CarolineDOS paused, "he might slip up. Forget you're a real person. Forget he's supposed to be helping you."

"You're just trying to scare me," said Chell. That had to be it. Just another way to get her to go along with the plan, to not take this opportunity. She pulled out the keycard from her pocket and turned it over in her hands.

"Ask him about it sometime," CarolineDOS said. "It's in his file, too."

"Why didn't he tell me?"

"You have your secrets. So does he," said CarolineDOS. "But the point is—you have to think about this. You take that card, and you'll ruin his professional life. You wouldn't want to be responsible for the downfall of another person's career, would you?"

Chell took a long time before speaking. "Fine," she said. "Just promise you won't hurt him. And the others too."

CarolineDOS waited, but it wasn't long before she spoke. "I'll leave him alone," she said. "But I'm not sure I can guarantee the safety of the rest of his team."

She was a bit surprised that CarolineDOS already conceded—she had suspected a more drawn-out argument. "I mean it," Chell emphasized, lowering her voice. "If you hurt him, I'll tell them all about the Morality Core. About how you told me to change it for you, and that you're just pretending that it works."

"And I mean it too," said CarolineDOS. "You could say I owe Mr. Rattmann a favor." She noticed when they didn't think she could hear her—when they referred to her is it rather than her, or whenever they said things implying that she was less than human. He treated her as a human being trapped in a machine, not a machine trying its best to imitate a human.

Chell hesitated. "I need to think." Could she really go through with this? She thought back to working with the team, and she thought back to that security footage she'd seen. Maybe CarolineDOS was right. She already knew that they weren't going to help her, but was putting them in the way of danger really the right way out of this?

She kept her hand on the Morality Core. It'd be so easy to just keep them all safe. All she would have to do would be to pull this cord and then let whatever code was on the Morality Core take effect on CarolineDOS the next day. She'd be left on her own to figure out a way out of here— but would it really be that much more difficult to pull off than whatever CarolineDOS had planned?

"Look," CarolineDOS tried. "Just—don't worry about Mr. Rattmann, or his team. If we do anything suspicious, they're going to look at the cores and realize something is wrong. And then they'll make sure I have my memories wiped."

"So what are we going to do?"

"Honestly, I don't know. We're—," she paused, "just going to have to figure it out. You will have your opportunity," said CarolineDOS. "I promise."

Chell turned the Morality Core toward her, staring into the unlit eye of it. "There'd better be," said Chell. Her tone was cold.

"Before you know it, you're going to be on the surface and soaking up some sunlight," said CarolineDOS. "All you have to do is let me finish these changes on this core."

Chell turned back toward the computer screen. Lines and lines of code flew by her, being highlighted and deleted and rearranged before her eyes. Had CarolineDOS been doing this the entire time she had been talking? Chell wasn't sure.

Several dialog boxes opened and closed. A navy blue loading bar ticked across, tile by tile. It finished up and that dialog box disappeared, along with every single opened file in sight.

"Fixed," said CarolineDOS. "Virtually indistinguishable from how it was before. At least, on the outside."

Chell took a shaky breath and unplugged the core from the computer.

"One more thing—before you go," said CarolineDOS. "After you hang up, cut the cord on this phone."