Hey! Today's Portal 2's release anniversary! (April 19) So the completion of this chapter is very well timed! enjoy!
Chapter Four.
"Long distance."
ooo
For GLaDOS, traveling was a heck of a ride.
See, nobody really knew how an airport might accommodate her. Would they regard her as a passenger? She didn't exactly have the same sort of identification you would have if you were a typical human citizen. So if Aperture ever needed to bring her somewhere, they made sure it was within driving distance.
But then, of course, GLaDOS wasn't exactly a licensed driver either. So someone had to do it for her. To her, it was bad enough that she had to admit to depending on someone for such a simple thing as that. She was used to being in control and she was used to being self-reliant. But she also had to sit and do nothing, enclosed in a relatively small space, with these people for several hours. She couldn't say she was looking forward to it. But she would deal with it.
Before she left on Tuesday morning, she and Chell made some final preparations as well as a warm, loving goodbye. Enveloped in Chell's soft embrace, GLaDOS near-whispered, "I'll see you in two days. Don't destroy everything while I'm gone. I love you."
I love you too.
And then GLaDOS had to go, and Chell went back inside, and the Aperture group drove away, and Chell was on her own, left to work on her computer in silence. It stayed that way for a couple of hours, with GLaDOS desperately trying to ignore the people around her, and Chell desperately trying to finish her project as fast as she could. In fact, just as she was closing the program with a sigh of relief...
Knock-knock.
The sound grabbing her attention away from her screen, she shoved her laptop to the side and jumped up to open the door. Behind it, she found Wheatley smiling brightly (to which she responded with a greeting smile of her own).
"Hello!" he chirped. "Chell, I'd like you to meet someone." He stepped to the side, creating a dramatic reveal of a young boy standing behind him. The boy had shaggy, light brown hair and was carrying a backpack printed with a galaxy pattern. He looked up at Chell and smiled.
"This is my little cousin, Phoenix," Wheatley said. "Phoenix, meet my friend Chell."
"Hi Chell," said Phoenix. "I'm Phoenix. I like space."
Chell smiled and waved in response. Phoenix turned to Wheatley and mumbled, "She's quiet."
"Yeah, and you're talkative," Wheatley responded plainly.
"No, you're talkative. You talk a lot. More than me. Hey, what are we doing? Are we gonna go somewhere? Where are we going?"
"Chell asked me to come and take her to Aperture for a... special project she's planning. She needs my help there."
"Do I get to come? I wanna come. I wanna watch."
"Well, fortunately for you, I'm responsible for you at the moment, so you get no choice but to come."
"Yaaay!"
ooo
The child continued to chatter to himself the whole way to the facility. "Hey. The moon. I see the moon. You can see the moon during the daytime. Look, it's the moon." He didn't seem to mind that no one was listening or responding. Maybe he didn't even notice.
"Phoenix's parents are out of town this week and they've left me in charge of him," Wheatley explained to Chell as they walked into the facility. "If you ask me, maybe don't go on week-long trips if you can't bring your child with you, but I will be honest, I don't mind having him around. And, you know, they think I'm responsible enough to take care of him-don't open that door, Phoenix!"
Chell giggled. You're doing a good job.
The group found themselves in a hallway situated between testing tracks. Wheatley gestured to one side. "Alright, there are a few of those painting you asked me about in this testing track, if you'd like to take a look."
The door opened, and as Chell stepped inside, she could see on the far wall a depiction of a test subject surrounded by turrets. She pulled a sizable bag off her shoulder, set it on the floor, and rustled through it a moment. She knew exactly what she wanted to do. She unpacked a set of paints and brushes and got to work. She began with several long, sweeping gestures across the top of the painting, letting passion (and a general knowledge of what she was aiming to do) guide her hand. Within several minutes, she had surrounded what had originally been a scene of fear and threatening with a musical staff, a brighter atmosphere, and the words "cara mia addio" which swirled around the edges of the scene like a length of ribbon. The simple sketch of a test subject was now smiling. The red light of the turrets even looked less intimidating, which was amazing, because Chell hadn't changed anything about the turrets.
She took a step back and grinned, satisfied with her work.
Chell hadn't painted in a long time. Not for any particular reason, she simply hadn't gotten around to it, and then the tests happened, and since then nothing had brought her back to it until now. Nothing like surprising your girlfriend to motivate you to pick up your paintbrush, Chell thought. A playful, excited part of her demanded, Do another!
Chell pulled her bag up, carrying her still-wet tray of paints in her hand, and walked swiftly, and with such a lightness and energy that she was almost bouncing, out the door. Wheatley, who had been watching Chell work through the window, was now leaning against the wall. As the door re-sealed itself behind Chell, he asked, "Ready for the next one?" She nodded, and they began to make their way down the hall. A hall Chell vaguely recognized as being close to GLaDOS's chamber.
As they walked, Phoenix, unable to let silence linger for too long, suddenly inquired, "Why are you doing that? Changing those paintings, I mean. Why are you doing that?"
Chell and Wheatley exchanged a glance. Chell shrugged. "Well, uhm... You know the lady in charge of all the testing? GLaDOS?" Wheatley hesitated briefly at the name, but that went unnoticed.
"The one who made those two guys stop yelling at each other? I remember her. Who's she?"
"Well, she's in control of a lot of Aperture Science, and a long time ago some very dangerous things happened, unspeakable things, and people got hurt. Lots of 'em did. Not the greatest part of Aperture's history, that. Anyway, people started finding out about it, and they were afraid. They were afraid of her, too, because she's in charge of testing and she's the one who was letting all that happen. They say, that's when these paintings started appearing."
"So why is she changing them?"
"Well, GLaDOS does things differently now, things are a lot less... murder-y. And Chell didn't like how these pictures were painting GLaDOS in such a negative light. Literally, painting her in a negative light."
Suddenly, Chell began to speak. "I know GLaDOS. She isn't a monster."
"Chell says she thinks the paintings have got some sort of... psychological effect. Something about past mistakes and self-perception, I don't remember all that you said, sorry 'bout that. But that's why she wants to change 'em."
Chell nodded. "The message of those pictures is making her upset. I can tell. And I love her too much to let that keep happening."
Aw, that was sweet-
"Wait. You love her? Are you dating? Is she your girlfriend?"
"Phoenix!"
"Yes, she is," Chell responded calmly.
"Cool." And then Phoenix found something else to look at. "Moooon! The moon, I see the moon. SPACE!"
He wasn't wrong. On the ceiling in the chamber ahead, there hung a drawing of the phases of the moon. He ran over to the window, pointing in the drawing's direction and poking the glass.
"Wait, look at that wall," Wheatley called to Chell. "There's another painting of her, too."
Chell remembered this one. This was the one she was looking at last week, the one with a test subject that was undeniably meant to be Chell herself, somehow. The moment the door opened, she ran in and dashed across the room to get a closer look.
Standing a few feet away from the illustration, she paused, staring at the terrified expression of her painted counterpart. Gazing into the threatening, unforgiving eyes of an AI she barely recognized. She almost couldn't look anymore. She sighed. One thing at a time. Lifting a paintbrush, she mixed together a few quick colors and with only a few brushstrokes softened GLaDOS's expression, transforming it into a faint, anticipatory smile. A quick splash of blue made Chell's painted eyes bright and calm and curious. And now, Chell thought to herself, the best part.
She'd figured the best way to fix the bad things was to replace them with good things. For example, happy memories or a song GLaDOS wrote. And she'd thought of a fairly recent happy memory that would be perfect here. Within a few short minutes, the new version of the painting showed an arm outstretched from GLaDOS's silhouette, offering a piece of cake on a plate to the curious human ahead. Chell grinned and wrote under the plate," Truly amazing."
Chell paused for a moment. There was something else she wanted to do. Finding a blank space on the next wall over, she began to sketch an illustration of her own. No, two of them, but meant to be reflections of each other. On the left, GLaDOS stood facing a monitor, a microphone, and a keyboard; her hands were held in position to type. On the right, GLaDOS stood facing Chell, hands reaching out to meet Chell's, and both of them smiling. Above the first image, Chell added the words, "For Science." Under the second picture, she wrote, "For Love."
She looked over her work again, setting her paintbrush down on her tray. She's going to love it. No doubt.
ooo
"Years ago, Aperture scientists began a project aiming to upload a human mind to artificial intelligence. We called it the Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System, or GLaDOS, and this is what we ended up with," Aperture's CEO told the audience. "Come on out, GLaDOS."
GLaDOS fought the internal urge to respond to "come on out" with "fine, I'm gay" as she made her way up the steps to the stage. She wore a dress with a flowy, white skirt under a soft black sweater, and the side of her hair that she usually pinned back now hung loose at the side of her face like the other side did. She almost sparkled in the eyes of everyone watching, and the audience's applause fell silent as she approached the mic.
She talked for a short while about her role in the facility and in the test designs. Then she talked about herself, her origin and how she worked. That was really all she needed to talk about. She spoke with clarity and resolve, but inside, there was something she wished she could discuss instead. But here wasn't the place. So she kept talking about what these scientists had come to hear, and when she was done she sat back down.
She didn't mind talking in front of people. Technically, it was part of her job. There was no performance anxiety or anything. She didn't mind the presentations. She sort of liked being shown off. She knew Aperture was proud of her, of having created her, and she knew she was, after all, rather impressive.
But there were a lot of things she could say to that many scientists, to that many people, and she couldn't tell whether or not she wanted to say them, or if she should say them, or if she wanted to stay quiet and lie by omission, and she had a lot on her mind suddenly, and she didn't know what to do, or what she wanted to do, and she didn't know, she just missed Chell.
Chell...
As quietly and inconspicuously as possible (so as to avoid advertising to the whole room that Not Only Did She, An Android, Have A Phone, But Also She Was Using It Right Now Instead Of Watching The Presentations), she typed out a text message to Chell.
[Conversation: GLaDOS + Chell]
Today - 7:51 pm
GLaDOS: Hi.
Chell: hey! [insert heart emoji]
Chell: how is the presentation
GLaDOS: I just got done talking. Everything went smoothly. I don't mean to brag, but they LOVED me.
GLaDOS: Now I'm thinking about you. I miss you.
Chell: I miss you too.
[A minute passes.]
GLaDOS: I should have asked if you could come, I'm thinking about things and it would be better if you were here.
Chell: Is something wrong? are you okay?
GLaDOS: I'm thinking about being honest (for once) about the testing issue. Certainly not here and now, but eventually. I want to apologize.
GLaDOS: But I don't know if I should. I don't even know if I actually want to.
Chell: Admitting your mistakes is hard. But you've learned from it, havent you? and you've already made changes so those things don't happen again
Chell: If you keep it secret then no one will know. alternatively, if you're honest, you can still know that the current state of things is a vast improvement from the past
Chell: So it depends whether you want to be honest or not
GLaDOS: Hm. Then I guess I really HAVE learned a lot.
Chell: ?
GLaDOS: I think I actually do want to be honest.
ooo
oh my god finally i got the whole thing typed out, after losing all my progress to accidentally closing the tab. third time really is the charm, guys.
anyway happy portal 2 release date anniversary, here's to 7 years of a game i haven't played but love to death. it's still a couple hours to midnight in my time zone as of typing/uploading this, so im not late!
i've been having lots of ideas for this au and a few of them are introduced in this chapter, i'm really looking forward to them
also? remember the "fighting the urge to respond to 'come on out' with 'fine im gay'"? that's definitely me. this fic is now a certified Melancholy Starlight Content [insert rainbow badge thingy]