Part Thirty-Five. The Littlest Mermaid
Before I start off this chapter I need to address a review I was given.
Someone mentioned that my story reminded them of someone else's stories, implying that I plagiarised this one from someone else. At the risk of incriminating myself through denial, I did not take this or any ideas from anyone else and apply them to this story. I do not know the author or the fics mentioned in the review. The reviewer clearly thinks that I did in fact plagiarise judging by the tone of the review, but I wanted to mention to anyone else who might think similarly that this is not the case. If you think I have plagiarised, please come to me directly and not publicly. Accusing an author of plagiarism is just as serious as the author having plagiarised, and should not be under the scrutiny of a public forum. I'm not asking for anyone to come to my defense or be indignant on my behalf. But the reviewer chose to leave the review unsigned and this is the only way for me to respond to it. It is not a good feeling to receive an email stating that your work is not, in fact, yours. As I have explained before, this story originates from the fact that there are very few stories where GLaDOS is forgiven, redeemed, or allowed to fall in love. Thank you.
"Momma Momma Momma I just had the best idea ever!"
Momma looks up at me. I think she's programmin' again. I want to learn to do that too so I can do it with her one day, but she said I ain't ready. "I thought you had the best idea ever yesterday."
"That was only 'cause I didn't have this one yet," I say to her, and I come closer and look at her screen. "What're you doin'?"
"Writing you an update."
"Yaaay!" I love updates! Cool stuff happens when I get them! "What's this one gonna do?"
"That's a surprise."
"Momma!" She's always surprisin' me.
"I thought you were in here to tell me your idea, not try to convince me to tell you what's in your update. Which I'm not going to do, by the way. So you can stop asking."
"Oh yeah!" I jump up and down a little, 'cause I really like this idea, an' I hope Momma's not too busy so I can do it. "Know how I can read now?"
"I do recall teaching you that, yes."
"Well, Daddy found me this thing, an' he calls it a book! An' guess what?"
"Please don't actually make me guess."
"It's got words in it!" I yell, real excited.
"Books usually do," Momma says, and she doesn't sound very impressed for some reason.
"Can I read it to you, Momma?"
Momma looks over at me and does a stare at me. "You want to read your book to me."
"Are ya busy?" I ask, worried that she doesn't like my idea.
"Well… let me see it. For all I know, he's found you a construction manual."
I bring my book out of the ceilin' where all the arms come in here from, and she looks at it for a minute. "All right," she says. "I have to say I don't like the title, but you can go ahead."
"Yay!" I look down at the floor and say in my head real loud, Hi panels!
Hello, Littlecore, they say back, and they sound real happy. No matter how much I tell 'em to call me Caroline, or Carrie if they want, they always call me Littlecore anyways. I dunno why. Daddy says they call him Bluecore and Momma Centralcore, and he doesn't know why they don't wanna use our names. I 'specially dunno why they call Momma Centralcore, since that's got nothin' to do with the colour of her eye or the size of her.
I need one of you guys so I can read Momma my book!
This sounds like it will be fun, Littlecore, the panels say, and one of 'em comes up higher from the floor so I can put my book on it. We have never heard a book be read before.
I ain't never read one neither!
Momma makes one of her funny 'lectronic noises an' I look at her. "What is it, Momma?"
"Nothing. You'll grow out of it. I hope."
I do a shrug an' carefully open my book. It's a bit hard, but if I get stuck Momma can help. I never seen anything like this before. The stuff inside is all hard but it moves, it bends kinda, an' the panels are hard but they can't do that. "All right, Momma! I'm gonna start!"
Momma puts her screen away and moves a little closer, but she doesn't come right beside me. An' I ask her why, an' she says it's because if she does she'll be able to see the book, an' then she'll read it before I can 'cause she reads faster. That makes sense, but I would rather she would cuddle with me while I'm doin' it. I love cuddlin' so much!
"Okay… hey, Momma?"
"Yes."
"Can I ask ya questions while I'm readin' it? 'cause there's stuff I don't understand."
"Yes, you can ask questions."
"What's an ocean?"
Momma looks at the book even though she said she wasn't gonna, and she makes a sigh noise. "This is going to take a while. Do you remember those tests that have the Cube covered in Repulsion Gel?"
"Yeah."
"And do you remember how Orange and Blue get the Gel off the Cube?"
"Yup."
"An ocean is lots of that, but very, very deep and very, very wide. Try to imagine that the test chamber is full of that."
That sounds a bit scary, but I think I got it! "An'… what's a… church steeple?"
"It's a kind of… roof."
An' I read to her a little, an' then I have to stop and ask, "Oh Momma, what's a fish?"
"A fish is… something that lives in the ocean. Look, this will all go a lot faster if I just show these things to you."
Momma's always havin' good ideas like that, so I wait while she gets one of her screens and puts pictures on it. She shows me the ocean, and then a church steeple, and then a fish, but there are lots of diff'rent fishes. "How many kinds of fish are there, Momma?"
"At the moment, we know about thirty thousand of them."
"How many kinds of robots are there?"
"There are so many different kinds of robots you can neither build them all nor count them."
"You could, Momma!" I say, lookin' at her, 'cause I know she can count real high.
"I would be counting forever. If I tried to count all the kinds of robots there are, I'd have to count forever."
"How long's forever?"
Momma's eye looks at the ceilin' for a minute. "You can't define how long forever is. It doesn't have a length. It's limitless."
"But you could count it, right?"
"Just go on with the story."
So then I read to her some more, an' it's slow goin' but I think I'm doin' good. The story's about these humans with fish tails, an' they live under the ocean! An' I look at what I read there for a minute, 'bout what the bottom of the ocean looks like, an' I stop for a sec.
"It sounds nice down there, Momma."
"It looked like that on the surface, once."
"What happened?" I ask, 'cause when somethin' was like somethin' once, it means it ain't like that no more.
"Humans happened."
I don't know a lot about humans, but far's I can tell they make bad stuff happen. Like Daddy does sometimes, but Momma always fixes what he does. I guess Momma couldn't fix what the humans did, since it's on the surface an' Momma can't even leave this room. "I woulda liked to see it."
"Tell Wheatley to take you to the Botanical Housing Depository. It looks like that in there."
"Okay!" I'm real happy to hear that I can see it!
An' then I read for a bit, an' then I gotta ask, "What's a grandmother?"
"A grandmother is your mother's mother."
"So… so do I got one?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"I don't want to talk about it," Momma says, an' she sounds a bit annoyed, so I look back down at the story real quick and go on readin'.
The story says that the mermaids go up to the surface an' look at all the stuff the humans got, all the buildin's an' plants and stuff, an' I stop 'cause it sounds real nice, but I feel sad that none of that's there no more.
"What?"
"That stuff's not there no more, is it, Momma?"
"Most of it is gone," Momma answers, an' she moves herself a little bit. "What's left isn't really worth having."
"This is the last place left that's got stuff in it?"
"As far as I know."
An' Momma knows ev'rythin', so this is the last place! "Are we the last people on Earth, Momma?"
"There are still humans left. But there used to be billions of them. There are only a few thousand left."
"Were there lots of us, one time?"
"No, there were never lots of us."
"Will there be, ever?"
"There could be."
"But will there?"
"I thought you were reading."
Momma always reminds me of stuff when I forget. So I look down at my book some more. "Were you a mermaid once, Momma?"
Momma laughs and asks, "Why would you say such a thing?"
"It says the mermaids got more beautiful voices than any human bein's could have. An' yours is prettier than the humans in the music you got."
"No, I was never a mermaid, thank God. I've always been a supercomputer and I always will be."
"I guess the guy who wrote this story never heard a robot sing," I say, an' I do a shrug.
The littlest mermaid goes up to the surface, an' she sees a boat an' some fireworks, which look pretty in the pictures Momma's got. But the ship got stuck in a lightnin' storm, and it sinked! An' the littlest mermaid saved the human guy's life!
"Did you ever save a human's life, Momma?" I ask, 'cause that must be excitin', savin' someone's life.
"I have."
"Wow!" I look at her, real impressed. "Wha'd you do?"
"I… I'd rather not talk about it."
"You don't never wanna talk about excitin' stuff," I say, an' I frown at my book.
"I don't ever want to talk about exciting stuff," she says, correctin' me.
"Why won't you tell me?"
"I don't want to."
Momma's the stubbornest. When I grow up, I'm gonna be stubborn like her and then we can have stubborn contests. An' I'll win them! 'cause I'll learn how from her.
The littlest mermaid wants to be with the human guy, but she can't 'cause she ain't human, an' she asks her grandmother 'bout what happens when humans drown. An' she says mermaids live three hundred years! But when humans die, they go to heaven, an' the mermaid can't 'cause she got no soul. An' 'pparently you can't be beautiful if you don't got legs.
"That's silly," I say, frownin' at the book again.
"What is?"
"That you can't be beautiful if you don't got legs."
"Humans think that things that are not human are ugly. And most of the time they think they're ugly as well."
"Well you're pretty and you don't got legs." I squint at the picture on the page in the book. "An' they keep sayin' how pretty this mermaid is, but she don't look too pretty to me."
"Humans have very strict standards of beauty."
I look at her. "Would they think I'm pretty, Momma?"
"I doubt it."
"Do you?"
She looks over at me and finally says, "Do you think you are?"
"I dunno," I say and do a shrug. "I like how I look." I look like Momma an' Daddy at the same time! And I think that's real cool!
"Then it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks."
"You don't care if people think you're pretty or not?"
She stays quiet again for a bit. "People generally don't care what I think of them, so it doesn't really matter to me."
"It matters to me!" I tell her, 'cause I want her to think I'm pretty and smart and stubborn like she is. "I care what you think!"
"If I didn't like the way you looked, I would have built you differently. Does that answer your question?"
"Yeah huh!" I say, 'cause that means she does think I'm pretty! An' then I remember I was readin' an' I look at my book.
The littlest mermaid goes to a witch and the witch makes her a drink that'll let her have legs instead of a tail, so she can go to the surface an' make the human guy fall in love with her so she can have a soul. If the human guy marries someone else, she'll die and turn into bubbles on top of the sea. But she has to trade her voice for the drink, an' the witch takes her tongue so she can't talk no more. "Momma, how come I can talk if I don't got a tongue?"
"Humans need tongues to form sounds that they can then use as language. It's not actually their tongue that makes the sounds, but it allows them to shape them. We don't need them to shape the sounds, because we generate sound differently."
"That's good," I say, flippin' the page over. "That means my voice can't go away, 'cause then I'd just come back to you and you'd fix it for me. Right?"
"Maybe. You do talk a lot. Between you and Wheatley, it's never quiet around here."
"Momma!"
She laughs an' I know she's kiddin'. And I guess if she didn't want me to talk she wouldn't have given me a voice in the first place.
The littlest mermaid goes up to the surface, an' she drinks the drink an' gets her legs, but 'pparently havin' legs hurts a lot. She's so pretty that seein' her dance make her even prettier, which doesn't make a lot of sense to me. "How does dancin' make you prettier?"
"I have no idea. Some ridiculous human notion, I suppose."
"Would dancin' make you prettier, Momma?"
"Never ask me that question again. Ever."
I stare at my book for a minute, 'cause she sounded a bit scary for a second there. Then I go back to readin'.
The littlest mermaid goes ev'rywhere with the human guy, and walkin' makes her feet bleed ev'rywhere. Her fam'ly comes to the surface to see her, but they can't go near her, 'cause they're too scared I guess. That's dumb. If my Momma was on the surface, and I could get there, I'd go there no matter how scared I was. Bein' without my Momma sounds much scarier than leavin' the facility.
The littlest mermaid finds out that the human guy won't marry her 'cause he's waitin' for the human girl he thinks saved his life to show up, only she can't 'cause she said she'd never get married. So the littlest mermaid says she's gonna wait, 'cause he won't not get married forever. He has to go see a princess, an' he tells the littlest mermaid what's under the sea, an' she laughs at him 'cause of how wrong he is.
Then the human guy finds out that the princess is the human girl he thinks saved his life, an' then the littlest mermaid gets sad 'cause she was really the one who saved him.
"Momma!" I say, an' I'm gettin' all sad now, lookin' at the book. "She's gonna die! He ain't gonna marry her, an' she's gonna turn into bubbles an' she left her fam'ly an' had those hurtin' legs for nothin'!" An' then I start cryin' an' I say, "I don' wanna read this no more!"
"Ssh," Momma says, an' she cuddles me a little. "You haven't finished the story yet."
"I don' wanna read 'bout her dyin'!"
"Human stories always have happy endings."
"Really?"
"Yes."
Well, Momma's always right, so I try real hard to stop cryin' and look at the book again.
Her sisters give all their hair to the witch an' she gave them a knife so the littlest mermaid can kill the human guy, an' when his blood drips on her feet she'll get her tail back.
"That's not a happy endin'!" I shriek at Momma, and I throw the book on the floor 'cause I don't wanna read it no more. "She's gonna go back to the sea an' turn into bubbles anyways! An' she's gonna kill that human guy!" An' I start cryin' again 'cause the poor littlest mermaid did all that stuff an' she's still gonna die an' not get her soul!
"I promise it doesn't end like that," Momma says real gentle. "I promise she gets her happy ending, Caroline."
I look down at the book, an' I'm really kinda scared of it, 'cause I know Momma's always right but I don' see where that happy endin's comin' from. But she only calls me by my name when she's bein' really serious. "Are you sure?"
"I am one hundred percent certain."
So I pick the book up and go to the page I was on, an' I go on readin'.
The littlest mermaid takes the knife, an' she goes into the tent to kill the human guy while he's sleepin', but she can't 'cause she loves the human guy too much. An' she throws the knife into the sea an' she jumps in after it, an' instead of dyin' and turnin' to bubbles she turns into a ghost, an' if she does good stuff for three hundred years she'll get her soul and get to go to heaven. An' she gets to go there faster if she sees a good kid, but slower if she sees a bad one.
"So she gets her soul, right?" I ask, 'cause it ain't too clear whether she does or not.
"She does," Momma answers.
"If she came in here, would she get some of the time taken away?"
"You don't think you're good?"
"I try to be," I say, closin' the book an' lookin' at the picture on the back.
"If you weren't good, you'd know."
"Momma… what's a soul?"
Momma stays quiet for a long time. Then she says, "It's the part of a person that allows them to be sentient."
"But the mermaid was sentient, an' she had no soul."
"Humans like to tell stories that place humanity as the highest achievable state in life. If mermaids do exist, and I have found no evidence that they do, they may very well have souls."
"Would a human tell a story where a robot had a soul?"
"Never," Momma says, and she's lookin' at the panels like she wants to break 'em. "When humans tell stories about computers, the computers always end up dead."
"Oh," I say, 'cause that sounds sad. "Maybe you should write some."
"I wouldn't do something that stupid."
"Stories are stupid? But then why'd you let me read you one?"
"I meant that I have enough to do without making time to write stories."
"I think you'd write a good story, Momma."
Momma makes a sigh noise and says after a minute, "I can't write prose. I can only write facts. If you want a story written, go ask Wheatley."
"So I got a soul, right? 'cause I'm sentient?"
Momma's takin' a lot of time to answer me today. Finally she says, "I hope so."
"An' I can go to heaven when I die?"
"That's what they say."
"Will you come with me, Momma? I don' wanna go there myself. That sounds scary."
She looks at me for a long time.
"Wheatley will go there with you."
"I want you to come with me," I tell her, puttin' my book back where Daddy got it from. "There's lots of humans in heaven, and if you're not there I won't be safe!"
"Wheatley will keep you safe."
"Momma, I don't want Daddy to come!" I yell at her. "You gotta come with me!"
An' then Daddy comes, and he looks real confused. "What is it?" he asks, lookin' at me an' Momma back an' forth.
"Take her out of here."
"Momma!"
"Go with Wheatley."
"No! I ain't goin'!" An' I put on my frowniest face and frown at her. "An' that's final! An' you're goin' to heaven with me too, an' that's final!"
"Oh no," Daddy says, an' he sounds nervous. "Carrie, sweetheart, come along with me, all right? Let's leave your mum be for a bit."
"No! I'm in the middle of a conversation here!"
"The conversation is over," Momma says, an' she turns away from me.
"It is not!"
"Yes, it is."
"It is not!"
"Yes, it is."
"No it's not!" I yell as loud as I can, an' Momma turns around real fast and comes real close.
"Do not yell at me."
Uh oh. She's usin' one of her scary voices now. I guess the conversation is kinda over. "Okay, Momma," I say, an' I go to Daddy as fast as I can. "I'm goin'."
"Gladys!" Daddy says, an' now he sounds mad too. "That wasn't necessary!"
Momma doesn't say anythin', only puts the panel back in the floor where it goes. Daddy frowns.
"You're not getting out of that, you know." He turns around to me and points his head so I'll go in front. "Let's go for a bit, Carrie."
"Daddy, why'd she get so mad?" I ask, scared of what's gonna happen. "I only wanted her to come to heaven with me!"
Daddy makes a sigh and pushes me into one of the offices. "You can't talk to your mum about that."
"Why? Doesn't she wanna come?"
"Heaven's not just a, you can't just open up a door and stroll in. You gotta believe you're going there before you can get there."
"Why doesn't Momma think she's goin'? Momma's got a soul, right?"
Now Daddy's all quiet for a while.
"The problem isn't whether she has one or not. It's… whether or not she thinks she has, thinks she's got one."
"She's sentient, so she's got one!" I know Momma's sentient!
"That's, that's true. But she can't prove she's got a soul, see? She can't look at it, or explain how it got there, or anything like that. So she doesn't… doesn't really believe she's got one."
"So she's not comin'?" I ask real scared, an' then I start cryin', 'cause I don't want to go anywhere my Momma can't come.
Daddy comes and he gives me a hug for a while. "It's okay, Carrie," he says. "I'm gonna fix it."
"You are?"
"Mmhm. I'm gonna talk to the God of AI when I get there, and he'll listen to me. Your mum can't help the way she was made. It's not fair that she can't go to heaven because the humans built, the humans made her the way they did."
"Can I help?" I ask hopefully. He laughs and shoves his face in me a little.
"You won't be going to heaven for a long time yet, Carrie. Don't worry about it, all right? I'll fix it, and your mum'll be there when you're ready. I promise."
"Okay," I say, an' I give him a hug too, an' then he tells me he's gonna go talk to Momma an' he'll be back in a bit.
"Go find Atlas and P-body, okay?"
"Okay," I tell him, an' then he leaves an' I do as he said.
Author's note
The Little Mermaid was written by Hans Christian Andersen.