If anyone tried to read LaaC last night and saw that I accidentally added a chapter of Storytime with GLaDOS to it, please hit previous now and read Part Thirty-Eight first. Sorry about that.
Part Thirty-Nine. The Adventure
Today I'm goin' out by myself.
Usually Daddy comes with me when I go somewhere I never been before but today I'm gonna do it myself. I'm a little scared 'cause this place is really big but I wanna start bein' more grown up. I'm doin' pretty good 'cause now I can read and write and I can draw a little better, and I can even get my Edgeless Thingamabobs out when they get stuck without askin' for help. So I'm gonna go in the facility. I dunno where I'm goin' yet, but it's gonna be somewhere I never been.
Part of why I'm doin' it is 'cause Momma gave me an update yesterday and she says I got my own camera now. And what I can do with it is take pictures of what I see! So I'm gonna go really far and take some pictures to show her. I hope she'll be proud of me again.
I erase the picture I had on my panely – I mean my whiteboard, that's what Momma said it was, and put the markers for it away. I'm really excited for my adventure but I've never really done anythin' without tellin' Momma before. I mean she'll always know where I am if she looks but I feel kinda diff'rent not actually tellin' her. But Daddy and her don't tell me everythin' they're doin' so I guess it's okay.
I make sure everythin's neat and tidy for when I come back and then I go down the hall. I'm goin' a little slow 'cause I still feel funny about not tellin' anyone but the panels are here so someone does know, right?
The farther I go the older lookin' stuff gets. It's not really diff'rent from where I usually go otherwise. There's lots of offices with computers and desks and windows in them. Some of the offices I go and look inside but they're all the same. The only thing I can see through the windows is test chambers, but they've all got their lights off and the testing stuff is shut down. The one I'm lookin' at now I think has the pellet-firing thingy and the thing that makes the blue swirly things. One day I wanna go in a test chamber and solve a test, but I haven't asked Momma to yet 'cause I dunno how you solve a test chamber without bein' able to hold the portal gun. Also Momma won' let me touch the portal gun so that makes it even harder. She said she'll let me look at it when I'm old enough to understand what a black hole is. I'm gonna look it up in the database but I keep forgettin'. I really wanna look at one 'cause they're really pretty an' Atlas has a blue one so I really wanna look at it. Momma has a portal gun too but I haven't seen it. I just heard Momma and Daddy talkin' about it one time. Momma was sayin' that she thought it might be broken and it would be just like her to break it before she left, and Daddy started laughin' and said she got the last word in, even though she was mute. I dunno who 'her' is. I haven't seen anyone else here and the only other girl is P-Body, and she's here so it can't be her portal gun. Plus she still has hers.
The farther I go the more lights are off, and I see some of Momma's cam'ras but I think they're turned off too 'cause they're facin' the floor. I go up to one an' look at the front of it. I don't see the little red light on it so it's gotta be off. Once I asked Momma why she has a little red light near her eye, and she told me it was because she makes a recordin' of ev'rything she sees. She told me I couldn' do that though because then I'd fill up my hard drive, which I need for other stuff like learnin'. So I gotta be careful when takin' my pictures. I feel a little nervous again. Momma only turns off the cam'ras farthest from her chamber. So I'm gettin' really far now.
I keep goin' but a little slower. There aren't a lot of panels here anymore. I can see this place and it looks kind of like an office but not like the ones where I just came from. The only problem is that the ceilin' has a diff'rent kind of rail on it and I'm gonna have to leave the one I'm on to get there. I don't know what I should do. I've never been off this rail before. Is that rail safe? Maybe it's not, since it's stuck to the ceilin' and all. But if it wasn't safe, why would Momma leave it there?
Well, I am on an adventure. And it's not very adventurous if I just sit here all day. I'll just be careful and I'll make sure I can get back to my rail. So I get a maintenance arm and I move myself to the other rail. It doesn' creak or fall out of the ceilin' or anythin', so I guess it works okay. And I just got a message sayin' I'm plugged in so it works with my battery too.
I go into the room and it's kinda disappointin' 'cause all that's in it is lots of chairs and another desk and a… I forget what it is. It makes pictures I think? If you put paper in it? Momma told me once but I can't remember.
I keep goin' through the room and it's so borin' that I wanna go back to my rail, but then I see somethin' else outside the room and I decide I'll go look at that first. And what I see is kinda cool! There's these signs and they tell me how to make a batt'ry out of a potato! That makes me laugh 'cause it's kinda silly. 'magine if I had a potato in me! Daddy took me to this room where Momma keeps all this stuff she has to fix and showed me what some of my insides look like. I have this green thing called a motherboard and the batt'ry is really really small. It's just a small little circle and it has much more power than this potato. This sign says… one point one volts. Yeah, my batt'ry's gotta be bigger than that.
There's lots of potatoes but there's also this thing that's 'pparently a volcano. I read that sign very carefully because it says stuff about chemical reactions and I know that's Science and knowing Science is very important. Not just 'cause Momma likes it but 'cause if you don't know Science you can't fix stuff or build stuff and that is somethin' everyone should know. I'm not sure how useful knowin' about volcanoes is but maybe it'll come in handy one day.
The last thing is – it's amazin! It's a huge potato, and I can see its roots and everythin'! Wow! I wonder if Momma knows about this thing. I take a picture of it for her and try to read the sign but I can't see it 'cause the potato is too big. That's kinda annoyin'. I wanna know why this one's so big but the others are just tiny. And how come Momma doesn't have any giant potatoes?
When I'm done lookin' at it I go farther on the rail and I come to another place and there's this really big thingy stickin' out of the floor. That's weird. I'm not sure what it is. It's really big though. When I go up closer I can't even see the bottom of it. It just goes into the facility farther than I can look. I shiver a little and pull myself together and move my handles closer to me. I don't like this part of the facility. It's too dark and weird and I can't hear anythin'. There's just a whooshin' sound and sometimes some creakin'. And it's cold. It's colder'n anywhere else I ever been. I shoulda just gone to the greenhouse. It's not really that fun to go on an adventure when it makes you all lonely. I wish I woulda brought Daddy with me.
I turn around and I go down to where I came from. I'm gonna go back now. I don't like this anymore. But now I'm at the end of the rail here and it goes in two directions and I don't remember which one I came from. I know there's only two ways out of here but what if I pick the wrong one by accident? Then I'll really get lost! Right now I'm only sorta lost, which is still scary but not as scary as bein' really lost! But I can't just stay here! I gotta go somewhere!
I don't know what to do. I can't even move hardly an' I think it's gettin' darker and colder. I look around and try to remember which way I came from on this rail but I can't!
Oh wait! All I gotta do is call Momma. She'll help me. She knows where I am. She always does. So I send her a message and then I wait. I hope she answers me quick. She always does but I really need her to be really fast right now. I want to go home.
She's not answerin'. Momma's not answerin'.
I gotta stay calm. I try real hard to and then I send her another one. I need her to tell me how to get out of here. Or send Daddy to come get me.
She's still not answerin'.
Oh! I get hopeful 'cause I just got two messages but now I'm readin' 'em and I just feel worse 'cause they both say they're unsent! But that means Momma can't hear me!
If Momma can't hear me and I can't get out then I'm gonna be lost forever! What'm I gonna do? I can't stay here forever!
Then my optic goes real small 'cause I just heard a noise I never heard before. I dunno what's goin' on but there's probably a monster behind me 'cause Momma's not here and it probably knows that and it's gonna eat me. I didn't believe about monsters before but now I think I do 'cause I dunno what else that noise would be. Just me and Momma and Daddy and Atlas and P-Body live here. And Momma's not here and if Momma's not here this is probably where all the monsters in the facility live. And then I remember there really are monsters here! The Mantis Men! The humans who put DNA in themselves and turned into monsters! I'm in big trouble now, I just know it! I'm gonna have to run away and that's gonna make me lost!
I don't hear the noise anymore. Maybe I 'magined it. Okay. I'm scared so I heard a noise that didn't happen. And I'm gonna turn around and look and see nothin' and then I don't have to be scared of somethin' I 'magined.
Okay. I'm gonna be brave. I'm turnin' around. I'm gonna see nothin' 'cause there's nothin' there.
Except there is somethin' there! There's a Mantis Man there and he's gonna eat me! I can't even think no more and all I can do is start screamin'! And I start shakin' real bad and I'm tryin' to get away but I can't make myself move 'cause I'm too scared!
The Mantis Man blinks at me and moves backward, and he starts scrunchin' up his face. When I can stop screamin' I say as brave as I can, "You better not eat me! My Momma won't like it if you eat me! She'll probably do some Science on you and you better not make her mad 'cause Science is really powerful, you know!"
"Eat you?" the Mantis Man says, and his voice is quiet and kinda scratchy. That's kinda weird 'cause I woulda thought the voice of a Mantis Man would be real loud.
"You Mantis Men are really dang'rous," I tell him, 'cause I'm gonna let him know I know all about him and the kind of stuff he does. I dunno if that'll stop him from eatin' me but it's the best I got right now. "So of course you're gonna eat me. But you better not. Or you'll be in trouble."
The Mantis Man frowns and folds his arms together. "Wait. I've never seen a core like you before. Where did you come from?"
"C-come from?" Why is the Mantis Man askin' me questions before eatin' me?
"Do you remember who made you?"
"Well yeah," I tell him, and I'm not as scared and I dunno why but I think if he was gonna eat me he would've eaten me without talkin' about it first. "My Momma made me."
His eyes get real wide. "Your mother?"
"Yeah?" Unless Momma was lyin' but she doesn' lie to me. Not ever. "Don't Mantis Men have Mommas?"
"I'm not a Mantis Man," he says. "I'm a human."
"Don't be silly," I tell him. "You're too small to be a human. Humans are giant scary monsters an' you're smaller'n Atlas 'n' P-Body."
He makes his frown again. "Who told you that?"
"Nobody. But humans aren't very good. All the books I read they do bad stuff." What I don't get is why he hasn't done any bad stuff yet. Is he waitin' for more people to come or somethin'?
"What kinds of books are you reading?"
"Daddy calls 'em fairy tales."
"Hm," he says, and he shrugs. "I guess you're right, in that case. But I'm not going to hurt you. I won't even touch you if that's what you want. You've been sitting there staring for quite a while, though. I came to see if you were broken."
"I don't think so," I tell him. "Somethin' might be broken, though, 'cause I was tryin' to send a message to my Momma and it's not sendin'."
"This part of the facility isn't in use anymore," the human says. "It's been shut down for a few years now. I'm glad of that, but I have been wondering why. Where are you trying to go?"
"I wanna go home." I'm gettin' scared again. This human guy seems to be nice but I don't wanna stay here talkin' to him.
"Where is home?" he asks me real soft.
"With my Momma."
"And where is she?"
"In her chamber."
The human sticks his hands in his hair and messes it up a little. "You are kidding me."
"I'm not jokin'," I tell him real serious. "Home is my Momma's chamber!"
"No, I…" He shakes his head. "I can't believe this. She actually did it."
"What'd who do?"
"Is your… father named Wheatley?"
I open my eye real wide. "How'd you guess?"
"I've met him." He's lookin' at me serious now. "He told me his plans, but… I never thought such a thing would happen. I never thought she would do it."
"Who would do what?"
"I never thought she would agree to build you. Not you specifically, but at all."
Oh I think I get it now. "You mean Momma?"
"…yes," he says real slow.
"So if you know her you know how I can go home, right?"
"Possibly. I'll have to look it up. Come with me." He waves one of his hands at me and I follow him into a little office. It's got a computer in it and he sits down and wiggles the mouse. "I'll see if I can find a map for you."
"Thanks," I say a little shy. I guess humans aren't that bad, right? 'cause he's helpin' me and he doesn't have to. "Can I ask you somethin'?"
"What?"
"Do humans have names?"
He looks up at me, and I think he's surprised, and then he starts laughin'. "Don't the humans in your books have names?"
"Yeah but I don't trust 'em 'cause they're names like Little Red Ridin' Hood."
He nods. "That's true. Yes, we have names. I'm Doug."
"Mine is Carrie," I tell him and I feel a little shy again 'cause I've never told anyone my name before. I don't know if I did it right. He looks a little sad for some reason.
"That's not… short for Caroline, is it?"
I'm about to ask him how he knows that when all of a sudden I realise somethin'! "Did you meet Momma's friend, Doug?"
"Caroline? No. She was gone before I came here." He's typin' a little on the keyboard. "I know who she was, but I never met her."
"I wish I met Momma's friend," I say to Doug. "She gets sad if anyone even says my name so whoever Caroline is she's gotta be real important."
"Your… parents don't say your name?" He looks up at me all confused again.
"Daddy calls me Carrie an' Momma only calls me Caroline when she's bein' really serious."
He stops his typin' and then he turns his chair around so that he's facin' me. "How is she."
"Momma? What d'you mean, how is she?"
"You know. Tell me how she's doing. What you guys do. That sort of thing."
"I don't know what you're talkin' about, Doug," I tell him, and I make a confused face but I don't know if he understands what I look like.
"Tell me about your family," he says. Okay. I think I can do that.
I tell him about Momma and Daddy and all the stuff we do, and when I tell him I can write his eyebrows move real quick so I have to stop and ask him why. "Robots don't usually write," he tells me. "But I shouldn't be surprised, since she built you."
"She said she was proud of me," I say a little shy, 'cause I don't know if Momma would want me sayin' that but it just makes me so happy to think of it and I'm even happier now that I can share it with someone. "She said what you just said, only she said somethin' about fingers."
Doug smiles. "She insists on using those claws, eh? She never changes."
"She's really stubborn," I say, frownin' a little. "I'm gonna be really stubborn too one day."
That makes Doug laugh. "Oh no," he says, and I think he looks really happy for some reason but I can't figure out why. Then I notice his eyes look a bit weird.
"Hey, are your eyes broken?"
He shrugs. "Sort of. But it doesn't really matter."
"You're still efficient even with your eyes broken?"
He narrows them a little bit and makes his mouth thinner. "That sounds so odd, coming from you."
"What?"
"'Efficient'," Doug says. "Children don't usually know that word."
"That word's important," I say to Doug. "If we aren't efficient we're gonna get hurt. And anyway. I'm not some dumb human kid."
"That's not a very nice thing to say," he tells me really soft. I shrug.
"I looked up children in the database. When they're the same age as me they can barely do anythin'. They still can't even talk right. And I know I don't talk really well yet but I'm getting better." I look at the floor.
"Do your parents talk about humans a lot?"
"No," I answer. "Sometimes but not a lot and it's usually about test subjects."
"What about test subjects?"
"Just that Momma wants some. She doesn't get to test anymore. I don't know why Atlas and P-Body stopped but now they only use the test chambers for playin' in."
"She stopped testing."
"You can't test robots," I tell him, 'cause he's bein' silly. "You don't get any data if you do that."
He looks up at me for a long time. Then he waves his hand at me. "Come here. I'll show you where you need to go."
I come over so I can look at his screen and he shows me where I got stuck. I'm s'posed to go left when I get there. Okay. I can remember that. He gets outta the chair and follows me out of the office. "What d'you do in here, Doug?" I ask him, tryin' to go slow enough that he can keep up with me. "And how come Momma hasn't got you to test for her?"
"She can't test me," Doug tells me, and he puts his hands inside the white thing he's wearin' on himself. "I have a mental disorder."
"What does that mean?" I stop to look at him.
"It means… my brain doesn't work the way it's supposed to." He smiles. "Testing me would provide very bad results."
I start frownin' at him. "You look like you're workin' fine. And if your brain don't work why don't you just ask Momma to fix it?"
"It can't be fixed. It can only be patched."
"Momma can fix it," I tell him, comin' closer and tryin' to sound serious. I know Momma doesn' like humans, but Doug is nice. I would still be lost and scared if he hadn' helped me. "There's nothin' she can't fix."
He just smiles a little and doesn't say anythin'. I start movin' again. When we get to the spot where I got stuck I turn around again. "Thanks for helpin' me, Doug," I say as polite as I can. "It was nice of you not to eat me."
"Most humans don't eat robots." He rubs one of his fingers on his nose. "No need to be afraid."
"I wouldn'a been if I could call Momma," I admit to him. "'cause she woulda scared the pants off you." I frown a little bit. "I never screamed before. I been scared before, but I never been so surprised like I was when I saw you. But you're not scary. Hey Doug? Are all humans like you?"
He looks not so happy all of a sudden, and he looks down. "… I wish I could say yes, but… no. There are bad humans and good humans, and there are some where it's hard to tell which they are."
"They should just all be good," I say, and I swing back and forth a little. "Like robots!"
"You should get going," Doug says, steppin' backwards. "You've been here a long time."
He's right so I wave one of my handles at him. "Bye Doug! Don't let the Mantis Men eat you!"
He smiles and waves one of his hands. "I'll try."
I put myself on the panels and I run to Momma's chamber as fast as I can. And then I remember I've only got one picture to show her 'cause I forgot to take more and that makes me a little mad at myself. I got almost lost for nothin'!
I feel much better about everythin' when I finally get to Momma's chamber, and I'm already tryin' to figure out how I'm gonna tell her about my visit with Doug. Since Doug said Momma can't test him I guess she already knows he's there, right? I know she don't like humans but if he's here I guess he's okay.
"Hi Momma!" I yell at her, an' she looks up from the floor real fast. I still dunno how she moves so fast when she's that big. Both me and Daddy are so slow sometimes compared to her.
"Where have you been."
Uh oh.
I stop movin' and suddenly I'm feelin' a little scared again. She sounds mad. I didn't do anythin' wrong though, did I? She doesn't know I got lost yet. I bet she'll understand when I tell her. "Well I went on an adventure, Momma, to take pictures with my new cam'ra. But I wanted to go somewhere I never been, so I kept goin' really far and I got lost."
"You left the management rail."
"I found another one! And I thought it was okay 'cause if it wasn' safe you wouldn't have left it there, right?" Please don't be mad no more, Momma!
"I left it there because I didn't think anyone would ever go over there. I closed that part of the facility for a reason," she says, and I can't tell whether she's still mad or not. "Don't go out of range again. We've been looking all over for you. If you feel the irrational desire to head off into the depths of an unused laboratory, far out of range of communication, at least tell someone where you're going. Wheatley's been trying to find you for hours."
"You don't have to worry, Momma!" I tell her, feelin' better 'cause she sounds more annoyed than mad right now. "When I got lost this human came and he helped me!"
"What."
Oh now she's mad. Now she's really really mad. I don't know what I'm s'posed to say. I think if I talk more about Doug she's gonna get madder, but if I don't say anythin' it's gonna be the same. I never seen her so mad before. I guess that's why we don't talk about humans. I knew Momma didn't like 'em but –
"You've been talking to a human." She comes t'wards me real slow and she's starin' at me and it feels kinda like she's makin' me stay still 'cause her optic is so intense.
"I was lost, Momma, and I got scared and I couldn' figure out where I was or move and he came to see if I was broken, and he was real helpful, Momma, he didn' hurt me or touch me or do anythin' –"
"Which would not have happened if you'd used common sense and not gone somewhere no onecouldfind you," Momma snaps. "That was stupid. I thought you knew better than that."
"He just helped me find how I was gonna get back, Momma. I only talked to him a little when he was findin' it. And he wanted to know how you were, Momma! But I didn' know what he meant so then I told him about all the stuff we do –"
"I cannot believe this," Momma says, interruptin' me. "Have you learned nothing? You do not go near humans. You do not enlist human help. And you do not talk to humans! I don't have a lot of rules, Caroline. You're free to do as you please. But the one thing you are not to do you go ahead and do." She shakes her core. "Why do I bother telling you things. You obviously don't listen to a word I say."
"Momma, I do!" I shriek, 'cause she's bein' a little scary now but I can't imagine nothin' scarier than her not talkin' to me! "But I didn't know what else to do and he – "
"If you had bothered to think, you might have figured it out. It seems you don't do a whole lot of that. Hardly surprising, come to think of it. Considering." She turns away from me. "I am surrounded by thoughtless idiots."
When she says that to Daddy she sounds like she's teasin' him but right now I think she actually means it. But I'm not, am I? I didn't get lost on purpose!
"Gladys, that's enough."
I turn around and Daddy's comin' in behind me. I feel a little safer now. When Momma's mad he always fixes it.
"I don't think it is."
"It was Doug, Gladys," Daddy says real firm, and he stops right next to me. "You know Doug. You trust Doug. Doug is here because, um, because you let him stay here."
"I don't care who the hell it is!" Her voice gets louder and she's starin' at Daddy now. "I do not want her near humans!"
"She was lost and scared and, and she made a mistake," Daddy says in a low way. "Don't tell me you've uh, you've forgotten how that feels."
"That has no bearing on this," Momma snaps, and her eye narrows a bit. "If she had used common sense in the first place she would not have been lost to start with."
"Carrie, you went there to take photos, is that right?" Daddy asks me, and he's talkin' softer to me than to Momma. I nod at him a little.
"There a particular reason, princess? Or were you just explorin'?"
"I wanted to take them for Momma," I say but I'm really whisperin'. "She can't come in the facility with me and I wanted to show her stuff that I saw."
Daddy just looks at Momma. She doesn't say anythin' either and they just stare. After a long time Daddy says, "She got lost and needed help from Doug because she was thinking about you. I could be wrong, I know that, could be wrong, but I think she deserves a little slack. Then again, she's just a kid tryin' to explore, so it could just be that you're uh, that you're making a huge thing out of uh, out of a kid making a mistake. Bit ridiculous if you ask me. How about you think on that for a bit, hm?" And then he comes in front of me and starts pushin' on me. I turn around and start movin' so he doesn't have to push and we go to my room. He tells me to come off the rail and we sit on these little pillows Atlas 'n' P-Body gave me one time. I'm still scared and I'm really confused so I don't say anythin' because I don't understand what happened. After a long time Daddy says quietly, "You didn't do anything wrong."
"She was so mad," I whisper at him. I think she can hear me in here and I don't want to make her madder. Daddy moves to face me better.
"She's not angry with you. She is uh, she is pretty angry, but um, but not with you. She's just… she's just taking it out on you. Which… is not very nice of her. I thought we took care of that, but apparently not! Guess it was too much to hope. But princess," he tells me, and I don't think I ever heard him so serious, "don't take what happened today… don't uh… don't let it bother you, alright? She didn't mean any of that. Promise. You're not an idiot, and you've common sense. Just try not to do it again, alright?"
"But he was nice to me, Daddy," I tell him, and I feel better 'cause Daddy would know if Momma was really bein' mean or not. "Why do I gotta stay away from nice people?"
"She just wants what's best for you, princess," he says, and he rubs the top of me. "Go to sleep now, alright?"
I start frownin'. "But –"
"I think your mum needs a little more time to think."
But I don't go to sleep and when I think Daddy's sleepin' I get off my pillow and go out of my room. I ain't sleepin', not with Momma super mad like that. I'm startin' to feel scared again but I'm gonna be brave. I was supposed to be brave earlier but I kinda wasn't so here goes.
When I peek in her chamber I get a bit surprised 'cause she's pushin' her core into a floor panel she brought up and I think she's talkin' to herself in bin'ry. I think she's still mad. That's a long time to be mad though. I mean all I gotta do is throw some stuff through portals and then I'm okay.
Hey. Wait. How do you stop bein' mad if you don't got stuff to throw? Well Momma's got stuff to throw I guess but I dunno why she ain't throwin' it. She probably wouldn' be mad anymore if she did. And if she did that she wouldn't have to yell! Maybe I can try to tell her that. If she's gonna listen. She might start yellin' at me again. I pretend to take a breath like I seen Daddy do sometimes and I'm about go in when I think of somethin'.
Momma tries to stop bein' mad by throwin' words!
I gotta stop and think about that for a minute. Daddy said Momma wasn't mad at me, not really, but she was takin' it out on me. So Momma was mad but she had to throw some words but I was the only one to throw 'em at. And now she's… I guess she's throwin' 'em at the panel? I hope the panels don't mind that. But now I know what she's doin' so I don't gotta be scared if she starts yellin'. She's tryin' to stop bein' mad and she's not bein' very nice about it but I guess sometimes you do what you gotta to calm yourself down.
Okay that was good that I figured that out. I'm nervous but not scared. So now I keep goin' and when I'm about two panels away from her I put on my best soft voice, the one where I try to sound like Momma when she's helpin' me, and I say, "Hi Momma."
She comes up really fast again like before and she stares at me. I think Momma's really pretty the way she is but when I'm tryin' to figure out what she's thinkin' I wish she had an eye like me. If I'm lookin' at Daddy I can see whether he's mad or sad or anythin' else, but if Momma's starin' at me I just don't know. "What are you doing here," she says and her voice is really flat.
"I want you to stop bein' mad," I say. "You're hurtin' my feelin's by sayin' stuff you don't even mean and you gotta stop 'cause you're not bein' nice."
"So the humans are nicer than me. Is that it?" I never heard her sound so harsh before. She's not yellin' but it's a little scary anyway.
"I don't know what you got mad about, Momma," I say to her. "I guess I shoulda told you where I was goin' but I wanted it to be a surprise! And Doug was nice to me. He was worryin' about me and he didn't even know who I was."
"I have my reasons for wanting you to keep away from them," Momma says, and she sounds a little mad but not as much. "It doesn't matter if they're nice to you once. That does not say anything about them as a whole."
"But you know that human. Don't you?"
"I know him. But you do not. I know to what extent he can be trusted. You got lucky. Next time may be a little less unfortunate."
"Okay, Momma." If I see another human I won't talk to him. I'll spy on him instead, maybe. Then I can tell Momma about him and then maybe she'll let me talk to him.
"Go back to your room. Wheatley's going to be wondering where you went."
"Sure," I say, and even though she doesn't sound too happy she doesn't seem mad anymore. And I'm almost gone when I remember somethin'! "Wait, Momma! I got somethin' for you!"
"What?"
"I'm gonna send it." And I find the picture of the potato tree thingy on my hard drive and I send it to her. I know she got it when she looks up a little bit so I start leavin' again.
"Wait."
So I go back to facin' her and actually I think that lookin' at the picture stopped her from bein' mad. I dunno why. "Yeah?"
"I changed my mind. You can stay here if you want."
"I do!" I say excitedly 'cause I've been away from Momma all day. So I zoom back to her and when she lies down I cuddle her. I guess she's still a little mad 'cause she doesn't cuddle me back but that's okay 'cause I get to stay here. And I'm listenin' to Momma's brain goin' and gettin' that nice feelin' of bein' cozy that I get when I sit right next to her, and she says, "Caroline."
"Mmhm?"
"I didn't mean any of what I said. You know that."
She sounds really tired. I guess maybe I'd be tired if I was worried about me all day and then I got really mad 'cause bein' mad is really tiring. "I do, Momma. But maybe you could throw somethin' else instead of words, okay?"
"What are you talking about?"
"When you're mad you start yellin'. When I get mad I go throw stuff. But I ain't hittin' anyone with the Edgeless Thingamabobs and you're hittin' people with your words. Even if you didn't mean it, it didn't stop it from hurtin'."
Momma stays quiet and I hope she's thinkin' that over.
"It wasn't right to yell at you," Momma says, in my favourite soft voice. "And I know right now you won't understand. But I yelled at you because you're my baby, and you always will be."
"I like bein' your baby, Momma," I say and I wiggle a little bit. "But I don't like your yellin'. So can I be your baby without the yellin' please?"
"I'll try. I don't like yelling at you, but… I don't know what else to do, sometimes."
"Try talkin'?" I say and my voice goes up a bit at the end but I don't know why. "I like talkin'."
"Oh, I know," Momma says in one of her dry voices, and then I giggle 'cause she's teasin' me for talkin' a lot. And then she nudges me and I have to smile 'cause I was waitin' for that! "Why don't you try shutting up long enough to go to sleep."
"How about I don't?" I say and I try to make it sound like I'm playin'.
"You're going to have to. If you don't sleep, I won't sleep, and I'm not going to be very fun tomorrow if that happens."
"We're gonna do somethin' fun tomorrow?" I shriek.
"That's… not what I meant, but all right. I'll think of something."
And I was gonna go to sleep, I really was, but then I thought of somethin' and I say, "Momma?"
"Is this the last question?"
"Okay." I gotta let Momma sleep, so it really has to be.
"What."
"Momma, can… can you promise not to yell at me?" That would be nice 'cause that'd solve that problem. Momma never, ever breaks a promise. But she's bein' real quiet and I dunno if she's gonna do it.
"I promise not to yell at you," she says softly, and I know I'm s'posed to go to sleep but I gotta shove on her 'cause I'm so happy to hear that. "No more questions. Go to sleep."
That's not too hard 'cause Momma is cozy and my clock says it's really past when I usually sleep. And I tell her, "Goodnight, Momma!" and close my eye real tight.
"Goodnight, Caroline."
Author's note
I bet you're all thinking how original that chapter was, what with me having another core meet Doug. Well, it wasn't that original. But it was important. Here's why.
Some of you might be thinking that what Carrie said about Science and a couple of the things she says to Doug are a bit weird. But she's AI. She's going to think a little different from a human child.
She lost contact with GLaDOS from a combination of GLaDOS having disconnected that rail from her surveillance network (that part of the facility is shut down) and because Carrie is out of wireless range. Yes, GLaDOS knows Doug is there doing maintenance, but she doesn't talk to him because while he trusts her as much as he can, he's still schizophrenic and she's not bothering him out of respect.
What GLaDOS is doing with the core-against-the-panel thing is like you know when you're mad and you just press your face into the wall or maybe your hands into your face and just sorta make growly noises (or maybe that's just me)? That's what she's doing. She has no one to yell at so she doesn't know how to get rid of the anger. Well she's actually talking to herself but that's besides the point.
You know how parents will sometimes dislike a certain group of people? They'll be like, don't go near them. They're trouble, they're this they're that, etc. And then you hang out with them and you're like yo mom yo dad I don't get why you don't like these people. That's what happened. This is going to matter later in the story. GLaDOS's first experiences with humans were terrible, but Carrie believes they're just as good as robots.
The real reason GLaDOS flips is that she was trying to raise Carrie without human influence. It's not that she WANTS Carrie to think that humans are bad, but GLaDOS believes that human contact is damaging. So she got angry because now Carrie HAS spoken to a human, and she believes that Carrie's newfound trust in humans (because Doug was nice to her, she trusts him) will hurt her later on.
GLaDOS changed her mind because seeing the potato reminded her of how she felt to be able to trust a human. She still doesn't like that Carrie did it, but she's a little more understanding.