Portal: Love as a Construct

by iammemyself

GLaDOS brings Wheatley out of space to keep her company. Through trial and error, their friendship grows into an undeniable connection that they might be able to call love. With that on their side, they can do just about anything - maybe even save the world. Cores only. I don't care if you don't read the whole thing. Just read the parts that interest you if you want.

45. Part Forty-Six The Request

Part Forty-Six. The Request

They think I'm sulking again.

I know they've all told me to stop spying, but seriously it's the only way I can get any information around here. I mean, I guess I could try asking, but if they were gonna tell me what they were talking about, they'd probably just talk about it when I was in the room. And okay, I was kinda sulking before, but that's not what I'm doing now. Now I'm just trying to think so I can figure things out. But it's not easy. And I'm getting a little scared, because I think there's something wrong with me.

I've been trying to go talk to my mom for the last few days. I want to tell her what I've been thinking about because maybe she'll know how to fix it. I've been a little dumb, thinking I know more than she does. I don't like it. But my mom really does know more than me. And it's silly that I keep arguing with her even though I know that. I should just listen. But at the same time… I wish she'd listen to me a little more. Even though I'm not that old or that smart or whatever, I gotta have some thoughts she's never had, right? But every time I decide to go in to see her, I… well, I chicken out. I don't know why. She never really says anything mean to me. She doesn't insult me like she does Dad. I really have no reason to feel this way. I guess chickening out is better than starting another fight. I wish I knew what made me so scared to talk to her, though. I used to love having conversations with her. And I probably still would, if we didn't start arguing every time we started one. But I'm so tired of fighting with her. I don't want to fight with her anymore. And I wanted to apologise to her after the last one, but I couldn't. I got to her chamber, but I couldn't go in. I don't know if there's something wrong with me, or if I just didn't want to admit I made something out of nothing.

All right. I'm gonna do it this time. I'm gonna go in there, and I'm gonna talk to her, and we're gonna have a normal conversation. No fighting, and no arguing. Just normal old conversations, like we used to have. Here we go.

"Hi Mom," I say, coming into her chamber a little. "Are you busy?" That sounded good.

She glances at me, then back at the paper she's looking at. "It can wait."

So I go in and she puts her paper away, and… nothing. Nothing happens. Now that I'm here, I can't think of anything to say. And I know not to count on Mom to come up with a topic. Starting conversations is not her thing.

"Uh… what were you doing?" I venture. Actually, that was a good start. I expressed interest in what she was working on! Smart move, me.

"I was drafting," she tells me, glancing at me again. "I might have to add an extension to the Botanical Housing Depository. I want to get started on bioengineering."

The… what? Botanical has to do with plants… a house is… where you put stuff… oh, she wants to make the greenhouse bigger. And she wants to…

"What's bioengineering?"

"It's the fabrication of organic life that does not exist, or the deliberate modification of organic life that does exist."

"So you want to invent some new plants?"

She nods in consideration. "Basically."

I wish she'd just say stuff like that, instead of getting all science-y about it. But I guess if she did it that way, she wouldn't be my mom. I don't want to talk about science though. I hate talking about science because it's always her telling me stuff. We can't really talk.

So now there's another awkward silence. Come on, Mom. It's your turn.

"What have you been doing," she says finally. "Do you have any… I don't want to say projects, but… anything to that effect?"

"Um… no, not really."

"You must be doing something every day," she says, looking at me now. Okay, well there is something I try to do every day… but it's not like I can show her that.

"I just kinda… do stuff." When did I forget how to talk to my mom? This is dumb and I'm wasting both our time.

"Oh. I remember now." She gives me a little more attention. "You like drawing. Right?"

Of course she would guess. "Kinda."

"I'd like to see them, if that doesn't bother you. If it does, I understand."

"You're not going to be able to see them," I tell her, a little more harshly than I mean to. "Remember?"

"I can see the parts, even if I can't see the whole," she says calmly. "I might not be able to see the subject itself. But I can see what it's made of."

That sounds kinda interesting. Like she sees abstract drawings where they don't exist. I mean, I wouldn't want to see that way all the time, but maybe for some part of a day I would. "Okay. I… I'll show you some."

"You don't have to."

But I want to, even though I'm nervous. I've always wanted to, but I just didn't because I thought she wouldn't see them. I don't like it when she says stuff just to be polite, which is what usually happens when I show her something.

So I grab a stack of papers and bring them into her chamber. I don't even know what's on them, or how many there are. She'll probably get tired of not being able to see them after a couple anyway.

She looks at the first one for a long time. I thought this one was good, but apparently not. It's nothing complicated, just a test chamber I like, but it doesn't look like she understands what she's seeing.

"It's a test chamber," I tell her shortly. She twitches a little bit, as if she forgot I was here.

"I just… see a lot of squares," Mom admits.

"Well, it's… a room made of squares," I say, and she laughs.

"Are you telling me to make panels of different shapes?"

"That'd be cool." I wonder if she'll actually do it. "Like make them of circles or something."

"No, not circles," she says a little absently, turning the paper over and setting it aside. "They wouldn't fit together. I need angles. I can do triangles. Hexagons. Dodecahedrons. But not circles. Or ellipses."

I had to go and pick the one shape she can't use.

She leans in closer to this one than the last one, narrowing her optic as if that'll help her figure out what she's seeing. "It's a – "

"Don't tell me," she interrupts. "I can almost see it." And I can tell she's really trying, because her hard drive is going at it a little harder. "It's this that's tripping me up." She points at what apparently is not recognisable as the bottom of P-body's core. When I tell her that, she just keeps squinting at it, but I can see she doesn't get it.

"Can I… I'm not saying this is a bad drawing. Please don't take it that way. But do you mind if I reproduce it quickly?"

"Sure," I say, even though I do mind, and she brings back her drafting pencil and a sheet of paper and lays down most of my drawing within fifteen seconds. The drawing that took me three hours.

Maybe this wasn't such a good idea. I know she's not doing it to show off, but… I feel like she's doing it to show off.

"And you say this is…" She adds in the last part, the part I messed up. "Ah. But this is supposed to be… and this…" And she just goes around making corrections and I start getting mad. All of a sudden she stops and backs away a little.

"What," I ask, trying not to sound too annoyed. She looks at me.

"I can see it now."

"Really?" All because she redrew it her own way?

"I think so. Those parts," and here she waves the pencil at my drawing, "sort of go… in and out of focus, you could say."

"Mom, why can't you see it?" I ask her. I know she told me before, but that was the kids' version. I can handle the adult one now. "Dad can see it. I can see it."

She lays down her pencil and looks down at the two papers. "When I was made, I wasn't sentient like you or Wheatley. I was a computer. Computers recognise objects or people, subjects in general, by matching image data to content stored in libraries. If the content I'm looking at doesn't match anything in my libraries, I can't identify it. I can do partial matches, but not consistently. I should add that to my to-do list…." she says idly.

"What about Dad?" I press, because she's getting distracted with science again.

"Wheatley has an imagination. I don't. You both have long since trained yourselves to see things that are not… inherently complete. I was… taught Gestalt psychology, but there were aspects I never mastered."

"What's Gestalt psychology?"

"It's…" She looks up at the wall. "A way of explaining how connections can be made when data is missing. When I find holes in data, I run calculations. But you can't do that with visual or aural or olfactory data. It has to be understood as it is received." And she sounds a little sad. I guess she really does wish she could see my drawings.

"Don't take any of this to say that you're not good at this," she goes on, looking at me again. "It's nothing to do with you and everything to do with the way my brain works. Though I am glad you passed that obstacle."

She goes through a few more of them, each time almost able to see them but having to redraw them to make it click for her, and I stop getting mad and start feeling a little… well, all she can draw is technical stuff. I don't think there's any in this pile, but sometimes I just draw stuff out of scribbles, or I try to copy cartoons from books. She wouldn't be able to recognise any of that to redraw it. I'd be kinda scared if I was only able to draw one way. All the stuff she draws is very good and accurate, but it looks like… well, like a computer drew it.

Mom flips over a drawing of a Cube house Atlas and P-body made one day to go to the next one, and as soon as I see what it is I grab it and pull it away. She follows the path with her core, optic narrowing. "What are you doing?"

"I… it's not finished," I say, even though it is finished. I don't know why I just lied, but I do not want her to see this.

"Yes it is," Mom protests.

"How would you know?" I ask, burying it under another pile like I did with it the first time and hoping I don't forget where I put it. "You didn't see it."

"I did see it."

Of course she saw it. Out of all the stupid drawings in this pile, she saw that one. I don't even know why she can see it. It's awful. It wasn't what I wanted to draw at all. And if she looks at it longer, she'll figure out that I got into Surveillance and started poking around in there. She won't like that.

"It's stupid."

"It isn't," my mom insists. "I won't even say anything if that's what you want. Can I look again?"

I shake it out from under the pile I just shoved it in and drop it back in front of her, looking studiously at the other side of the room. I don't think I've ever been embarrassed before, but I am now.

I don't try to draw my mom a lot. She's a terrible subject. Dad and the co-op bots and the turrets, they're all easy. Easy shapes no matter how you look at them. But Mom's got every shape at every angle, and if ever I start on her I end up folding it up and throwing it in the incinerator. And don't even get me started on her size. She always ends up not fitting on the paper, or so tiny I can't even figure out what line goes where anymore. But one day I said to myself that I was gonna do it and I was gonna finish, so I went into the records from the week before and started scrolling through some of the video. And I got to this frame that just… it was just really nice. I just had to try that one. She and my dad were just goofing around, and it was just really cute, okay? So I tried to draw it. I don't think I've ever spent so long on one drawing before. It took me at least ten hours. And while it looks like the frame I copied it from, it still doesn't look right. The thing I was trying to draw doesn't exist. It sorta does. But it sorta doesn't. I don't know how to explain it.

"Can I say something?"

"Okay," I say, still staring at the wall.

"I like it."

"It's all wrong," I tell her, turning around angrily. She tilts her core sideways.

"I don't see anything wrong with it."

"Well, I can." And I try to snatch it back but she's still got the maintenance arm on top of it. "Okay, you've looked. I want it back now."

She moves the arm and lets me take it, but I can tell she doesn't really want to. "What's wrong with it?" she presses.

"It's ugly."

"Ugly? I honestly have blueprints uglier than that. It was good and I liked it."

I move away from her. "You don't have to say stuff like that anymore. I'm not a kid. Just say that it's terrible. That's better than pretending – "

"I'm not," she cuts in. "I'm not making it up. And I do genuinely like all of your drawings. I don't have to understand something to like it. Though honestly that usually helps."

"It's ugly and I know it's ugly so just stop pretending!"

"I'm not pretending."

This was a terrible idea.

I go back to my room and I stare at the stupid thing for like five minutes. I don't get why she's bothering to lie. If she was going to start lying to me, you'd think it'd be about something important. Not some dumb drawing. I really don't see how anyone could like this. It's supposed to be a fun picture. They're having fun. But that part isn't in the picture. It's like I got them right, but the feeling is missing.

Maybe she's not lying, then. She just finished explaining to me about libraries and stuff. She doesn't understand feelings the way me and Dad do. She can't tell what's missing because she can't see it anyway.

But I can.

You know what? I'm sick of this thing. I rip it up as best I can and push the mess onto the floor. I might regret that later. But I probably won't. Because now I'll never have to look at that ugly thing again. That's why it was buried in the pile in the first place. I spent all that time on it just to have it come out wrong.

I wish I'd never gone in there.

I don't want to go back, not for a long time, but I'm gonna be an adult here and I'm gonna go in to say goodnight. It was sort of rude of me to go from sleeping with them to just ignoring them at night, and I do get kinda lonely sometimes. So I'll start doing this instead. That way we all get to check in with each other at the end of the day. That's a good idea, right?

"Hi guys," I say, and they look up from putting the little dudes from Stratego back in the box.

"'allo!" Dad says cheerfully. "How're you getting on, princess?"

"I'm fine," I say, glad I thought of this. Dad's always happy to see me. It's a nice thing to come back to. "Just came to say goodnight."

"Uh… okay," he says, sounding a bit surprised. "Goodnight? I'm uh… not quite sure what your goal is, here, um, honestly. Oh! Oh, I know. C'mere, princess."

I actually have no idea what he's doing, but I do as he asks and he gives me a hug. "There you go!" he says when he's done, sounding pretty pleased with himself. "Goodnight hug. Thought of it myself. Not a moron, eh?" He gives Mom a glance.

"One mildly surprising good idea does not exempt you from being a moron," she says dryly. "You will never have enough good ideas to earn that."

"Oh well," he says, shrugging. "I tried. Oh hey Carrie, I've just remembered. Your mum was uh, she was telling me about this lovely drawing, that you did. I don't remember seeing it, princess. D'you think you could show it to me? Sorry if I um, if I've seen it already, but um, don't think I did. Think I'd remember something like that. And I'd've probably told your mum about it, if I had."

"You told him?" I demand of her in disbelief. She stares at me.

"What do I not tell him?"

"Nothing, hopefully," Dad interjects. Mom smacks him with the maintenance arm she's putting back into the ceiling. "Ow! Was that, was it really necessary?"

"Why would you tell him about that?" Now he knows about it! I didn't show Dad because he would have loved it even though it came out wrong. He loves everything to do with my mom.

"Because it was good, and I liked it," she answers. "I generally tell Wheatley about things that I like."

"I think we're up to three things, now," Dad says teasingly. "Science, neurotoxin, and – "

"Oh, don't remind me of the neurotoxin." She shakes her head. "I have absolutely no use for it right now and you have no idea how much that pains me."

"I didn't even want to show it to you in the first place," I snap at her. "Doesn't that clue you in to the fact that I didn't want to show Dad either?"

"Why not?" she asks, sounding like she actually doesn't get it.

"Because!" For a supercomputer, she sure lacks understanding.

"Can I show him then?"

"You can't. It's gone now."

"I scanned it," Mom says, and if there's anything I didn't want to hear that was it. "I scanned all of the drawings."

"Why?" I shout at her, and my chassis starts to clench. Why is she being so clueless about this? "Why did you – and you didn't even ask me first!"

"I wanted to keep them." She trades a glance with Dad, who looks just as confused as she seems to be.

"You can't even see them!"

"I might be able to in the future. I was going to use them to practice with."

"Well, I want you to delete them," I tell her forcefully. "I didn't want you to scan them. I don't want people looking at them. Get rid of them. Especially that one!"

She moves back a little, looking reluctant. "Do I have to? I really like –"

"They're mine and I'm asking you to! Why are you not just listening to me!"

"All right." She looks at me seriously. "I'll delete them."

"I don't want you doing anything like that again."

She sighs. "Caroline, you're taking all of this the wrong way."

"There's a right way to take it?"

"I just wanted a record of what you made."

"I don't want a record! If you want to see something of mine, ask me!"

"But Carrie," Dad says, frowning, "what your mum said it was, it was uh, it was from… from Surveillance, wasn't… wasn't it? That's your, those're your mum's records, and you didn't… ask her for them? So… not trying to start a fight, here, not that, but um… why're you upset about what she did if… if you did it first?"

Now they're tag-teaming me? I'm about to tell him that it's different when my mom says, "Ignore him."

"What?" Dad protests, turning to face her indignantly. "Ignore me? But I've a valid point, haven't I? She was digging 'round in your stuff again, and she, she took something she liked, as you did, and –"

"It doesn't matter," Mom interrupts. "We've been over it now. She didn't like it and I won't do it again."

"But –"

"That is the end of it," Mom says firmly.

"Why am I the bad guy again?" Dad turns to face her now, and he's getting upset. "No matter what I say during, contribute to these things, it's always –"

"It's over," Mom cuts in yet again. "Drop it."

I leave and go back to my room, plunking myself on one of my pillows. That's the second time today things got off to a good start and the second time they got screwed up. And it's her fault. Both times. What's the point in trying to talk to her if stuff like this just happens? It doesn't even matter if she deletes the scans. She can go back into Surveillance, or back up her memory, even, and look whenever she wants. I forgot she could do that. And her memory is as good as any scan. She will never forget that stupid picture. She'll probably bring it up a hundred years from now and I'm gonna get just as mad as I am now. And okay. Dad had a point. I was in Mom's stuff, and no, I didn't ask her if it was okay to look in her records, and yeah, I'm pretty sure there's stuff in there she doesn't want me looking at. But it's not the same. She just keeps those out of habit. She doesn't need all the different recordings she has of the facility. She doesn't make them on purpose. I did make those on purpose. They were personal. And she just took pictures of them without asking me, even though I didn't want her to see them in the first place.

I wish today had never happened.

Asking this isn't going to go over well, but if luck is on my side maybe it'll work.

Mom's back to her drafting, though on a piece of paper much bigger this time, and I wait for her to notice me. She does after a minute or two.

"What," she says, sounding a little startled.

"I'd like to go on a trip," I say carefully.

"A trip," she repeats.

"Yeah. A trip."

"I'm going to need a location." She looks back down at her paper, pulling the pencil across it. "I don't care if you go somewhere, but I would prefer I have a general idea of where you're going to be."

"I want to go on a trip to the humans."

The pencil goes on a trajectory that doesn't look planned, but otherwise she doesn't react. "No."

"I'm sure you know a place that'd be okay," I say as calmly as possible, trying to appeal with a little more logic. "There must be some humans out there that aren't totally awful."

"No."

"It doesn't have to be for a long time!" I press. She's not looking at me, but she's also still not drawing anything, which means I have her full attention. "A day or two. I just want to see what they're like." I also wouldn't mind seeing if human mothers are this stubborn.

"No."

"Why not?" All things considered, I'm doing pretty well. Now to move on to the part where she needs a valid reason to refuse. Which I'm sure she doesn't have.

"You don't know what they're like."

I know Doug said there were good ones and bad ones and ambiguous ones, but there's gotta be more good than bad. "You don't know what every human is like. They're all different."

"We're not talking about this. The answer is no."

"The answer is always no!" I shout, accidentally losing hold of my temper. She looks up at me.

"If the answer is no, there's a reason. And the reason in this case is you're not ready."

"No, you're not ready." Her lens retracts a little at this. Finally, a reaction out of her. "You tell me no because you can't handle it."

"You're not going anywhere," she says, her voice not revealing anything at all. "The fact that you think you're ready when you're not speaks volumes. That's the kind of attitude that will get you killed. Or worse."

"All humans are not homicidal maniacs," I say, rolling my optic. "What about Doug? He didn't kill me on sight. He didn't try to hunt me down after he discovered I existed. Guess what? I haven't seen him at all!"

"That's because if he even thought about it I would bring this facility to the ground to find him," she snaps, shifting into a more intimidating position. I'm still mad but I kinda regret bringing it up now. I mean, she looks pretty scary now, but what's worse is I don't even think she realises she's done it. "Now stop asking me. The answer is no. Again." And she snaps back to her paper and presses the pencil into it.

"You need to stop being so selfish!" I yell at her. And she really does! I'm getting sick of this! "You don't listen. You don't ever accept that someone else might have a point more valid than you do. You know what? I wish you weren't my mom. Because you really suck at it."

As soon as I'm finished saying it something inside of me freezes. I need to take it back and I can't. I didn't mean that. I don't even know why I said that.

Oh my God.

I'm turning into my mom.

And not the good things about her, either. All the things I hate, the things that bother me. I don't listen anymore, and I'm starting to tell instead of discuss, and now I'm saying stuff I don't even want to say by mistake, and I'm trying to apologise but I can't…

"All right," she says. Her voice is very calm and flat but she's not moving, except for the fact that she's grinding the pencil into the paper in front of her, and as soon as I realise I actually hurt my mom's feelings I turn and run away.

I've never felt this bad before. I didn't mean it and I'm sure she knows that, but oh my God… I said it, and I can never take it back. How does she live like this? I don't understand. When you hurt people constantly, do you just go numb about it after a while? You just stop feeling bad? Why am I like this, anyway? Mom built me. She should know better. She should have known how to avoid this. She should have –

Waiiit a minute.

She doesn't want me, does she. I'm just a science experiment to her. She's been manipulating me the whole time, hasn't she! She's been pushing me in all the directions she wants me pushed in! I can't believe I didn't realise this sooner! I don't know why Dad went along with it. But it explains everything. It even explains why I can't stand her and yet constantly want to fix things with her at the same time. It's because she built me to feel this way. It all makes sense!

Except for that part just now, when she looked pretty upset about what I said. But she's able to fake that, I'm sure.

I hate living in a place where one person decides everything. How does she know I'm not ready? Because I'm willing to believe that there are more nice humans out there than mean ones? So what if I trust a mean one anyway? It's silly to think that every human is out to get you. What's he gonna do? No matter where she sends me she'll be able to get me out before something happens if she really wants to. I don't see what her problem is.

I'm sick of this. I'm not ready to leave the facility. I'm not ready to do anything for the facility. I'm not good at anything and I can't even hold a conversation with my mom without fighting with her. If she even really is my mom. I need to leave. I need to find someplace where she's not, where she can't get to me. Maybe then I'll be able to figure things out.

I've only been an adult for three months and already I can't stand my life. It's a good thing Mom and Dad didn't have any more kids. Actually, no. I wish they did. Then we could all figure something out and she wouldn't be able to stop us from leaving the facility.

I know this is a long shot, but maybe Dad can help me. He probably won't, and then he'll tell Mom, and then we'll fight, but he tries to understand a little more, at least. Seriously. A day or two is all I need. I still miss my mom. Or the idea of her, at least. But I can't do this every day. I can't go through life having okay beginnings and terrible endings. If I could just see how other people get through this part of their lives, maybe I could handle it a bit better. I have to know if everyone's mother is a crazy, stubborn, passive-aggressive obsessive scientist. I don't know where I'm going to go or how I'm going to figure it out, but I feel like the world is crashing on top of me and now I know that I can't depend on her. I don't know why she built me, but I'm starting to think I'm just one of her objects and she doesn't care about me at all. The only thing I really know that she cares about is her stupid science, and probably this life is just her carrying out some crazy experiment. Poor Dad. He'll never accept that.

But I'm going to try to talk to him anyway. And I'm going to be extra careful, because now that I know what's going on I am not going to turn into my mom.

She's done a really good job on me, though. Because even though I'm sure I'm right, knowing that I'm an experiment still hurts more than anything ever has.

Author's note

GLaDOS really has no notions of privacy. In her world, she's the be-all end-all; she knows everything if she so chooses. So she actually doesn't understand the concept of not taking something of someone else's. It's kind of like that person who borrows your clothes without asking but throws a fit when you try to take their stuff. Wheatley doesn't have any 'stuff' so she never really learned to leave other peoples' things alone.

Caroline's reaction might sound a little weird. But it's like when you draw something, and it looks right, but there's something missing. And it's disappointing to spend all that time on something and see that it didn't really work out. She's being a bit melodramatic about it, yeah, but people do that.

Her closing thoughts might sound a bit extreme. But if you thought you were an experiment, what would you do? She has no one to turn to (or feels that way) and all she knows is that she wants to get away from GLaDOS. She's not being rational at the moment.

Some of you have wanted to smack Carrie, so I'm posting the next chapter soon's I can. She doesn't need discipline, just an epiphany. She's a good girl but she's very confused.