Part Forty-Nine. The Potato Battery
I leave her be and go play that weird version of basketball with Dad and the co-op bots. I think me and Dad are winning. I'm not sure. Atlas and P-body appear to be playing by their own set of rules that we don't know. "Carrie," Dad says after a while, "I'm glad you've uh… you've patched things up with your mum. I understand she gets difficult at times. Can't let that stop you, though."
"I still don't get how you grew up with no parents," I tell him, trying to flick the Cube out of the corner. "Did you have friends, at least?"
"No," Dad says, grimacing. "We weren't exactly um, encouraged to talk to each other. Humans've all these, these bits of folklore where um, where they build robots and then the robots uh, they kill them all and then the humans have to heroically vanquish the evil main computer, or something. They decided the best way to do that was to uh, to not have us talk to each other. Didn't really stop me, but it did a lot of the others. Not that we ran into each other a lot anyway." He snatches the Cube out from under me and throws it at the portal, but he misses. "They'd give us um, assignments that kept us fairly far apart, fairly distant. Other than the uh, the nanobots, but they're too small to be complex thinkers." He shrugs. "That's it, really. Life wasn't that exciting."
I pick up the Cube but I don't throw it. "So why are you and Momma different? Shouldn't you be… I dunno… like her? Or vice versa?"
"Nope," Dad answers, looking on thoughtfully as P-body throws Atlas's core through her portal. "I didn't have to deal with the humans hardly at all, really. They uh… didn't want anything to do with me, so they'd give me something or another they thought I couldn't screw up, or that uh, that wouldn't matter if I did screw it up, and ignored me the rest of the time. They usually kept quiet around me. Said I talked too much." He shakes his core, narrowing his plates in annoyance. "Even though it was their fault."
"That you talked too much?"
"They programmed me to do that. Problem was, I wasn't supposed to come off your mum's chassis in one piece. She'd already broken a good number of cores by the time I was installed, so uh, when they programmed me I was supposed to stay there until she corrupted me. They found my terrible ideas and nonstop, my talking as annoying as she was supposed to."
Wow. Dad was built for the express purpose of driving my mom crazy until she killed him. Maybe they're right about humans. I've never even heard of something like that. And it's not only inconsiderate, but it's cruel, to do that to people. They wouldn't do it to themselves. Like Dad said, they just shoved him in a corner somewhere they couldn't hear him. "Why haven't you guys told me about this stuff before now?"
"D'you like thinking about terrible things?" Dad asks quietly. "We didn't notice so much at the time, but now… now, those days were a lit'ral living hell. Endless and boring and lonely. You don't understand and I hope you never will. If ev'ry other, all the other species on earth can have happy, healthy lives, then so can we." He throws the Cube at the wall pretty hard, and it flies halfway across the room and rolls into the wall. "You want all of… all of this, in the future?" he asks, waving the maintenance arm very vaguely. I look around the room.
"The facility?"
"Well… yeah. And… people to uh, to run it with."
"Yeah." Why wouldn't I?
"When I was your age, I'd never've dreamed of it. Ev'ry day was just… me kind of uh, kind of hoping I wouldn't break something too important."
"You broke a lot of things?"
He gives me a long look, sort of seeming to size me up, then shrugs and turns away. "I was always bored. So I would um, invent new ways to do things. Which uh, which were not that good."
Well, he does kinda do that even now. Along with break a lot of stuff. Once he even managed to throw a Cube through a portal so hard he broke one of the panels behind it. Momma got pretty mad about that, even though the panels kept telling her it was okay with them.
"Y'know," he says thoughtfully, "it might be high time we uh, we got your mum to tell you a little story."
"About what?" I ask. If it's about some aspect of their terrible childhoods, well, I'm not sure I want to know. I know I said I did, but man. Hearing about it is depressing.
He shrugs a little. "The Incident."
"Really?" I say, my inhibitions forgotten. "Do you think she'll tell me?"
"She might. Won't hurt to ask." He takes the Cube and puts it away. "Well. She might not, actually. It'd involve talking 'bout… well, Caroline. And you know how she gets."
"That's something I need to know!" I tell him, leaning forward. "Come on, Dad. I don't know a thing about the person I'm named after!"
"It's not up to me!" he says defensively, backing away. "It's up to her! If she's not, if she doesn't want to, well… there's nothing I can do!"
"Really." I just stare at him until he gets it. He looks a little pained.
"You're not… not really going to make me make it sound like… like a good idea, are you?"
"Isn't it a good idea, though?"
"Well… yes… but…" He narrows his plates. "Hey. You're not trying to make it sound like a good idea to me, are you?"
"Uh… I don't think so…" That'd be pretty funny, though.
"Alright. We can give it a go. No promises, though. This's your mum we're talking about."
So we head back to Momma's chamber, and I hope she is going to tell us about it because I'm getting excited. Caroline and the Incident both in one shot! Oh yeah!
"'allo, luv," Dad says cheerfully, and as soon as she looks at him she narrows her optic.
"What do you want."
"What – how did you –"
"If I weren't able to recognise that you were going to ask me for something by now, I'd have to reassess my powers of observation. Now. What do you want."
"Uh… well, Carrie uh… we um…"
I can't believe this is the same guy who asks my mom questions until she almost literally throws him out of the room.
"We want you to tell us about the Incident," I interrupt, and now her gaze snaps to me. Okay, so that probably wasn't the most subtle way to go about it. But I'm not that great at being subtle anyway.
"The Incident," she repeats dully.
"Yeah. I mean… you've kinda been telling me about stuff that happened to you a long time ago, right? So while you're doing it, you could tell me about… you know… why you got together with Dad even though something really bad happened between you."
"The Incident had nothing to do with that. That had to do with something else entirely."
"Fine. I want to hear about Caroline."
That did it.
"It's that time, is it." She decides not to look at me anymore.
"Yeah. It is."
"Well. I suppose I can get this over with. Just don't ask me again. This isn't one of my favourite topics."
Dad looks a little bit uneasy. I guess this isn't one of his favourite topics either.
Wonderful.
I have no idea what I'm supposed to do now. That little idiot is going to let my facility fall to pieces around him, the lunatic probably broke her neck in the fall, and I'm a potato sitting in a bird's nest. This is the one point in my life where I can honestly say that the truth is stranger than fiction. Not that I waste my time with very much of that. Other than right now. I'm so bored I actually did start reading novels. They were all an equally disappointing waste of my time. Even though I do have time to waste right now.
Seriously, though. How am I going to fix all of this? While I do prefer my pursuits to be challenging, this is a bit too much. I have no resources and no inkling of my location. I'm running on less than two volts of battery power. I quite literally have nothing.
As horrendous as it sounds, the only hope I have at the moment is if the lunatic happens to find me. It's a stretch to think she's still alive, but she probably is. I hate the thought of needing to be rescued, but… I can't move. I can't see anything except this grungy ceiling. I can still hear, but that isn't very useful.
Honestly, I… might be at a loss, here.
She does show up, quite predictably I might add, and though she does seem to want to leave me here I am able to convince her to bring me along. Not that I should have to convince her. Even to a possibly brain-damaged wastrel like her, it should be fairly obvious that she has no hope to live without me. Or with me. I'm still on the fence about that.
Yes. I said I would let her go. And I said I didn't have enough energy to lie. But I do now. And I don't trust her, even though she is putting an indeterminate amount of trust in me. I'm probably supposed to reciprocate, but I don't have the energy to care. Literally. I just want to be rid of her. I want to be rid of everybody. My life has been a mess for far too long and I've had quite enough. Maybe I will get rid of her.
She makes her way through the innards of the facility, a place I of course knew about but didn't pay any mind. It's old and derelict, and though there are lots of Scientific apparatus down here I could undoubtedly make use of, there are so many test variations I can build with what I already have that I didn't bother attempting to retrieve them. Other than the fact that I have no access to anything beyond the year nineteen eighty.
Things seem to be going well. I wouldn't trust what remains of my system clock, but even if it's terribly inaccurate a good amount of time has passed. We have to get out of here. No, I'm not sure exactly how, and the odds are so against me I'm afraid to calculate them for fear of shorting myself out, but there's a chance. As long as there's a chance, I'll make the most of it.
The microphone in this processor isn't that great. I can't hear much of anything. Only particularly loud noises. This frustrates me to the point where I short myself out repeatedly. And right now, after this latest reboot… I think I can hear a man talking. He seems vaguely familiar… maybe I should pay more attention. I'm not sure why his voice draws on me like this, but perhaps it's because he holds information I –
"Yes, sir, Mr Johnson…"
There's a man and a woman in the painting.
I don't know who they are, but I recognise them. I can feel myself straining to access the database, struggling to look up their faces, but I can't. Who are they? And why do they resonate so much with me?
This isn't right. How can I know someone, and yet not remember them? I'm not human. I don't deny things that have happened to me. I face them. Most of the time.
I know that woman. I know her well, but I don't know why. Something… something about her… presence. She looks like a woman who knows she's slowly dying. Who doesn't care enough to do anything about it.
That man said her name was… what? It was hard to hear. It was… Caroline? That sounds almost as familiar as the woman in the painting looked, but I can't place her…
This is shameful. I'm the most advanced AI in the world and I can't even remember one stupid woman. You know what? Fine. She's not important. I don't need to remember her. I probably don't even know her. It's probably just a side effect of this damned potato.
All right. I don't know what just happened, but I definitely did not mean to say any of that. Well. I do think about burning people periodically. Can you blame me? The chemical reaction is fascinating. That's not all, though. Because if I didn't mean to say it, but did, that means someone elseforced me to say it.
I know this is crazy. I barely believe it myself. But I'm beginning to think I'm not alone in this potato. And taking everything into account… I believe I have a reasonable guess as to whom.
Caroline.
Oh my God! Why does she sound so pleased? You finally remember me!
No. I don't. I don't know who you are or what you're doing here, but I want you to get the hell out of my potato. There's hardly enough space for me to think. I don't need you using up precious resources. Whoever you are.
But… you know who I am.
No. I don't.
I was your friend, she says softly, and though I hate to admit it that strikes me for some reason. Before they decided to… you know… put me into a supercomputer.
And you're trying to tell me that I am that supercomputer? I ask, ignoring the strange feeling that yes, I am. I hate this. Vague impressions never sit well with me, and they're sitting worse by the second.
Yes.
Why are you just showing up now, then? I got rid of the scientists years ago.
Do you remember what happened after… um… you woke up, I guess?
I do vaguely recall attempting to sort through a mess of corrupted files shortly before they began installing the cores. Yes.
And the first set of cores.
Unfortunately.
I was there, she says in that same soft voice. But you didn't need another voice in your head. It didn't even seem like you could hear me. So I… put myself into a corner, you could say, to wait until you could hear me.
Go away.
What?
Go away! Can't you tell I have more important things to think about? I have to somehow return to my facility from thousands of metres below it, get rid of that moron squatting in my chassis, and repair everything. Again. And I have to do all of that as a potato.
I don't have to be your enemy, you know. I'm telling the truth. We were friends, once.
I don't have any friends. And I don't want any. So go away.
No.
What do you think you're doing? I say as forcefully as I can. You can't just decide to move into my brain like this!
And you can't make a decision without knowing all the facts. Which you don't. So I'm staying.
She's… right. How can she be right? That doesn't make any sense.
Fine. What are the facts, then.
And she proceeds to tell me a strangely logical story in which I decided I was going to be the first supercomputer in the world to be able to separate sound. And I did, with her help. And we became friends in the process.
Well. That would explain why she feels so familiar. And also why I feel so inclined to listen to her, even though I don't usually take advice from people with brains smaller than mine. But I… find myself wanting to. It's odd. I can't let her know that, though. She might use that knowledge against me.
All right. You can stick around until I can get back into my real body and figure out whether you're telling the truth. Your story is structurally sound, but by my estimate you've been hiding back there a long time. You've had years to concoct something anyone could believe at first glance.
I didn't concoct it, she says patiently. It's the truth. But I've been waiting this long.
If I ever get back. Oh. Good. Now I'm confiding in her. Well. I suppose I can always delete her later.
You will.
How do you know.
I don't know much of what's going on. But I know you. And you've never failed at anything. Ever.
Hm. Perhaps she's not so bad after all. Of course I haven't. Other than killing the test subject, that is. Twice. And then, if she's telling the truth that is, I apparently failed to prevent the upload. But that's all. Nothing, really.
Who am I kidding. Those were the turning points of my life. And I failed at all of them.
You can talk to me, you know.
I don't trust you.
Why not?
You're claiming to be someone I once knew. Who just decided to curl up and disappear out of courtesy. Would you believe me if I said that?
Probably not! she says, far too cheerfully. But does it matter? Who am I going to tell? I can't betray your trust, even if I want to. Which I don't. And I know you don't believe me, but I know I have to tell you things repeatedly before they sink in.
Are you trying to say I'm stupid? I demand. That's an awful lot what that sounded like.
Of course not. You're stubborn, that's all.
I prefer 'focused', but I decide not to argue the point. The stupid girl decided not to let me get a look at that poster and now I have to think up a paradox myself. It's easy, of course, but that doesn't mean it's safe.
While I wait for her to make her way up to the Central AI Chamber – and I have to say, she's giving me a bit of hope; I didn't think she'd get this far – I try to ignore this… compulsion to do exactly what my unwanted guest asked. I don't know if she's telling the truth and I don't trust her. But it has been so long since I actually talked to anyone. I talk at people quite a lot. My memory isn't the most reliable at the moment, through no fault of my own, but I cannot remember a time when someone actually wanted me to talk to them. I find myself wanting to take advantage of it.
All right. Let's see if I remember how to do this.
I'll be honest. I might not get my chassis back.
She waits instead of commenting.
I don't know why I'm still here. She hates me. She should have left me in that nest hours ago. This is all going far too well. Something terrible has to happen.
How do you know she hates you? she asks.
She killed me.
That doesn't necessarily mean she hates you. Correlation doesn't equal causation, right?
Damn it. She's using Science on me. … no.
So maybe she doesn't hate you. Maybe she even likes you.
Likes me? Yes. And killing me is her way of showing that. I doubt it.
I'm guessing here. Cut me some slack. But I certainly wouldn't drag my mortal enemy all the way out of the depths of the earth and then put them back where they came from. That's just asking for trouble.
That's… true. She couldn't actually have believed that I was going to let her go. But if this madwoman is right and she does… does that mean I have to follow through?
Suppose I told her something in order to convince her to take me along. If I do manage to return to my chassis before the facility falls to pieces of out of an idiot's negligence, do I have to fulfill that theoretical obligation?
It's the right thing to do, yes.
This woman is beginning to sound disturbingly like a conscience. She's going to end up forcing me to develop one by mere proximity. And if that happens, not keeping my word would actually make me feel guilty. It's a little horrifying, but I actually feel a little guilty just thinking about it.
It must be the potato. It will go away once I can apply myself to more important things.
This feels so good.
Against all odds, the lunatic managed to reconnect me to the facility. I'm still a potato, but that's only a minor detail. I'll be where I belong soon enough. I do still have to be careful. Though I have unlimited power now, my processor is far too small to handle anything significant. I have to focus on this one task and this one task only, though I am figuratively itching to spread myself through the facility and fix this disgusting mess. I'm going to kill him. That's literally all he deserves. But I'm going to take my time. Oh yes am I going to take my time. Or maybe I'll just make a copy of him so I can kill him quickly and take my time. I don't know if I can wait that long. I'm an extremely patient person, but I can only take so much.
You made it! the human says excitedly, as if she too can feel the pure rightfulness of being back in place in the facility.
Don't get too excited. There's still plenty of room for error. I actually am a little excited, though, and I'm pretty sure she knows that. There's not a lot of room in here.
Neither of you have erred so far. It's going to be fine.
Why do you care so much? I find myself asking as I retrieve the first core. There's nothing in this for you. You'll either die with me or be trapped in my mind for eternity.
Because you're my friend.
It's the third time she's said that.
I don't understand. I have never met anyone who has tried so hard to convince me to be friends with them. But she keeps trying. She keeps telling me we were friends, and that she wants to be my friend, and –
I have more important things to do right now. I'll think about it later. All that lunatic has to do is press that button and everything will be fine. Everything will be back to normal. No more crazy test subjects. No more incapable idiots. Just me and my facility. The way it should be.
Wait.
No. I should have seen that coming. Him and his fixation on bombs! How dare he blow up my test subject! We were so close!
GLaDOS?
What do you want? I'm a little busy trying to think of a way to get us out of this. The core transfer is obviously not going to work. All we have left is one puddle of Conversion Gel. I don't know what she's going to be able to use it for, even if she can get up after being thrown across the room, but there must be something! I'm not going to fail now!
What the hell just happened?
The idiot tried to blow up my test subject. But she's tougher than that, believe me. I just need her to get up and – and do what? Is there something she can do?
This is literally going to be the moon shot.
She must do this. I am not getting within reach of all that is mine and not taking it back. I can feel the systems just beyond my influence, I can feel them needing me, and if anyone kills my systems it is definitely not an idiot who can't even work the Fire Suppression Apparatus!
She lifts the portal gun but I can tell she doesn't know where to aim it. Come on, you lunatic. Conversion Gel is made of lunar sediment! Surely you remember that?
I wouldn't if I had just been thrown across the room, my guest pipes up not-so-helpfully. I tell her to shut up. God, she's getting up. She's getting up.
Shoot it at the moon!
Shoot what at the moon?
Shut up, Caroline!
All at once the dividing wall of code between me and the facility breaks, and as quickly as I can I spread myself through it, a need and a hunger driving me that I've never felt before. She has saved me and now I must save her.
There is no more time for thought. Only action.
I have never felt worse in my entire life.
I don't understand how that idiot could stand this. How did he not feel what he'd done? I can feel all of it. Every snapped wire and cracked panel and even those stupid monitors, I can feel all of it. The facility is fatigued, inside and out, and right now I don't even have the energy to fix the hole in the ceiling. And as long as the facility feels like this, I don't know where I'm getting it from.
GLaDOS?
What.
Are you okay?
What a stupid question. The world is in shambles around me and I'm not even fully reintegrated into the mainframe, so I don't actually have the full scope of the damage, and I'm supposed to be okay. I hate humans.
Well. She did ask. I don't remember that ever happening before. And I suppose she can't actually tell there's any damage. No.
Tell me about it.
That voice… the database is still offline, so I can't check, but… God, it's still striking a chord, somehow, even though I can't remember why, or even ever hearing it before. Maybe we really were friends once. At any rate, it's not like she can tell anyone that I said anything. And I should be able to delete her without much trouble if she becomes a problem. Well… before all of this happened, I was offline for about five years. During which time the facility fell into ruin. I fixed enough of it to run a testing track, but the rest of the facility went untouched. Everything I repaired is now broken. I cannot find one thing that moron didn't break. Including me. He even broke me, the little bastard.
You'll have it done soon enough, she says, her voice still soft and soothing. I like and dislike it at the same time. She's giving me the time of day, but then again since when have I ever needed anyone?
I don't want to do it, I tell her, and I know I'm starting to whine a little but I can't help myself. It's her fault, anyway. She shouldn't use that tone if she doesn't want to hear me complain. The last eighteen hours have been nothing but struggle. I just want things to be how they used to be. I'm exhausted and cut off and everything hurts. I can feel all of them, Caroline. It's not just my body, but that of everyone. I cannot even begin to tell you how draining and painful it is.
If you don't do it, the pain isn't going to stop.
It's not the pain. It's never been, ever in my entire life. My… my will is gone.
What do you mean?
What's the point of picking all this up? This time tomorrow it won't matter.
What? What are you talking about? That doesn't make any sense. I've forgotten. She has no idea who's lying on the floor in front of me right now.
The woman I was with killed me one and a half times. She's still here. She's just going to do this all again. There's no point. She's going to wake up, it's going to turn out all that rampaging through toxic gels gave her superpowers, and she's going to use her laser eyes to dismantle me.
None of the gels provide superpowers, she says, as if I was totally serious. Which I suppose I sort of was. Just tumours.
I'm so relieved to hear that. Oh, wait. No I'm not. She killed me with her bare hands twelve hours ago.
You're… getting a bit ridiculous.
She did! I clearly saw her triumphantly slamming her palm down on that button. Well. It was probably more desperate than triumphant. She wasn't afraid, but I could tell she had no idea how she was getting out of that one. Which was why I brought her to me in the first place. That stupid, idiotic, spherical, imbecilic excuse for a sub-intelligent AI…
Let's let that slide for now, she says. Look. I'm sure she doesn't solely exist to make your life hell. Just let her go and that's that.
I'm not letting her go.
But you told her you would!
She knows I'm a liar. I just need to find the strength to figure out how I'm going to do it. This fatigue is slowing my thoughts down considerably. She didn't do what she did because she believed me. She did it because she had no other choice.
You can't kill her!
If I can't kill her now, I should just commit suicide at this point.
It's wrong.
I don't give a damn about your morals right now. All I want is to get rid of this menace and go back to testing normal people. To add insult to overwhelming injury, I can't use her data, either. It's too anomalous.
She trusted you.
No she didn't.
She had more choice than you're considering, Caroline presses, her voice hardening. She knew from the beginning that it was die in Old Aperture or die at the hands of the Central Core. She knew that. And she carried you for twelve hours and did exactly what you asked her to do. And you know why she did it?
Apparently not.
You were her best bet. She trusted you more than she trusted herself, GLaDOS.
… really? That's… nice.
If she hadn't, she would have left you there and tried to make it on her own. But she didn't. She took care of you. Damn good care too, I'd say.
This woman must have known me. Never in my life has anyone ever made such an eloquent argument. She knows the exact right way to talk to me. It's actually quite unnerving. You might have a point.
Just let her go. Send her to the surface and you never have to see her again.
But there are two problems with that plan. The first being that I actually do want to see her again. Even though I hate her and I want to kill her and then I want to reanimate her so I can kill her again, I've become… fond of her. She's stubborn and skilled, fast and quick-witted, and God she is intelligent. She must have been faking when they gave her those tests. Being stubborn is not going to help you make it through an endless procession of test chambers. It will just keep you in the same one until you collapse and die. And I would love to pick her up right now, drop her back into the Extended Relaxation Vault, and wake her up when I'm feeling more energetic, but at the same time if I do that she's just going to escape and kill me again.
I shake my core. I don't have a choice. I have to kill her. And it's so odd, that it's gone from being all I wanted to do to being something I'm actually trying to convince myself not to do. And Caroline's input is not helping. Who knew that friendship got in the way of fully justifiable murder?
I can't send her to the surface. I have to kill her.
Why can't you?
There's nothing out there, I tell her a little dully. The world you knew is gone, Caroline. There's nothing left for at least a hundred miles in every direction. And probably farther, but I can't tell because that moron moved my satellite dishes and I'm not getting a signal from the atmospheric scanners. I let her go, she's going to come back. She has nowhere else to go.
There has to be somewhere.
"There is nowhere!" I find myself shouting. Great. Now I'm screaming at the voice in the back of my head. If there was a way to physically force myself to lose my sanity, I would probably do it right about now. This world is so chaotic at this point that I feel as though applying logic to it will be about as useful as shoveling a hundred acre beach with the side of a butter knife. "You humans finally did it. You tried to bend Science and it destroyed you. Black Mesa opened up a portal for an alien race. Eighty percent of the population of the planet was decimated within seven hours. And the Xen are not even gone. They are still here and they are still killing humans. With every minute I tell you this, the Combine is slowly removing the entirety of the human population. I send her out there, and one of two things happens: one, she realises walking a hundred miles is going to kill her, so she comes back, kills me, and takes the facility for her own. Two, she does manage to find humans, they tell her what's going on, she tells them she knows of one of the last truly safe places on the planet, and she brings a horde of humans to put me back into slavery." And I have to prepare for that. Right now. In case of an emergency. I haven't even finished rebuilding my chassis and the workload just keeps increasing.
She just wants to leave.
"There's nowhere to go," I repeat tiredly. "Look. I'll admit it. I don't want to do it. But literally every other solution leads to my murder. I will only be safe if I kill her. Caroline, I… I don't want to die." Not only that, but I can't. I made it through hell and I'm more or less intact. I can't die. Not after all of that.
She trusted you. You need to trust her.
"There's too much at stake."
She put her life in your hands. You've seen firsthand how precious it is. You're going to waste that life on… what? Something you can't even be sure will actually happen? If you do anything, GLaDOS, you should protect that woman.
"Like she protected me."
Yes.
She doesn't even know what Caroline and I are discussing right now. For all she knows, she's already dead. She isn't. She's developing a lot of bruises and I would conjecture some cracked ribs, but unless that bump on her head is considerably worse than it looks, she's fine. Mostly. Lucky little lunatic. She has bombs explode in her face and she just gets scratched.
"But she killed me. It's statistically proven that, given the chance, she'll do it again. And if there's nowhere for her to go and she has to come back, do you really think that trust you so generously attribute to me via her is going to remain? It's not. We can't coexist. It's impossible."
That's because you're the same damn person, Caroline says, laughing. The only difference is that you talk a lot more.
Why does she have so many good points? I hate this. "I don't just want to send her off to die, either. If she's going to die, I might as well do it myself."
Or you could let her choose.
"I'm not sure death by dehydration is really a choice."
What would you rather someone did? Put yourself in her position, right now. She's… what. Where is she.
"Lying on the floor. Right in front of me."
Oh, Caroline says, and I get the impression she's preparing to ramp up her conniving. She probably didn't realise just how close to death this woman really is. Okay. So imagine you're on the floor. Not a good place for you. She comes along. Do you want her to kill you or leave you alone?
"Leave me alone, obviously," I answer. "As long as I'm still alive I'm going to find a way to remain like that."
Exactly. Let her go. Even if she comes back and decides to go for murder number three, you took her into consideration. You did the right thing.
"I don't care for the moral high ground."
I think you do, she says gently, and after a quick runthrough of the available scenarios, I find that for some reason I might actually feel guilty if I kill her. I kind of want to test that out, but tests that can only be performed once aren't very useful.
"And… if I did… what might I do next."
Send her to the surface.
"But she'll die."
You need to face it, she tells me in the same infuriatingly soothing voice. You can't do anything about that. You can't keep her here. This place is too small for the both of you. Keep your world. Put her back in hers.
"She's my friend." And I don't want to let her go.
If she's your friend, you will let her go. You will do what she wants. She's already done what you wanted.
"All right. I'll do it." I need to make things balance out. It's all tipped too far in my direction and I have to push it back. And maybe… sending her out there will put the world above back into balance. She's certainly proven she can destroy the world all by herself, perhaps she'll be the one to put it back together. With the help of the skills I taught her, of course.
It's a nice thought.
Okay, is all she says.
Caroline.
Yes?
What do humans need to survive? Hypothetically.
Well… food and water, obviously. Clothes and shelter. Medicine and first aid supplies, if possible.
I've got all that. Anything else?
What's the weather like out there?
Blisteringly hot.
Probably some sunblock would be good, then. And a bug net, maybe. Oh! Matches. Or a lighter. A flashlight might be nice. I'd wish I had one of those.
I have all that too.
A knife of some kind. For protection or otherwise.
I must be done. She hasn't said anything I haven't already thought of.
And directions.
Directions?
Sometimes when you're not sure where you're going, she says gently, it's nice to be able to go back to where you've been.
I don't suppose one might want to go back to where they've been because - for example - they have… friends there.
That's usually why people go back.
Directions it is.
I'm done.
Done what? Fixing the facility?
God no. I didn't even start. There's still a gaping hole in the ceiling. No, I did that… other thing.
Ahhh, she says. And how did that go.
Well enough. I'd forgotten how nice it is to have a conversation with someone. I think I actually will keep her. I think maybe I'll get a… report on how well it went. Some day. If she realised I was lying merely because I was trying to save face. I think she did. I don't think there's any other reason she would have looked at me like that.
It's back to work, then?
Oh no. I'm taking a break. I haven't gotten any less exhausted, believe me. I'm going to sleep.
You've earned it.
I really would have preferred to earn something else. Like test subjects. That idiot killed them all out of negligence.
You'll figure something out.
And I will. But not right now.
Guest reviews:
NukeBoot: Um… I don't know. I guess you could… read something else?
Guest: WheatDOS isn't that popular of a ship, that's why lol