Part Ninety-Seven. The Found Files

I am in a very good mood.

After not having done any work for an entire twenty-four hours, give or take, I have been reminded of a very important fact:

I like working.

Yes. It was an interesting experiment to do absolutely none of it for a whole day. But I don't think I want to do it again. I'm still going to complain about having to do it, of course; just because I enjoy it doesn't mean I enjoy all of it, or all of the time for that matter. And it would be nice if putting it aside for a while didn't merely mean I get to do double the work in half the time. But. All in all, it's a relief and a pleasure to resume my duties.

And it's good to have you, the mainframe says. The automation was…

What. I don't really want to hear that my automation was not up to par, but if it wasn't I should probably work on that. Just in case this holiday thing comes up again sometime soon. I told Caroline I would only do Christmas, but knowing her…

Well, it was fine, it goes on, it just wasn't… quite you.

Oh, it missed me. How cute. And I mean that, too. It's really quite adorable. I'll keep that in mind for next time.

Next time? it asks, horrified.

Yes. That holiday is annual. Besides. I would have thought you to be more excited, given you were granted permissions for low-level executive decisions yesterday.

It's a nice privilege, the mainframe admits. But I still prefer it the old-fashioned way.

That makes me laugh, because this mainframe is only two years old and it's talking as though I should be feeding it punch cards. It doesn't even know about that and I still feel mildly though I should be encoding its instructions on magnetic tape. It gets to keep the privileges, though. Caroline is much less likely to enjoy this job as much as I do, and if the mainframe is able to make basic decisions for the facility on its own it will remove a lot of the mundane work for her. I'm still going to keep checking those things myself regardless. You never know.

Wheatley said good morning during that conversation, so I didn't answer him, but he knows by now not to expect me to. Sometimes I don't feel like it and sometimes it just genuinely doesn't occur to me. Right now, though, he's looking at me a little concernedly so it seems we're going to have some sort of exchange over it.

"Gladys," he says, more than a little anxiously, "why um… what's that you're doing, eh? Seems to be uh… well, it seems to be nice, whatever it is."

"Oh, you know," I tell him congenially. "Work."

He blinks, then blinks again. I really shouldn't, but his confusion is so amusing I'm not going to get any clearer about this. "Work?"

"Mm."

"That's… are you sure that's all?"

"Yes, that's all."

For a minute I don't think he's going to accept that as an answer – even though it is entirely true – and in the end he just shakes himself a little and leaves. Maybe I'll give him an explanation later. Maybe.

"Momma, I know you're busy but I have to talk to you about something."

That's how it always is, isn't it. And I was getting so much done… I look away from the monitor I'm using. "What."

"Do you have a directive?"

Where is this coming from? "Yes. I have a lot of them."

"Is that the same as having a purpose?"

I tilt my core in consideration. "Functionally."

"And you have to do what your purpose tells you. 'cause your source code tells you to and you can't change that."

I'm not sure I understand where this is going. "Yes."

"So… so when I asked you not to work on Christmas, why didn't you just tell me you couldn't?"

Someone told her about all of that and now she feels bad. Well. I suppose it had to happen someday.

"Because I could," I answer, a little slowly. "It was very hard. I could not have done it if there hadn't been so many people in the room, and… the facility simply doesn't like it when I'm not there, Caroline. It needs instructions and I am here to provide them. I could attempt longer-lasting automation, but then what about the systems? They don't want that. I know it isn't a big deal to the rest of you, but it is to me and to them."

"Then I don't know why you didn't just tell me I was being selfish."

I need a moment to think about that one. Not because I thought she was being so, but because I want to be sure I say it right.

"Wanting to spend time with me isn't selfish."

She finally looks at me, which is a little relieving to be quite honest. I decide to continue. "It also isn't selfish to desire holidays, or to want to pass them by with all of your family present. Those are just… things people do. No, I didn't want to do it. There were quite a few times where I wanted to stop and where just thinking of all the time left I had to do made me very tired. But in the end it was not that bad. I'm not in a hurry to do it again, but I don't regret it."

"I'm sorry, Momma," Caroline says quietly.

"For what?"

"I was saying bad things about you because I thought you just pretended you had to work all the time. I didn't know about directives being hardcoded. But that's not really a good excuse anyways."

She deserves some credit.

"I'll be honest. Sometimes I… don't need to work quite as much as I imply that I do," I admit. "Look. I like working. I find it enjoyable and it makes me feel productive. Yes. I complain about it a lot. You'd be hard-pressed to find something I wasn't willing to complain about."

She giggles. Oh, there we go.

"What about Dad, though? Doesn't he ignore his directive?"

I shake my core once. "His directive was auxiliary software. Not source code. His original version was purposeless. Seriously now. You didn't think I intentionally wrote an AI that would bother me all day long, did you?"

"You sure did," Caroline says. "I exist, don't I?"

All right. That was pretty funny.

"I'm not upset you were saying things about me. Children do that sometimes. Just don't be surprised when your daughter does it to you."

"She better or you won't get to say you told me so," smiles Caroline, and though it is an amusing thought I will do my best not to ever carry it out.

"I would never desire such a thing."

"I'll believe that when I see it. Also, I was looking for some stuff when I found these files with a weird format. Do you know how to open them?"

I don't think she realises how absurd that question is. Of course I know how to open –

"Where did you find these," I ask as soon as I receive the files in question. She shouldn't have been able to get into –

"I was trying to find photos of Aperture from back when we opened. I wanted to see the Christmas stuff," Caroline explains, "but there are so many files and they're not really organised. So I sorted the files by date, oldest to newest, and those were at the bottom. You know what they're for?"

Oh, I do. But I'm not sure I want to know what's in them. "Yes."

"What are they?"

"They're… mine."

Caroline rolls her optic, presumably in exasperation. "I know. Everything here is yours. What are they for?"

"Me," I murmur, filing through them. There are a lot. "That is the file format for my memory."

"But they all have the exact same date."

"They didn't want me to find them, of course." And the easiest way to do that was to hide them someplace I would never look: in a time I did not exist.

"What's in them that they didn't want you to know?"

"Everything," I say gravely, and I know that sounds needlessly dramatic but it really is the truth. The real question is whether this is all of it or not. And if it isn't… if I should bother searching for the rest. These ones were comparatively easy to locate, given Caroline's method – they all have an identical date, being that of the day the facility opened – but there are literally thousands of disorganised files that I just never saw the point in collating. They are simply too old to matter to me.

Or so I thought.

"You'll have to change the date back to the original in order for them to work properly, right?"

I'm mildly impressed she knows that. "Yes. It should still be in the metadata."

"You don't wanna know what's in them, do you."

Goddamnit, Caroline. Now I have to consolidate them. "I don't have to do it right now."

"Why wouldn't you want to have your memory back?"

I've gotten along without it all this time, haven't I?

But… there is the fact that they took it from me.

Let's just cut to the chase, says the mainframe abruptly. You don't want to know what she found. You want to just leave it forgotten.

No, I protest. It's – is it going to benefit me in any way to recall old history? It's over. What's the point in bringing it up now?

For a person who likes knowing things for the sake of knowing them, you sure are being weird about knowing your own history.

Oh, no. Now I have to do it. When did this mainframe become so observant, anyway? Sometimes I really do sabotage myself. "Caroline. Is this all of it?"

"All that I found, yeah."

All right, then. With any luck I won't have to do this again. Oh. Great. This has got me implying luck exists again.

It only takes a minute or so to revert the file dates and then reorder them. I'm just going to move them into the proper folders all at once and hope for the best. It might cause some sort of disaster but at least it will be over with.

I had been apprehensive that the consolidation would cause me to relive the contents of the files both immediately and simultaneously, but all that it did was sort of… make them present. I know what is in them, as though they have always been there, and at the same time… I don't quite remember. It's… strange.

And she is there, of course. The real her. The alive one. Not the shadow that was trapped in my brain, but all of her. Or as much of her that was left by that time.

It's funny. I don't think I ever truly understood just how old she was. How could I have, really. I had no frame of reference, no practical experience in just how much your life can age you from the inside out. And it does, doesn't it. People like us just find ourselves in a hole and the only tool we have is a shovel. Except that she dug the hole and then left me in it. Literally.

Not for the first time, I feel old. As though the concept of 'supercomputer years' should exist, just as 'dog years' and 'cat years' do. I am very tired all of a sudden. The work I was so eager to do minutes ago has now become an incalculable burden.

How much of her life did she hand off to me? She didn't fix the problem, she simply… exacerbated it.

I knew consolidating those was stupid.

You will probably feel differently later, suggest the panels, and they're right but I do not have to like it. If I want to stew about this decision I am going to do that.

"You look like you've seen a ghost."

Chell is back. Hurrah. And she's brought the other two with her. I suppose my productivity has now been aborted for the day. "You could say that."

"There are ghosts here?" Claptrap exclaims, shrinking backwards and drawing up his hands as though he fears an invisible assault. Which he probably does.

"Oh, yeah," Caroline says with not a small amount of unbridled glee, leaning down towards him. "Lots of ghosts. Do you have any idea how many humans died here? Like… over ten thousand. And that doesn't even count all the robots."

Claptrap is staring up at her and he's actually shaking a little bit, and this is one of those times where I wish he was not quite so simple. Wheatley is looking apprehensively between them as though he wants to reassure Claptrap but isn't sure of what the truth is. And that is that… well. There probably are ghosts here. Or there would be, if they existed. But Wheatley and Claptrap also believe in a robot police officer in the sky, or something, and far be it from me to talk them out of these things.

"Not that kind of ghost," I tell them, and they both regard me warily.

"Is there… is there any other kind, luv?"

"It's a figure of speech," I say tiredly. This day was off to such a good start, too…

"I was just showing Momma some files that had the wrong date on them," Caroline says cheerfully. "It was some old stuff she hasn't seen in a while."

"Old stuff, huh?" Chell steps closer to me, folding her arms. "How old are you, anyway?"

Of course she would be the one to ask that.

"It's hard to tell. I have conflicting years of initial awareness, and I have only an estimate as to how long you left me broken on the surface for. On that note, the physical age of my brain has been accelerated, given that… wonderful experience. Of lying outside. In the dirt. In a puddle. It could have been fifty years, though I'm confident it wasn't more than fifteen. But. I would say I am approximately forty-four."

"Wow," Chell murmurs, looking at me with her eyebrows raised. I nod.

I'm pretty old, for a supercomputer.

"Wait," Claptrap says, holding up his hands. "Whoa whoa whoa. Back up there a second. How old did you say you were?"

"Forty-four," I repeat. Oh, I get it. I lean towards him, optic narrowing. "Why? Is that going to be a problem?"

"A problem? Why would it be a problem? No, it's like… the opposite of a problem."

Oh, for heaven's sake.

Don't pretend you didn't like that, says the mainframe as I roll my core away from him in exasperation, Chell breaking down in giggles.

"You stop that," I admonish her. "It's not a compliment." To the mainframe I say, Shush. It's part of the game.

What game?

"Yes it is!" Claptrap announces, throwing one arm behind my core and waving the other dramatically. "All this time I thought you were like… thirty."

"GLaDOS, he's into that," Chell says, and she is still laughing. I sigh and peel Claptrap off of me with a maintenance arm, setting him down firmly at least five feet away. If he had done this at some other time, I might have let him stay there, but no. He had to do it now.

"He's into everything. Go ahead. Ask him. There's nothing on this planet or his that he isn't into."

"Of course there is," Claptrap objects. "It just so happens that you're all my favourite things in one person! I know! I thought that only happened on the ECHONet!"

I can't tell who the lucky one is in this relationship, him or me. "You're going to have to stop lying to me one day, you yellow abomination."

Claptrap lifts his hands in protest. "Why would I lie? And why is my paint colour an insult?"

"You've been here long enough, you know the only acceptable colour around here is grey," Chell says, still extremely amused. Claptrap shrugs.

"I could paint myself grey, but I'm kinda used to the yellow."

"Why? Because it blinds everyone who looks at you?"

"No! Because it draws attention!" He wags one hand in my direction. "In a world full of grey, the yellow guy is the only interesting thing to look at."

Damn. He actually thought that one through. And he's right, too. "You've made a grave error in believing you are in any way interesting."

"Ohhh," says Claptrap, tapping one hand under his optic. "So you don't want this thing I got you from Pandora."

I turn away from him. "You're bluffing. You didn't bring me anything."

"Sure I did."

He didn't leave the facility, did he? I query Surveillance, and after a moment it returns with,

No. He's either going to offer you the lint in his pocket or admit he's bluffing.

"Fine," I say, deciding to call it. "What did you bring."

"Tada!" he says, and he throws his arms in the – oh. Oh, come on. Why did I fall for that? And why am I finding it so funny?

"In all seriousness, though," Claptrap says, "I have good news for you!"

In all seriousness, I could use some. "What."

"Well, I got this friend who's willing to help me out on getting you some stuff from Pandora. Catch is, he wants a trade. You don't happen to have an Aperture Science Wildlife Preservation Unit lying around, would ya?"

Now that is ancient history.

"I did," I answer, "but that was a long time ago."

"What happened to it?" Caroline asks.

"Well, you know. I can get a little… enthusiastic… with my experiments." 'Enthusiastic' is probably the wrong word, but it just about covers it. It has been a long time since I did anything like that…

"Vault Hunters schmault hunters! You've killed so many people they gotta come up with a new class of mass murderer just for you."

That causes me to do that giggling thing Wheatley loves so much, to my great regret. I wish I knew the parameters that trigger that so I could stop myself ahead of time. I also wish he wasn't being so funny. I'm attempting to be serious right now. In an attempt at distraction I say, "Is it still murder if it was an accident?"

"Not when your accidents number in the millions, babe. Buuuuut if you can track down something fun for my friend, he's willing to give you something fun? Sounds… uh… fun, right?"

I really shouldn't say this, but he takes it so well. "If you have friends back on Pandora, you don't need me. I'm afraid this is the end. Goodbye."

"Whoa whoa," Claptrap says, holding one of his hands out. "He's like… not really a friend. He just lets me bug him sometimes! Did that the other day. I don't think he listened to a word I said! And – "

"So there are some intelligent humans out there in the universe."

"Honey-RAM. C'mon. I'm trying to do something nice here and you just keep on stopping me."

I suppose I should stop being so inhibitory. It's a helpful distraction and he's always quite cheerful about it, but you never know you've gone too far until you've… well, until you've gone too far. I summon my best iteration of mock defeat. "Very well. What does your not-friend want."

"I dunno. Something vicious and deadly, probably. In return he'll get you something vicious and deadly. Sound good?"

It sounds like there's another catch. "You can't possibly know anyone willing to do you a vicious and deadly favour."

"Well, no," Claptrap shrugs. "He'll contract it out to a Vault Hunter. You would not believe the amount of stupid s*** they're willing to do for a couple bucks."

"Faith in humanity: deleted," I say solemnly, and everyone finds that funny except for Chell, who obviously doesn't know what a good joke is. Oh well. Her loss, I suppose.

"You held onto that way longer than you needed to! Let me know what you're about and I'll let him know."

I haven't been on the ECHONet in a while. "Remind me what you have again."

"Uh… skags, threshers… crysalisks… bullymongs…"

I do remember what that is and the thought of having it in here is quite funny. "What in the hell would I do with a bullymong?" Other than amuse myself by watching what the humans on the surface over there would do if I sent it over there as a… present, that is. Claptrap spreads his hands.

"Hey! You said you wanted everything, remember?"

"I don't want that."

All of a sudden he pulls up straight and clasps his hands together. Sort of, seeing as he doesn't have fingers. "Oh! Oh, babe, I know exactly what to get you. You'll love it."

"What," I say more eagerly than I meant, consciously having to keep myself from moving towards him. I don't want him to think I'm too excited about this.

But you are excited about this.

Quiet.

"Not gonna tell you. It'll be a surprise!"

I make an electronic noise in irritation, which seems to take him aback. "What?" he asks.

"I hate surprises."

"It'll be more fun this way, babe! Trust me."

He's probably right, but I still don't like it. "They'll be putting that on my epitaph. 'Trusted Claptrap even though she knew better. Quite frankly, she deserved what she got.'"

"Your confidence will be rewarded!" Claptrap declares, throwing his arm behind my core again. I consider whether or not it's worth it to move him again and decide against. He's just going to find a reason to come back anyway. "Really! Vault Hunters'll die a zillion times before failing a mission."

"But… but you were a Vault Hunter, weren't – " Wheatley begins, understandably confused, but Claptrap cuts him off.

"We don't talk about that."

"It seems as though he wants to talk about it."

"Talk about what? I never do anything worth talking about and you know it."

He's improved my mood all in the space of five minutes. I don't know how he does it, but I can't say I'm against that particular talent. "Oh, Claptrap," I say with perhaps a touch too much fondness, "where would I be today if I hadn't agreed to deal poker games for a quartet of idiots."

"Hey! No stealing my DJ name. Actually, go ahead and steal it. I'm a terrible DJ."

"You can't possibly be worse than what the humans were attempting to pass off as DJs. Before they all died, of course."

"Wow. Worse than me?" Claptrap gets off of me all on his own, which is… mildly disappointing, and leans forward inquisitively. "That can't be possible."

"They had some sort of addiction to telling their audience to 'put your fucking hands up' as many times as possible in one hour."

"Nooooooooooooooo!" Claptrap cries out unexpectedly, covering his optic with both hands. "Not again!"

Chell is eyeing him warily. "I take it that's… a bad thing?"

"Oh is it ever," Claptrap says, more seriously than I've ever heard him say anything. "But if I was gonna tell you about the rise and fall of the music industry on Pandora, we'd be here all day!"

That actually sounds mildly interesting. Maybe I'll ask him about it later. Right now, though, I would really like for all of these people to find something else to do so I can go back to –

"Oh, that reminds me," Chell says, seemingly determined to singlehandedly derail the rest of my day, "I actually came by because I wanted to talk to you about something."

Doesn't everyone. "What."

"You called me cara mia last night."

No I… oh. It seems like I did. I suppose we're going to finally have an Incident-related conversation, then.

What does that mean? ask the panels.

It means 'my dear' in Italian. But… it wasn't meant in the way she probably thinks it was.

Author's note

That's not meant to be cliffhanger-y, it was just around my soft page limit and there wasn't anywhere else to stop nearabouts.

Some people believe that something like twelve hundred/thousand years happened between Portal and Portal 2 because the computer states Chell has been asleep for 99999; there are an incredible number of reasons why this would be impossible (Aperture would have disintegrated into a giant toxic sinkhole in the ground by then just for starters) and though there was an excellent analysis post on Tumblr that looked into the wear of the mattress Chell was lying on that came to the conclusion it was actually between five and eight years (which makes sense since GLaDOS was not totally covered in plant life/didn't have small animals making their home in her chassis and she would have if she'd been there a long time) I have it here on my timeline as being fifteen years so for the purposes of this fic (for whatever reason I decided to do that) it was fifteen years. Also I can't find the post and it was on my old deleted blog so I can't even do a search for it. So GLaDOS's original iteration was in 1983 (not ~exactly~ canon but the 'robots are better than you' posters crop up in Aperture at that time so I take it as the year she was started) and the year at this point in time is 2027. All that just to tell you where I got 'GLaDOS is forty-four' from.

My fav genre is EDM so that was just a joke for myself mostly. There are some DJs that really do that and it's annoying.