A/N: THE LEMONS! *cough* Scuse me, just had a bout of Cave Johnson induced exclamation. Anyways, I really like this chapter, and it really begins GLaDOS' inner search for her self, which ultimately ends, as we all know *SPOILER* in her rediscovery of Caroline. So, here we go.
Disclaimer: I don't own Portal. Or GLaDOS. Or Cave Johnson. You get the picture.
Chapter 10: Do You Know Who I Am?
At the end of the long fall to the very bottom of my facility, an area I had neglected for years due to its extreme state of disrepair, of course Chell failed to pick me up before I was carried off by a bird. The foul thing flew with my potato body to its nest within the facility –it was incredible, to be honest, to see all the old technology– and proceeded to try to peck me to death. I tried making as many loud noises as I could to frighten it off, but that only made it more determined to devour this ridiculous thing I was stuck in.
And so that's how I ended up sitting in the bowels of Aperture Science in the nest of a bird for half an hour while Chell took her sweet time finding me. I guess I couldn't blame her; I had tried to kill her on multiple occasions, but she'd tried to kill me first, it was only to be expected. And maybe I did take the adopted jokes too far… considering that now the person I ridiculed was my only hope to not be completely eaten by a bird. However, she did eventually find me. Luckily my optic was facing the glass walls of the room the bird's nest was in so I could see her coming.
"Oh, hi. Say, you're good at murder," I called conversationally. "Could you-OW-murder this bird for me?" She considered me for several moments, seemingly weighing her options. Theoretically, she could just leave me here and murder Wheatley herself, leaving the facility without an AI, though that would also cause it to self destruct, but I had a feeling she didn't know that. She started to walk away.
"No, wait!" I cried, lacking the energy to hide emotion. "Just kill it and we'll call things even between us! No hard feelings! Please get it off me!" Maybe it was the fact that I had been reduced to begging my greatest enemy for help that invoked the response I got, or maybe it was just plain pity, but Chell moved forward, scaring the bird away.
"Oh, thanks," I sighed in relief. Suddenly a tremor rocked the facility from somewhere up above. "Did you feel that? That idiot doesn't know what he's doing up there. This whole place is going to explode in a couple of hours if someone doesn't disconnect him." Chell's face set in a look of determination as she turned to head for the door. Exasperated, I called after her. "I can't move, and unless you're planning to saw your own head off and wedge it into my old body, you're going to need me to replace him. We're at an impasse." She turned back to raise an eyebrow at me suspiciously. I guess I'd be a little suspicious too, but this was no time for it.
"So, what do you say? You carry me up there and put me back in my old body, and I stop us from blowing up and let you go." Her expression changed to surprised, and almost as quickly shifted to mistrust. She thought I was lying. Well, my lying processor was completely offline, I couldn't do anything but tell the complete truth; I needed more voltage for lies and deceit. Another tremor accentuated my words.
"No tricks. This potato only generates 1.1 volts of electricity; I literally do not have the energy to lie to you." She started to turn away again anyways. I called after her, my voice now showing a little of the desperation I was feeling for both myself and my precious facility. "Even if I am lying, what have you got to lose? You're going to die either way!" Probably not the most optimistic point to make, but it was true. If she thought I was going to murder her once I was back on my old body, while she might've been right, if she didn't get me up there she would just end up exploding anyways, even if she did murder the moron. "Look, I don't like this any more than you do. In fact, I like it less because I'm the one that got partially eaten by a bird." This for some reason seemed to make up her mind. She walked forward and lifted the portal gun as though to pick me up with the beam and…
"OW! You stabbed me! What is WRONG with-?" I cried indignantly, only for a sudden rush of energy to flow through the potato. "Woooaaaah, hold on, do you have a multimeter? Never mind. The gun must be part magnesium; it feels like I'm outputting an extra half a volt. Keep an eye on me; I'm going to do some scheming! Here I g-!" Suddenly, as my excitement rose, the power completely blacked out.
It could have been moments or hours later that I came back online. "Woah, where are we? How long have I been out?" As an answer, Chell showed me the room she'd found me in about fifteen feet behind us, so not long. "That extra half volt helps but it isn't going to power miracles. If I think too hard, I'm going to fry this potato before we get a chance to BURN up in the atomic fireball that little IDIOT is GOING to-!" As I felt my emotions begin to rise in fury, indignation, and yes, fear, I blacked out again. This was going to be a long trip.
Much longer later this time, I came back online, my optic lighting up to show Chell with a different background this time. She looked irritated at something, and as I'd been unconscious for the past however long it couldn't have been me and Wheatley couldn't see this far down, so what was it?
"The testing area is just up ahead! The quicker you get through the quicker you get your sixty bucks!" a much too enthusiastic voice proclaimed over the PA system. Something about it felt immediately familiar, and yet, I had no face or name to put it to.
"Hold on, who-?" I started, only for the voice to start up again over me.
"Caroline, are their consolation vouchers ready?" he asked presumably to someone near him; it was obviously not meant to be overheard by the testers. I felt my voice processors act without my volition suddenly, saying along with a much too cheerful voice that also sounded extremely familiar;
"Yes sir, Mr. Johnson!" I felt fear, shock, and panic shoot through the potato, reaching dangerous levels, but being as energy deprived as I was, I couldn't stop it.
"What did I just-? Who is that? What the hell is going on here-?" Predictably, the potato didn't have the voltage to power an emotional outburst of that level, and I blacked out again. I don't know how long I was out this time, and Chell gave me no clues when I came to. Nor did I really care.
"Okay, 1.6 volts isn't enough to power an emotional outburst. Now we know that." I did my best to keep my voice calm. It was horrible, I felt so awfully human, having all these emotional breakdowns. "We're still going to find out what the hell is going on here, but calmly." We continued wandering, the voice kept exclaiming things that made little to no sense-so whoever it was had to have been pretty high up on the Aperture Science totem pole-and I kept feeling like I should know these people. But what bugged me most was the woman named Caroline. Something about her resonated in my being, like someone I had shared a deep bond with somehow. I didn't understand it. If I could just access my archives… But I didn't have enough power to do it. I was left with basically just my own consciousness, which means I would have to remember it spontaneously like a human would. But it still bugged me.
"Caroline, Caroline, Caroline, why do I know this woman?" I finally wondered aloud as Chell wandered amongst the centuries old tests. "Did I kill her? Did I-?" Something suddenly dawned on me. Something that seemed so obvious I should have seen it immediately, but also so out there, so impossible, that it could not possibly be. My thought process went to the unknown woman I knew I had been, and I couldn't help wondering…
"Oh my god." The statement came out without my permission as the epiphany dawned on me, as impossible as it was. "Listen, y–you're doing a great job. Do you think you can handle things by yourself for a little while? I need to think." Chell nodded at me and I went into my own mind, loading my memories with excruciating slowness and trying to get to the bottom of this.
This guy over the speakers, he was obviously someone important. And he seemed to care very much for this Caroline. There's no way he would ever have put her through something like what I remembered. It was the most gruesome death a human could imagine, really. It was like being shocked to death and stabbed to death, plus many other sensations that were impossible to describe with only 1.6 volts without shorting out again. And as I continued pondering Caroline, I also pondered what about her made me hate Chell less. Because it was true, I did not want to see her fall to her death, burn up in a beam, shot to death, or any of those other horrible things while I was thinking about Caroline. I didn't understand it, and the fact that I couldn't understand it scared me. I was made to understand things, and the fact that something could be beyond my range of comprehension was a scary thing for me. My thoughts were interrupted by the man's voice that for some reason rang true through my being like none of his other announcements had.
"You know, I've been thinking. When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade!"
"Yeah," I agreed; had I a neck I would've been nodding. Why? Who knows? My processors weren't acting on my command.
"Make life take the lemons back! ('Yeah!') Get mad! ('Yeah!') Demand to see Life's manager! ('Yeah! Take the lemons!') Make life regret the day it decided to give Cave Johnson lemons! ('Oh, I like this guy!') Do you know who I am? I'm the guy that's gonna burn your house down! WITH THE LEMONS! ('Yeah!') I'm gonna have the engineers invent a combustible lemon to BURN YOUR HOUSE DOWN!"
"BURN HIS HOUSE DOWN!" I cried in excitement (Chell was staring at me with a look that was half very annoyed, half slightly disturbed). "Burning people, he says what we're all thinking!" This had to have been the guy that decided to build me, had to have been. He would have understood. None of this whining about safe science or letting people's rules get in the way of Science. But he continued.
"The point is, if we can store music on a compact disc, why can't we store a man's personality and intelligence on one? So I'll get the engineers on that." His voice cut out. I was silent this time. Why can't we store a man's personality and intelligence on one? I had just heard the point at which I was conceived, more or less. From that one statement, GLaDOS was born. So I had been human once, it was now confirmed. Which human though? Several chambers later, after listening to about crushed moon rock being poison and Cave Johnson's recording showing his terrible cough that heralded his death, I got my answer.
"If I die before you people can pour me in a computer," his voice called over the intercom. "I want Caroline to run this place. Now, she'll say she can't. She's modest like that. But you make her!" If I'd had blood, it would've run cold. That statement sounded very familiar. That statement had resonated through my mind as a human before I died. Did that mean… Did Cave Johnson's employees really make her become me? Become what was regarded by humans as a monster? I had to stop thinking about it at that point as my sensors were warning me that the potato would short out soon if I didn't. But it didn't get rid of the nagging question that Cave Johnson had asked rhetorically.
Do you know who I am?
