"Why don't you just let me die?"
The question was not posed as a request. Karen's voice, cracked and strained by vomiting, sounded genuinely confused.
Chell wiped Karen's mouth and held up a glass of water for her to drink.
"Because I'm not you," she said matter-of-factly. Chell had been forced to kill a pack of stray dogs once, after they'd started hanging around her house and become increasingly aggressive. She didn't think she had it in her to kill a human, not even one who stretched the definition of "human" to breaking point.
"That's not..." Karen sighed and closed her eyes with a frown, then lay back down and limply let Chell tie her back up. The fight had gone out of her once she'd realised Chell wasn't going to let her go, and she'd fallen asleep for hours, only to wake with a cry of pain. She'd started withdrawal, and was not taking it well. Chell wasn't sure she'd last the night.
"I'm not me either," said Karen softly. "Not any more." Chell wasn't sure what to make of this, but didn't respond, instead she put the lid on the bucket and wiped her hands. She sighed and sat in the chair by the bed.
"So you admit it then?" said Chell. "That you're..." She stopped herself from saying Her "...GlaDOS?"
"What if I do?" said Karen. "Will you kill me then?"
"I already said no," said Chell. "I'm not out for revenge, that won't bring my parents back, bring my life back. I just want to know the truth."
Karen stared at her with rheumy bloodshot eyes. Motes of dust twinkled in the afternoon sunlight filtering through the curtains and the air stank of sickness. Chell absently reminded herself that the room was going to need a good clean when this was all finished.
"You baffle me," said Karen. "If I was me, I'd kill me."
"Obviously," said Chell.
Karen laughed briefly, then coughed again. "Many times over," she said. "It made perfect sense when I was...when I was in that body. It didn't seem like such a good idea once I was in this one." She tilted her head towards Chell weakly and said "I don't mean to make excuses, but it really does change you. When I was Caroline I...I would not have done the things I did as GlaDOS. Not to you or to anyone." She coughed again. "Least of all myself. I always liked myself."
"Liar," said Chell, mildly. It was hard to be cruel to anyone this sick, no matter how much they might deserve it.
Karen's eyes widened.
"How many people did you and Cave kill?" asked Chell. "More or less than GlaDOS?"
"But they volunteered," said Karen, sounding genuinely hurt. Then she added, in a quieter voice, "...mostly. And Caroline never agreed with Mr Johnson about forcing people to undergo testing. He...he and Caroline disagreed about a lot of things before the end."
So it's fine to murder people as long as they volunteer thought Chell, as ever disturbed by the ethics of all Aperture employees, human or otherwise. But this was not the time to have that argument, especially given the painful questions it would bring up about her own father's complicity in his company's wrongdoings.
What questions did she want answered, now that Karen was in a forthcoming mood? It probably wouldn't be long before she sank back into unconsciousness, and there was no guarantee that she'd ever wake up again after that.
Chell's scientific mind longed to understand how on earth you could transfer a human mind into a machine and back again, and to know exactly how different the woman in front of her was to the dead voice haunting the bowels of Aperture, and to the AI that had killed Chell's parents and blighted her adolescence. But she should concentrate on more pressing concerns.
"Is GlaDOS likely to come after you?"
Karen shook her head gently. "Too much effort. And she...she knows I'd come to you, or can guess. And she, I...we meant it about letting you go."
Now there was something else Chell found confusing, though she wasn't sure she wanted to understand it. Trying to understand how Karen felt about her was disturbing, and led to the unpleasant experience of probing Chell's own feelings. Feelings were not her strong point.
What else did she want to know?
"How many other humans are there left alive in Aperture. Are any of them...not you?" Was she going to have to go on another rescue mission? Not that her last attempt had saved anyone.
"None of them are me," said Karen, her eyes half closed and voice fuzzy with sleep. "I'm me. And I don't know. Last I knew GlaDOS was defrosting them one by one, most didn't even have enough of a working nervous system for breathing let alone thinking. I think the stasis pods lost power for a while when Wheatley was in charge."
"Oh," said Chell. That made her feel a little better. If GlaDOS was only hurting versions of herself that was...kind of ok? Sort of? They never covered this kind of situation in highschool ethics class.
"Then what about outside the Centre? Are there any other humans around?"
"Not around here. Maybe in other places." Karen's eyes were fully closed now, and it was hard to make out what she was saying.
"What happened to them all?"
"Alpmph," muttered Karen, rolling her head away into her pillow.
Chell poked her.
"Aliens," repeated Karen, irritably, and then pointedly closed her eyes and went to sleep, refusing to budge no matter how much Chell shook her.
Karen didn't die.
She did vomit a few more times, and demanded to be taken to the bathroom (Chell wasn't ever really planning on making her use the bucket, and as little as Chell trusted Karen she was no threat to anyone in her current state) She even managed to hold down a little fish and vegetable soup the next morning.
She still hadn't explained the alien thing to Chell's satisfaction though.
"What do you mean you don't remember the details?" said Chell angrily. For a long time she'd enjoyed passive aggressively taunting GlaDOS by refusing to speak to her, but there also was definitely something to be said for shouting.
"There's only so much information you can store in a space this size," Karen tapped the side of her skull, enjoying the freedom of having her hands untied while she ate lunch with Chell on the decking by the lake, "even with the added cybernetic components."
Chell found the knowledge that Karen was not fully biologically human a little disturbing. Just how many "cybernetic components" did she contain? She claimed that these "repairs" were designed to leave her mental function as human-like as possible, but Chell had a well earned mistrust of any sort of artificial intelligence.
"Any information GlaDOS didn't consider important wasn't saved to her primary memory, and so wasn't transferred to me. Plus of course she deleted the knowledge of how to solve the tests. That would have ruined the science."
"And the fate of the human race wasn't considered important?"
As if to emphasise the emptiness of the landscape, a flock of geese drifted by on the water and then took off en masse, their loud quacking breaking the stillness of the scene.
"Not to GlaDOS," said Karen, as if this made perfect sense. "All she cares about is being able to test. I managed to fight off the aliens when they first tried to take hold of the Centre, and once the humans in the Centre's local vicinity were neutralised or transported elsewhere the invasion was no longer relevant."
"Well it's relevant now," said Chell.
"I guess," said Karen. "But can't we just...take a moment to enjoy being alive?" She smiled, and managed to look surprisingly pretty. "The sun is shining, we're by a beautiful lake, I have this delicious soup...why worry about aliens? We could be dead tomorrow anyway!"
Chell raised an eyebrow and took another sip of her soup. It wasn't that delicious, Chell still hadn't really gotten the hang of cooking. "Why do I get the feeling you know something I don't?"
Karen's smile became much less convincing, and much less pretty. "Haha, what makes you say that?"
Chell frowned. Karen's smile fell and she looked like she was remembering Chell's strong words earlier about the very thin ice she was skating on in terms of trust.
"Did I mention how great this soup is? Mmm!"
Chell rolled her eyes but decided not to bother pressing the issue. It really was a lovely day, and she didn't want to spend the whole of it cleaning up vomit and arguing.
The sat quietly, the only sound the wind rushing softly through the birch trees and the lapping of the waves against the wooden pillars of the deck.
When Chell finally decided to let Karen go her first response was to hug her.
"Whoa," said Chell, feeling suddenly uncomfortable, "Don't make me regret my decision here."
"But this means we're friends, right?" said Karen, surprisingly bouncy for someone still in recovery from withdrawal. Not to mention the fact that her base personality was the mind of a long dead eighty year old, though Karen made a firm distinction between herself and Caroline, saying that it was like she was the same metal but had been melted into one new shape, and then another. "You've realised that you can trust me and that we have more in common than you thought, and we can hang out and...catch fish or whatever it is you do around here when you're not tying up sick people. Some people might think you were a bit weird for doing that. But I won't judge. Because we're friends!"
"We're not...it was just too much hassle," said Chell. "And I don't trust you, but I also can't see any reason why you'd want to hurt me."
"You did murder me," said Karen, as if explaining something obvious to a child. "It was really unpleasant...but totally forgiven!" she added once it occurred to her that she wasn't helping her case. "Water under the bridge! And you're right, mostly when I tried to kill it was the programming making me do it, I feel much better now."
"Right," said Chell. She grabbed Karen by the shoulders and pushed her away. "But we're not friends. You can stay here, and help out, and maybe it'll be nice to have a little company, but..." Why did she have to explain this? And why did she feel bad about the kicked puppy look in Karen's cloudy green eyes?
"I'm going to go for a walk," said Chell. She'd been forced to stay around the house and look after Karen for days, and her feet itched to escape to the woods. Being trapped in Aperture had left her with a lingering claustrophobia whenever she was stuck indoors for too long.
"Ooh! A walk!" said Karen. "That sounds like fun! Where are we going?"
Chell sighed. "Out." She had a thought. "You know there'll be birds, right?"
"Really? I mean...of course! Birds. Yes. In the outdoors. And all the trees. Everywhere. Not that I...have a problem with birds. That would be...how about you go for a walk, and I...clean the dishes? Or sweep the floors or something else...inside?"
"Sure," said Chell. "See you later."
Karen gave a quick little wave and then unexpectedly pulled Chell into another hug. "Look after yourself," she said into Chell's ear, softly. "I...I don't want you to be gone. For too long."
"Ok," said Chell, feeling awkward. "I'll be back before night, don't worry."
"Good! Or I'll hunt you down! Ahahaha! Just kidding."
Chell laughed despite herself and then turned away to walk slowly towards the trees. There were indeed many birds, and the prettiness of their song as she escaped into greenery made her heart lift with a sense of freedom.
But she was back before nightfall.