Chell had to admit that Karen wasn't entirely to blame for the explosion.
Sure, she was the one who'd created the engine, and it had been her idea to test it. But for all that Karen was her own person, she was still a partial copy of GlaDOS, whose whole reason for being was the creation and testing of scientific devices.
And if anyone knew how little the woman-formerly-known-as-GlaDOS could be trusted to implement proper health and safety regulations, it was Chell.
"I should never have let you talk me into this," said Chell, with a groan, as she picked herself up off the ground. It was a good thing she hadn't let herself be talked out of making them wear safety gear, or she'd have ended up in even more pain than she was now. Karen had wanted them to wear jaunty hats and pretty dresses.
"But it worked!" said Karen. She was laying flat on her back, her face coated with soot and split by a massive grin. "Didn't you feel it? The car moved. Because of my engine! It worked!"
"For about thirty seconds," said Chell, standing up and shaking off the dirt and checking for hidden injuries. "Before it exploded and nearly killed us."
She looked across to the car, now a smoking ruin surrounded by lightly smouldering brush. It hadn't been much to look at before it exploded, just the bottom of an old car body, Karen's engine, and some seats. Chell had insisted that it be easy to escape from, another decision she was glad of. She walked up and started stomping out the embers before the fire spread and caused even more problems.
There were surprisingly few signs of the alien invasion that had apparently overtaken the Earth and emptied Aperture's little company town some time after Chell entered the Centre all those years ago. A crater where the security office used to be, some dead bodies, now buried, and signs in every house of people grabbing their things and leaving in hurry. Unfortunately, Aperture had encouraged it's staff to use their own "environmentally friendly" recycled plastic electric cars, and the few that had been left behind in the exodus had all melted into toxic looking puddles on the pavement.
Karen had seen this as an opportunity to get creative. She jumped up and starting poking at the still scorching hot remains of her invention with a stick. "I think it was the fuel," she said. "Too much alcohol. I'll fiddle with the mix and start again."
"Good luck with that," said Chell, limping back towards the house. This kind of situation called for medicinal alcohol and maybe a trashy novel. Something with pirates and far off places and no scientists whatsoever.
"You know noone forced you to get involved," said Karen to her retreating back. "Funny isn't it, you go on and on about how you hate being forced to do science, yet the moment there's an experiment going on without you..."
Chell turned to face her. "If I hadn't have been there, you wouldn't have jumped off when it started making that horrible screeching sound, you would have stayed on to see how much further it would go and you would have died."
"Maybe," said Karen, "maybe not. That's what makes it an experiment." She went back to poking at her engine.
To begin with, Karen had been deeply unenthusiastic about Chell's plan to go south to search for other human survivors.
"You'll probably die alone in the wilderness," she said. "Let's face it, you're hardly Davy Crocket. Five minutes and you'll be crawling back here for the soft luxuries of civilisation, if your legs don't give out on you first." Much as Chell hated to admit it, Karen had a point about her legs, they'd never forgiven Chell for their treatment at Aperture. But she wasn't going to let that stop her.
"If by the soft luxuries of civilisation you mean whatever we can scrounge from abandoned houses, I'm sure I'll find more of the same along the way. It's less than 20 miles to the Delaware township, I think I can manage it. If I'm lucky they'll have some working cars."
"And what about the aliens? They might kill you!"
"I thought you said the aliens had gone," said Chell.
"...as far as I could tell," admitted Karen reluctantly, having obviously forgotten that she'd let that inconvenient fact slip. "But maybe I was wrong! Hard as you may find it to believe, it has been known to happen, even to me."
"I'm willing to take that risk."
Karen took a breath and looked like she was debating within herself whether it was worth trying to argue in favour of her own infallibility, before deciding it was not.
"Well I'm not coming with you. Someone has to keep the home fires burning instead of gallivanting off on irresponsible adventures."
"Yes, I'm glad one of us is responsible," said Chell sardonically. Karen was meticulously clean and organised when she chose to be, but she had very little respect for other people's property, and had a tendency to pull any piece of useful technology they found to pieces to see how it worked. GlaDOS had deliberately removed a lot of her technical knowledge before uploading herself to Karen, and she was desperate to fill in the gaps any way she could.
They argued about it again a few times, but as always, when it came to anything important, Karen's determination found itself no match for Chell's. Within a week she was complacently opining on various aspects of the trip as if it had been her idea from the start. And that was before she got the idea to try and make a car.
She was rather less excited once it became clear that they were going to have to walk (a horribly inefficient form of transportation in her opinion) but she never tried to dissuade Chell from leaving again. She did, however, grow increasingly subdued as the day of their planned departure grew ever closer.
Chell was having trouble keeping her eyes open. She and Karen had cooked a large meal to celebrate their last night in this house, and there had been baked lobster, fresh green salad, and cake. The cake had been burned on the outside and raw on the inside, since they still hadn't quite gotten the hang of creating an even temperature in a wood fired oven, but the parts that had been edible had been great.
She sat down next to Karen and patted her companionably on the knee. "I don't know about you," she said, "But I'm beat. I should probably go to bed." Instead of getting up she just leaned back against the log they were sitting against and closed her eyes. It was warm by the bonfire, and sitting with Karen was nice. Maybe she could just doze here for a while...
Karen flopped sideways onto Chell's lap. "Now you're trapped," she said with a lazy laugh.
"Ha ha," said Chell, without humour. Such jokes were still something of a sore point, but Karen never met a sore point she didn't want to poke.
Karen turned so that her head was looking upwards towards the stars. Chell watched her trace the constellations with her eyes. The fire set flickers of gold sparkling in her green eyes and the soft brown and silver strands of her hair, and her head was a comfortable weight on Chell's thighs. The longer Chell lived with Karen the better she looked.
"Enjoying the view?" asked Chell.
"I would be if your bosom wasn't in the way," said Karen. She pushed at the underside of Chell's breasts. "It is impractically large. Are you even wearing a brassiere?" Chell got the feeling Karen wasn't entirely happy with the stocky, almost androgynous shape of her body, quite a contrast from Caroline's statuesque physique. Chell thought she looked fine, a few weeks of healthy-ish living had help fill her out quite nicely, and anyway Chell liked her women a little stocky. But she wasn't going to tell Karen that.
Karen's expression grew contemplative and she put one hand under each of Chell's breasts, presumably trying to tell if one was heavier than the other. Chell felt herself flush, and not just from the heat of the fire.
"Would you stop molesting me?" she said.
Karen snatched away her hands and sat back up.
"Does everything have to be about...sex with you?" she said, whispering the word as if there were disapproving censors hidden in the trees. "Most decent people try and avoid the subject, but not you. Always making things sordid, I hate to think what sort of vile behaviours you got up to when you were outside the innocent world of the Centre."
Chell rolled her eyes. "Are you still upset about that thing with the dildo?"
Karen made a sound of annoyance, which Chell took as a yes. "I can't believe you didn't tell me what it was! And I can't believe that you KNEW what it was!"
"I was having fun watching you theorise," said Chell with a laugh. "I thought you liked science, sex is a kind of biology isn't it?"
Karen made another sound of annoyance and shifted a little further away. "You know sometimes I think that you're not a nice young woman," said Karen. Times like this reminded Chell that for all that her body was in it's twenties, the closest thing Karen had to an upbringing were a few childhood memories from the 1930s. "You're lucky I'm open minded and don't hold such flaws against you."
"Yeah, I'll live with myself somehow," said Chell.
Good thing she doesn't know you're a lesbian said a voice in her head.
Pfft. It's not like she'd be comfortable doing anything with Karen anyway. Chell had come to be somewhat fond of Karen, and didn't blame her entirely for the things GlaDOS had done, but she was still, to some extent...Her. Domineering and thoughtless and cruel. The voice that haunted Chell's dreams and had left her an orphan.
Thinking about the similarities between Karen and GlaDOS made Chell uncomfortable, but she'd be lying if she said it made Karen any less attractive, quite the reverse. Which just made her more uncomfortable (and evidently in need of some deep psychological therapy, but that was hardly news)
"Yeah I'm turning in," said Chell.
"Wait," said Karen.
"What?"
"After we leave...what happens if we do find other survivors?"
Karen eyes were big and troubled. What was up with her? She'd been weird about this trip from the start.
"We join them, and settle down and...help rebuild human civilisation," said Chell. "Or spend our days fixing cars for money, whatever we want. That's the point."
Karen's eyes grew even bigger. "But what if they're dangerous? Who knows how they'll react to two beautiful young women arriving in their midst. They could make us...marry them." She made it sound like the worst fate imaginable. "Or...maybe they've formed a corrupt dictatorship where newcomers are forced to fight to the death for sport. That frequently happens in post apocalyptic scenarios, you know. And no offence, but you've really let yourself go since Aperture, I'm not sure you'd last long."
"If I can survive you I can survive anything," said Chell. "My main worry is that it'll be a waste of time, but at least we'll know. You may not care about the rest of humanity, but I do."
"So I'm not good enough for you, you want the rest of humanity," said Karen, petulantly. "You just can't wait to be rid of me."
"Is that what this is about?" said Chell. Now Karen's weirdness made sense, as much as Karen ever made sense. "God, you have the emotional maturity of a two year old. Look, I may still have certain issues with you, Karen, but...you've grown on me. Living with you...hasn't been all bad." It was true. Part of her was going to miss this place and the stability she'd found here with Karen, and not just because it was where she'd lived as a kid. "I'm sure we'll still see each other around. And you'll make new friends too. Maybe some real scientists even." Actually that was kind of a terrifying thought.
"Oh," said Karen. She smiled and Chell felt a warm fuzzy sense of affection for her. Whatever her (many) other flaws, Karen rather obviously really liked Chell, and that made up for a lot.
"Hey, do you want a hand up?" said Chell, putting out her hand. "The fire's dying down, we should put it out and go to bed before it gets too dark to find our way back to the house."
Karen grabbed her hand and pulled herself up, then threw her arms around Chell in a hug. "You are best friend I have ever had," she said. She smelled of cake and ashes.
"...thanks," said Chell, as always feeling a little weird when Karen got all affectionate.
"Do you remember," said Karen into her neck "When I first arrived here, and you didn't know who I was, and we shared a bed?"
"...yes?" said Chell, wondering where this was going.
"That was nice," said Karen. "I...I would like..." She stopped and moved to look at Chell, as if not knowing what to say and hoping to see it in Chell's face.
There was a moment of tension, the two of them staring into each other's eyes. Chell could feel Karen's small breasts pressed against her own and the chill of Karen's fingers against her back, twitching with tension.
Escape! said a voice in Chell's head.
She flashed Karen a quick smile then stepped back. "Well, see you tomorrow," she said, firmly, then walked quickly towards the house, leaving Karen alone by the fire. She made sure not to look back.