AN: Wow... So I got a bunch of alerts telling me that people are putting my story on upload alert, etc, but not one review for my last chapter? :( Dang. Guess I'll have to work harder! Or... maybe my AN was too wordy? :/ Okay, so I'll go short on this one! Just this quick note; I'm not greatly confident with my grasp of GLaDOS' character, so I'd REALLY welcome some feedback concerning her, okay? Please? -mangapuppyface-
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She groaned lowly, barely even noticing the heavy clunking noise of her heat-sink rings shifting into a higher gear. The coolant pumping throughout her chassis wasn't really helping much and thus, GLaDOS had a headache.
Despite knowing the answer, she asked herself yet again how it was possible to have a headache. She then reminded herself that a headache was as much of an impossibility for a computer as falling asleep or dreaming, but she'd already done those so why the hell not?
Maybe it was a migraine, she decided, her optic dark-orange in an unfocused glare aimed vaguely at the floor panels beneath her chassis. The problem was the calculations, the design computations, everything relating to her current predicament. That being the fact that vital parts of the facility were not connected to the mainframe and could only be accessed by a human or humanoid -such as a certain overpowered turbine engine plant that was wearing out the machine components as fast as her dream-self had spitefully tried to do to Wheatley with a treadmill.
The master design, everything that was currently finalised, was displayed on the spread-out monitors surrounding her. GLaDOS barely saw it except during moments of clarity when a collective set of calculations slotted together and her processors gained a moment's relief before the demand took them over again. She glimpsed it now -and her overheated circuits tingled with something like pride, making her forget the throbbing pain in them for just that long. From either a mechanical or aesthetic point of view, it was beautiful. She couldn't wait to finish. But of course, getting finished meant-
Another out-load moan in protest of the throbbing, heat-induced pain. She promised herself a major chassis overhaul once this was done. Vision took a backseat to the demanding calculations and GLaDOS let herself go blind, knowing full well where the priorities lay. A sob came over the speakers, the coolant was so hot that it was expanding in the hoses, the pressure was rising, it couldn't pump fast enough to disperse the heat. A hose started to leak, then another. The dribbles of fluid ran down her chassis and made greasy-textured tracks through the thin film of dust on her white painted shielding.
In order to maintain pressure, new coolant flooded into the fluid jackets in her chassis, causing even more to leak from the cracked hoses and failing seals. Was that coolant spilled on her optic or was she actually delirious? Was this her own tailored version of heat stroke?
Whatever it was, she grumbled decicively to herself, it sucked.
Satisfied beeping echoed around the chamber as full consciousness came back to her, seemingly hours later. The noise was intermingled with her audible panting, her headache still in full swing yet tolerable enough to push aside and discover the cause of the soft beeping. All calculations finished, design finalised, estimated build time was seven hours.
GLaDOS backed up the file several times, then shipped it off to manufacturing. Then she let her chassis go slack, issuing several commands to the maintenance pit below her and the robotic arms hidden within, and she snapped her optic shut and happily let sleep take her elsewhere.
Upon waking, the robotic arms had long-since finished their jobs and gone back into standby mode. GLaDOS' chassis was clean, polished, and the busted fittings either repaired or replaced. The leaked coolant had been cleaned up from the floor, too, her coolant and hydraulic reserves had been replenished with new fluids, and her heat-sink rings were now practically dawdling at minimum operating speed.
GLaDOS searched the mainframe eagerly, coming upon the security camera footage located in manufacturing. An excited shiver ran throughout her circuits. But she still had to write the programming for the damned thing, and regretfully turned her attention elsewhere to grind her way through gigabyte after gigabyte of code. The Mark 1 had been sent up to her chamber well before she finished -she determinedly didn't even look at it until the programming was done.
Oh, but then... then she turned her optic on the machine propped up like Frankenstein's monster on a support framework. Unlike the fictional creature, this thing was very real and it was very beautiful, GLaDOS thought proudly. Lightweight titanium-alloy exoskeletal structure formed by overlapping plates; musculature composed of masses of fine, high-strength, interwoven elastic polymer filaments; a powerful and microscopically-detailed sensory input/output network; an Aperture Science Portal Device built into the left arm (it held eight charged shots and even that had been the limits of her abilities, since she'd wanted it compact) and also, inbuilt Aperture Science Long Fall heelsprings. Those were just the necessary components. Aesthetically, she'd had the 'skin' painted white just like her own chassis shielding and the Aperture logo was stamped broadly in black across the left pectoral plate, the main optics were amber like her own, and the bipedal droid was slender in build and appearance, feminine though it lacked the unnecessary (she thought) mammaries.
Really the only thing she couldn't do was give it hair. Aesthetics had to make way for functionality, unfortunately. All that work had resulted in a humanoid android body that could access the places she couldn't through the mainframe. The downsides she was determined to fix included the fact that in order to make it work at all, the immediate motherboard, processor and RAM drives in the thing took up the entire thoracic cavity. There was no room for a power supply, so if she really had to disconnect it and run it wirelessly, it would run off the ASPD's limited battery, though that would last a bare twelve minutes and then that would also be rendered useless. It was one thing to be shoved in a potato, incapable of anything more than slow claps and voicing the truth, it was wholly another thing altogether to -in essence- recreate her entire being on a human-sized scale. Five-foot-ten to be exact.
Thick cables descended from the ceiling, connecting to a multitude of ports along the android's spine and across the scalp. They resembled hair... vaguely. More importantly, they comprised the main power supply and all the data-transfer lines needed to control it. GLaDOS closed her own optic and her chassis hung limp, as she wanted to devote her internal systems to this new form. Chassis functions were unnecessary, she left only the subconscious chassis functions active, like coolant and hydraulic controls.
The android's eyes glowed softly and they opened, and her immediate reaction was shock. GLaDOS' main chassis hung twenty feet away, and it was a hell of a lot bigger from this persepctive. It twitched as she processed the memory of looking up at Wheatley when he had inhabited it. GLaDOS resisted the urge to move it and reassure herself that she was still connected. She accessed the programming code she'd written, causing the android's arms to lift, turning her new right hand in front of her face and examining the ASPD that took the place of the left. The exoskeletal plating shifted smoothly, allowing the action. She then made each of her new fingers twitch and flex, then she caused the body to sit up from the support framework. The cabling trailed loosely as she finally made it to a standing position free of the frame, they were safe in this slack manner so it wouldn't catch and break.
GLaDOS forced down her excitement and moved around slowly, pacing across the floor of her chamber, working her way slowly to a jog and then a sprint to test the android's physique. Trickles of Test Solution Euphoria worked their way through to her Core, and the android body shivered slightly in enjoyment at that.
Well, that answered one other question she had. The Test Solution Euphoria hardcode affected both her conscious Core and also whichever body she currently maintained a greater control over, despite being primarily an aspect of the main chassis. If she was not connected to the chassis at all, she wondered, would she still feel it as strongly? Once again, there was a big difference between being a potato and this highly complex android form.
An internal notification reached her -the new turbines were already one percent more worn-out than they should have been. And this figure would climb if she didn't do something about the engines driving them.
Patiently, GLaDOS withdrew her consciousness from the android and slowly regained full control of her main chassis again. It was a disconcerting feeling. Nice as it was to view her surroundings from a new point of view, she didn't think she'd be doing it very often. Once all controls and systems checked out, she arranged a section of primary cabling that would remain connected to the android at all times, then sealed it carefully in a protective casing and sent it on its' way to the power plant and the misbehaving turbine motors. There was work to do.
~!~
AN: So, was that any better? I'm a little afraid of GLaDOS' character, I think, so I avoided dialogue. :( I need encouragement! Well, I don't like holding stories to ransom for reviews, so I won't do that, but I do have an idea... :3 If I get past 25 reviews after posting this one, next week will be a double update! There's six attached to this story now, so that's not TONS to ask for, is it? :3 Go on, push that little button down there! Reviews! Reviews! You know you want to! ;)