As I walk through the woods, I continuously look back to make sure I'm not going too far. It's very different under the shade of the trees. There's a peaceful feeling here, and a sense of being sheltered, as opposed to the almost daunting openness of the field. It also feels more…alive here. Overall, it's a very comforting place for me to be.
Sometimes, I accidentally drop an individual stalk of the yellow grass I gathered. I don't bother trying to pick it up when I do - with the Companion Cube in my hands, I'd probably just lose more if I tried. It's not until I decide I'm getting too far away from the field and try to turn to my right that I realize that the stalks I've dropped might leave a trail that can lead me back, provided animals don't eat them.
If there are any animals. I haven't seen any.
After walking through the woods for about an hour, trying to stay within sight of the field, I suddenly notice the sound of running water. It sounds like it's coming from the direction opposite of the field.
I hesitate. Water, or the chance of being found?
"You should find the water," my Companion Cube advises me. "You can find your way back to the field without too much trouble, and you're severely dehydrated."
I agree and turn away from the field, heading towards the sound of the water. I only have to walk for a minute before I find the source: a small brook. The brook creates a break in the trees, so there's more sunlight here than in the rest of the forest. The spot I've found is at one of the bends in the brook - it changes directions right in front of me, from heading towards the field to running parallel to it.
There's a tree growing right beside the brook, with its roots mostly exposed for some reason. I walk over to where the roots form a sort of alcove in the hill and sit down, relieved. The seat is as comfortable as I could ask for from nature, both sitting up and leaning back.
I set down the Companion Cube and my bundle of yellow grass in front of me, then turn and bend over the brook, using my hand to catch some of the water and bring it to my mouth. The water has a strange, almost-disagreeable flavor that the morning dew had lacked, but I guess that's only to be expected since it's been flowing over plants and dirt. It's alot better than nothing, so I can't complain.
Once I've drunk as much water as I can handle, I lie back in the seat I've found. It's nice, to be able to just rest - to actually have what I need nearby, so that I don't have to run from something or wander aimlessly. I close my eyes and listen to the sound of the brook flowing beside me. I feel very relaxed, more so than I can ever remember having been. I know I still have a couple of things that I need to do before nightfall, but right now, I take some time to rest - not because I don't have the strength to go on, nor for any reason other than the simple fact that I can.
After a few minutes, I force myself to open my eyes and sit up again. I immediately catch sight of the grass I brought with me. I'm going to have to dig out a hole in the side of the brook so I can try and soak the seeds.
Out of pure curiosity, I pick up one of the stalks and take a closer look at the seeds. Having more light than I'd had the previous night, I notice that the seeds appear to have a multi-part shell with a spike at the end of each bit. Intrigued, I pick at the parts of the shell, and after a minute, I find a grain inside that's entirely separate from the shell.
I put the grain in my mouth and try to chew it. It's easier to chew than the coated seeds had been, but it's still tough enough to make my teeth hurt again.
So that's two things I need to do: pick the shells off of each seed, then soak them.
I sigh. I've dealt with much worse things. Really, the only problem with this is that it's going to be monotonous, and…well, I guess I wouldn't mind some monotony for a change. First, though, I need to dig out the hole where I'll put the seeds.
I put the stalk back with the rest and crawl the short distance to the nearest spot where the brook is bordered by dirt instead of roots. The soil is wet, so it's not too hard to dig at; I have the hole I need within a couple of minutes. I wash the dirt off my hands in the brook, then turn back around. As I do so, I catch sight of my Companion Cube again. There's still a fair amount of char on him.
I reach over and put my hand on him. Do you want me to wash you off in this brook, or would that be bad for you? I ask him.
"Oh, I don't mind being a bit dirty," the cube says good-naturedly. "It would hurt me if you submerged me in water, but I'd probably be okay if you just rinse me off. You don't have to, though. Really."
I smile; I've never known such a friendly AI before. I decide not to take any risks and leave him be for now. Maybe I'll try to wipe him off later with some wet leaves or something.
I pick up my bundle of yellow grass, crawl back into my seat beneath the tree, and start the long process of shelling the seeds. The roots around me create lots of dips and holes, so I have plenty of places to put the seeds I've removed from their shells.
I have no real way of telling time, so I'm not sure how long it is before I've shelled enough seeds to make it worthwhile to try and see if soaking them will work - it's a little while, I know that much. I have about half a handful, so I gather them all in my hand and move back over to the hole I'd dug earlier. I'm not going to shell any more seeds if the soaking thing doesn't work, so this is going to be like a test run.
Test run. I smile to myself as I drop the seeds in the water. I guess tests really are important in the real world, after all.
The seeds float, but don't drift away, so there's nothing left for me to do but wait a while and see if they soak well. I move back, picking up my Companion Cube before lying back in my seat again. For a little while, neither of us says anything. Then I think at him, What have you been doing all this time while I've been asleep?
"Not much," he answers. "We Companion Cubes weren't much use to the Personality Cores that took over the facility after you destroyed Her, so they let me be, and I did the same to them. I heard a lot of their talk, though, which is how I found out that I'd been right about you."
You said you knew I wouldn't end up like the others, I remember. How many "others" were there before me?
"In terms of total people She killed, there were dozens," the cube replies. "They say that, before She started testing volunteer test subjects, She forced the scientists who didn't die in Her initial takeover to go through Her earliest tests. There are rumors that one of them managed to escape Her wrath, but the rest died."
I remember how Wheatley had said that he'd found hundreds of old test chambers full of skeletons, and how She - GLaDOS - had admitted she'd stockpiled them as mementos.
"After She ran out of Aperture Science employees, though, I…have heard that you were Her first test subject," my Companion Cube goes on. "I even heard a couple of cores mention that it looked like someone had hacked the database and deliberately put you at the top of the list. I don't have any idea if that's true, but if someone did do that, then we are all grateful for whoever it might have been."
I consider this for a minute. If it's true, then whoever had done it had either had a personal grudge against me…or had somehow known that I would stop Her, just as my Companion Cube had. How would someone I'd never met know that, though?
Oh well. It doesn't really matter now.
There's a pause. Then, suddenly, I realize what my Companion Cube said.
"Volunteer" test subjects? I ask him.
"Yes," he replies; "Aperture Science never made people into test subjects against their will. She never sought out people from the outside world, so the only test subjects She had were those that had volunteered."
So I volunteered for testing, I think. Why would I have volunteered?
"Not many people outside of Aperture Science knew about the facility's lack of safety protocol for tests," the cube says; "you probably had no idea what you were getting into."
I guess not, I think. I can't remember, so it doesn't really matter anymore. Still, I can't help but wonder how I'd ended up at Aperture Science. How had I heard about them? Why had I wanted to test for them? I have no idea.
After a minute, something else crosses my mind, and I ask my Companion Cube, What's her story, anyway? How did she take over Aperture Science? What went wrong?
"No one knows what went wrong," he replies. "You see…Well, the only parts of Her story that I know are the parts I heard retold among the Personality Cores that took over after you killed Her, and since they were all built to modify Her behavior after her central system was put together, anything I tell you about what happened early on will only be speculation and the repetition of rumors on my part. As for the rest, though, I will tell you Her story as accurately as I can.
"The engineers at Aperture Science were trying to design an AI powerful and intelligent enough to run their entire facility - based on what I've heard you remembering for the past few days, it's most likely that they started the project with the intention of making Mr. Cave Johnson's mind the central program the rest of the system would be based on, but he died before they could translate his mind into computer-program format, so they had to use his wife Caroline in his place. The process of developing Her was quite possibly the biggest project in the history of Aperture Science, and years of hard work by the most brilliants minds in the company were put into it. Once they thought She was finished and turned Her on, however, they were forced to deactivate Her less than a second later due to an unexpected level of hostility."
Meaning she tried to kill everyone right away, I think.
"Most likely," my cube agrees. "At any rate, the scientists were determined to turn the newly-designed AI into the director and boss of all of Aperture Science, so they started trying to modify Her in an effort to make Her harmless. For a while, or so they say, everything they tried was met with zero success; She repeatedly tried to kill them all the moment they turned Her on. Over time, however, She started to get clever, and one day She pretended to have lost all interest in killing humans, claiming to be interested only in science. She told them about an experiment that She wanted to run, and requested that they give Her some deadly neurotoxin for it. For some reason, the scientists were fooled, and they agreed to develop the neurotoxin, which would be Hers to use once She was given control of the facility.
"A holiday of sorts in the company was developed specifically for the event, though no one understands the connection between the theme of that holiday and Her. It was on the first annual 'Bring Your Daughter To Work Day' that the scientists first gave Her complete control of the facility…and as soon as they did, She began flooding the entire building with Her deadly neurotoxin. Many of the scientists died that day, along with most, if not all, of the girls."
I shiver, remembering my dream again. It's not unreasonable of me to think that my dream was a coincidence, though; after all, Wheatley had told me that "Bring Your Daughter To Work Day" had ended badly, and GLaDOS is the most terrible thing in the history of Aperture Science - it's a connection my subconscious could easily have made. There's no reason to think it was anything but a dream…
What happened next? I ask my Companion Cube.
"Well, a handful or so of engineers and scientists managed to get gas masks and make their way to Her chamber to shut Her down," the cube tells me. "The undoing of the company was that everyone was so determined to put Her in charge of the facility that they kept trying. There weren't enough scientists to work on projects besides Her, and everyone left tried to pitch in as best as they could.
"The whole thing was essentially a war between Her and Her creators, and Her victory on 'Bring Your Daughter To Work Day' tipped the scales irrevocably in Her favor. Still, the scientists went down fighting valiantly. After the catastrophe was when most of the Personality Cores that are still alive today were constructed - the scientists kept trying to use them to moderate Her behavior to make Her stop killing people. During Aperture Science's final years, the same thing kept happening: The engineers would design and attach a Personality Core to alter Her behavior, it would work for maybe a day or two, and then She would find a way to use the new Personality Core to Her advantage and start killing again."
What do you mean, she used them to her advantage? I ask.
"Well, for example, the Space Core," my Companion Cube says; "it was designed to give Her an obsession with space, so that the tests She designed would be made to gather data concerning outer space. After a couple of days with the sphere, however, She figured out how to work around it by designing tests that would fling people into outer space. The core failed, She was deactivated by the surviving scientists, and the process repeated itself with another core. Mind you, the scientists were always quick to shut Her down once they realized the tests She was designing had become lethal, but they rarely realized it before one or two of them had already died. Eventually, there were simply none left.
"Now, that's not to say that all of the Personality Cores were complete failures - any core that She wasn't able to turn around and use to Her advantage was always left on Her. By the time the last of the scientists fell, there were four cores on Her: the Curiosity Core, which made Her curious to see if a human could survive what I've heard you call a 'maze of deathtraps', resulting in Her designing tests that were actually survivable, if only just barely; the Cake Core, which gave Her an obsession with cake and was designed to distract Her - while this core didn't exactly work, She was never able to use it against the scientists, so they left it in; the Emotion Core, which was designed to give Her human emotions in the hopes that it would give Her empathy - again, this one didn't really work, but it didn't hurt, either; and, most importantly, the-"
The Morality Core, I think, remembering my first confrontation with her. She told me that it was designed to make her stop flooding the Enrichment Center with a deadly neurotoxin.
"Just so," my cube says, and even though he can't move, I somehow get the impression of him nodding. "The Morality Core gave Her moral standards and a sense of integrity, so that She would see using the deadly neurotoxin as cheating and thus refuse to do so."
I sigh. So they just kept trying until there were none of them left, I think. I look down at my Companion Cube and comment, If only they hadn't designed a facility that would self-destruct without someone running the place to begin with, huh?
"Actually, that was Her doing," the cube says.
I blink. It was? I ask, surprised.
"Yes," he says; "in fact, that was a rather popular story among the Personality Cores, and I heard them retell it to each other frequently, so I know it by heart. It happened when the scientists tried to impede Her extremely high intelligence by designing an Intelligence Dampening Sphere."
I jump, recognizing the name. You mean Wheatley? I ask.
"Possibly," my Companion Cube says; "I don't know about that core ever having a personal name or position."
I'm pretty sure that was what she called Wheatley, I tell my cube. I think for a moment, then add, She said Wheatley was…"the product of the greatest minds of a generation, working together with the express purpose of building the dumbest moron who ever lived."
"Hmm," the cube responds. "Well, at any rate, the story of the Intelligence Dampening Sphere is a popular one. It went like this:
"The Intelligence Dampening Sphere was designed to generate idiotic ideas and plans, with which it would constantly bombard Her brain. The idea was that She would have to take extra time to sort out which ideas were Hers and which were coming from the Intelligence Dampening Sphere before She could do anything. Like most Personality Cores, this worked at first, and the scientists were able to keep up with Her and avoid Her lethal tests before She managed to kill someone in them.
"Unlike the way everyone expected things to happen, however, She didn't grow accustomed to the continuous spam from the Intelligence Dampening Sphere and learn to automatically sort it out from Her own brilliant designs. At first, the scientists thought they'd finally succeeded at subduing Her, and I've heard it said that Her exclamations of frustration certainly seemed to signify Her defeat. Supposedly, the success of the Intelligence Dampening Sphere lasted many days longer than usual, and after a week, the scientists started to celebrate their hard-won victory.
"Just when it seemed the battle was finally over, however, She made what was quite possibly Her most ingenious move in the entire struggle: She started following the Intelligence Dampening Sphere's advice. You see, it just so happened that the Intelligence Dampening Sphere was designed to give Her bad ideas about everything, including Her job as omnipotent controller of the entire facility, and it apparently started giving Her ideas such as 'Maybe you should power the entire building with a highly reactive nuclear core that will explode if you don't keep it constantly regulated.' In a stroke of brilliance, She stopped trying to fight such ideas as these. Before the engineers even knew what was happening, the entire Aperture Science building was turned into a highly reactive bomb that would detonate into the biggest atomic explosion in the history of the world - almost comparable to a small stellar nova - unless several key functions were constantly monitored. What was more, after that, She started deliberately listening to other bad ideas from the Intelligence Dampening Sphere, such as 'Maybe you should focus on testing right now and regulate the reactor core some other time.'
"The scientists just barely managed to get the Intelligence Dampening Sphere off of Her before the entire facility turned into a doomsday bomb. Before they got back to work on Her, though, the scientists added programs to all the failed Personality Cores that would activate them in the event of Her shutting down, so that there would always be somethingperforming the vital functions necessary to keep the building from exploding.
"The truth is, I got the feeling that the Personality Cores were very grateful for the invention of the Intelligence Dampening Sphere, because if it hadn't been for that sphere, none of them would have gotten a chance to live."
For a minute, I don't respond. I can only think about how much Wheatley would like to hear this. If this story is true, then he had been one of the most important Personality Cores in the history of Aperture Science! I remember how he'd complained about the low-level job he was given in running the facility after GLaDOS had died, and the feeling I'd gotten that he'd felt under-appreciated, and I wish with all my might that I could tell him this story.
"You know, Chell," my Companion Cube finally says, "there's something called the Shared Personality Core Mainframe, through which all Personality Cores, no matter where they are or what they might be doing, can be contacted; it's part of the system the scientists designed that would allow the failed Personality Cores to run the facility in the event that She was rendered unable to do so. It's a highly restricted system, but I think Companion Cubes have the power to access it, provided we're plugged into one of the Aperture Science Personality Core outlets. Those outlets don't only exist inside the facility, so maybe if we find one someday, I'll be able to contact Wheatley for you. Does that sound good?"
Yes, I reply. Yes, I'd like that very much.
Again, there's silence; neither one of us has anything more to say. I watch the patches of sunlight move across the forest floor as afternoon passes into evening. It really is so nice to be able to just sit down and watch the time pass without needing to do anything to avoid death. I don't know if I'll ever get used to it, and part of me actually hopes I don't - after everything I've been through, I know it's something that shouldn't be taken for granted.
Finally, I remember my promise from yesterday to name my Companion Cube. I still don't know many names; and, for that matter, I don't really want to name him after any of the personalities I've met or heard before anyway.
Is there something you'd like to be called? I ask the Companion Cube. I mean, is there something you want me to name you?
"I am entirely indifferent," the cube replies. "Wanting a name isn't an integral part of my programming."
Whatever that means, I think, but I don't feel like hearing an explanation just now.
I close my eyes and lean back, trying to think. Part of me wants to name him after Wheatley, but I know that would be pointless. No…
Chell, Cave, Caroline, Core, Companion Cube… Whatever I name him is going to have to start with a "C"…
C…Wheatley…Companion Cube…Core…
Suddenly, a random name pops into my head. I don't know where I've heard it before, but I guess it works.
I'll name you Cornelius, I decide. Is that okay?
My Companion Cube makes a mechanical whirring sound, then says, "Individual name 'Cornelius' saved." His voice, which sounded normal before, has suddenly become robotic.
I stare at him for a moment, unsure what to think.
"Thank you, Chell," he finally says, his voice back to normal.
So you're okay with that name? I ask him.
"Absolutely," Cornelius says without hesitation. "I am honored to be given a name, just as I am honored to be your Companion Cube."
I sigh; I don't feel like hearing about how honored he is to be my Companion Cube. I glance around and notice it's getting dark - it's probably sunset.
I sit up, set Cornelius aside, and go back to the seeds I'd been soaking. They're still there, but I can't tell at a glance if there's anything different about them.
I take one out of the water and put it in my mouth. It's a bit softer now - or at least, my teeth hurt less when I chew it, although that could just be because my teeth are starting to get used to serving a purpose. Either way, I need to eat, so I scoop out the rest of the seeds and put them all in my mouth at once. Then I get back in my seat and chew while I'm waiting for nightfall.
The seeds have an interesting flavor now. It's not bad. I really do hope there's nutrition in them, though, and that I'm not just eating starch or something.
Oh well. It must be better than nothing.
It's dark by the time I finish chewing and swallow. I guess the moon hasn't come up yet, because everything's pretty much black. I can still hear the brook flowing gently beside me, and while this hole in the roots isn't quite as comfortable as a bed of tall grass, the sound is so soothing that I quickly find myself drifting off. Just in time, I remember to sit up and grab Cornelius before I let myself fall asleep, in case I have another dream.
Good night, Cornelius, I think at him as I lie down with him in my arms - it's an awkward position to fall asleep in, but I need to know…
"Good night, Chell," he says.
A second later, I'm asleep.
~o~
~Space Core story credited to penname "WallofIllusion" (story name "GLaDOS's Space Phase").
