A/N:
Sorry for making you guys wait so long! And please don't kill me for wrecking this game!
PFFFFFT. I just started this chapter on July 2nd. Fail and a half for me, yes? ;u;
And reviews are always loved, they make me smile. (:
This story will probably be put on hold for a little while, since I don't know why, but I have an urge to write a Team Fortress 2 fan fic for some reason. I even made my own little Scout. I'll also be working on a Nazi Zombies fan fic for a buddy of mine, too, so this more than likely will be put on hiatus. Enjoy anyway!
Portal & Portal 2 (c) Valve
Chell had finished her lunch with her parents, plenty of other fathers and a few mothers with their daughters eating, too. There was a buffet to choose from or the employees could have brought their own lunch to eat, which usually wasn't the case since the food was always quite good everyday anyway, whether you got tired of all of the different food or not. Caroline and Cave finished their lunch shortly after their daughter had, throwing their paper plates into the garbage before they continued on with their day.
Cave had decided to show his daughter some of the more "cut off" test chambers, the ones where only the lab rats, the assigned scientists and himself were allowed to be in. He had asked his daugher if she had wanted to go with him to overlook the tests a bit. He hadn't let her enter any of the rooms with him, but he let her watch what they were doing from a small video screen that was hidden in the wall next to the door. One of the tests got quite a bit of Chell's attention. It seemed that Aperture had bought some moon rocks and ended up crushing them and making them into a gel - conversion gel, to be exact - which didn't seem to like the human skeleton and it was, from what her father said, pure poison from what she understood out of the conversation he was having with the lab associates. Apparently, the gel was a great portal conductor, though, and they were running tests to see if they could get the poison extracted from those who ended up with it by putting them through the portals. When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Right?
Her father came back out of the room and led her back to the elevator, going farther down into the laboratory. He smiled down at the girl beside him, "This next room is very important," he said as the elevator re-opened on a new floor which was just a hallway with a secured door with a number lock to another room. "I think you'll like it. Maybe you can even help me with her!" Chell raised an eyebrow in confusion as her father coughed a couple times, but kept his smile as he opened the one door, motioning for his daughter to go in before him.
The girl walked into the room, her mouth slightly ajar from surprise. There were probably around five scientists or so in the room total, though it wasn't much. What got Chell's attention most was the large piece of machinery that was hanging from the ceiling. There were black chords connected to the thing, indefinitely used to power it. The brunette walked further forward, trying to get a better look at the thing - no, her.
There were three immediately visible spheres on the machine. There was a blue one, which had a small part of the sphere like an eye, as the others did. The blue one had the black close to nearly all of the color, only a small hint of blue for an iris around the outside of the black on the otherwise white ball apart for three black dots on either side of the "eye", but this core was apparently the "Intelligence Core" according to the scientists. The next sphere had a red iris with a very small pupil, close to just a dot of black in a pit of red, which was call the "Anger Core" and located to the left side with four black dots around the red instead of three, like the blue colored core. The last one that she could see had yellow, instead of red or blue. Its "pupil" was a slight bit bigger than the Anger Core's, if only by a little and its iris was a golden-yellow with two black dots on both sides of it, the pairs of dots straight across from each other.
Cave smiled at his daughter when he saw her bewildered expression. "Wel,, what do you think? Do you like her?" he asked, with a light laugh, "Her name's GLaDOS. It's short for Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System." he said with pride. Why wouldn't he be proud of his work? Sure, she still had some errors that needed to be worked out, like when everytime they'd try to start her up, she'd attempt to emit neurotoxin to kill them since they hadn't installed her "Morality Core" yet, a white sphere with a purple iris and an average-sized pupil with one black dot on either side of the iris. It was the last one they needed to install, but they were running into problems about getting it hooked up with all of the other ones, nonetheless, being careful to install it without problems in case she decided to warm up the neurotoxin emitters again.
Chell looked up at her father with hopeful eyes, trying to pass on the message that she wanted to help put in the Morality Core. Mr. Johnson laughed as he suppressed a cough, "Would you like to help put in the Morality Core, Chell?" he asked with a smile as a table with a large sphere, with an obvious color of purple where the eye was as it rolled into sight. The little girl nodded quickly, over and over again with a delighted expression on her face, happy that she'd be able to help with something even relatively important, nonetheless, almost secret to the majority of the other employees. She had listened to what the Morality Core was supposed to do, like the others. The Morality core was basically like a conscience, it knew when you did good or bad and it basically control her. Chell didn't approve of that so much. 'Just a conscience to control her? That might not work very well. You can always ignore your conscience.' the little girl thought to herself, but she kept the thought to herself.
The head of the facility took his daughter's hand and led her up the mesh stairs until they reached to where the railing curved back around and went back the way they'd come up the steps. The little girl was still curious about the whole machine, now seeing the 'GLaDOS' that was printed in plain English on a white portion of the robotic mechanism. The girl continued to examine the machine, finding some chords that needed to be plugged into something. The brunette glanced down at the Morality Core as two of the workers brought the sphere up the steps to where her and her father were. The two men stopped and Chell looked to her father then to the railing, climbing to the top bar with ease as the girl, taking hold of a few of the chords and turning to the scientists with the last core. She waited until the employee holding it brought the core closer so the chords wouldn't have to stretch so far, for fear that they'd disconnect and cause a disruption in the machine's programming or something like that.
Chell carefully connected the chords up to the Morality Core, an audible click confirming that it was put together correctly. The little girl smiled to herself with the success in helping with GLaDOS, jumping off the railing and landing back beside her father, the small, knee-high proto-type long fall boots that her father were having her test making the stress from falling the short distance nothing to her ankles and feet. "What do you say we fire 'er up, boys?" he said to the workers, getting nods and 'yes, sir's in return to his question.
Cave took his daughter's hand as they headed back to where the elevator was, going what seemed like a few floors up before exiting into another hallway which had a door on the left wall. The pair didn't slow down when they went down the narrow hallway and into the room. It was definitely a small room with three plain gray walls and one glass wall that overlooked the large open area where the rest of the scientists had stayed. It didn't take long for the little girl to notice a tall, white cylinder type thing with a red button on the top of it. She glanced at her father for any sign that she could hit it. Mr. Johnson nodded and Chell pushed the button, turning to watch what would happen next from behind the glass wall.
The four flat screens that protected the machine flashed to life, as did the one on the wall in front of the bundle of chords, seemingly flipping through images. Cake, security cameras, test chambers, and more. "Hello..hello..!" The first two hellos had shifted in tones before finally settling on a tone of pitch for the thing. "Hello, and welcome to the Aperture Science computer-aided Enrichment Center." The voice was robotic, mechanical, like her. But it still held some sort of tone that a robot wouldn't be able to have, something that made her seem, if only slightly, human.
"Now that we have that Morality Core, it doesn't look like she's going to warm up those neurotoxin emitters anytime soon!" Cave said with a grin at what he'd accomplished. It'd taken him about fifteen years and he'd finally done it. The Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System he'd worked so long for was finally finished. Chell watched with interest as the robot swung back and forth slightly as she looked around with the one gold light that indicated the eye that she saw out of, not like the four cores she had.
The little girl couldn't take it anymore, she had to get a closer look at her. Chell ran back through the door and down the hallway, going straight into the elevator. Cave quickly followed his daughter, making it into the elevator just before the doors shut. "Sheesh, Chell. You're sure in a hurry, huh?" he said, laughing with another small fit of coughs. His daughter nodded as she rocked on her heels, waiting for the elevator to stop again. Once the door opened, she ran back out and up the mesh stairs, back to where she had been before. The child slowly climbed back onto the rail, watching the mechanism in front of her turn so it was looking at the little girl the robot obviously curious as to what she was doing. Chell slowly reached her hand up to the robot, placing her fingers by the robots yellow-gold eye. The brunette sighed and ran her thumb lightly on the white cover that was the robot's make-shift face, the plastic –like material curved outward. She smiled up at the thing – no, female – in front of her, bringing her face close to the side of the face of the system, closing her eyes to get a better feel for the mechanism before her.
"GLaDOS."