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Gil's Afterlife 1
Chell sits, still strapped to the chair, still underground in Aperture Laboratories, and still having to deal with the egotistical AI GLaDOS. But there's something new, for the first time ever, Chell is smiling, but not just because Charlotte can go head to head with GLaDOS in the insulting game, no. It's because for the first time since waking up here, Chell knows GLaDOS has truly responded angrily to something. Chell did it, she got a rise out of GLaDOS, she won.
"Stop that! Stop smiling this instant you mute lunatic! I'm completely on top of the situation, and nothing your puny friends can do will help you, not to save you, or even to finish whatever you came here for. I'm still the one in control here." GLaDOS barked at Chell, but she didn't stop smiling, she was stubborn that way.
'Heh heh,' Chell thought to herself, 'I'm suddenly reminded of Wheatley.'
"Fine, have it your way, I'll just have your two male group members work together. They didn't seem to get along before, let's see how well they trust each other."
-
I wake up, I'm on a warm mattress and for some reason, I don't know who I am. I feel my chin, there's hair there, so I guess I'm a boy, but how old am I? And most importantly, what's my name? Wait…
My name is Gil, that's good, I remember that at least, but who am I? Am I a horrible person? Or am I really smart? Or am I married? I just can't figure anything out. I guess I should think about that later and figure out where I am, maybe that will help. I sit up and look around. I'm in a tiled room, its black and white mixed, and there're a couple windows. I can see a pair of white boots with black straps on the back to help hold it up. I also see a wardrobe with three differently coloured jumpsuits, I also see a door. If there's jumpsuits, does that mean I'm a criminal? That makes sense, I'm a criminal, I did something wrong, and now I'm here in this place. But then again, I did wake up in this bed, and there's a wardrobe, so maybe I live here? I guess I'll have to leave to figure that out.
I get up off the bed and walk over to change, in the wardrobe there's three jumpsuits, one is yellow, one's purple, and the other is red. Well, I could pick any colour, so I grab the yellow one and put it on. After I put the clothes I was wearing into the wardrobe I walk over to the boots. It'd be nice to wear them since the floor is cold. After I get fully changed I go over to the door, I'm not sure how to open it, maybe if I-
The door just opened, I guess I don't have to figure out how it works. That's something. I walk through the door and it closes, good thing I didn't leave anything behind. I'm now looking around at this new room, there's two doors, one across from mine, and another one to the left. In front of that door there's two stands, both have weird looking… things on them, I can't even figure out what to call them. I'm about to walk over to both of the stands when I hear a computer voice.
"Yellow is first to awaken." It says from speakers I can't see. I don't know why, but I flinch, the voice startled me, but not that much, why did I flinch? Am I afraid of that voice? I just don't know, I wish I did, but I don't. Maybe I shouldn't walk over to the stands anymore. I'll try the other door I saw; maybe I'll find something in there. I walk over to the door and it opens automatically, just like my door, and the room looks the same too. There's… there's someone sleeping in the bed.
So what do I do? I don't know who this is, but if they're in the same place as me then they might know me. I go over to wake him up.
"Umm, hello?" I say as I shake him, "I'm pretty sure you're my… friend I think, and the computer voice wants us to both be awake."
"Piss off Gil, tell Charlotte I'll be up in an hour." He grumbles at me.
"Who? Look, I don't know anything, I just woke up and I want you to explain things to me." Why won't he listen, does he think I'm annoying?
"What in humanities name are you babbling about?" He says as he gets up and looks at me.
"I don't know, I can't even remember how I got here." I'm not sure he's listening to me.
"You get hit in the head or something? We got here when-" He stops explaining when he notices the room.
He hesitates, "where…Where, in the FUCK, ARE WE!?"
=====
After he found out I lost my memory he continued to freak out for a while, he calmed down and changed into one of his own jumpsuits. He decided to wear a purple one; he then put on a pair of boots like mine and wanted to talk with me outside of his room.
"I guess I should introduce myself…" He starts when he meets me outside of his room. "My name is Charlie Charnal, we've been what I can call friends for years now, maybe 12 or 13, I haven't really been keeping track." Now he's pointing at the two stands with the things on top of them. "Those are Portal guns, they can help us get from place to place quickly. You probably have a lot more questions for me, but we need to-"
"Violet, I would like to ask you to refrain from wasting time talking to Yellow, The testing needs to begin." The computer voice interrupts, Charlie gets really angry really fast when he hears it.
"Just a second Gil," He says calmly to me before turning away and yelling loudly. "FUCKYOUGLADOSI'MGOINGTOMURDERYOUWHATTHESHITASSDICKCUNTFUCKBITCHKIWISUCKERGIVEMEBACKMYSISTERYOUBITCHNEVERSPEAKAGAINIWILLDESTROYYOUPIECEBYFUCKINGPIECE!"
Breathing heavily for a short time, he turns back to a really shocked me and grabs one of portal guns. Calm now he says, "Sorry you had to see that, normally I'm more composed, please don't think this is how I usually act. Would you like to join me?" Charlie asks, to be honest I don't think I want to, he kind of has a temper problem. But I can't really just stay here; he's able to tell me more about who I am and how I got here. I'll have to ask him a bit later.
I walk towards him and garb the other portal gun, "Okay, I'll give it a shot."
=====
"This is the Sintech, or 'Hub', from here we transport you to the new testing courses." The voice tells us. What Charlie and I see is a giant room with half the floor missing, and about 3 or 4 doors scattered randomly around the room, with no obvious way to even get to them. There's also a giant screen displaying some information about how many steps we've taken. I don't really know how that voice is even able to check that, but it apparently is. Anyway, the voice speaks up again; Charlie doesn't seem to like it however.
"The first course is just ahead, please proceed." The door she's referring to is labeled, above it is a sign that says 'Team Building'. I turn to look at Charlie as we walk towards the door.
"Will you be alright? You seem on edge from the voice talking."
He breathes heavily outward, probably to calm himself down a bit. "I'll be fine, I may have an outburst or two, but I'm used to dealing. I have one thing to say though, whatever happens I want you to know that you can trust me more then you can trust her."
'That's just the thing, I'm not sure I can,' is what I would say, but I don't want to give him the wrong idea, I can't trust her either, I mean, I can't even trust my own brain to work for me, let alone anyone else. The thing is though, Charlie's been nothing but nice to me, and so far he hasn't done anything to lose my trust for him, I'll play this one by ear I suppose.
"Just try not to let her get to you; it's hard to team build if you're always going to be angry." He stops for a moment before looking at me; with a thoughtful smile he addresses me.
"You know something, you're right; it's always been a redeeming quality of yours to keep your eye on the prize. Thank you Gil." I'm taken back by his compliment a bit, am I really like that? That's good to hear, I think I've been giving him too little credit.
He holds his free hand out towards me, "So, there's you, and there's me, let's go beat her at her own tests, eh?"
I glance down at his hand, and then back at to notice the look in his eyes, I may not know him very well, or even remember what any other people are like, but the only thing I know is that his expression spells determination, I'd be a moron to say no. "She won't even know what hit her." I say with a smile of my own as I grab his hand and shake it, forming a sort of pact. We defeat her tests or die trying.
=====
We exit the elevators to begin the first of the Team Building tests just as the voice comes over the speakers again.
"Due to federal and state regulations I must inform you that you two appear to make a very good pair together. That handshake you had earlier tells me that you're too good of a team already, which will render the team-building coarse unusable by the both of you. But instead of letting perfectly good Aperture brand equipment go to waste, I'm happy to inform you that I'm splitting the two of you up."
Wait, what?
-
Chell watches as two pneumatic diversity vents open on either side of Gil and Charlie, sucking them both up into the two separate vents.
"It's an important observation to note," GLaDOS cheerfully states, "that 2 out of 5 test subjects suffer some symptoms of retrograde amnesia after spending time in short stasis."
Chell doesn't seem to be smiling like she was earlier on, she's now returned to her look of contempt towards GLaDOS.
"It was a grave mistake in my otherwise perfect judgment to hope that those two would fail to work well together."
Your judgment is far from perfect, Chell thinks to herself as she's subjected to further rambling of an A.I. with a god-complex.
"It will be far more productive to pit them against each other in direct competition."
