Careless Sloth

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A shrill mechanical cry filled the test chamber as Orange plummeted down into the acid pit a few hundred feet below, the light bridge that had previously been supporting her now slanting off the opposite wall and up toward a far-off ledge. Blue, who was studying the room's layout in what could be described as deep thought, jumped in horrified surprise and rushed off toward the reassembly room to meet his friend. Evidently, this type of thing happened rather often with these two.

Chell sighed, running her fingers through her hair. As interesting as it was to watch someone other than herself test (and without the risk of permanent death, no less), she couldn't help but think back in distaste to how miserable and doomed she felt doing the very same thing. For a while, she had been almost convinced that she was going to spend the rest of her life in Aperture as a test subject, or rather at least until she made the one fatal mistake to end it all. But she hadn't been entirely sure if GLaDOS was patient enough to torture her in the long term, especially when she considered the human an immediate hazard to her health. How unsurprising it was then, that the deranged AI had taken less than a day to decide that she was willing to forfeit her amusement for a more practical solution.

It just made her even more incredulous towards the fact that she was coming back here willingly, and on a fairly regular basis no less.

The intercom system beeped, a sound Chell remembered absolutely dreading. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe we might have been entertaining the same thought just now."

"Not this time." The woman laughed softly, leaning back against the paneled wall. "I was reminiscing, which is something I'm pretty sure you don't do much of."

"And you would be right. The past is far less important than the present and future, as far as I'm concerned," GLaDOS snipped back, clearly with no shortage of superiority complex today. "Actually, I was thinking about how disgustingly humanlike these two are becoming. They've gained every impractical human mannerism, except for one."

Chell couldn't help but smirk. "What, the ability to feel love?"

"No, the ability to die." She went sullenly quiet for a moment, as if this were a major disappointment to her. "I suppose it means less of a mess to clean up, though. Not to mention I tended to lose most of my test subjects early on in the easiest courses. With a few major outliers, of course."

"I think you're a bit too hard on them, quite frankly," Chell pointed out, folding her hands over her lap. The two bots were hugging each other, Blue obviously apologetic for his mistake. "It's not as though you don't have any human traits. Although to be honest, I still don't really understand why you didn't name them."

Another indignant pause. "I did. They are 'Orange' and 'Blue.' Those are their names."

The former test subject rolled her eyes. "You know that isn't what I meant. I mean something unique, not just an identifier. Names are meant to give a sense of individuality. Your names are just flat-out lazy."

"I absolutely am not lazy." GLaDOS had that irritated, you're-a-crazy-idiot tone going again. "If I named every cube and turret in this facility, I would never have time to get the actually significant work done. It's a waste of time, something humans do to lesser organisms in order to degrade them. That's why I'm very relieved that I never had the misfortune of being named."

"I'm going to have to beg to differ on that one," Chell replied, watching Orange successfully make her way across the light bridge that had been her demise moments ago. "You're either lazy or have terrible foresight. I've been thinking about that ever since your first series of majorly bad decisions. You know, back when I first tried breaking out of here."

The woman felt a bit uneasy after having said it; while GLaDOS had yet to make a concrete attempt on her life since they had become good friends, she still had to wonder sometimes if saying the wrong thing would set her off.

But the AI only remained silent for a moment before her voice filled the room once again, sounding defiant nonetheless. Challenging, maybe?

"Go on."

Chell took a deep breath.

"Why the hell did you make your 'victory candescence' surrounded by portal-conducting walls?"

There was no sound of the intercom activating; no immediate aggravated retort and offhanded death threat. Just the low mechanical hum of the inner workings of the enormous laboratory. Even the two bots, normally unfazed by their temperamental superior, had paused their efforts at solving the puzzle in favor of staring at the ceiling expectantly.

"It just seemed…I dunno," the human finally added, with a bit less confidence than before. "Not a very airtight death trap. You spent seventeen test chambers making me think about how to use that gun right, after all. I would have almost believed the attempted murder really was part of the test."

"It could have been, for all you know." GLaDOS had regained her cool composure, though the usual underlying impatience was more pronounced than usual. "Protocol required you to assume the party escort position. Which, I'll remind you: you did not."

Shaking her head, Chell bit her lip to hold back a laugh. "You mentioned about fifteen times that you were going to kill me at the end of the testing. I was expecting it. I thought you would have planned ahead better, what with me shooting down all of your cameras. So, my conclusion is that you're either lazy or can't think ahead whatsoever. Considering your level of intelligence, I'm betting on the first one."

GLaDOS sighed, her usual indication that she would relent slightly on her opinion. "Humans never made it that far in the testing, as I already told you. Though I will admit I might have overlooked some…particular details."

"Critical details, I'd say." Chell watched as the two bots passed a cube off to each other, now in the process of trying to get one of them over to the button that would complete the test. "Well, come to think of it…I don't understand why all of the walls in your chamber were the portal kind either. I mean, I'm guessing you didn't have a lot of visitors to worry about, but still. Wheatley was kinda right. You spent a lot more time talking than getting the neurotoxin started, too."

"Oh, I'm sorry, do you think you can do my job better than me now?" the AI shot back. "I have a lot of matters on my mind at all times. Running the entire facility type of things. Did you forget that before you came around, my life was peaceful? Most of the subjects just wanted their cake. You had to have your cake and eat it too, if you'll pardon the expression."

At long last, Chell finally began to laugh wholeheartedly. It had been hard not to. "I just…I really can't believe you outsmarted everyone here. Not that I'm saying you're not intelligent, but for Christ's sake. They just handed you neurotoxin, didn't they? And control over this whole place? They doomed everyone with their ridiculous naivety."

GLaDOS was silent for a few moments. She wasn't as vitriolic as before about her crimes against the more innocent members of Aperture, and much more remorseful, even if she wouldn't specifically show it.

"They believed me to be Caroline, if you'll recall. Nor should you underestimate the arrogance and closed-mindedness of humans who have spent their lives in academia."

Chell was tempted to mention pots and kettles, but she kept quiet. GLaDOS had a surprisingly sensitive side about this particular matter.

"Anything that they deemed impossible was, for all purposes, impossible," she went on dryly. "My presence, rather than Caroline's, was never something they considered."

As arrogant as she was on the matter, the former test subject already knew that it continued to bother her to this very day. She must have forgotten about most of the Caroline incident, considering her near-infinite capabilities to 'un-remember' events that upset her or conflicted with her own self-image. Adding the insanity of the personality cores to her already unstable psyche, it was no wonder she had ended up the way she was when Chell first took her down.

Maybe that was why she found it just a tiny bit easier to forgive GLaDOS for her cruelty. She was a child in so many ways. A superintelligent child, true, but still terribly inexperienced in the world. Not to mention that she had a myriad of reasons to hate mankind.

"But you're telling me that you still thought I was dumb, even after I beat all of your tests?" This issue did still irk her quite a bit. "I mean, obviously you were suspicious enough to set up that elaborate trap in the first place. You gave me an easy out."

"Well, pardon me if I was saddled with a few brain parasites at the time," the AI sniffed irritably. "Remember those cores you took off of me? 'Ooh, what does that do?' 'One cup chocolate cake mix.' Just imagine that, loudly, constantly, inescapably. Then try to do even half of what my job entails."

"Okay, okay." Chell put her hands up, shrugging. "I get it. Don't think I'm saying you didn't make my life hard enough. You definitely did. But I do still think you're a bit lazy when it comes to considering all of the possibilities."

The panel she was leaning against nudged forward slightly, edging her with a jolt toward the acid pit below. "You're right. In this situation, I would be most likely to take the action requiring the least amount of effort."

The woman held her ground, instead opting to give an offended stare to a nearby security camera. It was a friendly death threat, if there was such a thing. GLaDOS had a domineering personality, but Chell still knew there was a completely unerasable fondness the AI had for her. Even if she rarely learned her lesson from a blunder, GLaDOS did seem quite aware that she couldn't play too rough with a human and expect a positive outcome.

"If you're going to get that hurt over a little criticism, then I'll lay off the subject, okay?" Chell had stood up now, as the two bots had completed the test and were gesturing joyfully for her to join them in the next chamber (as well as in celebrating their success). "Sometimes you're just so damn easily offended, you know that?"

Chell followed the pair into the next chamber, smiling as they warbled happily to each other and gave a high-five. It certainly must be wearing on GLaDOS's nerves that they had picked up these behaviors. But, judging from the flustered way she scolded them, it wasn't just annoyance that she felt at this development.

As she walked through the door behind them, the intercom flared up again.

"Atlas and P-Body."

The woman stopped in her tracks. "What was that?"

"The names that I gave them." GLaDOS said it almost languidly, as though it pained her to say it. "So I would ask you to retract your accusations of my laziness."

Chell cracked a small smile.

"Consider them retracted."

A/N: We all were wondering these questions. GLaDOS needs to plan better. Anyway, reviews always appreciated.