Goodbye Blue Sky
Her father's long strides made it nearly impossible to keep up with him through the lines of bustling employees trying to get to work. She felt herself get flustered as she imagined getting lost. The long, white hallways all looked incredibly similar, and even though they had only been in the complex for a few minutes, Chell realized that she had no idea how she could get back to the entrance.
Her science project was bulky and it rose above her eyes with each step. She had just begun to worry that she had lost sight of him when he had to stop at yet another security clearance.
This one, unlike the previous one with a real live security guard, required a key card and fingerprint identification. She stopped just behind her dad. His white lab coat looked almost too big for him, nearly coming down to his khaki knees.
"Dad, are we la-,"
"Good morning, Richard," The male-voiced door announced, turning light blue in the middle.
"No, I think you'll be fine, time wise… I'm not sure about me though."
It's like the door's happy for you, thought Chell, as she turned and watched the door slide close and turn orange again. She smiled, hoisting the science project potato with her knee as they started walking again.
They made it through the Daycare doors. The white sterile walls here stopped, and child friendly yellow and blue walls began. However, for trying to be child friendly, the room was completely undecorated, other than the large white, "BRING YOUR DAUGHTER TO WORK DAY," banner on the wall.
There were several other children looking around nervously. Several tables were set up in a long row with other science projects on them. Chell stopped dead in her tracks, noticing that nearly all were potato batteries.
"Dad. You said no one else was doing a potato battery," She whispered, leaning into Richard.
"Oh Chell, don't worry. Your potato battery is special. It got some help from me, you know." He picked the project up from Chell's arms and placed it on the last empty table. "I really have to go Chell. Good luck." He reached out and patted her shoulder as he quickly turned around, avoiding the protesting words about to come out of Chell's half-open mouth. She watched him say a few words to the daycare lady, a younger, thin red head with an unfortunate face and he smiled, leaving the room for the last time.
Chell turned and faced her potato project, sighing. Many of the other worker's children all seemed to know each other and had already grouped together. It was convenient for them to be friends because their parents knew each other.
Her dad was too important to know most of these people.
The event started at 9; only a few minutes away. The judging would start at 10 and that shouldn't take too long. Chell wondered if she would be allowed to follow her dad around for the rest of his workday instead of having to stay in the daycare center until 5. That would kill her.
—
The clock had just struck 9. Doug Rattmann turned the corner jogging, slamming his fingers on the print scanner and running his keycard with the other hand, waiting impatiently for the screen to load his security clearance. He bit his lip in anticipation of what the door would tell him.
"We are required to inform you that you are thirty-seven seconds late to your assigned work schedule. Good morning, Doug."
Doug absolutely hated that. He hated how loudly that was announced. He hated that he was not even a minute late and it still had to announce to everyone what a scatterbrain he was. Thirty seven seconds late, Doug. But what he hated most of all was that they recently changed the computer to call you by your first name, instead of Mr. Rattmann. Thirty seven fucking seconds late Doug. Ol' Dougie, ol' pal. This is the second time this week. Come ON, Doug!
Trying to make the computer friendlier, my ass.
At least it wasn't Cave Johnson's pre-recorded voice, like it used to be. They reserved that only the most embarrassing of employee indignations.
He still kept his light jog up. Henry wanted to meet with him about GLaDOS' morality core before it could finally be installed.
Inhibition technology. Give me a fucking break. If She wanted to kill us all, she could do it in a heartbeat.
It did make him feel a tad better though. At first, he thought he was the only one concerned that the first thing she had tried was to kill everyone. What could possibly make an AI become immediately murderous? Didn't that seem like an integral problem? But everyone else brushed it off and continued slaving away on making her work. It was then when he really started questioning what he was doing here. Were they really this blind? Or just scared?
Pathetic.
He caught himself a bit in the hallway. He felt so much anger lately. He had always been paranoid, paranoid to the point of seeing things. He saw enough imaginary murderous AI's to get a prescription for his beginning schizophrenia a few years ago. But now he only felt anger. He told himself to tone down the mental swearing as he turned the corner to GLaDOS' room where he expected Henry to be. The long corridor was brightly lit, and the huge circular room smelled of metal and sterility.
Hearing Doug, Henry turned around and smiled. "Good morning." He was holding a clipboard and looked pleased.
"How are things?" Doug caught his breath a little bit. Christ, you power walk for a minute and you're out of breath.
"Look, I wanted to get an early start on things, so I asked Craig to help me with the morality core. It's a big day."
Doug cursed under his breath. "I'm sorry; I woke up a little late today..."
Show up 30 seconds late and you're off the project. Great.
Henry laughed. "Don't worry about it. Just wanted to get her up and running…" He paused, looking over Doug's gaunt face and greasy black hair. "You look tired."
Doug put his hands into his lab coat's pockets. "I've had a lot of stuff on my mind. Been thinking about this a lot." He motioned with his head towards the swinging fixture of GLaDOS' body.
"You think about Her a lot for someone who isn't in charge of when she needs to be up and running. Me and my team are the ones whose asses are on the line."
Doug smiled a little, "Everyone is impressed with you, Henry. A lot more impressed with you than they are with me."
"You just have to stop showing up to work late," Henry laughed, turning to walk up the staircase towards GLaDOS' body.
"Only thirty seven seconds late today."
"See? You complain about it, but that computer announcer works. Every second counts, Doug."
Doug couldn't tell if he was being sarcastic or not. Maybe it was a combination. He gave him a small wave. "Tell me if you can't shut her down so I can run away in time."
"Will do," Henry smiled, and Doug began the long, echoing walk out of the metal chamber.
It was nearly 10 o'clock. Chell sat in a small, blue plastic chair, waiting for the other kids to finish talking about what they learned from their potato batteries and volcanoes. She wondered if her dad would come to see if she won first prize or not.
Her eyes wandering in boredom, Chell watched a man come in and rush to talk to one of the daycare attendants. He looked like everyone else around here; khakis and a tie under a crisp lab coat. At first she thought nothing of it, until she saw the face that the attendant gave him. The woman's eyes narrowed and strained. She posed him a question, and he shrugged and bit his lip. She paused, and nodded. The man left the center faster than he came in.
—
Doug was just starting to feel pretty good in his small metal office. His favorite part of the job was his hands on work with the Aperture Image Format — the interactive graphics format that Aperture had used since 1985. He felt almost out of place among these physicists until his work began to be invaluable for how they programmed GLaDOS into Aperture's system.
He was just getting into the groove of working when he heard the familiar alarm for his sector go off; A deep growl of an alarm. His stomach went back into his throat. He had heard the alarm go off several times before while they had been setting up GLaDOS. Sometimes it shut off immediately. Sometimes it took them a minute to shut her down completely.
Doug sat, holding his coffee cup to his lips and staring in front of him, waiting for it to stop.
He bit his lip when he realized this wasn't accidental. Right now, it was only a Sector 1 alarm. It was everyone's communal duty in Sector 1 to make sure the alarm did not have to spread to Sector 2. Aperture was all about preventing damage to the other sections of the buildings. To Doug, that meant leaving his office and asking his superiors what was up and waiting around with his hands in his pockets.
As he opened the door to leave, he saw Richard, part of Henry's team, already jogging towards his office. His large lab coat hugged to his legs as jogged. His dark hairline was beaded with sweat.
"What's going on, Rich?"
He stopped a few feet away from Doug. "I'm not sure, but we can't shut her down."
"Hasn't that happened before?"
"Yes… but this time is different. Just trust me." He put his hands on his hips and paused. Doug wasn't sure what he was hinting at.
"Is there anything I can do? Shouldn't you be with Henry?"
"They're going to try to manually inject the Morality core from outside the room. We couldn't put it in without starting her, so we've come across a few… complications. There's nothing you can really do, Doug."
Doug bit his lip again. Of course there wasn't anything he could do. Why did everyone say that? His annoyance flamed but subsided when he noticed the growing look of desperation in Richard's face, contorting uncomfortably with worry.
"But look, there's a bunch of kids here. Bring your kid to work day. My daughter's here. Chell. I don't know if you've seen her before…" his voice trailed off.
Doug nodded, remembering a blurry dark haired, dark skinned girl from some horrendous work party.
"I know you aren't supposed to leave until this alarm is finished, but I want you to use the maintenance access to get to Sector 3 and look out for Chell for me, please. I don't trust those attendants. I should but I don't."
Doug's heart sunk even more. How fucked were they if he was getting a personal request to go find his bosses' kid?
"Aren't the maintenance areas locked down during alarms?"
"I already took care of that. Take the one right outside of here," shrugging his head back and to the right. "I have to go. I'd go by myself but they need me… I'll take the blame if you get caught in there." Rich jogged away, and Doug stood still for a moment, feeling a little bit nauseous. Usually, Rich coming to his office would mean telling Doug that everything was fine. They were always so cool headed about this sort of thing.
Doug paused for a moment, staring at the wall. He couldn't help feeling flattered that Richard would trust him with his kid. And now he had an excuse to leave Sector 1. But Doug knew if things were really as bad as Rich's face said, there was nothing he could do for his daughter.
He started walking to the closest maintenance hatch. The mechanical innards of Aperture were so huge and complex that the majority of sections had several large panels that could be opened up to easily get to the separate areas. Usually, the sector panels would be locked up in the event of an alarm, keeping people from escaping in fear before they figured out the problem.
Doug stuck his hand in between the panel, and grasped the edge of it and pulled up. The panel came loose with a metal command panel display underneath. He typed in the sequence, and the panel next to him opened horizontally. Richard was right: He had taken care of the security alarm lock. Strange.
Doug crouched and squeezed himself into the panel, onto the cold metal maintenance stairs. Off to Sector 3.
It was fairly dark in these maintenance areas. The metal catwalks extended for what seemed like miles, and one would get easily lost in here if they didn't know the way already. Luckily, Doug had gone back here many times to oversee the installation of format hardware. Plus, it was an easy place to hide out and smoke.
He listened to his shoes echo against the walk. Every once in a while, production lines of turrets or knee supports would slither like snakes to an unseen room below and above him. Like everywhere else today, he began jogging. Through the walls, he heard the alarm for Sector Two start. His stomach hurt, but he took comfort that he was getting farther away from GLaDOS.
—
Chell was positive something was wrong. The daycare room was surrounded by glass, and the hallway next to them had an orange glow blinking from the light strips that followed the ceiling. The attendant was barely looking at the kids, who had now resorted to playing duck, duck, goose in boredom. Chell had removed herself from the game and wondered briefly about her father.
Then a real alarm started to sound. A deep, pulsing groan. The two attendants looked at each other as if they weren't sure what to do.
The red head turned to the children, and told them to line up against the wall.
"Why? What's going on?"
"It's probably just a drill. Don't worry. Get in line."
As the children did as they were told, Chell hugged the back door that was out of view of the attendants. She remembered listening to her mother and father talk about his job, and their quieter voices about something they were making.
Chell had no idea what they were talking about, and had no plan. But she opened the door at the alarm's loudest point, slipping out without anyone noticing. She set out to find her dad.
Doug had finally stumbled upon the Sector 3 panel door. He heard the alarm going off through the door. Christ, what the fuck is going on?
He shoved the panel open to an empty hallway, but he could hear the noises of nervous people. He pulled himself out and went down the nearest hallway. As he turned, he faced a large group of workers, maybe fifteen of them, mostly leaning against the wall.
"Where the fuck did you come from?"
Doug turned and faced a short, balding man. The group was silenced.
"Uhh... Sector one. I came out of the maintenance hatch."
"How did you get in there? Do you know what's going on?"
"I was… in there when the alarm started. I have no idea what's happening."
The group looked disappointed, and the angry balding man looked just as angry, "Nobody's going to tell us what's going on because we're Sector 3."
The group murmured in agreement.
Christ, I have to get out of here.
Doug walked down the hallway away from the group. As he walked closer to the Daycare center, he heard it. Before he could detect what the strange hissing was, he heard a woman somewhere behind him scream. His eyes searched the hallway rapidly as he slowed down his pace.
A green gas was erupting behind the security camera. What in the…? Then it dawned on him. Neurotoxin.
"Holy. Fuck."
People were pouring out of their offices now as more and more people screamed at the toxin flooding into the room.
"All the doors are locked!"
If she's flooding the center with neurotoxin, why wouldn't she lock the doors? Idiots.
"How much time do we have?"
Doug opened his mouth to tell them, but promptly shut it. Telling these people the truth would only scare them more. They had a minimum of five minutes, maybe up to fifteen depending on the concentration.
Despite his horror, Doug easily isolated himself from the mess around him. Most people were concentrated at the exits, screaming at the doors to be let out. Others were in small groups, unsure of what to do or what to scream at. He expertly weaved through them, not paying attention to the loud questions being posed.
If Rich had somehow overridden the security lock on the maintenance hatch, maybe all of the connecting hatches were open. He stopped in his tracks when he reached the daycare, remembering his original mission.
He peaked in through the glass walls. The children were still lined up, huddled on the ground crying along with the instructor. He briefly wondered which one was Rich's.
It is too late for them.
Doug continued his route. He knew a small office that held another Sector 1 leading hatch. As he wound his way through the maze of small offices, he breathed a sigh of relief as he realized almost everyone had abandoned their individual office in order to congregate with the others. Nobody would see him duck out.
He reached a tiny office that met with a cold wall. The owner was gone, and Doug picked up the desk that met with the wall. He felt a twinge of guilt for messing up someone's office. It was like a sanctuary, and so personal.
Christ, what the fuck are you thinking?
He threw the cheap desk to the side and used his hands to find the obtrusive panel, when he heard a small whimper to his right. He looked down and froze.
A small, dark haired girl looked up at him with large eyes that welled with tears.
She is hiding.
His mouth agape with questions but nothing came out. He paused for a long moment. He realized how he must look, running away like this, under a fellow employee's desk. Did she wonder about that?
"Where… where did you come from? The daycare?"
She looks too old to be in daycare.
The small frame nodded and stared blankly.
Christ, what a day.
Doug sat on his knees, cold laminate pressing hard against them. The alarm and cries of employees seemed so far away.
He reached out and pulled open the panel, accessing the hatch.
"Look, don't get your hopes up, but we might be able to make it out of here, you and I."