Author's Note: This bit took a bit longer than usual to do because I got the brilliant idea to try to become an alcoholic, under the premises that I just wanted to see what the darned stuff tasted like. (Also, quick note to you Americans, I'm over the age of majority in my province.) I quickly learned that I cannot hold my alcohol, and it resulted in cartoonish crawling to the toilet on my hands and knees to retch for the next hour and a half. I don't think I'll try that again.

Part of the inspiration for this fic came from a short story from school, called "There Will Come Soft Rains" by Ray Bradbury, which is something about an automatic house and I think a nuclear war, but I'm not sure. I couldn't understand it at the time. I'm still not sure I do. (I'm stuck with the mental functioning of someone who's 12 or 13. Who has a good vocabulary, I should add, which is probably the only reason I can pass off as remotely intelligent.)

Anyways, enough about me, enjoy my terrible attempts to be poetic or something.

22. Crack
Summary: Through a crack in the wall, Mother Nature invaded.
Genre: General
Characters: None
Warnings: None

It was just another unassuming crack in the wall. Once in a while, the janitor would paint it over again, thinking about how, one of these days, he ought to actually fix it.

But that day never came. The AI known as GLaDOS flooded the Enrichment Center with deadly neurotoxin, and there was no longer a janitor to paint over it.

Still, the wall was kept in good shape for a long time.

Then came the death of GLaDOS, a death that shook the entire facility. It would have been felt on the surface, but there was nobody on the surface to measure it; in the days following the Seven Hour War, trivial things such as seismographic variances were not considered important.

The crack grew.

A potato plant, searching for sunlight, fresh air, and water, inched towards the crack, and eventually through it. Once again, the crack grew.

It rained. Small spores of organic matter fell through to what had once been the Central AI Chamber. Over the course of years, plant life spread throughout the remains of the Enrichment Center, gobbling up the smooth white tiles, spreading throughout wherever it could.

One day, a tendril from the potato plant inched through the ceiling, to the outside, and the entire ceiling gave way, allowing access to Mother Nature. And once she had access, Mother Nature began taking over in earnest.

No longer could the self-repair functions of the facility keep up with the damage; neither could the nanobots or AI task cores. One by one, they shut down. The ones that remained wandered throughout the facility, looking for someone to talk to.

It had been years since the shutdown of GLaDOS when a single bird, looking for a safe place to build her nest, flew through the collapsed ceiling. In an observation office of an old testchamber, a testchamber which no longer resembling what it had once been, the plant life and decay having consumed it. The bird laid her eggs in an old filing cabinet which had survived the ravages of time.

The chicks hatched, and within the remains of the Enrichment Center, brought up their own families, one generation after the next.

On the surface, all one could see was a large field of wheat, and, almost out of place, a shed dropped in the middle. No human had ever become curious about what was inside.

Another Author's Note: I was considering doing a crackfic for this, but decided not to. To make up for it, here's a random confusing excerpt I found in my notes:

Then random orgies and stuff happened and Chell somehow became pregnant with a half-robot baby and then she went onto the surface to fight ugly Combines with ugly faces and then married Gordon Frohman, but then Alyx Vance and the Heavy got into an argument match and then Adrian Shephard dropped out of the sky and began doing a hula with HAL9000.