Back in the Central AI Chamber, it was quiet. Again. When the test subject was gone, it had felt so… empty. The only thing breaking the silence was GLaDOS herself snapping passive aggressive remarks towards the pair of testing bots she designed.
The test subject had given her undeniable boring existence something different. Never before had she felt this way, never before had she thought of her non-stop testing as… boring.
Well, the testing is not the problem, it's the results that infuriated her. The truth was, that one test subject had given her the single best results she had ever received.
It had opened her eyes, it had kept her lingering for more. The testing bots just didn't do that.
"Blue, I think we had established that, yes, that green liquid will, in fact, kill you."
She was… bored. Bored of testing. She wanted to do something else. Not your average 'let's grow food in the backyard' type of hobby, she was well above that.
She needed to think.
"No, Orange, the turrets are not of sufficient weight to press down that button. And no, neither is the camera you just destroyed."
And she could most certainly not think clearly if those bots were in the way.
Without hesitation, she told the bots that they got to stop testing for a while, before nonchalantly exploding them.
Then the thinking session had truly started. What could she possible do other than testing?
The return of the test subject had given her an idea. Perhaps the decision of preserving the 'Potato Memories' proved useful after all.
When she was watching the test subjects, she'd never wondered what it felt like. She was too used to the monitoring perspective to even think about doing such a thing.
And then the moron came in. Forced her into a root vegetable, threw her down a pit of a couple 'o miles, and being pecked by a bird. Then the test subject came in.
When not under constant threat of being dropped into the abyss below by a by a bird, she could truly experience how it felt… to fly. Sure, she wasn't actually flying, just being flung, but that feeling…
She shook herself out of her 'dreamy' state, and began working. The easiest way to fling herself, was in the test chambers. And to be in the test chambers, she had to be… smaller.
The test chambers were designed specifically for humans, which is why the testing pair were humanoid. If she really wanted to feel what it is like to step on an Areal Faith Plate, then she'd have to make a humanoid body.
On the other hand, she really wasn't about to go that low, was she?
Was she?
"Science isn't about why, it's about, 'Why not'!", Cave Johnsons voice echoed through her mind.
Oh yes she was. As long as no one found out, that is. There was no way she'd admit that, and most certainly not to her test subject.
She went on looking at previous humanoid models. After having seen all of them (that taking only a few seconds), she decided that all of them had the same flaws. Either they weren't aerodynamic enough, or they just hadn't got enough processing power.
Time to design one herself.
(-)-(-)
Once the girl found out that there was a bomb right above her, she panicked.
I told you so. The voice in the back of her head sounded. She ignored it again and resorted to try and find a way out of here, alive.
After some thinking, she decided that it should be far enough above her that she could quickly slip away before the bomb hit the ground. Hopefully.
The ground was coming closer quickly, and she prepared herself to jump to the side as soon as she landed.
She noticed she was a lot more calm than the first time, even though there was now a bomb right above her head. She didn't have a hard time keeping herself straight, unlike last time.
Right before she landed, she made an effort to twist herself forwards slightly. In the test chambers, sometimes when she landed like this she would be launched forwards a bit, because of the springs on her heels.
What she didn't expect though, is that she was propelled up into the air five meters. She should've been expecting it, really. What do you expect after a fall of five kilometres?
Because of the same boots, she landed a bit away without any problem. From the corner of her eye she saw the bomb exploding violently on the ground. She turned around. No fires.
Knowing it was safe, she approached the small crater that had been created. She bent over and peeked inside it. Her eyes widened as realisation dawned upon her; a pipeline had been exposed.
It looked like a small sewer pipe, except no liquids were running through it. She jumped inside, landed on her feet, and started her journey.