Re-entry chapter 6
Welcome to Chapter 6 (Technically 7). After 12 years in development, hopefully it will have been worth the wait!
In all seriousness though, hey everybody. Remember me? Maybe you do, maybe you don't. It has been... 12 years, 1 month, and 2 days since I last updated this fic. Where have I been? No good excuses to offer, I'm afraid. I got the block, I didn't recover quickly, and by the time that I did, I felt like it had been far too long since I'd last updated. But semi-recently, I've been feeling my creative juices flowing again, I've been reading fics, I've been doing some creative writing, and I thought back to this fic. And my other fics too but mostly this one.
I have to admit to you. I have had a chapter and a half finished since roughly 2015. So... I'm sorry for not at least sharing those. I thought, at the time, that I was going to drop 3 chapters and be done with the whole fic, but then that never came to be. So, I've decided to share what I have finished, touch up the next chapter since I never properly finished it, and then, and I offer no promises, but I'm going to try to finish the fic by giving it one last chapter. Again, that's not a guarantee, I just thought I should give you all some form of closure after all this time to know what happened and where I've been. A bit more on that possible conclusion in the next chapter's notes when I post it, because I have a bit more to elaborate on but I don't want these author's notes to be longer than the fic itself.
If you actually excitedly jumped to this story after a 12 year time gap, thanks for sticking around, thanks for being patient, and sorry for doing that to you. See you again soon.
Chell's eyes ran up and down the dirt road. It gave her an eerie feeling. It was the closest to civilization she'd been in... She wasn't even sure how long. Only two trips to the surface and there was certainly a huge change. What could it have been? Months, Years? For all she knew it could have been decades. This road was a good sign, but it was still so far from an actual sign of life. She didn't know which way to start walking either. She remembered a parking lot, a regular road, a forest. None of that was present from where she was now standing. She was starting to condsider that it could have been hundreds of years. That would explain all the overgrowth in that facility. She put Wheatley down atop the Cube, all this heavy lifting wasn't exactly helping her think. Maybe it would be best if she just sat down and waited for someone to pass.
But then again, who knows when someone passed last. She didn't know when someone might pass again, if someone would ever pass again, or if someone had ever passed in the first place. No, that was the wrong line of thinking. If they could connect to the radio, there was still at least one person out there to broadcast the music. If there was a road that hadn't been overgrown by all of this grass that surrounded them. it meant that it was at least semi-regularly used. Chell looked to the Companion Cube. She'd only been with it for about a half an hour when they first met, but if she knew one thing about the Cube, it was that it knew things. "What do you think?" Chell asked. Strangely, the Cube didn't respond.
"What do I think about what? That question was a bit out of nowhere, you know. Not any context to the situation, or anything." Wheatley questioned.
Wait, did she just say that out loud? Maybe she was getting a little used to talking again. Chell took a moment to think. Perhaps she should ask Wheatley, if he had a grappling hook, a telescope AND a radio in that little head of his, maybe he had some sort of map. "Which way do you think civilization is?" She replied, ending Wheatly's tangent that had somehow found it's way to what it would be like to ride a horse. His eye darted back and forth. Chell noticed the sun was finally going down again. She didn't want to spend another night out in the field, or on the side of a road. Not now that she's so close! She wanted to at least have a warm bed by the end of the day... Maybe a more realistic goal... A bed. That wasn't somewhere underground. That was a good goal to set for herself. Regardless, Wheatley didn't seem to get what Chell was getting at. "Maybe you should check to see if you have a map." Chell suggested.
Wheatley noticed a hint of frustration in her voice. He once again dove into his list of utilities. As he searched, he found some maps, all of them of the facility. Some of a few of the older areas. He wasn't sure of why he would even need those. There was absolutly nothing about anywhere outside. He didn't want to dissapoint her, not now that she was starting to like him again. So, he decided to guess, and hope that he was right. "We should go... To the right. If I'm right. Hah, that's funny when you think about it. Right, and right, spelled the same, different meaning." He REALLY hoped that going right would lead somewhere of worth.
Chell once again hoisted up her two travelling companions. Her back was really starting to ache at this point. She had gotten pretty used to the portal gun's tractor beam. Despite this annoyance, she pushed on. Before they could get very far, a distant rumbling sound began to slowly creep into Wheatley's audio sensors, it was coming from behind them.
Chell began to hear the sound as well. She turned around and saw the single best sight she'd seen since she'd regained her Companion Cube. A car, -a truck more specifically- driven by another human being, moving in her direction! She raised her hands up, dropping Wheatley waving to the car frantically. She wanted to be perfectly clear that she wanted a ride and didn't just want to say 'Hi'. The car slowed as it approached her, eventually coming to a stop in front of her.
Anticipation filled Chell as the slightly tinted window began to recede into the door, her heart raced, this was her first human contact since before 'She' happened. When the glass was gone, Chell didn't only see a face, but the fruits of all the efforts she'd put in to escaping that awful place. The woman who sat inside the car was the single best thing she'd seen in her entire life.
"You goin' somewhere?" The woman's non-computerized voice rang through Chell's ears like sweet music. She wanted to savor this, but, not wanting to lose the woman's interest, Chell replied.
"Yes! Yes I am! I'm looking for the nearest town!" She announced, very loudly one might add.
The woman in the car looked back the way she'd came from, then looked back to Chell. "Well, I just came from there, on my way home actually." Chell stared at her for a moment before looking at Wheatley. Glaring. He knew he messed up, but he at least tried to play it off with an awkward 'smiling' expression. "If ya' like, you can stay with us for awhile. We don't get company often out here." Even better! Immediate human interaction. Oh, the things that Chell would... Wouldn't be able to tell them without seeming insane.
Well, it would make a neat book at some point at least... Good lord, she was thinking about something she could do. She was thinking about writing. A hobby! "Thank you so much. You have no idea what this means to me." Chell tried to calm herself down. Yelling every sentence won't do much good for that whole "insane" thing.
"Don't 'cha mention it. just throw your stuff in the back." The woman advised, pointing back into the bed of the truck with her thumb. A bit of familiar paranoia began to creep in for Chell, though. It seemed to be going too smoothly, there was no way that things could just go so well, right?. Then again, she didn't really want to question it, after all, her other option was to walk her way down a dirt road for who knew how long. She put the Companion Cube in the back of the truck, then picked Wheatley up.
"Wheatley, you need to be quiet for awhile." She whispered. She didn't want the first person she met to be scared off by the talking ball that she's carrying around. For once, Wheatley seemed to pick up on what she meant and nodded with his eye. Chell laid him down next to the Cube, then walked around to the door. She grabbed the handle, took a deep breath, and pulled. Another thing that amazed her was the fact that the door just opened.
It didn't rotate or hiss and split in two, it just came outward, like a door. She sat down in the seat, and it was the most comfortable thing she'd sat on since that bed in that room where she'd met Wheatley. "So, how'd ya get so far out here by yourself?" The woman in the driver seat asked as she got the car moving again.
"Eh, let's just say that science brought me here." She joked, not wanting to go into much detail around her new... Associate? She wasn't sure what to call this woman.. She was given a bit of an odd look, but the woman didn't voice her opinion, she just shrugged and continued driving. As they sat quietly, the woman reached over to turn on the radio. An all too familiar tune began to play, slightly broken up by the radio static.
'Exile... It takes your mind... Again.'
Next chapter will likely have a bit of a jump in writing style partway through, a lot has changed in 12 years, and I'm hoping that its changed for the better. See you all soon, I'll have the next one up sometime within the coming week, and again, I'm sorry for the wait.