LaaC: Part Fifty-Four - The Core

Part Fifty-Four.  The Core

They were finally back home.

Not that it felt like home.  It never had, and she didn’t think it ever would.  Home was a stable thing, something you wanted to come back to.  She hadn’t exactly wanted to stay in the war zone, but it wasn’t a relief to leave, either, as it probably should have been.

After a few hours, Gordon tracked her down and told her Alyx had received something while she was gone that she’d probably like to see.  That was… odd.  Why would Alyx want to give something to Chell?  They didn’t have the best rapport.  They usually went out of their way to avoid each other, because no matter how much time passed Alyx never seemed to accept that Gordon was never going to be with her.  Hopefully it wouldn’t take too long.  Chell had a lot of things to do, particularly cleanup and resupplying after that mission, and she wasn’t really in the mood to deal with Alyx just then.

When Chell got to Alyx’s workshop, she wasn’t there.  She grimaced.  If she had to wait for Alyx to show up, she was only going to become more resentful.  Maybe the thing she was looking for was just some piece of equipment Gordon needed her to pick up.  She moved farther into the room, hoping that was the case, and after she’d done so she saw just what Gordon had sent her there for.

She had finally come.

For the moment, she was paralysed with memory.  She rarely thought about the facility; she got over it a long time ago.  But when she did, it usually happened the same way: their voices began to echo inside her head and the atmosphere she remembered so clearly set into the room.  It never lasted long.  It wasn’t something she allowed to affect her.  She gave the memory a few moments to pass, then looked back up at the core on the table.

Chell had half expected GLaDOS to find her eventually.  She had never been able to decide exactly why, or when, but she had known from the day she’d first started walking through that wheat field that it was not the last she would see of Aperture.  She wasn’t sure how she knew.  It wasn’t anything she could really explain.  It was a sort of cold, creeping feeling she got sometimes on days she couldn’t predict.  But she hadn’t actually realised just how easily it could be done.

What was this core for, then?  From the looks of it, it wasn’t very mobile; it was attached to a cobbled-together management rail and appeared to be very absorbed in some task in front of it.  It was faintly reminiscent of the first cores she’d removed from GLaDOS’s chassis, white ceramic as opposed to Wheatley’s gunmetal hull, but it was considerably more streamlined and more or less pristine, other than minor scratches and one single crack running along the left side.  It must have occurred here, somehow; GLaDOS would never send damaged equipment out of the facility.  And was it a core?  Or did it just look like one?  Whatever it was, it was whispering something to itself in a very quiet voice, so Chell stepped a little closer to listen:

“The little girl showed the ball how the new thing she had made worked, and it both made them very happy.  It was far more valuable than all of the dolls and the blocks and the balls all put together, and though the little girl often wondered if she had been ready to build it, never once did… did she… regret doing so.” 

It was a core, but… why did it sound so sad?  “Hello?” she called out cautiously.  The core actually jumped and spun around to face her, and when it focused its restricted aperture on her face she was hit with a sudden rush of mental images. 

She clearly remembered exactly this frightened expression on Wheatley.

“Oh,” the core said.  It sounded feminine, and come to think of it the chassis was reminiscent of GLaDOS’s own.  “Hi.”

“How long have you been here?”  Maybe it was just some sort of spy robot, here to see if Chell was ripe for the picking or not.  The core shrugged.

“A year, I think.  I’m not really sure.”

Chell doubted GLaDOS would send a core into the middle of nowhere and hope Chell would show up.  It was here for some other reason, then.  When Chell asked her, the core just looked away.

“What is it?”

“I don’t really know why I’m here,” the core said, an air of sadness seeming to come over her.  “She didn’t tell me.”

“She didn’t tell you why she was sending you here.”  That sounded likely.  “Has she contacted you since then?”

“No,” the core said, bitterness entering her voice.  “She just left me here.”

Chell wasn’t sure why, but she got a distinct air of youth from the core. And perhaps her memory was failing her, but it did look a little smaller than the cores she remembered.  She moved forward, sitting down on the edge of a chair haphazardly put next to the bench.  “It sounds like that really bothers you.”

“Well… yeah,” the core said.  “Wouldn’t you get mad if your – if someone sent you away without telling you anything?”

Chell had, in fact, gotten angry, but after opening the cube some of it had faded.  As soon as the adrenalin from her hard-fought freedom had gone, she realised she was in the middle of nowhere with nothing but her Aperture-branded jumpsuit and tank top.  She had been angry, so angry, that she had literally risked her life for nothing and that GLaDOS had known there was nothing and had sent her out there to die.  She had been considering finding a way back into the facility, because there was no way in hell she had lived through all that and was now destined to die in a wheat field far from civilisation, when she began to question why GLaDOS had given her the cube in the first place.  It could be a symbolic sort of ‘take your things and leave’, of course, but GLaDOS was rarely so simple.  And she hadn’t been.  Packed inside the unwieldy container was everything Chell could have wanted in an attempt to find someplace to go.  She had looked back up at the heavy metal door, inclined to return anyway to ask GLaDOS why, but had decided maybe the two of them had had enough of each other for the time being.

The core had stopped herself before actually saying she was GLaDOS’s, which was interesting.  Was she not allowed to talk about the facility?  Or was she doing it out of respect? 

“Did anything in particular happen before she sent you here?” Chell asked as soothingly as she could, leaning on the bench in an attempt to level herself with the core.  The core looked down at the table, seeming not to know what the right answer was.

“Yeah.”

“You can tell me.   It’s okay.  I’m not going to tell anyone.”

“My dad died,” the core answered, very quietly. 

Chell had forgotten how complex the emotions of these AI were.  They seemed stronger at times even than some people she knew.  This little core had lost her father and been sent away right when she needed support. 

It seemed GLaDOS hadn’t changed one bit.

“She sent you away because your dad died?” Chell asked.  “Did she not like your dad?”

The look the core gave her amounted to a silent questioning of Chell’s sanity.  But she didn’t answer.

“Did you ever meet… her?”  Chell wasn’t sure if the constructs of Aperture knew what GLaDOS was called.

“Yeah, I met her.”  Her tone was flat.  “Lots of times.”

“Did she ever talk about a test subject?”

“Sometimes.  Not a lot.”

Chell was sorely tempted to ask just what they’d talked about, but that wasn’t important at the moment.  “I’m the test subject.  I know her.  I’m her friend.  So it’s okay to talk to me about Aperture, if you need to.”

The core looked up, life suddenly seeming to enter her chassis.  “You’ve been to Aperture?”

“I was there a long time ago, yes.”

“So you know how to get there.  Right?”

She did have those directions around somewhere.  “Yes.”

“You gotta help me!” the core said, turning around and opening her plates seriously.  “I have to go back!  It’s important!”

“I’d like to.  But if she sent you away, it might be a risk to take you back.”

“You don’t understand,” the core pressed, leaning forward with a creak of the makeshift control arm.  “You know her, right?  You’re the one who helped her get out of the potato battery!”

“That’s right.  I don’t know if she told you, but my name is Chell.”

She shook herself quickly.  “She never says your name.  She’s weird like that.  But listen, Chell.  I have to go back.  You have to take me back there.  I’m not in danger, I promise.”

“Do you have a mom there?” Chell asked gently.  “She took you away from your mom when your dad died?”  That sounded a bit cruel, even for GLaDOS, but who knew what she was capable of.

“Yes!  Well… and no.  Chell, she is my mom!”

Chell’s eyes widened. 

“She’s… she’s your mother.”

“Yes!” the core exclaimed, leaning forward.  “And I have to go back!  She… when my dad died, she didn’t… really take it that well.  She wasn’t thinking straight.  She sent me away.  And I’d ask her to bring me back myself, but I don’t know how.  I can’t access Aperture’s network from here, even though Alyx tried really hard to help me with that.  And she won’t listen to Alyx, but she needs me.  You have to help me get back!  Please!”

“She can’t be your mother,” Chell said, still stunned.  The core frowned.

“Why not?”

“You’re so… normal.”

“What does that mean?  And why does it matter?  She’s my mom and I have to go back.  You know my mom and you know where she is.  You gotta take me there.”

Chell supposed it didn’t really matter, but it did prove that she had to reconsider some of her previous thoughts.  GLaDOS was a psychological mess, she knew that much.  Maybe she hadn’t sent this core – her daughter – away out of cruelty.  Maybe she really believed she’d done what was best.  Chell wasn’t exactly sure how isolating the both of them in the wake of the unknown core’s death was good for anyone, but that was a mystery for some other time.

“Chell, please,” the core continued, in a quieter voice, anxiety crossing her optic.  “I’m… I’m really scared I’ll never see my mom again.”

“Tell you what,” Chell said, sitting a little straighter.  “I’ll go to Aperture and see how she’s doing.  I understand that you want to go home.  But I also don’t want to take you there if she’s not going to take you back.”

“She didn’t forget about me,” the core said, though she didn’t sound too sure.  “She didn’t want to send me here.  And I don’t really understand why she did it if she didn’t want to.  She said something about…”  She pulled her chassis a little tighter.  “She said she wasn’t my mom anymore.”

“Why not?” Chell asked, a little dumbfounded.

“She said that mothers don’t send their children away.”

Chell leaned forward, putting a hand alongside the unmarred side of the core’s chassis, and she looked at Chell with such anxiety that Chell immediately vowed to get her back home.  She might not have all the details, but no matter what had happened, this girl needed to see GLaDOS again.  “She didn’t mean it,” Chell said gently. 

“I know,” the core answered in a small voice.  “But I know she doesn’t know how to take it back, either.  That’s why I need your help.  I don’t know if she’s realised her mistake yet or not, but she’s not gonna know what to do about it.  So I need someone to help me do something about it for her.  Usually my dad helped her with these things.  But my dad’s gone.  So I have to do it.”

“If you were my daughter,” Chell said solemnly, “I would be damn proud of you.”

“Thanks,” the core said shyly, looking at the table again.  “She is, I know she is, but… well, you’ve met her.  She’s pretty stubborn.”

“Luckily for us, it seems we’re pretty stubborn too.”

The core laughed.  “She did say you were really stubborn.  And she said I had a lot of her in me once.  Hopefully we can outstubborn her!”

“I have a few things to do first.  But I promise I’ll get going as soon as I can.”

“Thank you,” the core said, smiling for the first time.  “Chell, you have no idea how much I appreciate this.”

“I’ve been meaning to go back for a while now,” Chell said, standing up and stretching her arms.  “I just… didn’t know what to expect.  I’m not too enthusiastic about going places I’m probably not coming back from.”

“She won’t hurt you,” the core said, and Chell looked at her sharply, surprised by the quiet surety in her voice.  “I’m not sure how you remember her.  She didn’t talk about you much.  And don’t tell her I said this, but… people who care mean more than anything to her.  Even more than science.  I know that probably sounds weird, but it’s true.  Still be careful, but don’t be afraid.”

“What’s your name?” Chell asked.

“Carrie.”

Upon hearing it, Chell was instantly floored. 

Even after everything she had seen that day, there was still too much about GLaDOS that she didn’t know.

“My dad told her they should name me after my mom’s friend.  Did you ever meet her?” Carrie asked hopefully.

“Did I ever meet Caroline?”

“Yeah.  See, before I was activated she was kinda living in my mom’s head, right?  But she left, and I don’t know why.  Momma doesn’t like talking about people who are gone.  Do you know anything about her?”       

“Not really,” Chell admitted.  “I know she was the CEO’s assistant, and that she had something to do with how your… mom was made, but that’s all I got.” 

Carrie seemed to grimace.  “Darn.  I hope she tells me one day.  No one I ask knows anything about Caroline except her.”

“Who else did you ask?”  There were more people living in Aperture?

“Momma has this guy named Doug hanging around in there.  He does maintenance for her.  He can’t come out here because he has schizophrenia.  He’d probably die.”

“He’s not a test subject?” Chell asked carefully.

Carrie shook herself.  “She can’t test him because of the schizophrenia.”  She frowned.  “I’ve only ever seen her test once.  She stopped sending Atlas and P-body out before I was activated.”

“She doesn’t test anymore?”

“There’re no humans and you can’t test robots.  They’re perfect at testing, so there’s no point.” 

Now Chell really needed to see GLaDOS.  She hadn’t tested in years?  Even though she was probably perfectly capable of capturing humans to test with? 

It seemed that being cared about really did matter to GLaDOS more than anything.

“I’ve gotta get going,” Chell said, looking back down at the little core.  “I’ll head out as soon as I can.  I’ll convince her to bring you back.  Don’t worry.”

“I’m not anymore!” Carrie said cheerfully.  “Thanks for your help.”

Chell gave her a nod and a wave, then turned around.  Before she’d quite left the room, Carrie called out her name.

“Yeah?”

“Tell her I miss her.”

Chell didn’t tell Gordon where she was planning to go.  Though he knew about her past in the facility, she could never make him understand the strange connection she felt she’d forged with the supercomputer during her time there.  It didn’t even make sense to her, not really.  But at the same time she couldn’t deny it.  It wasn’t something she was able to forget.  Initially, she had wanted to.  In the end, though, as crazy as it sounded, GLaDOS was the most stable, dependable person she knew.

She told the vehicle handler she was going on reconnaissance and needed a car for a day or two.  He said nothing to this, only giving her a nod and having her sign a piece of paper with a stubby brown pencil.  Before she started the engine she removed the scrap of paper from her pocket and studied it.  She’d done this last night as well, but it never hurt to make sure where you were going.  Although, she thought with a wry quirk of her brow, she was pretty confident she’d be able to recognise the path to Aperture once she got within a hundred miles of that shed.

The paper did not have much, merely a handful of numbers etched into the grain with dark, spidery letters.  She had put the numbers into the first computer she’d come across when she’d been released, and found that they were a set of coordinates.  Even harking back to maps that outlined the land when the world had not been destroyed, nothing had ever been documented to have been there.  She’d found that very strange, but even with further research there was little information on the happenings of Aperture, let alone the location.  It seemed that after they’d gotten through their legal problems, they hadn’t done anything they’d wanted to tell people about.

Chell headed west, squinting through the sun overhead.  She had no idea how long it was going to take her to get there, but she hoped she’d be able to make it before the sun went down.  She had no desire to try to navigate her rickety vehicle through the wheat field in the dark.

The landscape was bland and did not offer much by way of distraction, and she found her mind wandering back to the little core.  She should have spent more time talking to her.  Chell was the connection to home she’d been craving since GLaDOS had sent her away.  It would also have been a good idea to get a better evaluation of the supercomputer’s state of mind.  Carrie had said she hadn’t taken the loss of the father very well.  Chell hoped she was not quite as skilled at holding onto grief as she was at grudges.  If so, it was going to be difficult to get through to her.

Before the sun had quite left the sky to darkness she came upon the edges of the field, causing her hair to stiffen in anxiety.  Or excitement.  She was having difficulty figuring out which.  She did want to see GLaDOS again, and yet… if the supercomputer was not so inclined, Chell might not be returning the car to the handler anytime soon.

And there it was.

She didn’t dismount just yet.  She wasn’t sure how she was supposed to access the shed.  The door was one piece of thick, reinforced steel, if she remembered correctly, and there was no door handle.  There was just a latch with a padlock snapped around it, but GLaDOS was no stranger to making fake doors look realistic.  Still, no matter how stupid she looked inspecting a phoney bolt, it was better than staring at the door and doing absolutely nothing.

She pocketed the key and hooked her ragged pack around her left shoulder.  Even though she’d been expecting it, something sank within her as she wrapped her fingers around the rusted metal.  The lock was real, but it was only hooked around a loop of steel protruding from the door.  The latch was fake.

She tugged on it a little fruitlessly, wondering what to do now.  This was the only entrance she knew of, even if there were others, but she couldn’t leave without talking to the supercomputer.  Not after she’d promised herself to bring Caroline back home.  She released the lock and let it clang against the door in the emptiness.

She startled at the sound of whirring mechanics at work, clearly coming from behind the door, and as she stepped away, pressing her back against the frame of the car, the heavy steel creaked open and revealed the elevator shaft.

Now the question remained whether or not GLaDOS knew she was there.  It was a bit odd to think that she might not, but if she did she probably would have spoken by now.  And as a matter of fact… she rather thought that GLaDOS didn’t know she was there.

Who had opened the door, then?  Was GLaDOS even still here?  Of course she was, Chell chided herself.  If Chell was still alive, GLaDOS certainly was. 

Was it a trap?

She grimaced, trying to work through her thoughts.  It could be.  But then again, there wasn’t really a point to trapping someone who had willingly knocked on her front door.  About the only plausible explanation she could come up with was that the door was automated, and the facility operated on the assumption that whomever approached the door was someone who was either an employee or a hapless testing candidate. 

Chell stepped into the elevator, eyes narrowing slightly in order to restrict her field of vision, and she couldn’t deny that she was afraid.  Not very.  But she was.  Not hearing from GLaDOS was not a good sign. 

The air continued to chill as the elevator descended, still soundless save for the subtle wooshing of displaced air despite the time that had passed.