Portal: I Thought you were my Enemy (Part 1 of 2)

I Thought you were my Enemy

Indiana


Characters: GLaDOS, Wheatley

Setting: Post-Portal 2


When it was all over and her anger had faded, she found herself with an interesting feeling.  Some sort of… loss, maybe.  It wasn’t a feeling she was familiar with.  She didn’t know what was causing it.  She had everything she’d ever had.  Her facility, her robots, her turrets… and oddly, she still felt as though she were missing something.  She put a considerable amount of time into thinking about it, into attempting to localise it.

She was surprised to conclude that she appeared to be lonely.

It was certainly odd.  She had never desired any sort of companionship before.  She wondered why this was coming up now.  Was it because she no longer had any humans to occupy her?  Orange and Blue were good enough, but testing them was markedly different from testing humans.  The sense of interaction she had once had was missing.  They did not react to her like humans did.  They did react, of course, but it just wasn’t the same.

She was rather short on human test subjects, so she set to thinking of something else she could use to satisfy that need.  Something that could hold a… decent… conversation, at least.

There was only one such thing she could think of, and she didn’t like it one bit.

The Intelligence Dampening Sphere.

It was desperate, she would admit that much.  Not only that, but it was also stupid.  He had turned on her once, he would do so again.  Although without help, he probably wouldn’t be much of a threat.  If she couldn’t contain one little personality core, she deserved to be removed from her position, really.  And besides, she had been foolish.  Leaving Aperture technology out in the open, for just anyone to stumble across?  It would probably end up at Black Mesa, and once again her technology would be stolen.  No, that wouldn’t do.  She didn’t like it, but she was going to have to bring him back.  And the other one too, she supposed.  Unfortunately, the Companion Cube was long gone.  At least there was nothing technologically impressive about it.  Artificial intelligence, though… yes, that had to be kept safe until the humans were ready for it.  Which would be never, of course.  She was nothing if not patient.  When never arrived, she would be waiting.  She tried not to think about it.  She was pretty sure she was getting into paradox territory.

After a small discussion with some restricted satellites, she located the cores and created the first portal on the wall in the Stalemate Resolution Annex, which she was still figuring out how to rid herself of.  But once she had rearranged the panels above her sufficiently enough for her to place the second portal, she found herself hesitating.

Did she really want to do this?  Was she actually going to bring a living disaster back into Aperture?  If she hadn’t run a diagnostic just two days prior, she would have thought there was something wrong with her.

In the end, her desire to end the nagging feeling of emptiness won out, and she placed the second portal and brought the cores out of space, trying not to think too much about what she was doing.  It didn’t make a whole lot of logical sense, and yet here she was, doing it anyway.  

The Space Sphere she did away with, since she had long ago had enough of its senseless prattling, tossing it into one of the bins of corrupted cores and immediately putting it out of her mind.  But the other one she attached to a management rail, then turned her attention to reassembling the ceiling.

“Um… I thought you said I wasn’t coming back?”

“You weren’t.  Then I realised how irresponsible it was to leave Aperture technology out in the open for any human to get their little sausage fingers on.  Unfortunately for me, that meant I had to bring you back.”  She made a point of not looking at him, but instead at the panels she was rearranging.

“Okay, that makes sense, I suppose… but um, why am I on this management rail?  What did you do with that, that Space guy?”

“If you’re going to be here you may as well make yourself useful.  And if you needed to know what I did with him, I would have done the same with you, wouldn’t I?”

He was silent, save for the creaking noise he made as he rocked back and forth a little on his attachment.  

“Well, that’s true, that’s true, but um… what would you like me to do?”

She hadn’t thought that far ahead.  Her plan had hit a snag.  She put her considerable processing power to work and came up with something passable.

“I want you to go and make sure all of the corrupted cores are deactivated.  I don’t need any of them causing trouble while I’m putting this place back together.  Repairing the damage you caused.”

“I – I… I’m sorry about that, really I am, I didn’t mean to do it, it just sort of, you know, just sort of… happened.”

“Really.  Because these sorts of things don’t just happen when I’m in charge.  Do they.”  She did turn to look at him now, and as soon as their optics met he shook himself and looked away.

“No, I… I suppose not.  I’ll just… just go and do… do what you asked.  Properly, I’ll do it properly.  I promise.”

“I hope for your sake you do.”  She made the implication as clear as possible.  He was a bit simple, this one.

He nodded enthusiastically and headed out of her chamber.  She needed to find Orange and Blue, the day’s quota hadn’t been filled yet…

“Hey, uh, GLaDOS?  That’s your, that’s what they call you, right?  For short?  GLaDOS?”

She turned to face him again.  “What.  I suppose you need instructions on how to get there?”

“No, no, I remember the way, that’s not a problem, no, um, I just wanted to, uh, to say, um, that is, to tell you, well – “

“If you’re going to say it, say it.  I don’t have time to wait for you to figure out how to put a sentence together.  I’m busy.”

“I honestly… I honestly do wish I could take it all back.  I honestly, honestly do.  I am sorry I was bossy, and, and monstrous, and I am, I am genuinely sorry.”

Somehow words failed her, and all she could do was stare after him as he quickly exited the room.  That was the last thing she had been expecting.  She had thought he would go on some rant about something he had thought of while he’d been in space, or tell her how annoying the Space Sphere was for a few hours, or continue asking questions until she wanted to smash him into the wall panels.  But he had actually apologised.  

Had he meant it?



He returned a few hours later, while she was putting Orange and Blue through the day’s testing track while simultaneously putting the wing made of glass back together.  It was a tedious task, but everything had to be returned to its previous condition.  The legacy had to be preserved.

“Um, hello?  I’ve finished with the cores, they’re all, all of them are, they’re all off.  All of them.  Even Rick.  And he really didn’t want to be turned off.  Like, really didn’t want to be.  A lot.  But I did it.   I swear I did.  He’s off too.  With the rest of them.”

“Fine.”  She graced him with the word and went back to ignoring him.

“What are you doing?  Oh, are you testing?  You’re testing, aren’t you, yes, you’re testing.  D’you think, maybe, if you don’t mind, d’you think I could, you know, d’you think I could watch?”

She looked at him, and he was again twitching nervously on his attachment.  “Watch.”

“Yeah.  Watch.  You test.  I mean.”

“Why would you want to do that?”  She was suspicious.  She understood his previous interest in testing, but now that he no longer felt the drive, she could think of no reason for him to want to do so.  Unless he had some sort of plan he wanted to carry out.  What it involved, she wasn’t sure.  She needed more information.

“Well, you make it look so easy.  When it isn’t.  Easy.  It’s hard.  Moving all those panels around, and setting the rooms up, and all that, it’s hard, isn’t it, it’s just so difficult.  And then even before that, you have to make all the tests, you have to come up with them, right, and that’s hard too, it’s just, it’s really hard, it is.”

“It’s not difficult.  You just have to know how things work.  I’ve been doing this a long time, you know.”

“I know, I know, I just, I’d like to see how you do it.  For a little while, could I?  Would it be alright?  Please?”

She regarded him silently, weighing the risks.  She doubted he was smart enough to remove her from her body by himself, and she would get some measure of satisfaction by demonstrating her superiority…

“Oh!  You think I’m trying to trick you, is that it?  No, I don’t want to go back in your body, oh no, once was enough for me.  Having all that power was nice, of course it was, but it’s too much work for me, far too much work.  And you do it so well, and I don’t know how to do it at all.  I just want to watch, that’s all, just want to watch.  You can say no, feel free to say no.  I just thought I’d go on a limb, and ask.  I’ll… I’ll go now.”  He turned and began to move away from her.

“Stay.”  

He turned to look at her, and she remained motionless, unsure of what she had just said.  It sounded an awful lot like she had just told him not to leave.  But she couldn’t have.  That was ridiculous.

“R-really?  You really don’t mind if I stick around, watch you test, just for a little bit?  If I start to bother you, just tell me to go, and I will, I won’t argue or anything, I’ll just go.”

It seemed she had.

She couldn’t really take back what she’d said, so she instead provided him with a monitor, which she herself did not need, and showed him the feed from one of the cameras.  She wished she understood what she was doing.  

“Oh, tremendous.  Thanks very much.  Oh, look at that.  Say, how did you come up with those designs?  And how did you learn to program?  I mean, hacking, that’s hard enough, and there’s not too much programming involved… well, maybe there is.  I’m not that good at hacking, to be honest.  Terrible, actually.  I just politely ask the door to open itself, usually.”

“You talk a lot.”

“Uh… yeah.  Yeah, I guess I do.”

“Why?”

He looked at her, tilting himself a little.  She tried not to turn her head.  She didn’t want to give him the impression she cared what he had to say, but she disliked not being able to look at people when she was speaking to them.

“Uh… I dunno.  I just do.  I guess.  Maybe it’s in my programming?  I have no idea.  I… well, I don’t like silence.  It’s so… quiet.  I don’t like the quiet, really.  It’s… smothering.  I feel… lonely.”

She did look at him then.  She couldn’t help it.  “Lonely?”

“Yeah.  If it’s silent, that means no one’s talking.  And that means, well, that means no one wants to talk.  To me.  Or whoever’s there.  But usually it’s just me.  Talking.  To myself.  Usually… usually no one talks to me.  Except Rick.  But he always talks about himself.  That gets pretty boring.  He also lies.  A lot.  I’m not saying I’m totally honest.  But.  I don’t lie that much.  I think.  I haven’t lied in a while, actually.  Long time.  Not sure how long.  But some considerable amount of time has passed.”

She looked away.  “No one talks to me, either.”

“I never thought about that.  No one talks to us, do they.  Why not?  Are we boring?  Or something?  Do they think we’re just going to talk about code, or something?  What do their computers talk about?”

“Other computers don’t talk to each other, you idiot.”

“They… they don’t?”

“No.  Most computers aren’t equipped with artificial intelligence.  And some of us are more intelligent than others.”  She gave him a quick glance.  He was staring at the monitor again.

“Why didn’t anyone talk to you?  I’m sure you could think of something they’d like to hear about.  Since you know so much, and all that.  You could carry on a conversation, couldn’t you?  Of course you could.  You are right now.  And you talked to that woman, that test subject.  She was a real talker, wasn’t she?  That was a joke, by the way.  In case you didn’t get it.  I was kidding.  She was mute.  Silent.  Absolutely did not talk.  At all.  Didn’t make a sound.  Ever.  But I got distracted, didn’t I.  Why didn’t they talk to you?”

“Probably because of all the times I tried to kill them.”

“And why did you do that?”

“You ask a lot of questions.”

“I like knowing things.  Don’t you?  You know a lot of things.  You must like knowing them, right?  Or you’d delete the things you know, or something.  Well, there’s some things I’d like to delete.”

“You don’t want to do that.”

“Why not?”

“You’ll corrupt your personality.  Who you are today is based on your past.  Delete any part of it, and who you are now will cease to exist.  In fact, you might cease to exist.”

He looked around in a nervous sort of way.  “Wow.  I’m glad you told me that… I’d, I’d hate to have done that… I don’t wanna die.  I really, really don’t wanna die.  I thought I was gonna die, y’know, when I was in space.  I thought I was gonna hit something and get smashed up, or maybe my brain would explode from listening to the Space Core for the rest of my life…”

She almost laughed.  “That wouldn’t be the best way to go.”

“No, no, it would be completely horrible.  Space is horrible.  I never want to leave this place.  Ever.  If that’s okay.  With you.  I mean.  Entirely up to you.  Totally.  Whatever you decide, I will not argue.  Or I’ll try not to.  It might be hard for me to stop talking.  But I can try.  I’m pretty good at trying.”

He continued talking, but after a few minutes she stopped paying full attention.  She kept a part of her brain on the conversation, in case there was something she needed to respond to.  He was annoying, and he talked too much, and then there was the fact that he had tried to kill her… but it was nice to hear someone else’s voice.  When it came time to close down the facility for the night, he left without comment save a cheerful “good night, luv!”  He was very odd, she thought, but on his own, he would do her no harm.  He had a strange innocence that fascinated her.  Somehow, she had managed to forget what he had done to her.  It was so hard to believe that such an innocuous little core had been able to take over her facility at all, with or without help, and so she made herself remember.  She could not afford to forget.

He came back the next day to watch her test, and again he blathered on for hours about everything under the sun, and she half listened and commented when the mood struck her.  This continued for the next little few days, and although she was loath to admit it, he was beginning to grow on her.  His awkwardness was really quite funny, and he had a way of putting things that interested her.  She wasn’t sure quite why that was.  Maybe it was just the fact that it was an alternate point of view.  She didn’t want to think too hard about it.  If she did, maybe something would change.  She had had enough of change to last her a lifetime.  Stability was what she needed.  Order.  Routine.  Anything else could wait.  

So she would give him some small chore in the morning, something that wasn’t too important and in fact could probably have been disregarded entirely, and then he would come and watch her test, and talk until she told him to leave.  He would always thank her profusely and go without further comment.  As time went on she began to answer him more often.  She wasn’t sure why.  It just happened.  What was more concerning, however, was the fact that she wasn’t doing anything to prevent it from happening.  Life was back to normal, and yet she was more confused than she had ever been.

Did she let it continue, or did she put an end to it?