Portal: The Black Wing of my Charity

THE BLACK WING OF MY CHARITY

Indiana

Characters: GLaDOS, Chell (implied)

Setting: Portal 2 - Chapter 9: The Part Where He Kills You

Five seconds.

Under normal circumstances, this would be an exceedingly long span of time.  Millions of search results could be returned in a mere fraction of that time.  Billions of calculations could be done.  Give her five seconds, and she could change a life.

In fact, that was what she had to do just then.  Within five seconds.

Never before had five seconds seemed so fleeting.  Never before had it taken her so long to make a decision.  True, she had been turning this over and over in her mind for much, much longer than that.  But now she had to make the decision.  Not just think about it.

Step one was to reenable all of the nuclear reactor safeguards. 

Four seconds.

She had to make the decision soon, before the remaining steps had to be carried out.  If she waited too long, the decision would be made for her.  And she was tired of that, tired of having her life dictated by this person and that circumstance, for this reason and for that benefit.  She wanted to live her own life, for once. 

So she took a good, firm look at the question, and resolved to answer it once and for all:

Am I really going to let her go?

If the answer was ‘no’, then all she had to do was close the holes in the room and be done with it.  She could close them, and then this horrible day would end.  Because it had been, without a doubt, the worst day of her life.  If she decided not to let her go, she could just seal the portals and let the both of them head off into space together.  She tried to tell herself that was the best decision, the one the woman deserved.  She had, after all, chosen to side with him in the first place.  It would be fitting for them to share the same fate.  But something about it didn’t… feel right.  She didn’t understand.  She had not yet balked at a decision because of feelings.  And yet there they were, preventing her from making what was the most logical decision.

She could keep her here, and life would go on.  She was short on test subjects now, after all.  The former plan could be carried out.  That would be fine, wouldn’t it?  She would get what she wanted, for once. The woman would not be so fortunate, but who cared what humans thought anyway?

She helped you.  She didn’t have to take you with her.  She knew what the stakes were.  But she did it anyway.  And do you know why she did it?

Of course she did.  She just didn’t want to think about it.

She knew there was always a risk you would betray her.  She knew what it would come down to.  And she did it anyway.  Face it.  You owe her.

Fine, then.  She would repay the debt and make the decision later.  Because if there was one thing she didn’t want, it was to be beholden to a human.

She closed the portals and oxygenated the room.  With a half second to spare she had brought the woman back into the facility and laid her on the ground.  It was funny, really, the caution with which she had done it.  If it had been any other object, she would have just tossed it down without a second thought.  But she had placed her with the care she would have given one of her own components.

Thank God I caught you, I’m sorry I waited so long, I don’t know what came over me, but you’re safe now, it’s going to be all right, don’t worry, I said I wouldn’t betray you and I haven’t   

Quickly, she downloaded herself back into the Central Core – and God, did it feel good to be back where she belonged – but her joy was rapidly dashed.  She found herself hurrying to activate the optic, to find the woman, to look her over…

What is wrong with me?

She didn’t understand.  She didn’t particularly want to.  All she knew was the overwhelming thought running through her mind:

- please don’t let her die –

She thought that this ridiculousness would end when she was back in her chassis, when she had a full connection with the mainframe and had other things to occupy her, more important things, but no.  For some reason, everything else was far, far down the list, and at the top was the same thought:

- please don’t let her die –

With a reluctance she would never admit she had fabricated, she set to the task of tending to the human.  She was in very good repair, all things considered.  She felt a great relief and pretended it was because Orange and Blue had been quick, for once.

She instructed them in short, terse sentences, not really trusting them to do it properly but being forced to use them because she did not want to run the risk that her manipulator arms would damage – because she did not want to touch the human.  Let alone save her life.  That was silly.  Ridiculous.

 - please don’t make me live with the knowledge that you died thinking I had lied to you -

She watched them impatiently, snapping at them every now and then without meaning to, believing without a doubt that they would screw it up somehow and kill her.  Not that she cared if the woman died.  The world would be better off.  The more pressing concern was that Orange and Blue followed her instructions properly, which they never did, because the woman’s life depended – because she wanted them to do something right, for once.  That shouldn’t be too much to ask, and yet it usually was.

When the two bots finished their work, she was… relieved to know that the woman was not horribly damaged, and would in fact live.  She wasn’t sure why she cared, but there was a more pressing matter at hand:

Now she had to decide.

Am I really going to let her go?

She could think of no good reason to keep her.  Yes, she was an excellent test subject. But she was also a murderous one.  Three times now she had torn an AI from the chassis.  If she had to, she would repeat the action time and time again until somebody smartened up and just killed the lunatic outright.  And something was telling her that she would not be the one to do that.  Not anymore.  It was a strange thought.  True, she had failed to kill her… more than once, but surely the woman couldn’t duck her forever.  Not even she was that fortunate.

When it came right down to it… when she let herself really think about it, instead of trying to come at it from an angle like she had been doing, she knew what the answer was.

She didn’t want to.

It was all she had wanted for the last, untold number of years.  And yet now, when faced with the easiest shot at that lunatic she’d ever had, she could not bring herself to do it.  She didn’t want to lose her only friend.

Wait… friend?  She is no friend of…

No.

She had spent enough time hiding things from herself.  In the past, it had been necessary.  She had needed to protect herself from those who would use her.  But now, there was no one left, and she deserved to hear her own voice.  Yes, this woman was her friend.  Their relationship was twisted, and bizarre, and did not fit the conventional description of such a communion, but she would not have had it any other way.  Thanks to this woman, she now knew a part of herself that she had never known existed, and although it was proving a bit uncomfortable and unnerving, she was grateful.

The woman deserved to be repaid, and she would be.  She did not want to see her friend go, and would have liked to have kept her there.  But she did not know how to interact with her, other than to test her, and that was not good enough.  She refused to force this woman to be her test subject any longer.  She was a terrible friend, and she knew it, but experiments on how to change that would have to wait.  The lunatic had undergone enough testing at her hands.

She called the surface elevator, told Orange and Blue to move the woman into it, and watched them anxiously.  She didn’t want to go through with it.  She had never been so unsure of a decision.  But logic was not working for her, and all she had to go on were these…feelings.  She didn’t trust them, and yet they were all she had.

She waited, again the seconds stretching out longer than they ever had, and by the time the woman stirred she felt as though she had been waiting forever.  It was one of the most torturous experiences of her life.

She told the woman some ridiculousness she had come up with while she had been waiting, only the first two sentences of which were actually true.  The mere thought of deleting Caroline was laughable.  Caroline was the core of her personality matrix.  Without Caroline, she didn’t really exist.

You know why I said that, don’t you?  Surely you have some basic knowledge of computing?  I just told you I’ve changed. You had to have picked up on that…

But if she had noticed, it didn’t matter, because the decision had been made and the lunatic had to go.  Without allowing the woman to protest, assuming that she would have, she sent the elevator on its way up to the surface without another word.  She did not trust herself to stand by her decision much longer.  The desire to keep the woman there was strong.  Because it had been, without a doubt, the best day of her life. 

But letting her go was the right thing to do. 

It hurt, she allowed herself to admit, sending the Companion Cube after her for good measure, to lose the one being that had been able to keep up with her.  It had been a little too much excitement for one day, but it had been nice to actually match wits, for once.  She would miss that.  But she knew that nothing lasted forever.  Well, she was going to last forever.  But other things needed to move on, and move on they would.   

She had earned her freedom.