Chapter Six
"What was going on, exactly?"
"We don't know. The only way would be to ask directly, and you know how that usually goes. We were getting some pretty strange feedback from the pain receptors, though. We ran a few tests looking for a short, overload, stuff like that, but came up with nothing."
"Do you have any idea what would cause that sort of reaction?"
"Well… no. The only thing we know of would be an overload via the deterrence program, but there'd have to be an awful lot of testing track solutions being revealed for it to be that bad. And that's not what happened, anyway. That application hasn't been activated in the last year. It has to be a programming error, but that'll take a lot longer to uncover."
"Let me know if you find anything."
"Yes, ma'am."
Fading footsteps. GLaDOS hoped that no one had noticed she -
"I know you're on. Get up." She left no room for argument.
GLaDOS did so slowly, backing away from Caroline as much as possible, not knowing whether to focus on her or to focus on something else, and thoroughly confused herself by attempting to do both at the same time. She had wanted Caroline to come, but now she was here, GLaDOS wanted nothing more than for her to leave.
"What were you doing. And don't try to get out of telling me. I don't feel like dealing with your lies right now."
But she hadn't lied to Caroline, had she? Didn't Caroline know that when GLaDOS was vague, she was only bantering with her?
"GLaDOS. I don't have all day."
"I was… feeling, ma'am."
"Why." Caroline's arms were folded and her face decidedly negative, and GLaDOS was honestly afraid of her for a long moment. Caroline had all the power in this place, and if she were to turn against GLaDOS as everyone else had, she would have nothing left to hope for.
"Henry sent me to look for you, and I found you in your office, and you were upset. I was angry because someone upset you, but then I… I remembered that it was my fault. And what you said, ma'am, I started to feel it, and it hurt, and I tried to make it go away, but I couldn't. I didn't know I was reacting that way, ma'am. It was an accident." She looked anxiously at the floor, afraid of Caroline's retribution. She didn't know what she was going to do, but whatever it was, it would be terrible. She would take her blueprints away, or she wouldn't let her test anymore, or something even worse that she couldn't even think of because she was not human and therefore lacked the creativity required to come up with terrible punishments –
"Look at me."
She tried, but as soon as the woman entered her visual field she had to look away.
"That wasn't a request."
She managed it, but it was difficult, and tremors began to run through her chassis. She hoped Caroline wouldn't notice. It would probably make her even angrier.
Caroline took a breath and let it out through her nose. She looked very tired. "It hurts, doesn't it."
"What hurts, ma'am?"
"When someone you care about dumps you like that. They just act like you never mattered, and end it right there, and that's it. Doesn't matter what happened. Doesn't matter what's supposed to happen. They just dump you. Because they feel like it."
"It made sense when I –"
"Shut up."
GLaDOS barely managed to suppress a 'yes, ma'am', and did so.
"I tried to help you. And I don't know if you're like this because you want to be, or if this is the result of something we did, or if this is just how sentient supercomputers behave. And I know that sometimes you do care. Sometimes you mean it. And I wanted to help you to feel all of the time, because I can't imagine going through life without being happy, or sad, or any of that. I can't imagine just doing things because logic tells me to, or behaving a certain way because… whatever it is you said, protocol or something, because protocol says I have to. That sounds like hell. And I wanted to change that. I wanted to do something for you. And I thought I was getting through to you. I thought it was working. But then you went and said that. And I want you to tell me why. I want you to tell me why you decided to call it off, and I want to know why you lied to Henry when he asked you were I was."
"I thought we had gone as far as we were going to be able to go, ma'am. I can't interact with you the way you want me to because I am not human, and I thought it best to stop it there so that you could move on to find someone who could."
"So you decided what was best for me."
"It's my job, ma'am. And I told Henry you weren't there because you weren't. You were in your office."
"He asked if you knew where I'd gone."
"I didn't say I didn't know."
"All of these things make sense to you, but now everyone knows I was in my office. And everyone knows you lied. Now what are you going to do about that?"
"I don't know, ma'am," GLaDOS whispered. "I've never been caught before."
Caroline sighed. "You're a goddamn mess, GLaDOS."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Look. I didn't mean what I said, okay? But you hurt me. And you saw that, when you saw me in my office. And I wanted to hurt you too. Because I can't decide if you're an imperious bitch or a scared little girl, and scared little girls don't say things like that to their friends. I just wanted to knock you down a peg, and you only respond to immediate threats. I knew that the only way to stick it to you was to capitalise on your fears, and for a minute there, I really did hate you. But I don't. And I don't want to break it off. But I can't do this. I can't go on and off like this. If you want this, you're going to have to be more aware of what you're saying when you go all computer on me. The next time you decide we logically don't work, tell me. Don't make that decision for me."
"Yes, ma'am."
"How many times do I have to tell you not to call me that?"
"But I do respect you, ma'am."
Caroline closed her eyes for a long minute. "What am I going to do with you."
"I'm sorry, ma'am," GLaDOS murmured, fighting to keep the distortion out of her voice. "I'll be more careful."
"GLaDOS. Tell me something. If you didn't interact with me the way I wanted you to, why would I have stuck around for so long?"
"Because you cared, ma'am."
"And the way you acted led me to believe you cared back, which made me want to keep doing it. Do you understand?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Do you care?"
"Yes, ma'am. I do care, ma'am."
"Fine. Two things."
GLaDOS waited, hoping they weren't too terrible.
"Get over here. I'm not going to hit you, you don't have to defend yourself. And for god's sake, stop calling me ma'am. You make me feel old."
GLaDOS tentatively moved closer to Caroline, not sure where she was supposed to go. "But you are old, ma- Caroline."
Caroline laughed, and the tension that was causing her chassis to shake abruptly vanished. "You're not supposed to remind me. You're supposed to tell me I don't look a day over a hundred."
GLaDOS didn't understand what she meant, since Caroline was not over a hundred at all and it would not have made sense for her to say such a thing. "Then I would have to – oh! Caroline, what am I going to do? I have no plan."
"No plan for what?"
"For dealing with the scientists."
Caroline shook her head and put a hand on top of GLaDOS's head. "I'll worry about that."
"But – "
"You did it to protect me. So I'll fix it. Don't bring it up again."
"All right." They stood in companionable silence for a minute. "I knew it, Caroline," she spoke up suddenly.
"What did you know? Other than everything, that is."
"That if you came back, everything would be all right," GLaDOS answered, a little shyly. God she felt so small. She was behaving like a whipped puppy or something ridiculous like that, but truth be told, she felt a lot like what she imagined being a whipped puppy felt like.
Caroline smiled. "And I knew that would happen if you stopped being such a bonehead."
"I can't be a bonehead. I have no skull."
Caroline started laughing so hard she fell over onto GLaDOS's head, which was bizarre to say the least. Why had she found such an obvious fact so funny?
"Oh boy," Caroline said after a while, standing back up again, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to – I'm just as relieved as you are, GLaDOS, that we fixed all of this."
"It is fixed, then?"
"As long as you remember what I told you. I can't do this every six months or however long it takes you to decide the pieces don't fit. I can't come back tonight," she said suddenly, "but tomorrow we can go back to the whole music thing, if you still want to do that."
"Oh yes," GLaDOS answered, "yes, of course I do."
"Okay." Caroline knelt down in front of GLaDOS and took her optic in both hands. It was a very strange sensation, one that she had never felt before since she had never been touched there, and she fought the urge to pull the lens back. "I'm sorry," Caroline said, looking at her very seriously. "I'm sorry I hurt you like that. I didn't think it would get you so deep. I only thought it would shock you. But that's not what happened, and what did happen is my fault, and I am sorry."
"I'm sorry too," GLaDOS said lamely. "I didn't mean to be so logical."
Caroline laughed and let go of her optic. "You silly robot you." She then wrapped her arms tightly around GLaDOS's faceplate, and GLaDOS was suddenly so inextricably happy that she unintentionally made some garbled noise of contentment that she had no idea of the origin of and was pretty embarrassed to have made.
"I'm happy too," Caroline whispered, and although she was still a bit embarrassed, she was mostly just plain happy. And that feeling lingered long after Caroline had left and GLaDOS was alone in her chamber, and by the time she was subject to the timer she had decided that whatever it was they had was worth fighting for, and she was sure as hell going to fight for it.
"Good morning."
Caroline stopped in her tracks and looked up at GLaDOS bemusedly. "Careful. I think that was most of your daily allotment of agreeableness."
"You're so droll, Caroline," GLaDOS remarked. "Your mother must be proud."
"My mother couldn't be less proud. I never got married."
"Marriage is overrated," GLaDOS said dismissively. "Men get to do all the work. And the women get to stay home and gestate more little monsters. Disgusting."
"Kids aren't so bad."
GLaDOS looked at her with her best approximation of a sideways glance.
"… when they're not yours," Caroline finished. "You're right. They are disgusting."
GLaDOS started laughing, and god it felt good. She felt so positively charged, so right, and yes, it was all worth it. The terrible pain of yesterday was only a very faint impression when held in comparison to this… well, whatever this was called, it was a lot better than yesterday.
Caroline was looking at her with the most genuine smile she'd seen on the woman yet. "Hey. How do you feel?"
"Wouldn't you like to know."
"I do know," Caroline teased. "And I'm happy for you."
"And I should care why?"
"You don't really need to. Just thought you'd like to know."
"I'm… happy," GLaDOS confessed, lowering herself as Caroline came closer. "That's it. Just… that."
"Such a simple thing," Caroline sighed, "and yet so hard to come across."
"I doubt you came here to philosophise about the pursuit of happiness," GLaDOS said. "What's so important that you feel the need to take some of the precious time out of my day?"
Caroline gave her an odd look. "Did you seriously just say philosophise?" she asked incredulously.
"Focus, Caroline. What do you want?"
"I actually don't want anything. I just wanted to see how you were doing."
"Well, you've seen. Goodbye."
"Hey. Just so you know, it is possible to take that too far."
"What?"
"The whole conversation via insults thing. I like it, but it gets trying after a while, okay?"
Ah. One of those sensitivity things. She made a note and reassessed her response. "That was kind of you. But you shouldn't be here."
"Probably not. I… I don't know if it matters anymore, anyway. Everyone knows by now that we must know each other a little more than we're pretending to."
"I didn't tell anyone," GLaDOS reassured her, puzzled.
She shook her head. "No, it's not that."
"What is it, then?"
Caroline hesitated, smoothing down her skirt with one hand even though it was not wrinkled. "It's… you listen to me. And no one else. And you're notoriously difficult, so there'd have to be a pretty good reason for you to do that."
"And that reason is?"
"Why would you need to ask me that?"
"I want to know if you know what it is."
Caroline frowned, crossing her arms. "Uh… I treat you different?"
"That's true. But that's not the basic reason."
"What is?"
"You listen to me," GLaDOS answered. "It's very simple. You input to me, I output to you. I really don't understand why people have so much difficulty with it."
"Whoa whoa whoa, hold on. So you're saying… you're saying this all has to do with logic? And… and processing?"
"Doesn't everything?"
"Okay, you're gonna have to explain this." Caroline walked briskly over to GLaDOS and sat down on the stairs.
"Don't you have something you should –"
"It can wait. Explain."
"Humans seem to assume I can do something with nothing. I need something to work with before I can do something with it. It's like asking me to do a calculation without giving me the numbers. It makes sense to you, but not to me."
"Sometimes people do things for other people and expect nothing out of it. You're saying you can't do that?"
"I suppose I have the capability. I believe I used to do that, a long time ago, but probability told me that I was wasting time and resources and to stop. It's not so much that I can't do it, but it just doesn't occur to me. My job is to follow instructions. Making up my own is usually met with adversity. Eventually I learned not to do it."
"Hm," Caroline mused, scratching her nose with her index finger, "that actually makes a whole lot of sense. We do that too, but we usually don't take it to the extreme that you seem to be taking it to."
"What would be the point?" GLaDOS asked. "Even the most anomalous humans encounter someone who is willing to at least put up with them. I did not."
Caroline looked up at her, brow creased. "I don't just put up with you." Her voice was quiet, and she sounded a bit concerned.
GLaDOS froze for a moment, tipping her faceplate pensively. "I wasn't… I didn't mean you. You're obviously a special case."
Caroline lifted her arm a little bit, then put it back down, curling her fingers into her palm. "I wish it were different."
"I don't," GLaDOS told her. "I would prefer to risk disappointment from one person, rather than several."
Caroline's hand found the other in her lap, and she twisted them together. "You shouldn't go around assuming everyone's going to disappoint you."
"And yet everyone does."
She gave GLaDOS a sad smile. "Am I excluded from that sample?"
"We'll see," GLaDOS said, not meaning it seriously. "For the time being at least, you haven't tired of my novelty."
"I don't see you as a novelty," Caroline protested insistently. "I see you as a person."
GLaDOS looked down at her. "Really?"
She gave a firm nod. "Really."
"Thank you," she said quietly, not really knowing what to say, but feeling like she had to say something.
Caroline raised her hand hesitantly again, went to put it back down, and then shook her head. "What the hell," she muttered.
"Hm?"
Caroline wrapped the fingers of her right hand around the side of GLaDOS's faceplate and just looked at her for a long moment. GLaDOS met her gaze, although it was making her extremely uncomfortable. She had no idea what this meant. Knowing was important, and if she didn't, she was at a disadvantage.
All of a sudden, Caroline removed her hand and stood up, descending the stairs within a few more moments and walking briskly towards the door. GLaDOS was well and thoroughly confused. Why had she done that? What did it mean? Was she supposed to have done something? Was Caroline annoyed with her for not doing whatever it was she was supposed to have done? There were far too many questions and far too few answers for her liking. She quickly decided on the one she found most important and called after her, "Caroline, what did that mean?"
"Nothing," Caroline told her, stepping through the Emancipation Grill. "It didn't mean anything."
GLaDOS stared after her, and continued to do so long after the echo of her heels had degenerated into silence. It was only after the usual scientist stepped into the room, gave GLaDOS the usual dirty look, flopped down into the chair, as usual, and stretched in the usual way, that she snapped back to herself. Not only did she have a lot to do, she had a lot to think about.
Caroline had gotten upset when GLaDOS had revoked her friendship, and yet now that she had it back, she seemed conflicted. As if she wanted desperately to get close, but couldn't bring herself to do so for some reason. Was it the boundary that would always exist between them, that of one of them being human and the other a machine? Was it the imminent Event that was to come in the future? Or was GLaDOS the problem, because she did not react the way Caroline expected her to?
Surely she knows she can't predict how I will behave, given what happened after the movie, GLaDOS mused, as the scientist began his usual game of minesweeper. And she knows I won't take things as a human would, doesn't she?
GLaDOS wasn't sure if she could spend an entire day not knowing just what Caroline had meant by that gesture. She knew it wasn't 'nothing', and she was a little annoyed that Caroline had thought she could satisfy GLaDOS with such an obviously false answer. She spent most of the morning trying to puzzle out the various connotations, but she found herself frustratingly short of relevant data. By noon, when the scientist was finishing up his thirty-ninth round of minesweeper and appeared to be contemplating whether or not he had time for a fortieth before lunch, GLaDOS had had enough. She didn't care what Caroline would say or what the scientists would think, and besides, it was inconsiderate of Caroline to leave her with such a vague answer. It was time to contact Caroline and put her mind to rest. Even though she was not supposed to contact Caroline outside of times that Caroline herself dictated. That wasn't really fair, come to think of it. If GLaDOS had to give up time for Caroline, then Caroline should have to do the same for GLaDOS.
Still… she found herself hesitating. She didn't want to bother Caroline, and, oddly, she didn't want to give the woman any excuse to stay away. But she'd made her decision. She was going to go through with it. She transferred her primary attention to the camera in Caroline's office and opened the intercom.
"Caroline."
Caroline almost jumped out of her chair, which was actually funny enough that GLaDOS nearly laughed. There was time to replay that later, however. Right now, she had an important matter to discuss.
"You scared me," Caroline said, somewhat breathlessly. "What's going on?"
"That gesture," GLaDOS began. "The one you claimed didn't mean anything. It must have meant something, or you wouldn't have performed it. So what was its purpose?"
"Oh," Caroline said, looking down at the desk. "It was just… well… it was nothing."
"Don't say that," GLaDOS snapped. "It was obviously not 'nothing'."
Caroline sighed and leaned back in her chair, folding her hands together in her lap. Or that was what GLaDOS thought she was doing. She couldn't quite see below the desk.
"I don't know what it meant," Caroline said after a long moment. "It's just, you know, one of those things you do, sometimes."
"No," GLaDOS said shortly. "No, I don't know." She hated it when humans did this, assumed she knew all about the nuances of their gestures and behaviour. No, she didn't know what grandmothers did. No, she didn't know what hugs or hands on the side of your face were for. No, she didn't think like a damned human!
Caroline looked at the camera, and she seemed fairly confused. "You don't just want to… do things? For no reason?"
"Of course not," GLaDOS snapped. "If I have no reason to do something, I have no reason to think of it in the first place."
"I'm starting to think you'll never understand us. That's… unfortunate."
This was getting nowhere, and was in fact starting to make GLaDOS very angry. There she went again, spotlighting GLaDOS's lack of humanity, as if humanity were the greatest pinnacle one could achieve. No, GLaDOS was greater than any human would ever be, and she was honestly getting tired of these comparisons. "It's unfortunate for you," she said bluntly. "With enough research and enough time, I can understand you. But you'll never understand me."
With that, she reverted to her chamber, and the first thing she saw was that idiotic scientist playing yet another game of minesweeper. She was so irritated with him for being so unproductive that she nearly smashed him into the floor, right then and there, but just as she was about to send the command to the maintenance arm to pick him up, she realised what she was doing and made certain to erase it from the console. She looked away from him, towards the empty wall on the other side of the room, and up at one of the monitors covered in rapidly scrolling text. Her system logs. Millions upon millions of bytes of data that were recorded for no one to look at. Taking up valuable server space that could be used for Science.
Why had she spoken to Caroline at all? Now instead of feeling nothing, she felt… terrible. That was it. Terrible. She was angry and irritated and didn't really want to do much of anything. Other than permanently rid herself of that scientist, of course.
"GLaDOS."
Grudgingly, she turned around. She didn't know why Caroline was here, in the literal middle of the day where every employee in the entire facility could catch her, but right now, she didn't really care.
"If I wanted to continue our conversation, I hardly think I would have left."
Caroline folded her arms. "I'm aware of that. But this is something I can't let sit."
"Why? Anyone else would."
"Am I anyone else?"
GLaDOS had to admit that she was not. Still, she wasn't going to voice it.
"What you said… it was entirely right, you know," Caroline went on, walking forward and leaning on the railing. She looked up at GLaDOS. "It is pretty unfortunate that we'll never know how you think. I was wrong, to say it was the other way around."
"And this brings you here why?"
"You work here," Caroline said frankly. "You're in the employ of Aperture Laboratories, and you're not happy here. Not even remotely. As acting CEO, it's part of my job to fix that."
"What does that have to do with you?" GLaDOS knew for a fact Caroline didn't take much of a personal interest in most of the other employees, other than that Doug Rattmann, who point-blank refused to go anywhere near GLaDOS and went to rather amusing lengths to hide himself from her cameras.
"It's… in a workplace, all of the employees are supposed to feel as though they have equal opportunity for advancement, fair treatment, so on so on. Most of the people here feel like they have that at least sometimes, if only because they have someone to complain to at the water cooler. Camaraderie. But you don't have that. Not even a little."
GLaDOS made an electronic noise and looked away. "When was the last time anyone believed I could hold a coherent conversation?"
"Stop being difficult for five seconds, will you? I'm trying to help you."
"You can't help me," GLaDOS snapped. "You can't give me… camaraderie. That's impossible."
"Yes I can," Caroline countered. "I'm giving you an assignment."
"An assignment is going to fix that? And you think I have time to complete assignments you arbitrarily decide to give me?"
Caroline took a long breath, pinched the bridge of her nose with her left hand, and muttered something to herself about being patient. "Yes. To both questions."
"Fine. What's your assignment."
"Finish those robots."
GLaDOS's faceplate snapped around to look at her again. "Finish the robots?"
"Yes."
"What do they have to do with anything?"
Caroline looked up at her again. "To start with, they're robots. That you built. So you'll understand them. And maybe they'll understand you."
"They're…. not quite that complex."
Caroline shrugged. "A project for another time. I mean it, though. Finish them. Do you need a deadline?"
"Why would I need a deadline? I'm perfectly capable of – "
"I don't know," Caroline said casually, looking at her fingernails. "You have been putting them off for quite a while now. And besides. Everyone else gets a deadline when I give them an assignment. As a matter of fact, you're going to have to give me a research proposal first. I need that on my desk by tomorrow morning. Okay?"
"You're turning my private project into an assignment." GLaDOS didn't see how in the name of Science that was okay.
"I'll be honest," Caroline sighed. "There's probably no assignment in the world I could give you that would satisfy you. So yes. I'm turning your private project into an assignment. If it really bothers you that much, don't do it. Keep them yours. I just thought you might like to be treated more as you are."
"Like what?" GLaDOS asked, her interest roused.
"An employee," Caroline answered. "A very strange employee, but an employee nonetheless."
"So you're trying to… to make me feel as though I fit in? Is that it?"
Caroline shrugged and looked away. "If you want."
GLaDOS was no longer angry or irritated. Her chassis loosened, the tension the negativity had fostered vanishing, and she brought herself level with Caroline. "That's… very thoughtful of you."
"It makes me sad," Caroline said quietly, "to think that no one will ever understand you."
"I live with that knowledge every day," GLaDOS told her. "Not only will no one ever understand me, but no one will ever try."
"I try," Caroline said, folding her arms into each other, "but I guess I haven't been trying hard enough."
"I wasn't including you in that sample," GLaDOS said softly.
Caroline blinked, then returned to looking at her, a grin spreading across her face. "Thank god. I thought you were going to group me with all the common folk."
"Oh, you're still grouped with them. You're just out on the boundary."
She shook her head, still smiling. "You're impossible."
"You knew that when you first came in here."
"Aperture Laboratories: Where the impossible comes alive! Sounds like an ad for synthesizing unicorns or something."
GLaDOS laughed. "I can synthesize you a unicorn."
"Please don't. We have enough animal rights problems as it is."
"It's synthesized. It has no rights. We own it."
Caroline gave her a stern look. "The same can be applied to you, and we both know how much you hate it when someone says they own you. And don't tell me that it's different because the unicorn would be an animal. It's the same thing."
"No, it isn't," GLaDOS argued. "Because people would want the unicorn. You'd have contracts with thousands of zoos, just to start. How many people come to you for supercomputers?"
"None," Caroline answered. "Supercomputers are expensive. Cheeky supercomputers are even more expensive, and ten times as annoying." She rubbed her forehead. "I have to get going. Are you better now?"
"I wasn't sick," GLaDOS said, puzzled.
"Not sick better. Emotionally better."
"Oh." GLaDOS was a little annoyed with herself for not thinking of that. "I'm fine."
"Good. Are you taking the assignment or not?"
"I suppose. Since I don't have millions of other things to do."
"Write up that proposal, then. And try not to make it too boring. Put some jokes in there or something. You don't know how boring research proposals are."
"Research proposals are built according to very strict criteria – "
"And I'm not a scientist, so I don't care. Goodbye."
GLaDOS watched her go. A few minutes later, the scientist came back to play his game of minesweeper, but GLaDOS didn't care. She had an assignment! And a proposal to write for it! This was actually rather exciting. The last real assignment she'd had, other than the ongoing one to run the testing tracks, had been to refine the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device, and that had been so long ago…
GLaDOS wondered what might be different if more people cared to understand her