Chapter Text
Part 131. The Harbour
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It took her almost three weeks, but Caroline finally got back to me with what she says are samples for Aperture’s visual update. I wouldn’t know. As it turns out, I can’t see them.
There are six sets, and they all look identical to me. I’ve been trying for over an hour to find some difference between any of them, but I can’t find a single one. I considered the possibility that there actually aren’t any, and she’s done this as some sort of prank, but I dismissed it almost immediately. She has always taken her art very seriously. It’s more likely that she simply thought – as I did – that this wouldn’t count as art. Unfortunately, it does. I can tell what objects she’s depicted in the sets, but they aren’t a close enough match to the listings I have for those objects in my library for me to see them the way I need to. I’m not so hamstrung by my age that I can’t tell she has sent me six mockups of a chair. I am so hamstrung by my age that I can’t tell the difference between these six mockups of a chair. I’m going to have to ask her to write up some binary descriptions. For all I know, she’s used six shades of white I’m not capable of seeing and it’s causing my vision to give up and pick the one it thinks is most likely, which happens to be the same one all six times.
“You finally hire a decorator?”
Oh, come on. She finally comes back and it has to be when I’m in the middle of something that’s giving me a hard time. No. I should have expected that. She always shows up when I’m making myself look bad.
“Yes,” I answer. Chell is grinning up at me from below the three monitors I have out. “It’s actually Caroline’s second job.”
“Second? Was the first installing booby traps outside the perimeter of that fence just in case someone you don’t like manages to wander by?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m going to train the wild animal I was gifted from another planet to do that. It’s much cheaper.”
She’s turned around to inspect the displays above her. “Someone gave you a deadly animal?”
“Two, actually. I killed the first one.”
She looks over her shoulder at me, eyebrow raised. Her hair, contained in a braid down her back, has gone almost fully grey. I don’t like it. I don’t want to think about the things that are creeping up on her, just as they’ve been creeping up on me.
“It was an accident. Really.”
“Oh, I believe you.” She points up towards the monitors. “What does she want you to do with these?”
“I’m supposed to choose one.” Wait. I can use this. “What do you think?”
“As far as I can tell, they’re all pretty much the same. But if I had to pick, I’d go with…” She squints at each of the displays in turn, attempting to discern the differences. And thank God for that. It’s likely if they’d been more varied I still wouldn’t have been able to tell them apart, but at least this way I don’t have to admit that to anyone.
“That one,” she says, indicating the third. “Don’t ask me why. They don’t seem to be that different from each other. No offence.”
“Why would I find that offensive?”
She turns to face me. “Because your kid made them?”
“She did,” I say. “She has also probably gone into such minute detail that only she knows where to look for it. She’ll want it to be perfect.”
“I wonder where she got that from,” Chell says, not even trying to hide how amused she is with herself. Well, she won’t find what I’m about to say next so humorous. She’s going to think I do, but I truly don’t.
“But you may also need glasses.”
She opens her mouth and then closes it again.
“I know how that sounds, coming from me. But I’m being serious. Humans over the age of -“
“Yes,” she interrupts. “I do. But it’s not like there are a lot of eye doctors and… and people who make glasses after the apocalypse.”
“I have the equipment here,” I tell her. “I have the equipment for most things. Don’t worry. We’ll do the procedure that doesn’t necessitate removing your eyes.”
She rolls said eyes and turns away from me. “Your ‘jokes’ aren’t funny, and they’re even less funny when you’re talking about stuff Aperture actually did .”
To be honest, the list of what Aperture didn’t do would probably be much shorter. “I know quite a few people who would disagree with you.”
“How many of them work for you?”
“How many members of the general public do you think I talk to on a regular basis?”
“Not very many,” she answers, “if your operating hours have anything to say about it.”
She seems annoyed with me. I’m honestly not sure why. She arrived with more… familiarity than I would have expected, but at the same time she seems to have forgotten… well, me. I was under the impression the way I talk wasn’t all that forgettable, but if anyone would manage to do accomplish that, it’s her. “I’ve become very busy since you left. But to you humans, it seems as though I just spend all day doing absolutely nothing, so I had to address the insistence on bothering me at all hours of the day.”
“I suppose I should feel honoured I was allowed in, then.”
I… am not sure how to respond to that. ‘Actually, I told the mainframe to exempt you from the rules for my visiting hours’ feels a little more personal than I want to be right now. Especially in light of the burning question I’ve had for months, and am going to have to ask at some point, for the sake of my own sanity. She left to find herself, and it may end up being that I don’t like the person she found. The thought sends an unpleasant sensation winding through my chassis, and it’s only with a lot of effort that I manage not to attempt to shake it off. I do squint momentarily, but she still has her back to me and so doesn’t see it. I wish I knew why I want so much for her to like me. Then I could take steps to prevent it ever happening again. Our relationship – if one even exists – is entirely in her hands, and the emotional turmoil it brings out in me is something I really don’t need.
Asking this is going to make me sound so utterly pathetic. She’s going to laugh at me, and I’m going to feel stupid and defensive, and I’m going to have to hide as much of it as possible because it will be confirmation of what I was afraid of.
“Chell, do you like me?”
She starts laughing as though I’ve said the funniest thing she’s ever heard. That bad feeling washes over me again, which is unfortunate because she’s turned around. “What kind of question is that? Of course I like you.”
“A serious one.” At least she isn’t able to tell just how embarrassed I am. And I shouldn’t be! This is yet another stupid human social nuance that nobody told me about, but I’m still expected to be able to identify and engage with accordingly. “You don’t call. You don’t write. You didn’t tell me where you were going or when you’d be back. And you ignored the message I sent you. I do have other friends, you know. They’re a lot better to me than you are, despite actually being around me more often.”
“Oh,” she says, her brow creasing a little. “I don’t have the ECHO anymore. I gave it to this little community way up north. It was hard enough to get help up there before the Combine. I thought they needed it more than I did.” She drums the fingers of her right hand against her left arm. “You must have sent your message after that.”
I turn away from her.
“What?”
“You couldn’t even have done me the courtesy of mentioning you gave it away before you gave it away?” I shake my core. “I don’t understand the way you treat me and, quite frankly, I’m getting tired of trying to figure it out. At least everyone else I know is able to explain their behaviour. You just act like it’s my own fault. Sometimes it is. But not this time.” Wheatley wouldn’t have laughed at me. He would have been horrified I felt the need to ask. “I don’t know what I am to you, and you think that’s funny. Well, it isn’t. But if that’s how you’re going to be, I want out. I’d rather focus my efforts on people who appreciate them. You don’t.”
“I do, GLaDOS,” Chell says, leaning forward. “I just thought you, you know. Didn’t need a lot of updates. That I just needed to check in now and again so you’d know I was still alive.”
That’s so utterly baffling that I look at her out of confusion. “You thought I was low maintenance ?”
She takes a breath to speak, and then doesn’t.
“I can literally see most of the people in my life ninety-nine percent of the time. Where on Earth did you get the impression I was a ‘check in periodically’ sort of person?”
“I thought that was what we already were ,” Chell says, lifting her hands. “Every time I see you, it’s like I never left. I don’t have to worry about – “
“It is?”
“Isn’t it?” She pushes her hair back with both hands. “Maybe something got lost here. If you don’t –“
“No,” I interrupt. “No, I was… concerned that wasn’t the case. Like I said. I don’t understand how you treat me. If I didn’t hear from Wheatley – or Claptrap – for a long time, I have no doubt that things would return to the status quo. But you’re… different. As you said. We don’t know each other very well. That, coupled with your vanishing and electing not to talk to me, doesn’t inspire confidence.”
She nods, though she directs it at her shoes, and a smile just barely pulls on the left corner of her lips. “I guess that’s the thing, GLaDOS. I started to think of you as… I don’t know. An institution.”
“A what?”
“You know. Something that… no matter where you go, or what happens to you, is exactly the same whenever you go back to it.”
“But I’m not the same.”
“You aren’t,” says Chell, “but you also are. I don’t know how to explain it to you. It’s kind of like how Carrie will always find you comforting, no matter how much time passes.”
“Are you saying you find me… comforting?” For some reason, I don’t find that as heart-warming as I think I’m supposed to. In fact, the very idea causes that bad feeling to settle in as though it doesn’t plan on leaving.
“Kinda,” she answers. “You change. Yeah. But you’re also always going to be what you are. It’s not a bad thing to be. And it’s… what I need out of you, if you can give it to me. A harbour.”
A harbour is something you forget about until you’re tired of being at sea. A harbour is something that sits there and waits for you to come back, because that’s the only reason it exists.
“Is that okay?”
No, Chell. It isn’t okay. This isn’t the compliment you think it is. You want me to always be here for you when you need me, and you want to give me nothing in return. That isn’t good enough. And I should tell you that.
But I won’t, because there’s no point in expecting more out of you than you can give me.
“Yes.”
She smiles, and it’s bittersweet. Not from her end. But its existence combined with the fact that I’m lying. I’m not good at it and she knows that. But she still can’t tell. Or maybe she just doesn’t care because it’s what she wanted to hear.
I hope she leaves soon.
“Hey, this is probably a long shot. But do you know where Gordon is? I can’t find anyone who’s seen him lately.”
Touching base with me is good enough. But she wants to see him.
It would have hurt less if she hadn’t come back at all.
I turn away again. I need a minute to gather myself. I want to be vindictive about this, but I can’t. I have to be the person I want her to be. Because… I don’t know. It’s the right thing to do. Something like that. And then I’m going to have to deal with all her emotions about it, even though she views me as some sort of immutable object she only has to pay attention to when she feels like it.
I haven’t calmed down, not at all, but I don’t have all day to answer. “I sent him to the future a few weeks ago.”
She stares at me with her mouth ajar.
Great. Just great. “What?”
“You sent him to the future ? First of all, how ? Second of all, you weren’t going to tell me about it?”
“Tell you what ?” I ask. “You told me it was a mutual marriage of convenience. That you didn’t care about him or your sons. He was also under that impression. And even if I had told you, you gave away the device I would have used to do it. So I don’t see how this is my fault.”
“Wouldn’t you be upset if I sent Wheatley to the future without telling you?!”
“Yes. Because I love Wheatley and I’ve made that very clear,” I say. “You told me you didn’t love Gordon. You changing your mind while wandering the Canadian tundra and electing not to tell me – or Gordon – is on you.”
She opens her mouth and then closes it.
“For what it’s worth, I am sorry,” I tell her – which is another lie, though it won’t be later, when I’m not so ensnared in my own emotions - “and if Wheatley went to the future without telling me, I would be sending drones to find him immediately so I could bring him back here and kill him. That being said. You and Gordon both told me you wouldn’t miss him.”
“Well, it looks like I do,” she says, throwing up her hands. “So that’s great.”
“I don’t know what you want me to do about it.”
“Fine!” she says, and now she folds her arms against her chest. “You’re right, GLaDOS. Are you happy now? Is that what you wanted to hear?”
I’m not going to take the bait. I’m not going to get angry. I’m a better friend than you, and you don’t deserve it, but what is my existence for if not doing things for humans that they don’t deserve. I pull the wall panels vertical in an attempt to keep my temper. There’s no way she won’t have noticed that, but there’s only so much I can contain at once. “You do not get to take your mistake out on me.”
She takes a long breath, but doesn’t say anything. I feel as though I failed her. I don’t know why. This problem isn’t my fault. This really isn’t fair at all.
“Look. There’s nothing I can do about it now. I don’t know when he went, and -“
“You don’t?”
I look her over for a minute. “Did he tell you about the G-Man?”
“Yeah,” she says.
“Well, he came to see me too. A few times. If he comes looking for Gordon, it’s me he’s going to think has that information. I don’t have it. No one has it. And nobody will until he comes back and tells us himself.” She’s looked away from me. “I know it doesn’t sound like it. But he’s safer this way.”
“He must have liked that,” she says quietly. “Talking to someone who understood what happened to him.”
“You can see for yourself,” I tell her. “I will send you all the footage from those days.”
Her face moves in what I think is surprise. “You will?”
“It will be raw footage,” I warn her. “It may not be very fun to watch.”
“That’s all right,” she says. “It’s better than what I have.”
Which is absolutely nothing.
“Here.” I produce one of my remaining ECHOs and she takes it. “I’ll send it there once I’ve extracted it.” And converted it to a format the device can play, given all of Aperture’s file formats are proprietary.
“Thank you,” she says, staring at it.
“There’s a map with a marker for the vision test, if you want to get that done.”
She looks up at me from beneath her brow. “Getting rid of me?”
She’s upset. She’s upset, and that’s why she’s acting like this. Antagonising her would be satisfying, but it would also make things worse. “Chell. I am a very busy person. You already showed up out of the blue to interrupt me, and I let you. I am happy to see you,” - or I would be, under different circumstances - “but I can’t simply stop what I’m doing according to your whims. You have no idea what the breadth of my responsibilities are now.” Nor does it appear that you care. But I’m going to have to get over that.
“Yeah, GLaDOS, I know,” she says, gripping the ECHO in one hand and shaking her head. “You’re way bigger and smarter and more important than the rest of us. I’ll make an appointment next time like the peasant I am.”
I’m not going to say anything. I’m going to let her have her precious last word, and I am going to lock the door and not trip her or drop something on her or reconfigure the fence so that it vaporises all of the hair on her body, including her eyelashes. I am going to be the bigger person despite the fact that she seems to have an allergy to not gravely insulting me every time she sees me. And I didn’t even do anything to deserve it. I was nice. I was thoughtful. I calmly explained that I had already made an exception for her and that I had things I needed to go back to. And she got angry anyway.
Humans are incredibly difficult to please after all.
//
“So, which one did you like?” Caroline asks about an hour later. I’ve had nowhere near enough time to myself to have this conversation. But I did tell her it was all right to come here, so I’m going to have to behave.
“Chell picked the third one,” I answer without preamble. Caroline’s optic narrows immediately.
“Chell was here?”
Right. Caroline has some sort of beef with Chell. And you. And everyone else she thinks slighted me. I suppose I can’t blame her. It’s the sort of thing I do. That doesn’t make it any less annoying coming from someone else, unfortunately.
“She’s here right now.”
“Okay, well, I asked you to pick. So if you’d do that, I can get started – “
“I can’t , Caroline,” I interrupt with too much force. But it’s too late now. “ She could barely tell the difference between the samples you sent, and she’s human. How on Earth did you expect me to?”
She’s staring at me as though she’s unable to comprehend what I just said. Which is possible. Not only is she too attached to me, she has a hard time with the concept of me being unable to do something. It’s not an encouraging combination.
“I forgot to send the translations,” she says finally. As though pointing out the obvious is helpful at the moment.
“It wouldn’t have mattered. You must have a favourite. Just use that one.” I’m snapping at her because I’m upset with Chell, and that isn’t fair. All I can do about it right now is get her to leave as soon as possible. Before she starts arguing that there’s a clear difference between those six shades of white and if I look long enough I’ll be able to see it.
“No,” she says. “I failed the assignment. There’s no point in an update only I can see. I’ll do it again. Dad will be a good benchmark for the average spectrum of colours everyone can process, right?”
“… yes,” I answer. Now I feel bad for the way I’m talking to her ahead of schedule. Normally that wouldn’t kick in until much later.
“It’s probably better if I ask him to pick, too. Even with translations, you won’t be able to see the furniture and stuff until it’s been uploaded into your library.”
“Basically.”
She nods once. “Cool. I’ll get on that.”
Did I unfavourably anticipate her behaviour because I thought it would have been in-character for her, or was I simply… looking for a reason to take things out on her?
I really hope it wasn’t the latter.
“Did she upset you again?” Caroline asks, and I fail to come up with any words to answer her with. And that, of course, is in itself an answer. She looks away from me.
“You have real friends now. You don’t need her anymore.”
I do. I hate it. But I do.
//
“GLaDOS,” Chell says, her voice very quiet, “do you have a minute?”
What now? Haven’t you already asked for enough out of me today? It’s been six hours and I’m already tired of being your harbour. Wheatley should have tried harder to get me to go to sleep when he did.
He really should have , says the mainframe.
“Yes.”
“You were… you were very kind to Gordon before he left.” Her voice sounds strange. I can’t quite place why. “I just wanted to say thank you.”
I don’t understand. “I didn’t do it for you.”
“I know,” she says. “I’m trying to tell you that I appreciate what you did.”
Oh my God. She wasn’t crying , was she? Why would she be…
She thinks he’s never coming back. That she might never see him again. And in all honesty, that… is a distinct possibility.
She’s started to mourn him and she came to me. Why? Doesn’t she know I can’t help her? Doesn’t she know I can’t even help myself?
No. She doesn’t know that. She doesn’t know that, and she doesn’t want to, because that would destroy the image she has of me. Or the one she wants to have, anyway.
“That’s all,” she says. “Goodnight.”
I don’t want to do this right now. I want to go to bed. Wheatley is right there waiting for me. Well. Not really. He’s asleep and has no way of knowing if I’m next to him or not. But I was about to be. I wish I was.
“Do you…” Do I say ‘want’ or ‘need’? If someone asked me if I wanted to talk, I would say no. Because I wouldn’t want to. But I might need to. I would probably need to. “… need to talk?”
I only have the one light on. It’s Claptrap’s night light. What that means is that I can’t see her that well. I don’t know if that would even help. Human body language and facial expressions are hard. Too many moving parts. Sometimes they don’t even realise they’re moving them.
“Would you mind watching the footage with me?”
I would mind. I would mind a lot. Most of it has me in it. I don’t want to watch that. But it’s what she wants. And it will be easier than talking. “All right.”
She comes and sits down on my right. I don’t know if she did that because she noticed Wheatley is on my left or if it’s a coincidence, but it eliminates my having to ask her to move. I pull down a monitor and start the first part of what I sent her, muting it for myself so I don’t have to listen to it, at least. But this also results in making me feel a bit… awkward. I don’t want to watch. She doesn’t want to talk. I’m trying to be nice, so I can’t go to sleep. So I just sort of have to idle here until she leaves. If she’s even planning on doing that.
The only sounds in here – other than those of myself, which I always filter out because of how insanely annoying that would be to listen to all day long – have to do with her breathing. It’s really not as consistent as you would think. It’s awful. Even Wheatley’s little fans spin at a predictable, consistent RPM. Lungs are automatic, until they aren’t. I don’t know how anyone could believe in an ultimate creator when they have nonsense like that installed.
This near-silence is almost oppressive. The longer it goes on, the worse I feel about sending Gordon away. Well. Giving him the means to leave. I’m not responsible for that. It was his choice. Short of not building the time machine – and let’s be honest. Who could blame me for not turning down that opportunity? – I couldn’t have stopped him from…
“I never told my mother I loved her before she left.”
She gives no indication she’s listening. But she might be.
“I never told her a lot of things. I regret all of it, every day. But she’d be very upset to hear what I’ve been doing to myself all these years. What I’m trying to say is…” I don’t know what I’m trying to say. I shouldn’t have said anything. “They loved us for who we are. That means even the parts of us that didn’t say enough, or said the wrong thing, or made the wrong decision. All the things we did wrong… they don’t matter anymore. Maybe they never really did. You made your mistakes, but that’s all right. They’re part of what he loves about you.”
After I’ve said it, I feel…
I don’t know. I don’t know, and I –
Damn it, Caroline. And damn you.
I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.
Chell doesn’t react. I may not really be there at all, for her, other as some vaguely ever-present concept she has anchored herself to. I’ll work on being all right with that. I did agree to it, after all. And if this is all she’s capable of… I have other friends to give me what I need.
I put a blanket next to her. She might end up needing it. It’s cold in here. For humans. She doesn’t seem to notice, but that’s all right.
It also means I don’t have to pay attention to what’s on the screen in front of us, which I’m personally quite relieved about. I really do not record well…
//
I fell asleep at some point.
That never happened when I was younger. I didn’t feel great after staying up all night, but I could do it. Now I go to sleep whether I want to or not.
If you say so, says the mainframe. I take a minute to check if I said anything to offend it yesterday. There doesn’t seem to be.
And you’re annoyed why ?
For someone who asked me to give them a schedule, you sure play fast and loose with it. I have to rearrange it literally every day. Why even have one if you’re just going to constantly ignore it?
All right. I can see why it would be unhappy about that. But before I can say as much, it continues,
Not only that, but you keep interfering with my schedule! I don’t have time to finish half your internal maintenance because you decide when to go to sleep and when to wake up seemingly at random! I thought I was finally going to be able to get your defragmentation done – which takes a full eight hours, by the way – and then a human wanders in outside of the operating hours on your schedule and you decide to watch TV with her until you literally can’t anymore. That’s annoying!
I really do need to let it do proper maintenance. Now, more than ever. And while it does need to be comfortable with not strictly adhering to a set timetable, I have been spontaneously ignoring it and subsequently rendering it useless.
You’re right. But what I was doing last night was very important. I don’t want her to end up like me.
That leaves it speechless.
I want her to be able to forgive herself. The way that I can’t. I’m sorry, Caroline. I know you don’t want this for me. But I don’t know how to change it. She made a mistake she may never be able to correct. She has no one to turn to. I am all she has, now that Gordon is gone. Unless you count her children, which I wouldn’t. If Gordon thought his relationship with them was beyond salvaging, hers must be even worse. Somehow. Look. I’m not a fan of it, either. She’s not a very good friend. But neither was I, for a very long time. It’s my turn to be the person on the other side.
All right, it says finally. I think it was trying to take a minute to hide that it’s still unhappy with the situation, but it didn’t work. Which reminds me of someone else who’s going to be unhappy with me.
He already asked why you were still asleep and I already explained it to him. He said some more stuff after that, but I stopped listening because it was something about how great he thinks you are and I didn’t feel like hearing it.
Oh. I may have to take a look myself. In the interest of… my employee file. Which I definitely have. Thank you. As for my… not adhering to the schedule, I –
Whatever you’re about to say, don’t , it interrupts. You need one, but you can’t keep to it. You have way too much personal stuff going on. So I’m just going to have to… figure that out. Somehow.
If you don’t like the job, you don’t have to do it.
I don’t think that’s how being an assistant works, says the mainframe. If I’m setting you a schedule you can’t follow, I am obviously doing something wrong.
That was how it worked when I made the schedules.
Should I wait until Chell leaves to do that? Since she has those special exceptions?
I shake my core even though it can’t see it. I think Chell is going to have to learn to wait like everyone else.
Oh, it says, seeming taken aback. I didn’t realise things went so badly yesterday.
They didn’t. I check and then send over the opening procedures. It’s for me. A reminder that we don’t want the same things.
Does that feel… bad?
It’s a better description than any I’ve managed to come up with. It does.
Losing a friend that you still kind of have. That sounds like it sucks.
I didn’t lose anything. Wheatley is with Caroline. Going over her new designs, most likely. I should have had her do that to begin with. We all know I’m not much for aesthetics. It just feels like I did. And I don’t know which is worse.
How about this: she has to make an appointment, but it doesn’t have to be in the morning.
That’s a good compromise.
Don’t worry. I’ll handle her if she puts up a fuss.
That’s good, because if I were to do it I would likely just give in and let her do as she likes. It seems sort of pathetic, to need my interactions with her moderated, but… even Wheatley has to respect when I’m busy. Or when I simply don’t want to see him. I didn’t anticipate having to set any boundaries with her, especially given she’s rarely here. But that was before she told me she thinks of me as more of a concept than a person.
She hasn’t learned anything since the conversation we already had about that. And I do know how that makes me feel.
Disappointed.