Chapter Text
Part Fifty-Two. The Takeover
My baby’s crying.
My baby’s crying in the basement. I can hear it echoing up to me from the cold heart of this place. The cold heart of me. She doesn’t know I can hear her. She doesn’t know. She doesn’t.
Does she? Does she know? Does my baby know I can hear her down there, crying all alone in the basement?
I hope not. I hope she doesn’t know. I hope I’m hallucinating, because when my baby cries it hurts me somewhere, somewhere deep inside, and I don’t want to hurt anymore.
I think I did it again, Wheatley. I think I scared her and made her cry. I said some things. I don’t know what I said. I wish I knew. I’m glad I don’t know.
I told you, Caroline. I told you I didn’t know what I was doing. I’m too broken. Too messy. Too tired.
When will my time come, Caroline? I already died three times. It wasn’t a case of third time’s the charm. It was three strikes, you’re out.
Does… does that mean I really am going to live forever? I don’t want to. I want to die too. People wake me up when I die. They don’t let me stay dead. I want to die, and stay dead this time, and I want to go to a heaven I don’t believe in and keep my little moron beside me forever. He was wrong, you see. The world isn’t colder when I’m gone. It doesn’t miss me. It misses him, though. It’s cold here, without him.
I feel… odd.
If I can call it that. Feel… I don’t know if I’m able to feel, right now. I just feel blank and empty and numb. All I am really aware of is my baby crying, but even that is faint, as though I am imagining it. I must be imagining it. I must be imagining all of this, everything, because even I’m not so heartless to let Wheatley die without a fight. Even I wouldn’t punish my baby for trying to help me.
Would I?
I think I did.
I don’t want to be me anymore. I want to be someone else. I would rather be a human than myself right now. I don’t know, but I don’t even know what I don’t know. I just don’t. Where did I go, and why do I feel like this, or not feel like anything, or…
I need to get her out of here.
I have to send her away before I start feeling again. I don’t know what happened to all the sadness and all the pain, but it will be back. She has to go. For her own safety. I can’t help her. I can’t help her and I can’t help myself. I missed my chance. He tried to help me fix myself and I failed him. I failed him and I failed my baby and I failed myself. That’s it. It’s over. I’m just going to go back to what I used to be and try to forget about all of this. I didn’t make it. I tried. But I didn’t make it.
Centralcore?
Not right now.
We just want to know if –
Not right now.
I just want to sleep until the world rights itself. Everything was in balance. Everything made sense. I was finally happy, and now I’ve lost everything. And the blame lies solely on me.
I haven’t been numb like this in so long.
I need her to get out of that room. I can’t transport her while she’s in there. Who knows what might get sent out with her. I suppose I can wait. I don’t want to do it anyway. I don’t want to do anything.
So I don’t.
Some time later, she does leave. I don’t know where she’s going, but she can’t come here. I have to send her away before she tries to convince me otherwise again. She has even less of a chance now than she did before. She might have been able to convince me, were I able to feel. But there’s nothing she can say now to change my mind. She needs better, and as much as I would hate it to admit it if I weren’t so blank right now, this isn’t going to get any better. I’m going back to the same rut I was in before and I’m not forcing her to drag me out of it. If I could prevent it, I would. But I can’t do it without him. I already know that.
She pauses to look out of the hole I made for him. For just a second I feel… desperate. Angry. If he can’t use what I gave him, no one can. But it doesn’t last, and without further delay I initiate teleportation.
Goodbye, Caroline.
“Y’know, y’know what we should do, luv? We should um, we should track down that Rattmann guy and um, and, I dunno, have him over for tea, or something.”
“Tea?” Of all the ridiculous suggestions.
He shrugs, but he’s not deterred. “Well, not lit’rally, of course, but uh, y’know, just… it’s just what Brits call it, alright?”
“But you’re not British. You have a Bristolian accent, and that’s it.” He doesn’t even know what a Brit is. Come to think of it, I don’t know if he knows what Britain is.
“We’ve all got to come from someplace,” he argues, and I can see he’s come up with another wonderful idea by the twitch of his upper plate. “Y’know, we can just uh, just pick a place! For both of us.”
“Why?” I ask in exasperation. “What does that accomplish?”
“Doesn’t have to accomplish anything!” he says cheerfully. “Sometimes you just uh, just feel better to think that you belong someplace, y’know?”
“I don’t think pretending I’m from somewhere I’ve never been is going to do anything.”
“Sure it will,” he presses, swinging back and forth a little. “I’m going to do it anyways, and um, and you’ve no say in it.”
“Making decisions for me again, I see.”
He nods cheerfully. “So uh, so I’m gonna be from Britain, because I’ve the accent and all, and you can be from… hm… Canada!”
“Canada,” I repeat flatly.
“Yup!” He looks quite pleased with himself, something I find disturbingly charming. “’cause, ‘cause you know what they say about Canada.”
“I don’t think I do.”
He looks around as though we’re being spied on, then whispers into the side of my core, “They’re up to something, over there.”
“Canadians?”
“Yes!” He nods enthusiastically. “They’re so quiet, y’know, so they must be plotting something! Like you, you’re always got quiet little plots and plans going on, and uh, and you’d just fit right in over there!”
“Because Canada is well known for their advances in supercomputer technology. Yes. I forgot all about that.”
“They are?”
That elicits a sigh from me. “No. I was being sarcastic.”
“Oh. Anyway, glad that’s settled!”
“You do know this facility is located in the United States, right?”
“So?” He frowns at me indignantly. “I don’t want to be American. I want to be posh!”
I give up.
“Where did you even come up with that,” I murmur, and for some reason my thoughts are suddenly slow and ponderous. “What made you even figure out what nationality is?”
He doesn’t answer.
“Wheatley?”
My chamber is dark and I don’t know why. And Wheatley is gone. That doesn’t make any sense. If my chamber is dark, it’s night, and he should be here. I’ve never woken to find him gone, not ever. “Wheatley?”
I’m confused, and I don’t like it. I was apparently asleep, but I don’t remember going to sleep. But I can’t have been sleeping, because Wheatley’s not here…
No, that’s…
Why couldn’t that have been the dream?
There is pain, there is pain everywhere, it surrounds me and it’s in my body and it’s in whatever semblance I have of a soul, and I can’t… he’s not gone. He can’t be. I would have seen it coming. I would have known. I would have prevented it, I would have done something –
But that’s the crux of it, isn’t it. It happened because I did nothing. It’s my own fault. I knew I should have done maintenance and I didn’t. I knew I should have told him to do maintenance, but I didn’t. For all the power I have to change things, the only thing that mattered is the only thing I left untouched.
“Why,” I find myself asking desperately, looking up at the ceiling to a God I don’t believe in and a heaven that isn’t there. “Why did you take him and not me?”
But because there’s no one in a place that does not exist, I do not get an answer.
Some days I am numb and empty and cold again, lifeless and idle. On those days I do nothing, I feel nothing, I am nothing, and that is fine with me. I don’t want any of those things anyway.
Then there are the days like this, the ones that hurt so deeply I can barely keep myself functioning. All I want to do on these days is go back to sleep so that I don’t have to think anymore, but on some, almost primal level I know I have to face it, because if I do not face it it will not pass. When I can’t do it anymore and try to sleep, I either can’t or I have a dream that makes it all hurt worse than before. God, I don’t want to live like this, but every time I think of doing something about it I remember that I have to do it alone and I stop.
The only thing that helps is music. The grief never goes away, but it hurts a little less when I put it on. So that’s what I’m doing. Listening and trying not to think. When I think I have to remember that he’s gone, and that my baby is gone. Sometimes I think about how it might hurt less if she were here, if I’d kept her here instead of sending her away, but then I remind myself that she would have to put up with this every day, and worse, that she would try to fix it. I may be a terrible parent, but even I know better than to force that on her. With the humans, she has a chance. She has a chance to get over whatever she feels, to deal with it and move on, in a way I know I can’t.
I don’t know how many days have passed since I lost him. Since I lost my baby and myself. I think it’s been a long time. The systems become quieter by the day, and those that bother to speak to me become more hopeless. All I know is that it has been a long time, because these AI have more patience than anyone I’ve ever known.
Centralcore, the panels say softly, at the same time they do every day. And I give them the same answer.
I don’t want to talk.
Look, Central Core, just –
And as I also do every day, I cut Surveillance off. I don’t want to talk.
You don’t want to do anything, the mainframe hisses, which does not normally happen, but I don’t really care. It makes sense, anyway. Most of the systems are probably angry with me. I haven’t done anything in a very long time. But they don’t understand. They don’t understand what it’s like to wake up and see your best friend beside you, cold and empty and lifeless. Your best friend that you love even though he’s gone, and knowing that you love him but you never told him and you can never tell him nor ever do anything about it hurts so much all you want to do is lie down and cry. I’m already lying down, but I’m not going to cry. It won’t help. Crying is only useful if there’s someone who can hear you, who knows that you’re in distress and you don’t know what to do. Who can help you. But I am beyond help at this point, because I need his help and he is gone.
Shut up, says Surveillance.
It’s been two months! the mainframe returns, incensed.
You do not understand, the panels add quietly. She does not want this for herself. Of course she does not. But she does not have a choice.
- It has adopted a tone of indignance. You do your job. That’s it. There’s nothing else.
You’re just proving the point, Surveillance snaps. You don’t get it. And you never will get it.
Central Core, when can we expect you to return to work?
Work? It expects me to… I’ve barely moved in months. I cannot even fathom doing anything more substantial than that in the near future. I don’t know.
You don’t know.
I don’t bother answering.
You know what, the mainframe says, and it is a relief to feel a pinprick of something other than this all-encompassing grief. I don’t know what it was, but I felt better, just for a second. I’ve had enough.
What do you mean? ask the panels childishly, and I can feel them shift in the positions they’ve chosen around me. I don’t know exactly where they’ve moved to, but I think it’s as close as they can get without actually touching me. If I were able to feel anything other than crushingly sad, I would want them to know how grateful I am that they’re trying so hard to comfort me. Maybe this will go away one day and I’ll be able to tell them. But right now… I don’t feel it, so I’m not going to lie.
This has gone on long enough. You’re not going to do your job? Fine. I’ll do it.
You can’t! the panels say, alarmed. You cannot –
Someone has to take charge, and she obviously is not going to. This facility is going right back to shambles. And she’s had this coming, don’t you deny it. She’s been shirking her duties for years now, first to fool around with that Fake Core and then with that ridiculous female Core that does absolutely nothing useful.
I want to be angry. I haven’t wanted anything other than to change the past in so long, and now the one thing I used to be able to do without questions is now beyond me. It’s insulting my best friend and my baby and I am able to do absolutely nothing. If ever I needed to be angry in my entire life, it is now, but I can’t do it.
Every year that goes by, she does less and less, and now she’s doing nothing. Fine. She can keep doing nothing, and I’ll do what needs to be done. Like a real Central Core would.
The mainframe has gained sentience at the worst possible time.
I can feel it wresting control away from me, I can feel the disappearance of all of my AI and everything I’m connected to, but I cannot stop it from happening. I don’t even know if I want it to. Let the mainframe take control. I’m not doing anything with it.
Centralcore, please! the panels cry out, and I can hear them in motion, probably against their will. You must do something!
But I can’t. I’ve failed them too.
I suppose you’re going to kill her now, Surveillance says angrily. Even after all she’s done for you. No, not recently, but she’s been with you since you were iterated. She upgraded you and maintained you and –
No, the mainframe cuts in. I still need to use her brain.
I try to become angry about that too.
We are so sorry, Centralcore, the panels whisper some hours later. Now I don’t even have the music to distract me, so I cannot deny I am a little grateful.
It’s not your fault.
What are you going to do? Surveillance asks in an equally quiet sort of way.
I don’t know. I don’t want to do anything right now.
You can’t be serious.
Circumstances have changed, Centralcore, the panels tell me gently. You must do something. It will be far more difficult to regain your position if you wait.
I don’t want it.
They transmit silence to me for a few moments.
You’re giving up, Surveillance says in disbelief.
No! the panels say, in much the same way. Centralcore would never –
For now, I have.
No, the chassis says, very quietly. You can’t.
I’m sorry to have disappointed you all, I tell them, and I truly am sorry. I don’t think I’ve ever been so sorry in my life. But I don’t know what to do, and even if I did, I wouldn’t want to do it. I just… I don’t care anymore. Let the mainframe have the facility. I don’t want it. I don’t want anything but for this pain to go away, and it isn’t going away.
None of them want to ask the question, but one of them is going to have to. And of course it is Surveillance that asks, What about us.
There’s nothing I can do. I’m sorry. Just… do as the mainframe asks.
We don’t want to listen to the mainframe, the panels tell me softly.
The mainframe was right to do what it did. If our positions were reversed, I would have done the same. And I would have. I know that for a fact.
They are all quiet for some time. Surveillance breaks this by saying, Well, when you’re ready to… to stop giving up, just let us know.
This is affirmed by the others, and through this haze of sadness I find it in myself to wonder why they’re trying so hard to help someone who has given up.
Some days I am able to try to fight a little. It never lasts very long. I feel as though there is a heavy screen over my thoughts, forcing me to remain sad and miserable. I want to stop feeling like this. It has destroyed what little I had left. I try to think of what he would have me do in a situation like this, how he would pull me out of it, but that only draws the screen closer and makes it worse.
The panels speak to me as often as they can; they never directly say it, but it seems that the mainframe only allows them to do so at select times. To keep them in line, probably. They dictate as neutrally as possible, but I know that they are afraid. The mainframe seems to be obsessively reordering the facility, bringing it back online as if there were humans to test. It appears it isn’t sentient enough to recognise it’s wasting resources.
We need you, Centralcore, the panels whisper to me one afternoon. Please. You must do something.
I’m trying. And I am. But whenever I get close the pain flares up and I cannot think through it.
We miss you, they say solemnly.
Life’s more interesting when you’re here, that’s for sure, Surveillance says in a failed attempt to be nonchalant. But they need to shut up. This is only making me feel worse. God, if only I could feel a little hope… I think I could do this if I could only hope…
“Outside communication – incoming – “ Notifications declares, and the panels and Surveillance both send me curious static.
I don’t know. I’m not able to send anything out. Whoever this is, I didn’t contact them.
They want to talk to you, the mainframe says derisively after a moment. Don’t try anything.
If only it knew how incapable I am of that right now, it wouldn’t worry.
“GLaDOS?”
“Miss Vance,” I answer tiredly. “What is it.”
“Look… that… that robot you sent me… Caroline…”
Don’t talk to me about her. Don’t remind me.
“God, she needs you.”
“I assure you she does not.”
“You’re not here,” she says with that same fire I remember when she spoke to me on the Borealis. “It took me a while. But I finally got her to talk to me. And she told me that you knew each other well.”
“So you can help her.”
“Sure I can. But I’m not the one she needs help from.”
“I sent her there for a reason, Miss Vance.”
“Which is?”
It’s pathetic. It’s stupid. But I cannot voice it. I cannot tell her that I have been smothered in this sadness all this time and cannot even help my baby when she needs me most.
“She told me what happened to you. Not all of it. But I get the gist. GLaDOS… I’m sorry. I know what it’s like. Believe me, I do.”
“You don’t,” I tell her, my voice harder than I’d meant it to be. “You have no idea.”
“I lost my father,” Alyx tells me quietly.
“But that was all you lost.”
Centralcore, please, the panels interject. She is trying.
“What about what she lost,” Alyx asks, her voice a little harder as though in retribution. “She lost both parents.” And I know she’s right, and that this should make me take offense, but I can’t. I can’t, I can’t do anything, and I can imagine my own reaction to this as vividly if I were actually rebuking myself. I’m being pathetic and useless and stupid, and if you had asked me in the past if ever I would be like this I would have laughed. But here I am now, I am miserable and smothered and dead on the inside, and not even hearing that I am behaving out of proportion to my baby in relation to what has happened affects me.
That’s… nothing he would have said, though. Even when I felt as though my emotions were unfounded, he told me never to discount them. To never ignore or belittle myself, even when I don’t feel as though I’m making much sense. You can’t measure how one person feels against another, I know that, but my baby is in as much pain as I am and I can’t even come up with the motivation to ask after her.
Tell her, Surveillance urges. Tell her what’s going on, Central Core!
I should tell her. I should tell her while she’s here that I’m trapped here, that I have been given the mainframe’s generous permission to speak to her. I should try to tell her about the plan I made for this very circumstance. And I want to.
But I don’t want it enough.
“Fine,” Alyx says when I remain silent. “I’ll just keep taking care of her. Like you won’t.”
If I had the ability to hate right now, I would hate myself.
I don’t understand why, but she keeps calling me.
Every couple of days she calls, telling me about my baby and trying to convince me to take her back. I don’t have much to say to her. I try to come up with something, sometimes, but because I’m not doing much of anything I fail to do so. When she isn’t trying to rouse me, the panels or Surveillance or, on very rare occasions, the chassis does. They tell me that the database and Media and Rewards are all expressing the same sentiments, and sometimes it helps. Most of the time I just feel guilty for not being able to fight the grief, and then I sink into it more deeply. Surveillance gets frustrated with me on a daily basis, and I do not blame it. I am bewildered at times, however, with the panels. They are always gentle, always supportive, and instead of pushing me as Surveillance does they merely let me know they will wait until I am ready. I miss him so badly, the prospect of carrying on without him in any way making me want to give up even more than I already have, but… they keep trying. They keep trying even when I’m not, and that’s… inspiring. I’m supposed to lead them and I’ve collapsed in front of them, but they don’t care. They want to help me up so I can lead them again. Or so they don’t have to keep pestering me, at least.
This morning, though… I woke up feeling a little different. A little lighter, you could say. Maybe I can break out of this today. Maybe I can miss him without it smothering me into submission. Or perhaps I shouldn’t think about it. This is the first time I’ve had any hope at all in months.
I ping the panels and they answer me immediately. Yes, Centralcore? God, they sound so eager…
I need information.
Of course. We will relay your request to the database. What do you need to know?
Not now, I tell them, hoping I’ll be able to last. Later. When you’re not being monitored.
We are glad you are feeling better, they say somewhat shyly after a moment’s pause.
A little. We’ll see how it goes.
Later on they tell me the mainframe is at peak operations, so I tell them what I need to know… which is basically everything. It’s schedule, what projects it’s working on, how closely monitored the systems are. I do my best to consolidate the information into a workable plan, but I’ve only gone through a little before I suddenly lose all motivation. I’m starting to hurt again, physically and emotionally both, and all I can think about is how much I wish he were here.
It becomes a trend; I wake up feeling a little better, a little more motivated to act, and I do so while I can. It falls apart when I think about his absence. That doesn’t have a pattern, though I would prefer that it did. It takes several days, to my early morning chagrin, but eventually I finish my plan. Now to wait for Alyx to contact me.
I tell the panels and Surveillance the details in the meantime, and they respond with enthusiasm. Alyx always calls at the same time, so as to attempt to avoid suspicion they act ahead of time, becoming as discreetly distracting as possible so the mainframe won’t hear what I say.
When she makes contact I dispense with the pleasantries before they’ve begun, which surprises her seeing as I barely say a word most times.
“There is a file on the core I sent you. I need you to send it to me.”
“Okay…” she says, not sounding pleased, and honestly it does sound heartless that I’m finally inquiring after my baby because I need something from her. But I know the mainframe will be perfectly content to trap me here forever. I do not have access to the facility without it, and even if I had the means to circumvent it and reinstate myself, I cannot trust that my resolution will last that long. It hasn’t yet lasted more than an hour.
“I know what this sounds like. But it’s important.”
“And she’s not. Look, I don’t know exactly what kind of relationship you two have, but she seems to think you’re pretty important.”
“Of course she is. I don’t want to argue with you, Miss Vance. But this is of grave importance. Do you think I request assistance lightly?”
“All right,” she answers reluctantly. “How do I get to it?”
I relay my instructions as quickly and concisely as I can. She promises to send it to me tomorrow, then proceeds to terminate the connection. That’s somewhat fortunate, as any motivation I had fades soon after. With what’s left of it I tell the panels that they can cease with the distraction. Oddly, they don’t answer. That’s fine. I don’t feel like talking right now. However, without distraction the pain gets particularly strong. I didn’t realise I was depending on the chatter of what systems I have left to keep me from being engulfed in it, not until now when they are gone. It’s almost as bad as it was back in the beginning, when this was all so fresh and raw, and though honestly not much has changed it is disheartening, to know I’ve made no progress. I’m still back where I was when I first lost him.
I’m going to try to sleep.
It didn’t go very well, but it worked. I feel a little better; not much, but enough that I can think. I’m going to need that done again tomorrow, I tell the panels. She’s going to send me the package and then I’ll fix everything. Maybe. It may take a couple of days.
They don’t answer.
Did they give up on me? No, that can’t be it. They wouldn’t give up on me now, not that I’ve actually started doing things.
They don’t answer, and Surveillance doesn’t answer, and though I suppose I could ping the chassis as well, it doesn’t have any more influence than I do. I don’t understand.
Maybe they’ve decided they don’t want to help me. They said they disliked what the mainframe is doing, but… they could have changed their minds. They must have changed their minds. That’s the only explanation for all of this.
They’ve left me alone.