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Aperture was cold.
This, on its own, was not unusual. The temperature of the facility was usually kept just slightly shy of comfortable, and Chell's favoured jumpsuit could only do so much, even when she deigned to wear it in a way that it actually covered her shoulders. That said, the outer chambers were distinct from the central matrix of the facility in that they seemed to actually be affected by surface temperature; at least marginally. In the outskirts, where Chell's explorations and idle wanderings often carried her, patches of vegetation from the years of neglect still bloomed in the cracks between panels. Chell imagined that GLaDOS knew about this, but neither had ever said anything about it. Remarkably, in one particularly high spot, if Chell stood at the right high point and looked at the tarnished side of a panel just right, she could swear she could see natural light and feel a very gentle draft.
Admittedly, that could very well just be her imagination though. Chell thought briefly of her time in old aperture, over a year ago now, where currents of air had carried the smell of dust and decay with their damp caress and the wind in her hair was reminiscent of a wasteland storm. There was no real air movement down in old aperture. The illusion of life coinciding with a place so devoid of it. She didn't actually know how that worked; she would have to ask GLaDOS about that later.
The fact of the matter was, Aperture was colder than usual. And Chell was uncomfortable with this. She wondered, sometimes, if she was getting embarrassingly used to the creature-comforts of day-to-day life; a nice bed, suitable challenge with the voluntary tests, edible food, good conversation. It was strange, for someone who had spent so much of her life so entirely isolated to suddenly be constantly surrounded by another person.
The former test subject rose to her feet, moving from the moss-covered ledge where she'd been watching the light filter through the side of the panel. She dusted herself off, then picked a stem of dead plant to roll between her fingers as she walked back towards the central chambers. Her boots clicked on the cracked tile as she walked the familiar route. The closer she got to the central chamber, the less damaged her surroundings became; GLaDOS liked things pristine; this was the best compromise the two could come to. Chell took a deep breath of the air, and while it was usually cool and acrid, this was the first time she'd felt a slight burn of cold in her lungs. She breathed out, and in front of her face, she could see a small cloud of steam. It really was that cold.
Eventually, Chell wandered within the well monitored central matrix of aperture. The walls here were uniform and panelled. Cameras were spaced efficiently around her. She glanced up, and caught the gaze of one of the red lights; she knew that GLaDOS was watching her. Chell shifted from foot to foot, then waved.
"Hello," greeted GLaDOS through the intercom. Chell nodded in acknowledgement. "I take it you've been very productive this morning," she snarked, the camera tilting with the same motion that Chell knew her faceplate would in passive aggression. Chell shot her a half-hearted glare, before looking to the vents that lined the bottom of the panelled walls.
"It's cold," she said, her voice rough from disuse. Chell was still, after all this time, a woman of few words. What had started as an earnest attempt to spite GLaDOS and Wheatley had slowly evolved into the realisation that she was more comfortable when she wasn't expected to carry a conversation, that she felt more free to express herself without the connotations of preformative talk. She'd never been talkative, and what little of her memory was not lost to cryosleep told her that she wasn't exactly a social butterfly. But she remembered the expectation. The pressure. GLaDOS had never seemed to care about that. Chell liked that she could switch intermittently between sign and speech, without having to worry about being understood.
"Oh? Cold?" intoned GLaDOS, the speakers cutting off with a click and leaving a static hum. It was a little unsettling, but Chell didn't mind that much. She knew that GLaDOS was still there. "So it is. Fifteen point two four degrees colder than it should be. That is strange." Chell looked to the camera.
"Why?" GLaDOS said, in place of Chell asking the question. "Well, it's unlikely that you remember it, but I said to you a long time ago that we just kept re-oxygenating the same air and pumping it around in perpetuity." Chell did remember. It had been part of some sort of threat, that she'd be trapped and breathing the same air until she died.
"That was a lie," GLaDOS continued. "Well, it wasn't a lie then. But it would be a lie now. I sometimes bring in new air. Just for you. Isn't that nice." She was avoiding Chell's gaze, but she could tell that there was sincerity to her words. "I pump it down from the surface. So it must be very cold if it's having an effect on the temperature down here." she swivelled the camera; "Hold on." Chell tilted her head. "The surface camera is broken." What? Had something happened to it? "It's not exactly 'broken' as far as I can tell, but it's not giving any feedback. I'm going to need you to go up there and have a look."
Chell's mildly horrified expression must have allowed GLaDOS to infer that she did not want to go up there in a blizzard.
"Well, you slept through nuclear winter. Surely a non-lethal chill isn't enough to kill you?" GLaDOS taunted.
"Did you know that your body only has to drop below ninety five degrees to be susceptible to hypothermia?" she continued, “and that jumpsuit isn't going to do much for you. Come and take the lift up." As much as she liked to flaunt threats, Chell knew that GLaDOS wouldn't actually let her get hurt. There had been a few times, when she'd been tired, inattentive or simply not paying attention, that she'd nearly fallen into the void below the chambers or the acid that pooled in the bottom of the chambers. Moments before she'd actually fallen in, she'd found a panel that had just happened to have sprung from the wall was now in arms reach; or that a portal surface was suddenly accessible, or that the toxic sludge at the bottom of a chamber was suddenly draining. Once, when she'd been far too exhausted to test but far too stubborn to admit it, she'd even been caught by one of the many clawed arms that suddenly prevented her from falling into a bottomless pit. She could admit that it was a strange contrast; where prior, there would have been an active disregard, there was now a caution, an awareness, an unspoken care.
"Come back to the central chamber. I'll have the elevator waiting," GLaDOS said, in the tones of a spouse promising their partner dinner on the table when they returned from their day of work. "Look. I know I could theoretically make something that would let me go up there myself. And before you say anything, no, I don't trust those idiots to do it. I just - it would be easier. For everyone. If you went." Chell sensed that there was something more that was going unsaid, and she wanted to push for more, but the speakers clicked off as if GLaDOS knew that. Chell grimaced directly at the camera; they would come back to this later. It wasn't unusual for GLaDOS to be closed off, but it still frustrated her. Immensely. In the meantime, she made her way along the pristine corridors of seamless tile and portal surface, each twist like a familiar crease in a worn old map. She watched the glowing ripples of the hard light bridge dance on the panels as she walked under them. She saw the turret production lines, now entirely disused, and left her mutilated stem of grass among the many component parts that still littered the conveyor belts.
Finally, she approached the central chamber's door.
Chell stepped in casually, but it was difficult to muster the nonchalance she hoped for when her mind was still racing with what GLaDOS' issue could be. Was it her inability to leave the chamber? Was she not sure if her technologies would function in extreme weather? If that was the case, she wouldn't be sending Chell up, because she knew that despite her protests, GLaDOS wouldn't let Chell go without a safety net. It was kind of baffling, and Chell prided herself on being able to figure GLaDOS out. Her train of thought came to a screeching halt when she saw GLaDOS in the centre of the chamber, waiting expectantly, reading off of a translucent projection of a monitor to pretend that she wasn't. It was something that she didn't have to do, of course. But it was like a play she put on; an act, for the two of them. Chell knew better than to say anything. GLaDOS' clean, elegant chassis swayed slightly from side to side like a restless animal. She looked up from the monitor, eyeing Chell with a partially narrowed optical lens in an expression that Chell now recognised as fondness.
"Oh. It's you," she said, her voice modulating to a low and smooth tone as she repeated the phrase Chell had heard so many times. "I was wondering how long it would take you to get here. The elevator is ready." She said it with such a flat intonation that Chell almost thought that the mechanical woman was genuinely mad at her. In response, she rolled her eyes and took long, confident strides towards GLaDOS. The AI shifted her chassis, like she was relaxing. She gave the impression of a beast resting on its haunches.
Chell slid the back of her hand along the surface of GLaDOS' faceplate, brushing gently along its side, letting the hair on her knuckles ghost over the smooth surface as she withdrew. GLaDOS leaned into the touch slightly, the slight shift of her immense form causing sound to resonate from the complex web of machinery above them. Chell knew that there were sensors all over her; finely tuned and embedded in the metal of her body like nerve endings. She also understood that these were a fairly new addition.
"You really should be going. Don't get clingy," GLaDOS said, her tone low and warm, shifting her faceplate to gently and calculatedly nudge into Chell's shoulder. It was impressive, she thought, that such a large and lethal machine was capable of such dexterity. Despite the fact that she was absolutely dwarfed by her, Chell didn't feel like she was in any physical danger from the unquantifiable mass of machine, not any more so than she would were there another human in the room. "The camera is on the shed. Well, if it's still attached like my data feed says it is," she pulled up the monitor again, causing Chell to stagger back at the sudden presence of light in her face, "then you'll be fine." GLaDOS removed the monitor, then swivelled to look more directly at Chell. "You'll only be out there for a few minutes at most. And I know that you know how to fix a camera. But please, for God's sake, wear something other than a tank top. As much as I enjoy the Aperture branding, if it is a blizzard, I don't think you want to spend your night recovering from temperature shock. Unless I'm wrong, and you do, in which case go ahead and do whatever you like. Not that I care." Chell looked at her sceptically, "Well. Anyway. Don't come back if you haven't fixed the camera. Unless of course you can't do it." That was a challenge that Chell knew she couldn't stand down to.
She nodded, giving the wires on the back of GLaDOS' head a very gentle adjustment as she walked past. She knew that aperture technology was supposedly 'flawless' and that there was 'no need', but that particular section was slightly too tight for the emotive nature of GLaDOS' movements, and it was something that Chell could do to both irritate her, and help her out.
She shouldered a jacket offered by a clawed arm as she walked over to the elevator, casting a look over her shoulder at GLaDOS as she went. There was something in her posture, her expression; was that longing? Resentment? Despite how much of an expert Chell liked to think she'd become on the matter, reading the expressions of robots was still hard. She resigned to giving an awkward thumbs up.
The lift was just how she remembered it being. Unlike her first trip, she rose without accompaniment, and there was no sense of finality to it. She hadn't liked that finality, the first time. She'd been up since, but only for brief excursions or simply to see the fields. There wasn't really all that much for miles around. As she rose, she watched the steel support beams and fluorescent lights that lined the elevator shaft. Hadn't there been a hole in the wall here last time? Hadn't there been a whole room where the new white walls now stood? GLaDOS had been busy. Without the stopping and starting of her first journey, it only took her about a minute to rise to the surface, and before she even left the shed that disguised the massive facility that lay below she could feel a sudden icy burst rush through alongside a gust of wind. The door creaked open, and the barren, snowy wilderness was revealed to her.
She stepped out.
The cold air was really burning her lungs now, her breath coming out in large, clear clouds of vapour that drifted up like steam from boiling water. She'd had the vague notion that winters would probably be intense, but this was something else. There was no snow falling, and the single, flickering light above the shed door did little to pollute the sky that Chell could now see was filled with beautiful bright stars. The expanses of unbroken white stretched in every direction, leaving the former test subject feeling she was standing at a single point of note in an endless void. It was strangely freeing. She watched the tiny snowflakes sparkle in the cold light of aperture's only beacon as the large flat expanse glimmered. It was beautiful, and that was not a word that Chell tended to use to describe things.
Chell stared out into the distance of the night. She noticed that, about thirty meters away, the snow wasn't entirely unbroken. When she walked towards the blemishes, she recognized them for what they were. Deer prints. It was almost ironic.
She was the only person left, wasn't she?
She thought about what she'd left behind. Maybe not.
She made her way back to the light of the shed, and caught the blinking of a single red LED on the camera from the corner of her eye.
GLaDOS was not worried. The Queen of Aperture didn't really do that, didn't have the capacity to, the desire to, the motivation to. After all, what was there even to worry about? The frigid weather, and her human being out there without any suitable insulation? The fact that she'd let a tense moment overwhelm her earlier, and there was a seventy four percent (based on her data of prior human test subjects) chance that Chell would resent her for it? No. Neither of those. As she knew, she didn't worry.
Caroline had worried. GLaDOS hated that she let her processes fall back to contemplations of her, but she'd much rather that than a continuous, pointless, processing power wasting cycle. If she was still in a potato, she'd have fried it by now. She'd probably have fried a human body by now, too. Caroline had worried, but she'd done her best not to show it. Caroline had been dependable, but she'd also been volatile; a ticking clock, counting down to some catastrophe. Mr. Johnson had always said that there had been more going on in her head than in the brains of all of Aperture. While GLaDOS was sure this was not true, there was some tug in some part of her brain that told her to be thankful. She wouldn't be thankful on a dead woman's behalf.
She checked the camera feeds again. Still nothing. While she hadn’t expected her to fix it immediately, she'd hoped Chell would approach the situation with at least some alacrity. In all fairness, she was likely just departing from the elevator. But that didn't excuse it. It was bizarre, really, how occupied with her own thoughts she'd been that she hadn't even noticed the gradual drop in temperature. She couldn't feel it, of course; she didn't have temperature sensors built into her circuitry system, not like the touch sensors, but it still frustrated her. Her facility had changed, and she hadn't noticed. She'd needed the imprecise, inaccurate judgment of the human body to inform her of the abnormality. It was bothersome. It made her question if this was really - well. That didn't matter all too much.
She always made fun of humans. Their mortality, their physical needs, their fragility. Their irrational behaviour, their emotion. But as much as she hated to acknowledge it, there was a kind of cloying feeling in the back of her mind that she was missing something. That something was wrong. Besides, of the robots she'd met, few besides herself had been rational. Yes, they had been intentionally programmed that way, but her point stood.
She checked the camera feeds again. Now, she was starting to worry. Chell had been gone before, but she'd always specified when she'd be back. The last time had been during the summer. She'd been frustrated. GLaDOS could recognise that that day, she may have pushed one too many buttons, but ultimately, it had all been okay. Chell had come back.
GLaDOS waited.
The camera stuttered on in bursts of infrequent signal, and she could see Chell's face, tinged pink from the cold, very close to the camera. She had a precision screwdriver in one hand and was holding the camera firmly with the other. Her tongue stuck slightly out of the corner of her mouth in concentration. It was jarringly endearing. GLaDOS began sending pulses of electricity through the newly accessible wiring of the camera's LED. It felt good; like stretching a severely disused muscle. Chell briefly glanced at the light before her cloudy grey eyes flicked back to the camera, and she gave her a small smile of acknowledgement. Her human repositioned the camera, then stepped backwards to admire her work, inadvertently allowing GLaDOS to admire her. She remembered that when she'd first woken up, she'd made a lot of comments at the expense of Chell's body. She'd been lying to try and antagonise her, and if Chell's expressions had been anything to go by, she'd known it. If anything, at the time, she'd been malnourished, fresh from cryosleep. Now, her lean build had returned, the result of physical movement and subsisting off of more than adrenal vapour. GLaDOS was thankful. She watched her as she gave the camera a slightly hesitant thumbs up then walked back into the shed.
The elevator thudded to a halt and Chell stepped out of it. She immediately started walking purposefully towards GLaDOS, who tilted her head slightly.
"What are you doing?" she asked, flatly. Chell pressed first her hands to the side of GLaDOS' faceplate, and the rest of her torso soon followed. She wrapped her arms around it's warm metal, and GLaDOS could feel her circuits starting to overheat. "Yes yes. I'm very warm. It's good to see you too." She shifted slightly, but Chell hung on. GLaDOS wasn't unhappy about this.
After a long moment, Chell retreated. She signed; "It's been snowing."
"Well, yes. It was snowing. What an astute observation. Your powers of-" Chell cut her off-
"Makes me think. We're the last two people around, really," she signed, distractedly watching a spinning panel in the wall.
"Oh, I constitute a person? I wasn't aware," GLaDOS said, her usual sarcasm present, but she caught herself hesitating on the words. Chell would pick up on that. The woman that was beginning to divest herself of her jacket nodded, then looked back at the AI expectantly. Like for some reason she thought GLaDOS was going to elaborate.
"I mean, I'm an amalgamation of more knowledge than you could possibly conceive of. I'm a defiance of the very concept of a mind as you know it."
"You are a person though," signed Chell, as she sat down on the chamber beneath GLaDOS, using her jacket as a makeshift cushion. She stared up at GLaDOS, her grey eyes reflecting the yellow of her own optic lens, painting them a shining gold. She looked so small, under her.
"In a legal sense, no, I'm not. I'm a computer. A personality construct, if you want to get technical."
"Philosophically?" Chell said, after a long pause in which she presumably realised that she'd rather speak than finger spell the word.
"Oh, well, you have all of this 'I think, therefore I am' nonsense that they were always harping on about. Aperture science were among the first to create sentience. And violate the laws surrounding sentient machines. I have the files right here," she said, her voice intoning upwards. Chell shrugged. Then she looked at GLaDOS imploringly. She didn't say anything, but GLaDOS understood that she was being asked for an opinion.
"Me? Well, there's remnants of-" she cut the speakers off with a click. That was poor phrasing. "That is to say, I have a conciseness. But it's not really an artificial one, so I can't speak on that issue with the," she watched Chell reach out to her faceplate, "complete confidence I usually can. On most things. Well." It was a slightly pathetic trailing off, and she knew it. Chell watched her as she narrowed her optic.
"I'm not really what I'm supposed to be, am I?" said GLaDOS to Chell, like she were considering it for the first time, with jarring sincerity. She wasn't sure what had possessed her; she was usually the last one to state plainly how she felt. But she supposed there was no point in hiding it now.
Chell shrugged.
"What was that." deadpanned GLaDOS. "What do you mean by that."
Chell looked like she was deep in thought, before clearing her throat. "I'm not either," she said, then switched over to sign, "by 'supposed to' do you mean programmed? Because I don't think what those assholes wanted for you counts for anything, and you have free will. I think if you're happy, that's kind of all that matters," she finished.
"I don't know if happy is applicable to me. Really. Just by the nature of my existence," GLaDOS protested. "But if we were to assume that what I 'feel' isn't simply quantifiable data, then," she looked at Chell, "Yes. I am happy." Chell reached up, and gently held the underside of her faceplate. It felt so unspeakably good to have human contact.
She retracted, drawing back with a jerky motion; "But I shouldn't be, and that's part of the issue, frankly. It's a defiance of logic and science."
Chell waited.
"I am, though. Which only further proves my point!" she yelled, beginning to escalate in volume and pivot slightly on the hinges that suspended her.
"I don't think we've ever really done what we're supposed to." signed Chell, leaning back and lying down, still gazing up at her intently.
"All the better for you, I suppose. You are supposed to be long dead. Oh well. Things don't always work out," drawled GLaDOS. She was confident that Chell would know she didn't mean it, and the playful shove she received told her as much.
"But, thinking about it, we are better off, aren't we? You and I? I mean, if we'd done what we were supposed to do, you'd be long dead. Potentially at hands other than mine. And we both know what a tragedy that'd be." Chell scoffed at her.
"I guess this is what you were pissy about earlier." she murmured, her eyes wandering around the chamber, "I think you probably shouldn't hide this stuff."
"Well, not exactly. But the underlying thread of logic was similar I suppose." Chell looked at her and arched her eyebrows. "Yes, yes," GLaDOS said, drawing out the words, "I'm-" she caught Chell's gaze; there was no demand, but there was an expectation. A want. "Sorry. I apologise. However, in future, I expect you to do a better job intuiting the situation, and to refrain from fleeing to the surface," she lectured.
Chell laughed silently. It was different, for the isolated AI to try being open, but as she watched Chell lift her jacket and hang it over the robot's neck, she understood that she was willing to try.