Portal: Bystanders

Indiana

Characters: Atlas, P-body, GLaDOS

Setting: Post Portal 2

Synopsis: They got no closer than anyone else.

She had always been a mystery to them.

She was all-powerful, but did very little with it. She was superintelligent, but rarely exhibited as such. She was the greatest thing they had ever known, yet somehow, at the same time… She was nothing.

She was perpetually frustrated by them, they knew, but they didn't care. They were more interested in playing with the Cubes than they were solving puzzles with them. They understood, to some capacity, Her need to send them through puzzle after puzzle even though there was no real benefit from doing so, but they did not enjoy it and neither did She. It was just something they did. Sometimes, when they were sure She wasn't listening, they spoke about the mighty Supercomputer. They'd never seen it and She never spoke of it Herself, but they knew it existed. There was a Supercomputer somewhere, even more powerful and superintelligent and greater than She, and it had built Her and tasked Her to forever test and work towards an uncertain Science for an even less certain reason. And She must have been very frightened of the Supercomputer indeed, for She never questioned Her orders and did nothing but carry them out. And sometimes they were a little resentful, to have been built to work toward absolutely nothing, but they would consider that She must have been built by the Supercomputer to do the exact same thing and so ended up paying it no mind. Perhaps the Supercomputer thought She was not working hard enough on Her own and had commanded Her to build them to make Her work more efficiently. Perhaps the Supercomputer had built them, and She did not want them to know of its existence and so pretended to have built them Herself. They never came up with a definitive answer, but these discussions passed the time and that was good enough for them.

Thankfully, She eventually stopped testing them, and afterwards She only summoned them to do things for Her that she attempted to explain away as Her being benevolent by asking them to do something. They figured out that wasn't quite the case. When She had sent them on their umpteenth mission to a dank and dimly lit section of the facility, where the panels gave way to chipped concrete gave way to grainy wood, they realised She was sending them where She could not go. And that horrified them, to find out that She was incapable of things, because it made them feel unsafe, so they put that information out of their minds. It was information they didn't want. It was information that scared them. It did so less and less as time went on, because they began to suspect She was using them to try to protect Herself. That was something they did not appreciate.

They also noticed, eventually, that She was progressively becoming more vindictive, more bitter and more frustrated. As though She were failing in Her endless pursuit of Science. They felt a little sorry for Her, but what could they do? Nothing. They were only robots. If She wanted them to do something, She was going to have to mention it. But She never did, only continued to send them on missions that seemed to be increasingly arbitrary and pointless. She seemed to be looking for something, in an increasingly desperate way, and She was not finding it. They never asked Her what it was She was seeking. If She wanted them to know, She would have told them. They knew very well that She only told them exactly what She wanted them to know.

On one occasion She summoned them, but seemed to have forgotten She had done so when they arrived; they found Her staring at the floor with Her great chassis tensed, and when they politely asked Her what they were there for, She only stared at them for several long seconds and then dismissed them. That worried them a little, because they got the impression of a deep and debilitating sorrow from Her. They had never seen such a thing before and hoped never to do so again. They did not understand Her and did not believe they ever would, but that was the most confusing thing She had ever done. Their qualms soon vanished, however, since they could do nothing about them anyway, and they went back to what they had been doing beforehand.

She left them alone for several weeks, which they thought nothing of. When She asked for them next, She again stared at them until they asked politely what it was She wanted them to do.

"Help me," She whispered.

But they did not understand what She meant by that and continued to wait. She only turned from them and sent them away.

They never heard from Her again, but they didn't mind. It meant they didn't have to go on any more pointless missions to the middle of nowhere. After a while humans found them, and the humans found the pair more interesting than She ever had. When they asked if there were any other people inside of the facility, they shrugged and shook their cores. The humans accepted that and led the two from the facility for the first time in their lives, and they had a passing thought that they both thought sad initially, but discounted as unimportant as they went on their way. After all, She had done nothing of significance, in the end.

She would not be missed.

Author's note

Because Altair likes to headcanon that GLaDOS is never saved (;.;) and this is the only way I can do it: from a totally impersonal, who-really-cares perspective. Altair, this is 10000% your fault, you monster.