All Good Things

Thanksgiving was one of the few breaks that Caroline got, really. She was usually under her father's foot, either figuratively or literally. But Thanksgiving was sometime she was with her extended family. Her cousins were the ones she most looked forward to seeing. They had great stories to tell, and although they weren't the brightest, they were still fun to spend time with. Plus, they'd listen to her talking about her experiments, and that was a rare thing.

The cabin that her family would stay at was large, and the woods in the back were extensive and riddled with long trails. The forest held creatures like squirrels and deer, and her cousins would joke about hunting and the men would seriously discuss hunting until a wife or a mother shooed them off the topic. Caroline was told to wear a dress, and she did, but she had hidden a pair of pants in the purse she carried with her, and she put them on as soon as she was out of her father's sight. She and two of her cousins were walking through the misty woods now, shivering slightly in the chilly November air.

"Look, Caroline! I found a newt!" Nick stooped to pick up a little thing that was halfway under a rock.

"A newt?" Caroline asked, walking a bit closer and putting on a thoughtful frown. "I didn't think newts lived here."

"It's a stick, dummy." James huffed, knocking the gnarled twig from his brother's hands.

"You're a dummy." Nick retorted, ears red with embarrassment.

"Be nice, you two." Caroline admonished. They stopped, and Nick scuffed his foot on the ground. She loved that they listened to her. It made her feel so powerful. Granted, she was older than them, but she still adored the rush she got when they took her orders without question. "If you're good, I'll tell you about an experiment I did!" Both boys immediately stood at attention.

"Did you set some more ants on fire?" Nick asked, wide-eyed.

"Be reasonable, Nick. Of course she wouldn't repeat an experiment." James nearly tripped over the words he was using. He liked to try and sound as smart as he could, especially around Nick and Caroline. They were intellectuals, he figured.

"Actually, scientists repeat experiments all the time, but this one is new. No ants this time. No fire, either." Caroline clarified, motioning with her hand for them to follow her up the path.

"Sounds boring." Nick responded with a sigh. "No ants, no fire? What does it have, then?"

"You'll see." Caroline grinned. She led them in silence up a hill, across a path overgrown with brambles and creepers and vines, all deep green and turning brown around the edges in preparation for the coming winter. Finally she came to a tree with low branches, remembering the spot from the year before. There was a clearing between the drooping branches and the trunk, and the light filtered in through a lattice of twigs and dead leaves. James and Nick found a spot on the ground to sit, and Caroline leapt up on a log so she towered above her younger cousins. "All right. I'll tell you about my experiment now. If you want to hear it, that is."

"Of course!" the boys chorused, leaning forward in anticipation.

"I was in class one day and Teacher was talking about electricity. Like lightning! And she said that lots of things conduct electricity. Like potatoes!" Caroline was obviously very excited. James found the wild look in her eyes a bit frightening. Still, he was fascinated by all her stories. "So when Father brought home a bag of potatoes, I found some wire and foil and an old light. I hooked things up just right... And the light lit up! The potato was actually enough to make the little light go on. It was... shall we say... enlightening?" The three laughed heartily at the pun, and the two boys applauded. Suddenly a call rang through the woods. The words weren't audible, but she could definitely hear the intent in the voice.

"Time to go." James announced, standing and brushing the dirt from his pants. Caroline reached out a hand to each of her cousins, and smiled as she felt their little fingers lace with hers. Hand-in-hand, the three headed back to the cabin.

It was fitting that her memories of her cousins tied in with the brambles and trees of the cabin's yard, for the brambles and trees perished in a wildfire the same year that Nick perished in a car crash. Two years later, Caroline had run away from home, away from her alcoholic father and the constant fear. Five years after that she was out of high school, one year after that she was in college. Two years after that, James died in a climbing accident and Caroline could not attend the funeral. One year after that, she was at Aperture, and her past vanished into a series of small ghosts who sometimes came back in the night to torment and taunt her.

Oh, she worked well with the company. She loved science as much as it did, and both her and the corporation hungered for knowledge- and power. She rose to the highest position she could reach, and soon she was working at the side of the CEO himself. She was his assistant. She felt like the figurehead at the prow of a ship, watching the waves break and watching the gulls fly but remaining above it all. It was glorious, absolutely glorious. Before she knew it, she was in love. Cave had the fire that she always wanted, the determination and confidence that she needed, and the gentle hand and comforting voice when she awoke in the night, pale and shaking, from one of her many nightmares. She couldn't be married, though. No, that would jeopardize her entire career, and they both knew it. It remained, then, as an affair. Nothing more.

The men of Aperture were getting married, though, and having children who would occasionally come in to work and become a reality and not just a picture on an office desk. Caroline soon discovered that she hated children. She regretted ever being one herself. There was one, though, who didn't bother her too much. Greg's child. She didn't much care for his wife, but the child was quiet and sharp and stubborn, and she had this spark of life about her that none of the others did. Her name was Michelle, but her young tongue tended to introduce her simply as "Chell". Chell, then, was what she was called. Caroline took a liking to her after a few visits, though Cave was upset by the vibrancy she brought to the otherwise dull office. Caroline, then, decided to find a way to amuse little Chell.

"Chell!" Caroline summoned, putting on a small smile just for show and pulling a burlap bag out of a drawer in her office. "Where are you?"

"Here, Miss Caroline." There was a small scraping sound, and Chell appeared from under the desk. She was grinning impishly, and Caroline's smile became ever so slightly more genuine.

"Oh! There you are. I've got a surprise for you." Caroline was about to pull out the materials from the bag, but the girl stopped her with a pat on the leg.

"Miss Caroline, can you say it in your robot voice? I like your robot voice." Chell requested somewhat meekly.

"All right, all right." Caroline sighed, tilted her head upwards slightly, closed her eyes, and cleared her throat. "Initiating surprise in three... Two... One." she announced, then pulled out the potato from the bag. Chell blinked, confused.

"A potato." she observed, tilting her head slightly.

"Yes. And..." Caroline pulled out some wires and a little light bulb. Chell's face lit up, and she clapped her little hands.

"Science!" she said gleefully, grinning widely.

"Science." Caroline agreed, and the two set to work. Half an hour later, they had a working potato battery, and they were watching the little bulb flicker on and off. Caroline looked on as Chell poked and prodded at the tuber to see if different wire placements would make the light brighter or dimmer.

"Caroline, I need you to-" Cave began, walking into the room, but when he saw the look on Caroline's face, he stopped. He hadn't seen her so content in a while. She was kneeling on the floor, and she turned her head up to look at him.

"Yes, Cave?" she asked, a bit puzzled by how he'd stopped.

"Never mind." he dismissed, walking away again. He sat down at his desk, shuffling around a few papers and shaking his head in amazement. "Potato batteries." he muttered, returning to work.

The sharp, cruel beak of the bird plucked PotatOS from her attempts to scheme. She couldn't be aware of real life and her files at the same time, seeing as she only had 1.6 volts of electricity to run on. This battery was pathetic. Of course it was, seeing as one of the incompetent children had built it. If she were housed in Chell's potato battery... No. There was no time to be thinking about these things now. Chell was a monster, plain and simple. Oh, she was no moron. She was clever. That was why she was so dangerous.

The bird pecked again, hard, and gouged out a small piece of the potato that was housing the once-powerful supercomputer. How had she fallen this far? Where had she gone wrong? The mute hadn't survived the fall. That much had been obvious, from the way that she'd been lying on the ground, splayed out sideways and unresponsive. The fall had been a long one, yes. Far too long. Some part of her wished that she, too, hadn't survived the fall, but that part was small and quiet compared to the rest of her.

One more peck from the bird took her down a few tenths of a volt. 1.56 volts now. No matter how much she shouted at the bird, it did not cease or flinch. Now she really was going to die. She was going to be pecked to death, lose power, and end up eaten by a bird. What a way to end! After all that she'd been through, all that she'd survived. It was so odd to face death now, after all that. She supposed she'd expected immortality. All good things must come to an end, though, as the saying went. Humans weren't that smart, but they had some good contributions. Now, she supposed, her good things were coming to an end.

What was it that humans did, when they were dying? In the test chambers, most had died too suddenly to utter any final words or perform rites of passing. A handful, though, would be shot and would drag themselves away only to bleed to death slumped against a panel somewhere. A few, driven mad by the testing, would unstrap their boots, lay down their guns, and leap from ledges or drown themselves in goo. They would often speak the names of those they had loved. Some would pray. GLaDOS neither loved nor prayed. She was going to die, though. There had to be something she could do to send herself on her way.

There was a rush of feathers, and the bird took off, winging away on currents of stale air to slip between shadows and find some distant otherwhere to be. Could she have sighed in relief, she would have. At least she had more time now. Sifting through her memory files, she went through record after record of deceased test subjects. One crushed, one shot, one incinerated, one drowned, one who had fallen too far. Finally she found one who was recorded under "Other". A subject by name of Alice Weiss. 19 when she'd perished. Her notes were simple. She'd been shot, she'd dragged herself off to die somewhere quiet, and had begun to sing. She'd sung until her very last breath. GLaDOS had found that odd and disconcerting. She loved listening to the music of the facility- the hum of the lasers, the bass grinding of the faith plates, the whirring of the panels as they moved, the steady murmur of dripping water and, of course, the operatic orchestras of turrets. She even sang herself sometimes, though she did not know why. Perhaps she should try and lay herself to rest with a melody of her own.

Her processors searched for a language and settled on Latin. She'd always liked the sound of Latin and Italian and French; how the words had a cadence and a near-musical quality even when spoken normally. Turning off all non-vital functions, she began to emit notes, harmonizing with the echoing hum of the old chamber around her. She would sing until she died, then. And that would be all right.

The potato in the crow's nest etched her eulogy in somber notes on the walls of old Aperture, until she could sing no more.