Jealous

Indiana

It wasn't fair.

Every one of them, the ones who made it here, anyway, immediately took to it. They forgot about her. They dragged it everywhere they went, spoke to it, embraced it, and cheerfully stopped testing in order to keep their beloved Cube.

While completely ignoring her. Acting like she no longer existed. She, the mighty paradigm of Science, passed over for a piece of metal with hearts painted on it.

It was unacceptable.

She spent many a day putting her considerable processing power to the grindstone, to uncover a method of forcing those impertinent humans to continue testing without their damnable Cube. Short of taking it out altogether, which she couldn't do because it defied protocol, she was coming up lamentably short. It was only after staring at the incinerator in her chamber for the millionth time, wishing she could throw the Cores in there so she could have some peace and quiet for once, that she realised what the solution was.

She could force them to incinerate it.

The more she thought about it, the better the idea became. Not only would the Cube be gone, but she would get the satisfaction of watching them regret having become attached to it! She already knew what they would do. They would whine, and cry, and yell a lot of unsavoury words in what they thought was her general direction, but in the end she would win out, and they would incinerate their beloved Cube. It was genius. She was genius.

She quickly modified the test chamber in question before the subject got there, almost eagerly anticipating her arrival with simulated impatience. As she watched, however, the test subject progressed through the test without a second glance at the Cube, and when the time came to destroy it she threw it offhandedly into the incinerator without even looking at it.

It was… disappointing.

The more she thought about it, the more incensed she became. How dare that test subject defy her experiment! How dare she be the only one to ever refrain from becoming attached to the Cube! It was insolent, that was what it was. And rebellious. And disrespectful. Unfortunately she was out of time to think up a proper reprimand, and instead was forced to think of a quick sentence in order to guilt-trip the test subject for not feeling bad about destroying the Cube. It was only after the test subject entered the next chamber that she realised that, despite her efforts, she was still less significant than the Cube was. Why else would the test subject so blatantly go against her wishes? That little lunatic was showing her that she was willing to pretend the Cube didn't matter to her if it allowed her to continue pretending the supercomputer didn't exist.

And now said supercomputer was back where she had started.

Jealous.

Author's note

Just a little one-shot about GLaDOS and her possessive nature. She could have been referring to Dr Rattmann in there… or she could have been psychologically torturing you…