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Do You Know What a Monster Is?

Author's note: I started writing this fanfic about 5 years ago but for some reason never got around to tidying it up and publishing it. Well, here is it: my version of Caroline's story based on all the research and backstory I could find on both Portal games. I've tried to be as accurate as I can while making a few assumptions and leaving a few things up for interpretation. Playing the games I became convinced that a part of GLaDOS really was Chell's mother... and this is how I think it happened.

Aperture Science, formerly known as Aperture Science Innovators, formerly known as Aperture Fixtures, changed forever when Mr Johnson died.

They say that the soul of a business lies with its founder but I had never really believed it until he was gone. Suddenly I was in command. I had total control of it all, everything he had built with years of sweat and blood from such humble beginnings. I tried to follow in his footsteps as best I could. Before he passed away, Cave made me sign a contract which handed control of the company to me in the event of his death. This was not something I had ever wanted, but he had been very insistent. He told me it was what he wished for Aperture. And when he was gone, really gone, I couldn't disobey his last wish.

I will admit that for the first few years or so, every decision I made was an attempted emulation of what Cave Johnson would have done had he still been alive. My waking life was led by the mantra: what would Cave do? On the whole it worked, I like to think because I had known Cave so very well. Perhaps better than anyone else at Aperture. I was always by his side, first as a matter of my job, and then because I wanted to be.

That's not to say Cave never made a mistake. He brought Aperture to its peak but he also sent it to the brink of destruction. I still remember the day he announced that the Department of Defense wanted to contract us. He was proud like a new father in those days. But things went from good to not so good to bad to worse. The golden age of Aperture Science was immediately proceeded by its dark one. When our test subjects began to dwindle we commenced mandatory employee testing. We ran low on funding. Some of our tests were risky and a little questionable. I suspect that we expanded too large too fast, without strong enough foundations to support all our aspirations. You can say many things about Cave Johnson, but he was not a man short of ambition. Aperture began to crumble from the inside, and as it did so he crumbled with it. And shortly afterwards he was dead.

It sounds awful, but I learned not to miss him very much in the days after he was gone. So many bad things had happened at Aperture that it became easier to just block it all out. Our test subjects had died, some of them terrible ways, and we had been forced to hush a lot of it up. I remained unharmed only because Mr Johnson had refused point blank that I take part in any of the employee testing. We all knew something was very wrong when he himself became sick.

Eventually there were too few of us remaining to run the facility, and everything was in shambles, everything Mr Johnson had built. We were unable to hide what had occurred any longer. The government said that what we had done was despicable, that we would be shut down and that Aperture Science would be concreted over so that all that would remain would be the atrocity of what we had wrought. But the government was all bark and no bite. We offered them some of our more impressive scientific inventions in return for allowing us to remain intact and functional as a company. They soon saw our value to the world. Cave would have been furious at us for giving our work away, but we were a shameless people by then. At least it kept Aperture running. At least we were still doing science. We had lost so much, but we were still alive. I found a lot of resilience within myself during that time.

Besides, we hadn't shown the government everything we had dreamt up. The portal devices we kept to ourselves. Our scientists said that was where the future lay, and I had total trust in them, just as Mr Johnson had.

So Aperture Science began again from the ashes. And we built everything upon the portals.

The first thing we needed was a way to effectively run the facility. Over the years it had grown to gargantuan proportions, and there was no way we could begin testing again on as large a scale as we had once done. We would have to begin small. But the scientists who remained remembered what Mr Johnson had once imagined: a person's entire brain, every synapse and mental process and everything that made them what they were, transported and somehow translated into a machine capable of controlling the entirety of Aperture. I had never been able to forget that dream.

Efficiency and economy became our keywords. We cut down and cut back. We were humble. Some of the scientists began working on a machine to carry out most of the hard work for us. But a mere machine could not do all we needed it to. What we needed was artificial intelligence. We needed a machine with a brain. Mr Johnson's dream was coming true.

Perhaps if we had all the time and resources in the world we could have built consciousness from scratch, but we did not. Using a human's brain as a template was the quickest and most obvious way to get what we needed. They said would I like the honour of being the first person to be mentally recreated in machine form. They actually said that, the honour. It was what was best for Aperture Science, and it was what Mr Johnson had always wanted. How could I say no?

Maybe I was a fool. It seems that, as time goes on, I have made more and more of an effort to justify it all to myself.

GLaDOS was born from wiring and trial and error in a barren, cavernous delivery room. The scientists were so happy, like new parents, not knowing what to expect from this grand advancement in science. But she was a troublesome child. There was something in her artificial brain which filled her with a deep desire to do us harm, so we had to modify her with cores to emulate a sense of empathy, equality, and fairness. Oh, she had intelligence which surpassed all we could have dreamed. She was able to run the facility and carry out tests by herself and calculate and predict everything we threw at her. But her love for testing was marred by her love for killing, and every time we activated her she had to be deactivated again. The last fallback was a morality sphere designed as a makeshift conscience for GLaDOS. And like so the ideal machine became more of an amalgamation of everything we thought an ideal human should be. I suppose in the end GLaDOS was so modified that whatever there was of me in there became lost.

Eventually the scientists said everything was in place. GLaDOS was ready to be switched on again, and this time it would be for good. The date was set. The date happened to coincide with Bring Your Daughter to Work Day. They switched her on in good spirits, but the good spirits lasted for less than a second. After that there was only neurotoxin.

She flooded the enrichment centre within minutes. When the green gas started seeping from the air vents, I thought the end had come. I thought my death was to come at the hands of my own self, my own mechanical reflection, dark and wiry and twisted.

In fact, I didn't know how to react. Was I supposed to feel guilty — had I done this somehow? Should I have known all along? Should I have been able to stop it? When you see yourself transplanted into a piece of metal, see that metal given your personality and brains and individuality, are you supposed to be able to communicate with it? Comprehend it? Was I supposed to see myself mirrored in that cold consciousness? Because while the other scientists were proud and glad about what they had created, I never saw myself in GlaDOS. I may have been her mother, but GlaDOS was never my daughter.

My daughter's name is Chell. If you were to ask her who her parents are, she would tell you that she was adopted at a very young age, and that as far as she is concerned her father was an Aperture scientist named David. David was a very gifted man who we hired after Mr Johnson's death, along with several others, to help get the company back on its feet. He was brilliant, and thoughtful, and kind. I admired him greatly.

A child was something I had never intended. It was for the best that David should take Chell and raise her. He had always wanted children. And with her close by I could watch her grow and learn and flourish without the personal involvement I could not give her. The joy I felt when I discovered I would be having a daughter was incomparable to anything I had experienced in my long years, but it went against all reason. I was far too old. I was fully invested in Aperture. How could I have time and energy for a child? And yet I loved Chell from the moment I knew she existed. I planned many things in my life, but life always delighted in watching my plans go awry. This was the decision I have regretted the most. I should never have let her go. If he had been alive to see it, perhaps Mr Johnson would have been disappointed with me for letting anything get in the way of my passion for Aperture. Maybe he would have even felt betrayed. But I like to think that he would have understood. He always said that I was married to science, and that always remained true. Science was my first love. Cave Johnson was my second. And my third and greatest love was my daughter.

When the end came, I hid in the corner of my office like a coward and held my breath and thought of Cave and of Chell. And then it was over. Somehow, I survived.

In a way what came next was even worse than the neurotoxin. GLaDOS was in control, and now she had done her killing all she wanted to do was test. Many of us had already died. She sealed the exits. Suitable test subjects were separated from unsuitable ones. Those of us found suitable were forced to begin testing, those unsuitable were hidden away from our eyes, where I do not know, and our days became endless cycles through endless test chambers. I never saw my daughter again. After Bring Your Daughter to Work Day I had no idea if she'd survived or if my Chell was already dead. She was so young.

Nobody, not even me, can continue testing forever. It must have been weeks, but a time came there was nothing left to live for. All my drive was gone. We were dying off so quickly that soon GLaDOS would have no test subjects left. My only hope was that somehow Chell was still alive and could escape from this terrible place, from the weight of all my mistakes. One day in the middle of a test I simply lay down and refused to do any more. I had given enough to science. I remembered my daughter, the things I would say to her if I had the chance, the opportunities I had missed to be with her. I prayed somehow she would remember me. And that one day she would understand.

I could not be there for her, but she would be watched over by the ghost of myself somewhere in that mechanical brain.

.

.

.

Chell does not notice the dust between the cracks of white tiles, dust which has decayed and crumbled over many lonely years. Dust barely there. Dust which holds secrets now impossible to decipher. Dust which was long ago swept aside by mechanical hands. Chell does not know who once lay there on the cold floor along with the dust, who once closed her eyes and succumbed to fate and became nothing but more dust, dust adding to dust, who felt death being delivered by the artificial ghost of herself.

Chell does not notice these things. But she notices a lot.

She jumps from a block with several feet of elevation, tunnels through a portal placed on the floor below, and reappears falling from the ceiling on the other side of the room. Then she lands with a quiet thud and makes her way back to her starting position. She does this several times. Her jumps are all executed perfectly. She is like a ballet dancer practicing a routine. Her eyes are fixed, every time she reappears from the ceiling, on a glass panel very high up. Through this she sees a room which leads off into another part of the facility, a non-testing area with seats and desks and cups. Through this panel of glass she sees ideas and schemes. From somewhere even higher above, invisible but assured, another intelligent eye watches Chell as she performs, inevitably, inescapably, and Chell knows this.

SUBJECT CONSIDERING ESCAPE . SUBJECT ENACTING ESCAPE SCENARIOS IN MIND . MOST LOGICAL COURSE OF ACTION : HALT ESCAPE BEFORE ENACTED , FORCIBLY DISCOURAGE SUBJECT .

"I hope you're not thinking about trying to escape," says GLaDOS. "Because I can assure you that will only lead to any one of a number of painful demises, including but not limited to asphyxiation, drowning, starvation, and death from a broken heart."

Chell says nothing. Chell never says anything. If she would only speak, only open her mouth. But all she does is keep testing, and as long as GlaDOS is there, all Chell will ever do is remain in her motherly embrace and test and test and test.

SUBJECT #1498 : ABNORMAL LEVELS OF TENACITY . UNSUITABLE FOR TESTING .

SUBJECT MUST TEST . My love. My dear. YOU MONSTER . YOU ADOPTED MONSTER . Please tell me you're alright.

DO YOU KNOW WHAT A MONSTER IS ? A MONSTER KILLS THEIR OWN MOTHER .

DO YOU KNOW WHAT A MONSTER IS ? A MONSTER KILLS THEIR OWN MOTHER .

DO YOU KNOW WHAT A MONSTER IS ?