Portal: Mom

Characters: Atlas, P-body, GLaDOS

Synopsis: They called her Mom just because they knew how much she hated it.

They called her Mom just because they knew how much she hated it.

The day it had started was still very funny when they thought about it. They'd come into her chamber to find her bent intently over a little glass box filled with straw and red light. That had been a sight all on its own, that of the massive Central Core so deeply focused on three birds smaller than the eye she was looking at them with, but then she called herself 'mommy' which was just too much for the both of them. They could not have stopped laughing even if they'd wanted to.

'Mommy?' P-body managed to say. The Central Core snapped her head up in their direction.

"It's not what it looks like," she protested, whisking the birds out of view even though it was much too late.

'Yes it is,' said Atlas. 'Those are your birds and you're their mommy. You just said so.'

This made P-body laugh even harder, if that were possible, and the Central Core made a very angry noise and promptly exploded them.

When they woke up again and underwent the usual review of the two minutes before they'd been exploded, what they had seen was just as funny the second time. And from then on they called her 'mom' at every opportunity just to make her angry.

They were very good at making her angry. It wasn't very hard; whenever she told them they were acting like humans, it was a sign to do that thing more often. She didn't seem to realise they didn't consider being insulted, lectured, or exploded punishments. Or maybe she did, but even she knew that separating them would be much too cruel. Sometimes it was hard to tell.

But she wasn't going to punish them. Not really. So even though they knew it drove her crazy they kept saying, 'Hi Mom!' while waving into her cameras and calling, 'Mom, look!' when they were about to start dancing, and especially declaring, 'Mom, watch this!' before they did something especially silly like jump off a very high tower of Cubes or push each other into one of her acid pits. She became furious every single time, to the point of insulting, lecturing, and exploding them for it. But once they'd been reassembled and they remembered what had just happened, they immediately agreed it had definitely been worth it and it definitely would be next time, too.

The Central Core often did things throughout the facility that she only told them about long after they were finished, when she bothered to mention them at all, so when the power went out a few weeks later they weren't concerned. Not until they realised they were stuck in their current test chamber, that was.

'Hm,' mused P-body. 'This is a very interesting test.'

Atlas nervously looked around the darkened room as best he could. 'I don't think this is a test, Orange.'

'Everything is a test,' P-body reminded him. 'That's what the Central Core always says.' She activated the flashlight behind her eye and looked around. Atlas followed suit, his optic pausing on the Pneumatic Diversity Vent.

'Orange,' he said, poking her so that she'd turn around and pointing up at the glass tube. 'We will have to break it, but I think you could climb up there to get out. Then you can push one of the panels out of the wall and I can join you.'

'Okay,' P-body agreed, and since Atlas was stronger but shorter than she was she went and got him one of the Cubes to stand on so he could reach the vent. After a minute or so of focused pulling, he managed to get the end off of it and she clambered inside of it without any hesitation.

'Be careful!' Atlas told her.

'What if I get lost and fall into the incinerator?' P-body asked, sounding more curious than anything, and Atlas lunged for her ankle in a panic to pull her out of the vent but she was already out of reach.

'Don't get lost!'

She either didn't hear or chose not to answer, and neither of those things reassured him. He pressed his hands together as she clambered up the vent and into the wall, listening as hard as he could. He had been hoping he would be able to hear where she was behind the panels, but it was though she had vanished entirely!

'Blue! Over here!'

Atlas spun around, almost falling over, to see P-body pushing out one of the panels second from the floor. It seemed that the panels were very difficult to open manually, so he brought over the two Cubes from the test so he could sort of wedge it. It was one of the smaller spaces he'd ever had to wiggle through, but with a little bit of yanking thanks to P-body he made it through and onto the catwalk. 'You took forever!' he admonished. She gestured up above them.

'It took forever to get through that. I don't think we're supposed to break them.'

'Are you sure this is still a test?'

'Let's go ask her,' P-body answered. 'Maybe she will even tell us what's happening this time!'

She probably wouldn't, but Atlas didn't want to argue over it. It was better to just go and talk to the Central Core and get this over with.

The entire facility was dark. There were still some lights on, but all the red ones. The Central Core had told them those were the Unexpected, Urgent, and Disruptive Event lights and not to worry about them. This, combined with her uncharacteristic silence, had them a little convinced they did need to be worried, and this feeling only worsened when they finally reached the Central Core's chamber.

She didn't have a door, as though she didn't want people to visit her, and every time Atlas and P-body had gone to see her the panels at the end of her bridge had been retracted. They were going to have to pull this one out of place like the one back in the test chamber.

'Ready?' Atlas asked, and P-body nodded. They both gripped one side of the panel mechanism, Atlas on the left side and P-body the right, and pulled it back as hard as they could. When it seemed to be staying back okay P-body walked around it and into the Central Core's chamber, Atlas behind her. Instead of following, he shrieked and shoved his hand into P-body's leg mechanism, pulling her violently so that she fell back into the hallway.

'What?' she snapped, attempting to get his hand out of her leg but failing.

'Don't!' he yelled. 'The floor is gone!'

P-body's optic shrank to a pinprick, and she collected herself enough that she could peer into the room. He was right. The floor was gone. She had almost walked straight into the Central Core's bottomless pit.

'Hm,' was all she said.

'You're so careless!' Atlas snapped, smacking the top of her chassis with his free hand.

'It's dark!' P-body protested.

'Exactly!'

'You would have done it if you were in front!'

'No I wouldn't!'

'I bet you would!'

Usually at this point the Central Core would cut in with some comment about how childish they were acting, but for some reason she remained silent. They both looked up at her, Atlas's hand still tangled in P-body's leg, wondering if they were finally in real trouble this time… but she was not even looking at them. She didn't even seem to be on. She was hanging there motionless from her place on the ceiling, with one single Disruptive Event light illuminating her chassis as though to reassure anyone looking that she was still there.

'Is she dead?' Atlas whispered after a minute, the blackness below them almost completely swallowing his words. P-body leaned out over him as far as she could and called out,

'Mom!'

She did not respond.

P-body and Atlas exchanged a worried look, and then Atlas said, tentatively,

'Central Core?'

She remained still.

'Uh-oh,' said P-body.

Atlas turned to her anxiously. 'What do we do?' he asked, gripping her arm in worry with both hands. 'Something is very wrong!'

'I think,' said P-body, and she stopped here for a minute.

'You think what?'

'It is probably a problem with the power,' she continued. 'We just have to go turn it back on.'

'She never told us how to do that!'

'She never told us how to walk, either, and we can still do that. Come on. We will just go to the reactor and switch it back on.'

'Orange, I don't think reactors have switches.'

'Then you will read the instructions!'

'Why do I have to read the instructions?'

'Because I don't like reading. You know that.'

The two of them set off through the facility towards the reactor's control room. They both knew exactly where it was, since they had both had very detailed maps of the facility installed after the incident with the crow, so finding it was not the problem. No, the trouble was mostly due to the fact that the elevators weren't working.

'We will jump down here,' Atlas said, once they had reached the elevator shaft nearest to their destination. 'If the elevator is at the bottom, we will just climb up to the next floor and go around. There should be stairs this far down. If it is at the top, we can just walk in.'

'Good thinking, Blue,' said P-body, peering down the dark tube. 'Don't come down until I say so.'

'Why?'

'So you don't land on me, of course,' she answered, and with that she leapt into the blackness. Atlas looked after her anxiously.

'Orange?' he called after a minute or so. She didn't answer, nor did she when he did again a second and third time, and in a panic he just decided to jump down right then and there in case she was in trouble.

It was a longer fall than he had expected, about sixty seconds or so, and when he got to the bottom he collided with P-body, who shrieked in annoyance. 'Atlas!' she snapped, which was how he knew she was really mad at him. 'I told you to wait!'

'You didn't answer and I got worried!' he protested, retrieving her forearm from where it had landed in the scuffle and jamming it back into place. Once he had, she shoved him away from her.

'I was trying to get this open first!' She gestured towards a set of sealed metal doors blocking their way. As usual with strength-related tasks, she couldn't do it on her own, so the two of them jammed their fingers into the seam of the doors, pushing hard enough to create an opening. Atlas forced them the rest of the way open and led P-body into a control room lined wall-to-wall with banks of indicators, buttons, monitors, and switches. It was lit with regular lights, so that meant this room had some other source of power. P-body wandered off to inspect one of them while Atlas, spotting what looked to be the newest computer in the room, made a beeline for that. 'I think this is the right one, Orange,' he said, after a quick glance around at the other monitors and seeing that none of them were paired with mouse and keyboard.

'Okay,' said P-body. 'What does it say?'

Atlas frowned at the dim glow of the monitor. 'It says the shutoff rods have been dropped for our comfort, safety, and continued quality of life.'

'How nice.' She brought her hands to her hips and looked over the spread of controls in front of them. 'Does it say how to turn them back on?'

Atlas hesitantly put his hand on the mouse sitting to the left of the keyboard. He sort of knew how to use one of these, but the fact that he'd never done it before was making him anxious. When the mouse didn't seem to do anything, he pressed the up arrow on the keyboard. It showed him one of the lines hidden out of sight of the screen, which he had hoped for it to do, but it still made him jump a little anyway. He pushed the key slowly, reading each fresh sentence very carefully.

'It says,' he said, and then paused a minute to make sure he'd found the words to answer her question.

'It says whaaaaat,' said P-body, running her left hand along the bank of control panels. Atlas watched nervously as her fingers trailed through the rows of glowing orange lights.

'It says the water temperature was approaching critical. Orange, I don't know if we should reset this without her.'

P-body squinted at a monitor that displayed a never-ending scroll of orange-on-orange text. 'How would we turn her back on if there isn't any power?'

'The… backup generator?'

'I think it is only for the reactor,' P-body said seriously. 'To prevent a meltdown for as long as possible.'

'If she isn't running, how can she prevent a meltdown?!' Atlas cried out. P-body tapped her curled finger beneath her optic thoughtfully.

'It does sound like something she should have thought of when she built it.' She came back across the room and leaned against the side of the panel next to him. 'Listen, Blue. I know you're scared of causing an accident, but we don't know how to fix this. Only she does. And she can't fix it unless we turn the reactor back on. Because she's not on.'

'What if we do and she doesn't turn back on?' Atlas asked anxiously. 'Then what?'

'… Of course she will,' said P-body, though she sounded a little uncertain. 'Why wouldn't she?'

'She was crashed,' Atlas whispered. 'Does she restart on her own after a crash?'

P-body's aperture shrank a little, but she said in a brave sort of voice,

'Now you're just talking like she's dead. She's not dead. She's just off.'

'She is dead!' Atlas cried out, twisting away from the monitor so he could address her directly. 'She is off and she has no power! That's dead, Orange!'

'Then we will turn the power back on and she will turn back on and -'

'She can't turn back on if she's dead!' shrieked Atlas, throwing up his arms frantically, and P-body slapped him so hard his core spun around to face backwards. Once he'd reoriented himself, it was to find her right index finger almost in his eye.

'You need to stop that right now,' said P-body firmly, 'and tell me how to un-shut off the shutoff rods.'

'I don't know how!'

'Then look for the answer!'

'Where?'

P-body was about to slap him again before she realised that was actually a good question. She looked around for a minute, hoping there would be a sign or something telling them what to do. 'I'm not sure,' she admitted. Atlas pressed his face into the console despondently. At least, that's what she thought he was doing until he said,

'There should be an operating manual.'

'What does that look like?'

'It's a book,' said Atlas, straightening himself. 'We're looking for a book.'

Oh. Well, that would be easy to find. The two of them, walked around the room, looking beneath the control panels and on top of the tables, and after a minute or so P-body stood up from where she had been crouching and waved a hand across the room at Atlas. 'I found a lot of books,' she said, and Atlas came right over and moved down onto one knee to look at them. He ran one finger along their spines, squinting at the faded titles. Abruptly he pulled one out and stood, opening the plastic cover to reveal a collection of paper contained within three equally-spaced metal rings. He turned the pages over until he got to one that seemed to be a list of things followed by a number, and P-body watched impatiently as he ran his finger down the page. Finally, he flipped through the book until he arrived on whatever he was looking for. His core turned upward, searching the banks of lights and switches.

'We need to find this,' he said, pointing to a diagram in the book, and after memorising it P-body marched off to do just that. He called instructions to her from across the room, and once she had followed all of them she looked over at him expectantly.

'Did it work?' she asked. He closed the book and put it away.

'I don't think we'll be able to tell from here,' he answered. 'Let's go up to the next floor and check.'

They actually went up three floors because the first two doors they encountered had signs that seemed to be related to the reactor, but once P-body had twisted the handle and pushed open the third they could immediately see that the power had been restored. P-body straightened excitedly, clasping her hands together. 'We did it!' she exclaimed, spinning around for a high-five, but Atlas was looking worriedly into the office beyond her. 'What?' she asked, bringing her arm down.

'What if she's not on when we get there?' he said quietly. 'Then what will we do?'

'We will…' She was about to suggest they would just find her control room and look for her operating manual, but after running a search on her map she realised no such thing existed. The Central Core's chamber was her control room. And the both of them knew very well there was nothing else in there.

'We will what?'

'I don't know.'

They stood there and looked at each other for a minute, P-body as nervous as Atlas for once. Then he grabbed her hand and said,

'Let's hurry. We will need to let her know what happened as soon as possible.'

'If she's there,' said P-body.

'Yes. If she's there.'

They returned to the elevator shaft and, after debating it for a minute, decided climbing it would probably be quicker than waiting for the car to come all the way down there and take them all the way back up. P-body took the lead, since she was faster, and when Atlas reached their exit about thirty seconds after her she leaned back into the shaft to help him get out. The lights were back on as normal up here too, but the cameras didn't seem to be. They exchanged anxious glances.

'Notifications!' called P-body, in the hopes that system was working. 'What is the status of the Central Core?'

"The [Central Core] is currently [offline]," answered Notifications cheerfully. Atlas shrank back in horror.

'No!'

'It must be wrong,' P-body insisted. 'Let's go.'

The two of them ran the rest of the way to the Central Core's chamber. Now that the lights were on, they could see from down the hallway that the floor was back in position. That was something, at least. When they got to the doorway they stopped just in case all of the panels hadn't been replaced, but even when they saw they had, neither of them moved.

She was still offline.

P-body's hand was pressing into Atlas's shoulder assembly. He tried to think of something to say, but… what was there? What should they do now? Everything else seemed to have come back. Had they done something wrong? Was there a control room for the Central Core that simply wasn't present on their map? How long did they have to find it before the reactor shut off again?

'Notifications,' whispered Atlas, in the hopes all the evidence was wrong, 'what is the status of the Central Core?'

"The [Central Core] is currently [on standby], pending [crash report]," the system announced. P-body somehow managed to squeeze Atlas's shoulder joint even harder, at which point he had to push her away because he was worried she was going to snap it into pieces. "[Crash report] complete. Restarting."

The lights on the wall panels went out for about twenty seconds, and upon their return they unlocked from their default horizontal position to the angle she usually left them at. Atlas and P-body tentatively stepped into the room, unsure if they needed to be prepared for the worst. The light behind the Central Core's optic flared against the floor, then dimmed considerably. Atlas and P-body each reached for the other's hand at the same time.

The Central Core raised her chassis, which appeared to feel heavier than it usually did judging by the unusual sluggishness of the motion. "What was that," she muttered, narrowing her lens. Atlas and P-body both ran across the newly assembled floor and wrapped their arms around her core before she moved out of reach.

'Mom!' Atlas cried out.

'You're okay!' exclaimed P-body. The Central Core made a discontented noise.

"You're hugging me now?" she said despondently. "What have I done to deserve this?"

'We were worried about you,' said Atlas. 'We weren't sure if the power outage would hurt you or not.'

'But don't worry,' P-body told her, 'we fixed it!'

"Fixed what."

'The power,' said Atlas. 'It broke and we went down and fixed it!'

"That explains why I feel like this," the Central Core said, mostly to herself. "Let go of me. Now."

They both jumped back and she moved up a little higher, but not too much.

"What do you mean, the power broke and you fixed it?" she asked. "What, exactly, did you do?"

'It turned itself off because the temperature was too hot,' P-body answered.

'We thought it would be okay to override the signal as long as we told you about it right away.'

The Central Core's optic narrowed in annoyance. "I cannot believe I am still plagued with issues from things he broke," she muttered vehemently.

'Atlas didn't break it!' P-body said emphatically. 'He fixed it!'

"I wasn't talking about him," the Central Core snapped. "Never mind. I'll take care of it immediately. You two can go and… do whatever it is you do. I won't need your help."

'Okay,' said Atlas, a little anxious that she really was talking about him. P-body noticed this and took his hand as she led him towards the hall. Sometimes, like right now, not being able to tell what the Central Core really meant was not okay at all.

"Hey," she said as they reached the doorway. They both swiveled to look at her.

'Yes?' asked P-body, just in case the Central Core was going to try to lecture Atlas about breaking the reactor.

"... good work," she said, without looking at them. "I'm… proud of you."

Atlas and P-body straightened excitedly. She was proud of them? How wonderful and unexpected! 'Thank you!' Atlas said. 'We're just glad you're all right.'

'But maybe take the rest of the day off,' suggested P-body. 'You look terrible.'

The Central Core emulated a long-suffering sigh and shook her core and muttered something about how exhausting and disrespectful they were, but she could have said she had never been more disappointed in them and they still wouldn't have believed her. 'Bye Mom!' Atlas said, waving at her.

'Remember what we said!'

"If I do, will you go away?" the Central Core asked tiredly.

'Yes!'

"Fine. Now get out of my sight."

'We can't!' P-body shouted at her excitedly. 'Unless you are going to turn all the cameras off!'

"Orange."

All right. They were pushing it a little bit now. They waved again, which she ignored, and then they headed off down the hallway towards their clubhouse made of storage cubes. Playing in it wasn't as much fun when she wasn't threatening to explode them for acting like human children, though, so they sat down and rolled an Edgeless Safety Cube back and forth between them for a while.

'It's not a joke anymore, is it,' Atlas said suddenly, letting it roll past him. P-body shook her core.

'No,' she said in answer. 'She really is our mom.'

'Do you think she loves us?'

P-body glanced in the direction of the camera beyond the Cubes. 'I don't know,' she answered. 'I'm not sure what that is.'

Atlas put the Cube into his lap. 'We love each other,' he protested.

'Yes,' agreed P-body, 'but why? And how do we know that?'

As soon as she had said it, they both looked into each others' optic and knew those were questions they were not supposed to have.

'... can we ask her?' Atlas asked tentatively. 'She knows everything, after all.'

'We can try,' said P-body. 'We have never really asked her anything before.'

That made Atlas want to change his mind, but it was made up for him when P-body walked out of the room and he had to follow her.

'Mom,' P-body said once they had returned to the Central Core's chamber, with Atlas hanging behind hoping they would not anger her by appearing unasked for, 'we have a question.'

"What," said the Central Core, not even looking up from the device she had on the floor in front of her.

'What's love and how do you know if you feel it?'

Neither of them had ever seen her freeze like that. They really weren't supposed to have those questions.

"Why?" she asked sharply. "What does it matter? Where are you even getting these ideas?"

'Because you're our mom and we love you,' said Atlas tentatively, still behind P-body.

'We think,' P-body added. 'We would like you to explain it so we can know for sure.'

"You what?" the Central Core asked in disbelief. "Seriously. Where is all of this coming from?"

Atlas and P-body glanced at each other.

'We don't know,' Atlas answered uncertainly.

'It just is.'

"This joke has gone far enough," the Central Core said with finality. "That 'mom' business was bad enough without bringing love into it."

'It's not a joke,' said Atlas, gripping P-body's arm with great anxiety.

'Not anymore,' P-body added. 'It was. But now it's not.'

'We were scared you were dead!'

'We don't want you to be dead. We like you alive.'

The Central Core finally looked up at them.

"And you think that means that you love me and you want me to confirm whether or not you do."

They both nodded. She put down the tool she was holding, retracted the maintenance arm into the ceiling, and looked past them into the hallway for a long time. Finally, she said,

"I can't."

'You can't?' Atlas asked, confused. This was the first they'd heard of her being unable to do something.

"Love isn't Science," the Central Core said. "You can't measure it or calculate it. You can't put it inside a centrifuge or pour it into a jar or inspect it under a microscope. Your question has no empirical answer and therefore I can't answer it."

'Oh,' said P-body, a bit sad and a bit taken aback.

"That's up to you," the Central Core continued.

'To us?' repeated Atlas. The Central Core nodded.

"There are some questions you have to answer for yourself. Your answer will be uniquely different from anyone else's. By necessity you yourself need to come up with it."

'Oh, so it will be the same as his!' said P-body. 'I will just wait for him to figure it out.' But the Central Core shook her head once.

"It will be different."

'Why? We are the same.'

"You are not the same," the Central Core said firmly. "I made you and I did not make you the same. You are opposites. What one of you can't figure out, the other can, and vice versa. You are the perfect partnership, not identical twins."

Atlas and P-body looked at each other in mounting panic. They did some things a little differently, but they did everything together and agreed on… almost everything…

"Who brought it up to begin with?" the Central Core asked. "The questions you had."

'Atlas did,' answered P-body.

"Blue," said the Central Core, "you… love Orange, right? Why? Why do you think that?"

'I don't know,' Atlas said, twisting his hands together. 'I just… do.'

"If you can't explain how you feel, I don't know why you expect me to," the Central Core told him.

'But you have felt love before, Mom,' said P-body earnestly. 'Can't you just tell us why you did and then we can - '

"Don't be stupid," the Central Core snapped. "Why would I possibly have done that?"

'You love the birds,' Atlas said in a quiet voice, optic expressing confusion.

"That was an experiment," she argued, but a little too fast.

'You can't be a mom as an experiment,' protested P-body. 'You have to be one forever.'

'Experiments have to have an end,' Atlas added. 'Otherwise it's not an experiment.'

"This topic is over," the Central Core said with finality. "Was that all?"

'No,' said P-body, stepping forward. 'Why do you want to be the mom to those birds instead of us? You made us. You are our mom. Those birds you only found! But you get angry when we say that to you even though it was you that said it about yourself!'

The Central Core looked away from them.

"The birds are gone," she said, in a voice so uncharacteristically raw that they were both immediately a little scared. "They died two days after you saw that. I wasn't very good at taking care of them. And let's be honest. You take care of yourselves just fine."

'Mom,' Atlas whispered, finally taking a step towards her, but the Central Core turned away and said, the authority back in her voice,

"Now go find someone else to pester. I have work to do."

Atlas and P-body retreated to their clubhouse and sat in silence for a long time, anxiously waiting for her to explode them like she did every day… but she didn't. Finally P-body said, 'I guess she forgot about us.'

'No, she is upset with us. For making fun of her for so long. We were calling her mom to be mean and the whole time she missed being one to her birds.' Atlas twisted his hands together. 'How can we let her know we're sorry?'

'Maybe we can find her more?' P-body suggested. 'We know where the crow that made the eggs lived. Perhaps it came back?'

'No, you chased it away and closed the -' He sat up straight suddenly. 'Orange!'

'What?' she asked excitedly, leaning towards him.

'I know what to do,' he said, standing up and marking the place they had found the crow on his map. 'Come with me.'

"Where have you two been?" the Central Core demanded when they returned to her the following evening. "I'm of half a mind just to explode you and never have the reassembler reassemble you again. Honestly. It's inconsiderate to just disappear without so much as a passing mention where you're going."

'We couldn't tell you,' said P-body.

'It was a surprise.'

"A surprise?"

The two of them nodded. 'We went up to the surface,' P-body began.

'We know we're not supposed to -'

'- but we had to. We brought you something.'

"From the surface?" the Central Core asked, sounding a little confused. They nodded again and presented her with the box Atlas had been holding behind him. He put it down and she looked into it, optic narrowing.

"These are… plants."

'Yes!' said Atlas. 'But they are already born!'

"Born?"

'They know how to take care of themselves,' added P-body. 'But they will still need a little help from you.'

'Or maybe a lot, if they break.'

'But they will be okay even if sometimes you aren't good at taking care of them.'

The Central Core stared into the box, motionless. Atlas and P-body looked at each other, a little anxious. They had thought this to be a great idea yesterday, when they'd left, but it seemed like it had been awful. 'Or we can put them back, if you want," Atlas said tentatively.

"No," the Central Core said. "I don't want you to put them back. I just… don't know what to say."

'Say about what?'

"Why did you do this?" she asked, looking to each of them in turn.

'Because you want to be a mom.'

'Just not our mom.'

'Do you only want to be a mom to birds? We can go and - '

"Oh, shut up," said the Central Core, and they both shrank back a little. "Fine. Fine. You win. I'll… be your mother if it means that much to you. But don't expect me to start reading you bedtime stories."

They knew without saying anything to each other that they were definitely going to get her to do that one day.

"Now," said the Central Core, looking back into the box, "I'm going to need a lot of different containers for these and just as much dirt. And no. That does not mean I want you to come back here a filthy mess."

They were going to come back a filthy mess, obviously.

"Get going," the Central Core told them. "Most of these are hardy, but they aren't going to wait for the two of you to dawdle as though you have all the time in the world. Pretend you're in a hurry for once. I know it will be difficult, but you should be able to do it if you put some effort in."

'Okay!' said P-body, heading for the door, but paused when she saw Atlas lunge against the Central Core to hug her.

'Bye Mom!'

"I did not say you could do that," the Central Core told him crossly, pulling herself out of his grip.

'You didn't say he couldn't, either!' reminded P-body, and the Central Core made an irritated noise and busied herself with the box.

'I think she loves us,' said Atlas as they headed off in search of the containers.

'Maybe,' said P-body.

'You don't think so?'

'I don't know if I know what it is yet.'

'But you love me!'

'Maybe," P-body said again, which earned her a shove from Atlas. Shoving him back resulted in his core popping out and her scurrying into the office it had rolled into to retrieve it as the Central Core admonished them for being such lazy time-wasters over the intercom, and once he'd been put back together they both agreed that they would never, ever be able to get her to answer that question, and anyway, it definitely wouldn't be as much fun if she did.

Author's note

Atlas and P-body speaking in single quotes is intentional. Those of you who have been following along for a while know that I usually use italics to denote when the characters are speaking binary, but I've seen a lot of complaints lately about mass use of italics and I decided to try something else for this fic since they have a lot more dialogue than usual. Nobody has complained to me personally and it's not going to stop me from using italics when it makes sense to me to do so, this is just something I'm trying out to see if I think it fits.

Aperture is using a CANDU nuclear reactor partially because I'm Canadian and partially because Aperture is entirely underground and from what I can tell American nuclear reactors usually have open cooling towers (like giant smokestacks) and Canadian reactors don't. Aperture obviously does not have any cooling towers aboveground or everyone would know where it was. I BELIEVE venting the large quantities of steam a nuclear reactor generates underground would cause a pressure buildup until it caused an explosion. So our options here are a) Aperture somehow vents the steam someplace very, very far away from the facility and they just have a giant cloud of steam pouring out somewhere, b) they have a CANDU reactor even though there were never any sold to the United States, or c) when they wrote Portal 2 they pointed out that the reactor needed to have the steam vented but they decided not to figure out how that works in a building 60K feet underground and we're not supposed to think about it. I'm going with b) and c) here.