A/N: Okay, a little one shot while I get over a little writer's block. A friend showed me that the second part of the Portal 2 Soundtrack came out, so I downloaded it to find a nice treat called "PotatOS Lament." I thought it was hauntingly beautiful, and I knew that I had to write something about it. I suggest you give it a listen, I love it :) I suggest listening to the one that actually says Portal 2 OST Volume 2 in the title, if you look it up on YouTube I mean. It's slightly different, and it's more refined. If you didn't know, Valve gives away the whole album (so far, it's not finished) on their site.
I'm not sure how I feel about this piece of writing, so I guess I'll just have to wait and see what readers think of it.
PotatOS Lament
"Caroline, Caroline, why do I know this woman? Did I kill her? Or…" GLaDOS trailed off. "Oh my God."
Chell raised an eyebrow and stopped moving for a moment to focus on the strangely unstable AI.
"Look, you're…doing a great job. Can you handle things by yourself for a little while? I need to think."
Chell was immensely confused, but she said nothing, as per usual. She merely nodded and continued onward through the facility.
GLaDOS envied her calm attitude. Inside her small potato, she was a mess of thoughts and emotions that threatened to fry her body. She managed to keep herself under control, but she was still deeply troubled.
Being down there in that old facility had unlocked something in her memory that had been previously unavailable to her, something that she hadn't even been aware of.
Caroline.
All of Caroline's memories were her memories, and GLaDOS could feel the presence of the woman herself. She could not take the chance of shorting out by accessing those memories. She had no way of knowing how she would react to such information.
It was maddening.
The sound of flapping wings drew her out of her trance, causing her to cry out: "Bird, bird! Kill it! It's evil!"
As the bird flew off, Chell gave the potato an amused smirk. GLaDOS ignored the test subject's expression. "It flew off. Good…for him." Chell rolled her eyes. "Okay, back to thinking," GLaDOS declared, thinking she had humiliated herself enough.
GLaDOS found herself watching Chell as she progressed through the decrepit sphere. The woman was truly remarkable. Her ability to solve tests was unmatched, and she had even been able to outsmart an all knowing AI. GLaDOS admired Chell's intelligence and determination, which was rather funny since she had hated those things about the test subject before they had been forced to work together.
Oh no.
GLaDOS didn't like where her thoughts were going. They were positive thoughts, compliments, towards a murderer. GLaDOS felt as if she might actually be losing her mind. She was even starting to like…
No, GLaDOS decided, I am not even going to go there.
"You know what? I've been thinking," declared the crazy Cave Johnson, "when life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade!"
"Yeah," GLaDOS agreed.
"Make life take the lemons back! Get mad!"
"Yeah! Yeah!" GLaDOS cheered enthusiastically, ignoring the incredulous look on Chell's face.
"'I don't want these damn lemons, what am I supposed to do with these?'" Cave asked angrily.
"Yeah, take the lemons!"
"Demand to see life's manager! Make life rue the day it decided to give Cave Johnson lemons! Do you know who I am? I'm the man who's going to burn your house down! With the lemons!"
GLaDOS felt a wave of fondness rush through her, catching her off guard. "Oh, I like this guy," GLaDOS found herself saying out loud. She couldn't explain it, but there was something about this man that she found endearing, and it left her feeling both happiness and a strange, sad longing.
"I'm going to get my engineers to invent a combustible lemon that burns your house down!" Cave cried triumphantly.
"Burn his house down!" GLaDOS yelled. "Burning people, he says what we're all thinking!"
Chell stared at the potato as if it was insane. GLaDOS didn't blame her, she was having a difficult time understanding her own behavior. Something about this man just…
"The point is, if we can store music on a compact disc, why can't we store a man's intelligence and personality on one? So I have the engineers figuring that out now."
Oh.
"Brain mapping, artificial intelligence, we should've been working on it…30 years ago. I'm going to say this – and I'm going to say it on tape so everyone hears it a hundred times a day: if I die before they can pour my mind into a computer, I want Caroline to run this place." Cave coughed, and a feeling of grief rushed through GLaDOS. "Now she'll argue, she'll say she can't, she's modest like that, but you MAKE her!"
Chell stopped what she was doing temporarily to watch the potato as this bit of information sunk in. The test subject seemed to understand completely. When GLaDOS said nothing, she continued onward.
GLaDOS went numb, unsure how to react or how to feel. Caroline was forced to become…her. And that fact alone was enough to send the AI into another trance.
"Alright, test over, you can head on back to your desk," Cave said weakly.
"Good-bye, sir," GLaDOS heard herself say distantly. She felt as if it hadn't even been her that said it, that it had been-
Anger flooded GLaDOS' processors and it was so strong that it threatened to overwhelm her insignificant little potato battery. Without a care for how she, or Caroline, might react to such a procedure, they had been forced together. GLaDOS couldn't even tell who she was anymore. Was she her own entity? Or was she Caroline? Were they separate minds or had they been combined? It was all so confusing and infuriating; she knew that sparks had to be flying out of her core. This was confirmed by the uneasy expression on Chell's face.
GLaDOS hated those scientists all over again. She wanted them dead. She took a small amount of comfort from the fact that most of them had died at her will. She took even more comfort from the video feeds in her memory banks from Bring Your Daughter to Work Day.
In the video, she noticed a little girl. Amongst the anger and the pleasure she was feeling from watching the people run around in fear, there was a small glimmer of something else while watching that girl search for someone in the mob. GLaDOS couldn't quite discern what it was: sadness? Pity? Regret?
As she watched the schizophrenic Doug Rattmann cart the girl off, GLaDOS knew who the child was.
GLaDOS watched Chell navigate with renewed interest.
The girl had been Chell, and she had felt strange emotions toward her. It was alarming, because she had been hoping that the girl wouldn't be one of those who died from the neurotoxin. Knowing now that the girl was Chell, GLaDOS found that to be preposterous. Of course she wanted Chell to die; it had been her goal since waking up.
But maybe her feelings and goals had…shifted a bit.
This news was not helping her mood.
To her horror, she realized that she had begun to sing.
Chell had stopped dead in her tracks, her eyes glued to the potato as its optic blinked with each word sung. The test subject's jaw dropped open slightly in awe, and GLaDOS stared back at her, just as mystified by this unexplainable phenomenon.
The music was so sad. The 'words' seemed to be absolute gibberish, but the emotion was so raw. GLaDOS could feel her anger and frustration peeling away; only to be replaced by emptiness so vast that she feared she would be swallowed whole. Studying Chell's face as she listened intently only seemed to intensify the melancholy emotions that were flowing through her.
GLaDOS realized that the song was meant for the test subject's ears. Caroline was communicating in her own cryptic way. A brief flicker of relief hit her as she decided that she and Caroline were separate, but deeply connected, minds. That relief was soon replaced by a longing similar to what she felt when listening to Cave Johnson speak.
Caroline must've cared very deeply for that maniac CEO, and now a similar emotion was directed at someone else. That someone couldn't possibly be GLaDOS, because Caroline was already stuck with her.
It had to be Chell.
The air was silent once more as the implications of everything settled in GLaDOS' mind. Chell could very well be Caroline's daughter. Seeing as how the latter had been forced into dumping her mind into a computer, it made sense that Chell had been put up for adoption. It all fit.
GLaDOS hated the idea of having a practically maternal connection to the test subject, but it did explain the new feelings of fondness and the lack of the urge to kill her she was experiencing. GLaDOS hated that too.
It took a long time for GLaDOS to realize that Chell was still frozen in place, staring at her. This made the AI angry again.
"What are you looking at? Stop staring at me; I'm not the one with the grossly configured bone structure. Get going, we're running out of time!"
With an irritated frown, Chell did as she was told.
GLaDOS sighed in defeat as the guilt seeped in. "Look, I'm sorry, but I've had one hell of a day, okay? I'm just trying to cope, and I know I'm not doing a good job of it. Just roll with it."
Chell made a strange noise that sounded like a cross between a disgusted snort and a laugh. GLaDOS realized that Chell had been through her own share of traumatic experiences.
"Alright, granted, you have been through a lot too. However, you did handle it by killing me, so I would say we both don't handle emotional scarring very well."
Chell gritted her teeth, and GLaDOS took that as her cue to shut up. There was that guilt again.
GLaDOS barely refrained from groaning in frustration.
I really need to get back into my body.