Portal: Love as a Construct

Part Seventy-Three. The Discovery

Part Seventy-Three. The Discovery

If only I could shut down that computer.

Ever since I tried to close that simulation, it's been frozen. I can't shut it down. I am reluctant to just disconnect it from its power source. I can't risk data loss, not of any kind. But the program has been hanging for days now. For the life of me I can't figure out how to shut it off.

Ever since I initially tried to do so, time has felt... odd. As if it's moving around me. Adding to this unease is the fact that none of the system clocks on any of the computers are in sync. I reset them periodically, trying to bring them in line with my own system, but they continue to run incorrectly no matter what I do. It has to be some consequence of that computer.

And... that's not the only strange thing that's been happening. Sometimes when I go into sleep mode at night, I dream things that haven't happened. For other people, that's normal, but for me, it's anything but. I keep dreaming that I saw Chell being assaulted by a Hunter, but when I search for any such event in my files... it doesn't exist. It feels just as real as all the other things I usually dream about, but... it isn't. Even now I can only remember the subject of the dream and not anything else about it. Besides. Chell can't have been on the edge of death. She's with the other humans, repairing the damage done when I moved the facility. I'm not sure why they're doing that, but I trust Chell enough to leave them to it. They can work on that, and I'll continue with the planning. That's... somewhat fair. Ah. Yes. The planning must be put on hold. That computer needs fixing.

I have a little spare time to try to figure that whole mess out, so I go into the files removed during the last few times Maintenance ran and scan through them quickly. I should have done it a long time ago, but I was too occupied with planning. I still am. However, this problem with the clocks is too great for me to continue to ignore. Perhaps Maintenance removed a file that computer needs. It wouldn't be out of the question. I actually can't quite place the last time Maintenance did a full scan. Some few months ago I think. I should have made time for a full run, but when compared to everything else that needs done, my personal maintenance isn't really that important.

Let me see... most of this really is junk. A lot of it is leftover remnants of files I deleted, which gets left in the deletion folder so I can ensure I really don't need it. This file, though... it's very old to have been recently deleted, so it's safe to say that Maintenance decided I don't need it, rather than my deciding so. All right then. Perhaps this is the file that other computer needs so I can shut it down.

On first glance, though... no, that's not what it is. It's a program of some kind. I'm not sure what it does quite yet. It seems to be several unconnected pieces of something much larger. It looks like... programming for a core. It's not commented, so whoever wrote it was either very lazy or trying to keep their work a secret.

I look away from it for a second, focusing on the reality of my chamber floor. Pieces of uncommented core programming... humans can't write this much code without comments, it makes it too hard for them to debug. So that means... that I wrote it.

I don't... remember doing that, but it's the only thing that makes sense. And it also coincides with the fact that the humans probably did not make the cores themselves, seeing as they were never able to replicate me to replace me. So this text file must have been my notes for the prototype. What happened to the rest of it? I obviously finished the prototype at some point. Where is that file?

I return to digitally scanning the file, looking for a clue among the many lines of code. The more of it I see, the more it reminds me of Caroline. The style is undoubtedly mine. It's a little messy, honestly. I must not have had a lot of experience when I wrote this.