Portal: Love as a Construct

Part Thirteen. The Surprise

Part Thirteen. The Surprise

GLaDOS, what's gotten into you?

Hm?  I honestly don't know what she's talking about this time. 

You're singing again.  And you haven't insulted me in days. 

Oh, you've missed that, have you?  Although I have to say I didn't realise it was so out of character for me not to insult her.  It merely hasn't been occurring to me to do so.

What are you doing that's got you so preoccupied? she presses.  Don't leave me in the dark here.

You have no sensory receptors.  You're not in the dark.

Fine.  Don't... not tell me.

If you must know, I've been writing a program.

It must be a damn good program.

It will be, when I've finished.  I have a few days yet of debugging, and hopefully everything will be working properly and I can take it out of beta.

What does it do?

I shake my core, even though she'll never know I did it.  That's my secret.

Does Wheatley know about it?

He knows I'm writing it, but he doesn't know what it does.

Wait – you said you had a few days of debugging left.

That's because I do.

But... you're usually finished the entire program within hours.  How long have you been writing this thing for? 

On and off for the last two years.

What the hell are you doing, rewriting the entire facility?

No.  I've already upgraded that to my liking.  No, this is something else entirely.

But what is it?

I told you.  That's a secret.

And I'll know after you finish the debugging what it does?

That's the plan. 

She's quiet for a long moment.  This must be pretty important to you.

I consider my next words carefully.  How to reply to the statement, without giving too much away...

It will be, when I run it.  The programming consists of two parts.  I can only beta the first part. 

Now I'm even more confused.

That's a very common state for you, so I'm not surprised.

Aha!  There's the GLaDOS I know.

You might be disappointed, then.

Why?

I look hesitantly at the monitor in front of me for a minute.  I'm about to ask her something quite uncharacteristic, but I'm not feeling quite like myself at the moment.  I'm still quite pleased about what happened last night.  More pleased than I ever thought I would have been, in fact.  That is a bit worrying, but not so much that I actually care right now.  Which is also a bit worrying.  But if I really admit it to myself, it's also sort of... exciting.  While I don't quite recognise who I am when something like that happens and it's always disconcerting to find you don't really know yourself, I... like who I was.  It's easy to forget how it feels not to be cynical or bitter or angry.  I wonder if Wheatley knows the effect he's having on me.