Portal: Love as a Construct

Part Thirty-Six. The Little Girl

Part Thirty-Six.  The Little Girl

“You can’t just intimidate her like that!”

“She wasn’t listening!”

“She’s a little girl, for God’s sake!  She doesn’t understand!  You know what’ll happen if you keep scaring her like that?  She’s going to grow up afraid of you.  Is that really what you want?”

“I don’t do it that often –“

“You know very well that the worst things that happen are the ones that stick with you!  Get a bloody handle on yourself!  Stop getting angry with her!  She’s not you!  She doesn’t run ev’rything through logic before she decides whether it’s true or not!”

“I know that –“

“All she wanted to hear was that her mum was gonna be with her when she died!  Why in the hell could you just not say you would be?  It could be a lie, fine.  But – “

“There’s no could.  It would be a lie.”

“It doesn’t matter!  You can discuss it with her when she’s older!  You don’t lay the world on her all in one go!”

“So it’s fine to lie all of a sudden, when you’re always complaining that – “

“She’s too young!  You have to protect her until she’s ready!  Which she’s not!”

I really wanna cry.

Momma and Daddy are havin’ a fight, and it’s ‘cause of me.  They only fight ‘cause of me.  Daddy must be pretty brave, ‘cause if Momma was talkin’ to me in that voice I’d be runnin’ away.  I know Daddy told me to go find Atlas an’ P-body, but I don’t like it when they say stuff about me when I ain’t there.  And I knew they were gonna fight. 

“She’s a kid!  You let kids have dreams and you don’t shatter them until they’re, until they’re adults!  She doesn’t need to worry about the, the logistics of, of what happens after you die!  Let her believe in heaven, or, or angels, or the bloody Tooth Fairy, for God’s sake!”  

“You want me to raise my daughter to believe in lies?”

“No!  I want us to give our daughter the childhood we never had!  Y’know?  A happy one, maybe?”

“I don’t know about you, but the lies I was constantly told were a large part of my problem with the scientists.”

“There’s a diff’rence between letting her dream and actually, really lying.  D’you seriously have, got nothing on child development in those precious databases of yours?  Yes.  You do.  Remember?  I’ve read it?  Which you should also have done?”

I got no idea what they’re talkin’ about.  I dunno what a scientist is, or angels, or a database, but I don’t get why he’s gettin’ mad at her for answerin’ my question.  I dunno why havin’ a soul isn’t a fact either though, but I know Momma loves facts an’ if somethin’ isn’t a fact she probably doesn’t like it that much. 

“That data is based on human research.  She is something else entirely.  Generalisation of one species to another is just bad Science.”

“What the – science?  She’s not science!  She’s a kid!”

“Don’t be ridiculous.  Everything is Science.  And I see no reason to apply human Science to - ”

“Will you just drop the, quit it with the science for three seconds?  Seriously!  Stop!  Just stop it!”