Portal: Love as a Construct

Part Ninety-Eight. The Disrespect

Part Ninety-Eight. The Disrespect

Her words immediately call to mind not the other night, but a different day entirely. One I really don't want to think about right now. I should just have left those files alone...

"And."

"Where did you learn that song?"

I want to lie. I want to tell her it's one of the millions of songs I have lying around my servers, that I just happened upon one day and it took my fancy. But you shouldn't lie to your third-best friend, especially when she's your sister.

"Caroline sang it to me once." I can remember now, and it makes me very... sad. I was confused then and didn't understand what was happening, but I know now.

She was telling me to get away from here, somehow, before it destroyed me. Like it destroyed her. And she, like the facility did after the Incident, used that song for one reason:

To say goodbye.

"It must be special to you, then."

"It's just a song," I say abruptly, turning away from where she has decided to sit on the floor, and I can see Wheatley and Caroline didn't believe that so she probably won't.

"No it isn't. If it were, you wouldn't have sung it to me when you sent me away."

"I did no such thing." I've never sung that song in my life. I don't even know why I called her that.

"Then who did?"

I was really hoping this would never come up. "The Turret Wife did."

Wow. Her jaw actually dropped. "... Turret Wife?"

"Yes. It's a turret that can sing soprano." I don't think she believes me, but it's all true.

"Why do you have a turret that can sing soprano?" she asks me, head braced on one fist and propped up on her knee. I shake my core in exasperation.

"There is an entire turret choir. I have no idea what it was made for. To make turrets appear friendly or something."

"A choir of turrets," Chell mutters. I lean closer.

"Yes! And I had nothing to do with it. I have no use for such a thing." Why would I when I can do so much better myself?

Chell is shaking her head. "This place doesn't make any sense."

She's telling me that as though I don't live here.

"So... was I actually adopted? It's not super important, it's just... even when you were a potato you said that."

"Hm." It's going to take me a minute to look for that. I archived all the test subject files a while back. No need to keep them active if they're all dead.

"And were there really two people with my last name in cryogenic storage?"

I have to laugh. "Yes, there were. Because you refused to give your last name you were just input to the database as 'Chell Smith'. There were quite a few people in there with your last name, believe me."

Wheatley and Chell both find that as funny as I do. Caroline merely looks suspiciously attentive, and Claptrap... I think he's started daydreaming again.

"I will admit," I continue, unable to locate any information of use, "that I can't be sure. But I believe you were. Any Aperture employee working here at the time of your conception would have been a fool indeed to have attempted to have children. It would definitely have been discouraged. And I doubt that you would have come back here to become a test subject, had your birth parents succeeded in not giving you any birth defects. I find it much more likely that you were adopted from elsewhere by an Aperture employee."