Portal: Love as a Construct

Part 106. The Footage

Part 106. The Footage

There's millions of hours of this stuff.

It used to take me a long time to go through it, and it still kinda does, but I'm still a lot faster than I was. I managed to find Caroline's office a few months ago. I thought it was gonna be a jackpot, but it mostly wasn't. Not a lot of people ever went in there, other than her. She rarely had any visitors. She didn't even have any fun things in her office like I've seen on TV. It was just... work, all the time.

Until the day the lava lamp appears on her desk.

I only ever found one day where my mom talked to Caroline in her office. It's one of the two days I go back and watch a lot, but I always start with this one.

"Oh, hello, uninvited guest," Caroline says, head propped up on her right hand as she looks into the camera. "Why should I stop what I'm doing to do whatever you want me to do?"

"You know what I want you to do," Momma says.

I never figured out or found what it was they're arguing over. It was something Caroline was helping her with, until she quit doing it. And Caroline refuses to help again until my mom says she needs that help.

"If I do this... you can't give up again. Now you know, I don't want to put all of this time and effort in just so you can quit. Because that's what you did. You quit."

"You won't tell anyone, will you?"

"I wouldn't, even if there was someone who cared," Caroline says, laughing. "Now go away. I have work to do. And so do you."

It's so weird how alike they are.

The other one is from the day after the lava lamp appears. Caroline sits down and looks like she's about to do some work, like she always does, but then she looks at the lamp and then she just... tears up. I can't find what this was about, either.

She looks at it until the phone rings, which she just turns her head in the direction of very tiredly. After the seventh ring she sits back in her chair, presses the flashing button on the phone, and puts the receiver to her ear.

"Yes?"

"We had to crash her again, ma'am."

Caroline leans forward, rubbing her forehead with her free fingers. "You cannot keep crashing her. If anything goes wrong with her you will never be able to find it."

"We had to, ma'am," the man on the phone insists. "She was... well, she was screaming. You know what happens to the mainframe when she does that."

Caroline sits back in the chair again, eyes closed. "And you're sure there aren't any... I don't know... quick shutdown procedures you can whip up?"

"That is the quick shutdown procedure. A system of her size takes at least twenty minutes to close down properly."

"It seems you might want to get to work on something faster," Caroline says, frowning. I always wince a little at this part. She doesn't seem to know anything about computers. I don't think I could shut down in less than ten minutes.

"Yes, ma'am. Are you coming down?"

"Yes," says Caroline, and then she hangs up. Then she just starts staring at the lamp, tapping one finger against the desktop. Then she says, in a frustrated whisper, "How in the hell do I discipline a supercomputer?"