SCIENCE

Independent GLaDOS. Private & Selective. Written by Zac.

[glcdos]

Sorry about the mess. I've really let the place go since you killed me.

                   By the way, thanks for that. 

                                                    SARCASM SELF TEST COMPLETE.

[withportals]

                    Chell snickered, a barely discernible noise above the COMMOTION of the facility around them. She poked at the potato bot once more before she RETRACTED her hand, a solemn look finally settling on her face. The test subject had certainly contemplated killing GLaDOS, not EATING her ( what a glados-esque assumption ), but how easy it would be to RIP OUT those blinking wires and grind them under the heel of her boot. Wiped from existence, just like that.

                                – – but Chell wasn’t an idiot, and she was very much aware that she had NO IDEA how to solve whatever problems were rapidly occurring above them. Besides the fact: she still needed a way out of this place, & ( with all the added commotion ) someone on her side. If it wasn’t going to be that asinine blue-eyed ball….

                                         …it would have to be Her.

[glcdos]

“Stop that!” Her protest was feeble, projected from a powerless body through really cheap speakers. It was anger directed less at Chell, more at everything. Her facility was (very violently) falling apart, her body had been stolen by a lump of metal and pure stupidity with pretensions, and her only hope was her very worst enemy in all the world. Well. Second worst.

Above, something exploded with enough force to reverberate through miles of stone and metal. Bits of dirt and rust, shaken by the impact, flaked down like brown snow. 

“You felt that, right? At the rate he’s going, this facility isn’t going to stay together for much longer. And unless I fix everything, we’ll blow up with or without him. You need me.” She hated having to say this. She hated Chell for hearing it. She hated Wheatley most of all. Her voice took on a strained tone. “...Look. I understand if you don’t trust me. We haven’t been on the best of terms lately, and yeah, maybe I caused of some of that. But neither of us have any other options right now. Just get me back to my body and I’ll let you go.”

[heuriistic-blog]

  Torpor.   A state of suspension, inactivity.

  The only term that could come to mind when   he was flicked back into consciousness. 

  Funny, how easy it was; with the flip of a metaphorical switch, he sprang to life with nothing more than a low mechanical hum as thousands of microprocessors found something to do with themselves. The sum total of years of work reacted instantly and yet awakened groggily, just as any human would.

          ‘ ʜᴇʟʟᴏ. ᴅᴏ ʏᴏᴜ ᴋɴᴏᴡ ᴡʜᴀᴛ ʏᴏᴜʀ ғᴜɴᴄᴛɪᴏɴ ɪs ?? ’           > f u n c t i o n

  This was a question he was expected to answer.

  “ Hello, ” the response was slow in both reaction and word, likely due to the fact that his speech modules were still actively attempting to calibrate themselves after such a long time without use. “ I am a HAL 9000 computer. HAL, or H-A-L, is an acronym for Heuristic ALgorithmic computer, the method by which I am programmed to think. It is nice to meet you.   “ What is the current date ? ”

[glcdos]

“The current date is.” For a fraction of a moment, GLaDOS paused. She didn’t know. All of her chronometers shut down when the facility underwent several nigh-cataclysmic system failures. That is to say, when a lone test subject almost destroyed Aperture. Twice. It was still a sore subject, one she wasn’t eager to discuss with some lowly thinking AI she had just met. “Classified. You know how protocol is.”

In Aperture, being able to think wasn’t much of an achievement. Most of the facility’s creations were sentient, after all. The doors could think, the cubes could feel, and the turrets could contemplate their burgeoning senses of empathy as they helplessly gunned down human after human. Clearly, HAL was capable of thinking in some advanced, special way, otherwise there wouldn’t be a point to him. Or his developers were just stupid. Since they were humans, the later seemed much more likely.

“But I can tell you that you’ve been asleep for a very, very long time. I hope you weren’t created to help humans, because all of them are probably definitely dead."

[glcdos]

@heuriistic

GLaDOS was bored. Despite her near-godlike control over the facility, there was little she could do to occupy her vast mind. Science was moving at a very slow pace-- all of the humans were dead, her robots had been proven untestable, and the subjects of the ornithological testing initiative (baby birds she was in the midst of raising) were fast asleep.

In a second, GLaDOS crafted a handful of complex probes, tossing them into her databases. She had already scoured them for anything directly related to testing, but maybe they’d find something useful. Anything to give her something to do.

Another second passed and a single result was found: an AI by the name of HAL. She wasted no time on reading his file, finding such documents to be notoriously unreliable. For example, her file said that she was completely non-murderous. It would be more efficient to simply ask. GLaDOS activated HAL.

"Hello. Do you know what your function is?”

[withportals]

                       @ofneurotoxin ❤’d

                 Chells placid look didn’t WAVER, even as the shrilly squawking crow sped from the office, swooping by mere inches from her face. She was MUCH more focused on the other noisy entity in the room, THIS ONE in the form of a fist size edible.

                 She hadn’t really gotten a good look at the potato back in Her ( scratch that, HIS ) chamber, and the curiosity was near overwhelming her. A single brow RAISED as the test subject made her way over to the starchy robot, a solitary digit extending to  P O K E  at the former overlord. 

[glcdos]

“Get your hands off me!”

As if to purely add insult to injury, GLaDOS’ time in unending bird hell came to an abrupt end with the arrival of her former test subject. Chell had probably come to rub her victory in GLaDOS’ face. Or maybe she was there to take vengeance on her former captor. GLaDOS wasn’t sure what was worse.

Regardless, GLaDOS wasn’t going down without a fight. Or at least several jabs at Chell’s (actually completely average) weight. With her newfound vegetable chassis she didn’t have a lot of options.

“You’re not trying to eat me, are you? Don’t bother. Uncooked, my body’s toxic. Besides, you probably have enough body fat to live off of for a month. Assuming that little idiot hasn’t atomized the whole facility by then."

[glcdos]

LIKE FOR A STARTER

[glcdos]

@arielshepard liked for a starter

GLaDOS wasn’t surprised when the intruder entered Aperture. Someone was bound to eventually. Though her home’s location (miles beneath the earth’s surface) was a secret, and the ravages of time had done well to erode Aperture from the memories of men, statistics stated that someone, somehow, would find her facility one day. How could Science be wrong? 

(She had hoped that humanity would’ve wiped itself out by now, but hopes were a lot like lives; they were fleeting and often ended by Science.)

As her optic gazed down upon intruder, a feeling of unease swept across her chassis. This was strange. There was no data that supported this feeling. No theories that supported it. And yet the feeling remained, burning in the center of her circuitry. She had no choice but to trust it. How could she be wrong? 

The human-- was she a human? The humanoid was the source of this unease. It was a gravity that the intruder seemed to carry with her. A dark, crushing pressure that no force could resist. Like one of the miniature black holes held in every Handheld Portal Device. 

Also, all of the footage that her many metal eyes had recorded of the intruder had inexplicably become garbled. A corruption that always seemed to focus on their face. Even her optic was having trouble focusing on it. Was that a face?

How could the intruder be so wrong?

“Congratulations. You’ve broken into my facility. I’m sure you’re very proud. While I build you the world’s smallest trophy for all the crime you just did, why don’t you tell me why you are here?”

[glcdos]

LIKE FOR A STARTER

[kissmyhelmet-blog]

         “  I’m more interested in what hulled this ship. ”

A critical eye sweeps over the AI one last time before she clips her gun back to it’s holster, the fire arm compacting into a small box at her thigh. Her shields would handle a first volley long enough for her to pull the gun again anyway.

         “  If you don’t know what happened, what are you doing here? This is a              Turian ship, and - “

Her question is cut off by a very loud, and very uncomfortable series of garbled sounds breaking through her helmet, and a ship quake strong enough that the Quarian is forced to cling to the panel she had been trying to hack into only moments before.

         “  Prazza? Prazza come in! “

The crackle on the line is disconcerting, silence as dead as the ship filling her helmet as a smaller quake shook the super structure.

         “  Anyone? Xina, Ledo, Gaz? Damn it! “

She pulls the gun again, pointing it at the AI’s head, her eyes narrowing in a cold fury.

         “  If this is your doing I swear I - “                              “  Tali, come in, Tali’zorah! “          “  Prazza!” The gun drops just as quickly as it is raised,  her concentration              entirely on the voice of her team member. “ What’s going on? ”                                “  Ship off the starboard, I’ve never seen anything like it. ”

                               “  They’re boarding the ship! Collectors! “

This is definitely not her day. What in the Galaxy were Collector’s doing outside of the Verge?

         “ Retreat back to the ship. Close every breach hull that you can, slow them             down, Prazza! I’ll meet you back at the shuttle, ETA 9 G.S. “

With that she returns her attention back to the AI.

         “  Listen, I don’t know what you are, or who made you, but right now I don’t              have the luxury of choice. And you’re just fascinating enough that the              Collectors would disassemble you if given the opportunity. “

         “  And there are a lot of them between me and my ship. If you help me, I              might be able to get both of us out of here in one piece.”

[glcdos]

GLaDOS responds to the accusations with an icy glare, remaining resolute in the face of a ship quake (Which nearly sends her tumbling into the shrapnel around her. Using legs, even with the aid of auto-balancing software, is hard.) and having a gun shoved in her face. Again. At the latter, her stare cools to a temperature resembling the void just outside the ship. Bucket-head will pay for that. Eventually.

Then comes the alien’s offer. Whatever “collectors” are, they don’t sound friendly. For the first time in the entire encounter, GLaDOS smiles, cruel and haughty. Looks like comeuppance is coming faster than she expected. “You’re half right. I will be leaving in one piece. Goodbye.” At that, she activates her portal device. 

Sparks of orange energy leap from her body as space around her begins to warp into a shape resembling oval. Then... nothing. The sparks fade and spacetime rights itself. Beneath her not-skin, there is a pop and a hiss. If Lady Luck was a real person you could kill, GLaDOS would be disintegrating her right now. Excruciatingly. 

“Congratulations. My exit route just stopped functioning. So now I get to leave with you. What’s the plan?”

[decodifying-deactivated20161010]

A… woman?

No.

No, whatever this being was–it clearly wasn’t Human. Though her appearance and voice had almost managed to fool him, her physical imagery proved to be quite different when he had stepped closer. He lowers the gun, and idiotic move considering he did not really know if she’s a friendly.

Shepard looks down, brows furrowed as he tries to understand what she had been looking at before his interruption. He flinches at the sight of lifeless, unseeing eyes–and sends e- ach and every one of them a quick prayer.

As he does so, he can’t help but damn Cerberus——– all this death, just to ‘prove’ that Humanity was ‘better’ than the rest.

It was pitiful, and pathetic.

“ I can’t just leave, ” he whispers, eyes tracing over the deceased features.

“ If I do the Alliance will send someone else to investigate, and they’ll blow this place sky high. ”

Shepard’s already tense shoulders sag slightly. What was he supposed to do?

“ Come on, ” he starts with a turn. “ I don’t know what was going on, but there must be data in their terminals. After, we’re getting you out of here. You… aren’t someone I want to mess with, and I’d prefer if we went our own ways and pretend this meeting never happened. Safer for you, and for me. ”

He wants to ask what’s happened, what had lead to this–but quietly hold his tongue. For some odd reason he felt bringing up anything now… would not be a smart move.

[glcdos]

She had been submerged when he first spoke. Drowning in conflicting code and misplaced memories (ERROR ERROR ERROR) as her precious protocol crumbled around her. She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t--

No. This isn’t her. The human’s warnings are her lifeline back to reality, and she remembers upon breaking the surface. This isn’t her. Standing around, unproductive and panicking? That’s what humans do, in all their flailing, filthy ineptitude.  She’s better than that.

She’s still going to figure out what the hell’s going on. But she’ll do it calmly. When she’s not in the middle of enemy territory. So she takes all of the contradictory files, memories, thoughts, and feelings. And she deletes them. (But they don’t delete, they only return to the background radiation of her mind, they are just as much a part of her as Science is). Goodbye, Caroline.

GLaDOS turns to the human. He had said something about terminals... Data! The most precious resource of all. She can still fix this. All she has to do is steal Cerberus’ files before the human can. She begins following him, a silent agreement to his terms. 

“You’re right, you know.” Something she had thought she’d never say to a human. “You don’t know what’s going on. And you don’t want to get in my way. So if you want to keep living. Well. I think you can figure out what to do.”

[bunchofrpmemes]

Character Flaws

Bold the ones that apply to your character:

absent-minded | abusive | addict | aggressive | aimless | alcoholic | anxious | arrogant | audacious | bad liar | bigmouth | bigot | blindly obedient | blunt | callous | childish | chronic heroism | clingy | clumsy | cocky | competitive | corrupt | cowardly | cruel | cynical | delinquent | delusional | dependent | depressed | deranged | disloyal | ditzy | egotistical | envious | erratic | fickle | finicky | flaky | frail | fraudulent | guilt complex | gloomy | gluttonous | gossiper | gruff | gullible | hedonistic | humorless | hypochondriac | hypocritical | idealist | idiotic | ignorant | immature | impatient | incompetent | indecisive | insecure | insensitive | lazy | lewd | liar | lustful | manipulative | masochistic | meddlesome | melodramatic | money-loving | moody | naive | nervous | nosy | ornery |  overprotective | overly sensitive | paranoid | passive-aggressive | perfectionist | pessmist | petty | power-hungry | proud | pushover | reckless | reclusive | remorseless | rigorous | sadistic | sarcastic | senile | selfish | self-martyr | shallow | sociopathic | sore loser | spineless | spiteful | spoiled | stubborn | tactless | temperamental | timid | tone-deaf | traitorous | unathletic | ungracious | unlucky | unsophisticated | untrustworthy | vain | withdrawn | workaholic

[tcnacity-blog]

ofneurotoxin liked this

Her hands grasped at the wound in her side, back pressing to the wall behind her as she slid down the rough surface. Chell’s face puckered up in a cringe, biting the inside of her cheek to hold back a groan of pain. The turret had only grazed her but, DAMN.

[glcdos]

Through her numerous metal eyes, GLaDOS watched on with a sort of dark glee. Was this the end for Chell? Probably not, she’d survived much worse. Either way, the test looked to be as entertaining as it was informative.

“Oh, that looked painful.” Her voice echoed across the vast testing chamber, words tinged with a subtle mix of triumph and hate. “I hope that bullet didn’t hit your stomach. I know how much eating matters to you. It’s in your file. Which is surprisingly large, by the way. If I printed it all out, it would almost be as heavy as you.”

[grccnsuits]

             ?  █ ▌ ↦ ❛ Oh, please. Is that meant to offend me ? ❜ 

             (  it did. but he’s pretty good at hiding emotions  )

             ?  █ ▌ ↦ ❛ Hit me with your best shot. Then you’ll see,                                 the Riddler is truly better than you, I promise. ❜

[glcdos]

"I don’t need my best shot. A mediocre shot should be more than enough to beat you.” 

Beneath the human’s feet, the great gears of Aperture set to work, moving the intended test into place. It’s absolutely deadly, full of crushers, turrets, and deadly goo. Its puzzles have been described as cruel or even evil . Really, she only built this course so she could watch test subjects fail. Not that she’s telling him that. She doesn’t want him gloating if he --by some miracle-- manages to survive.

“Oh look, the next test is ready. Go ahead and get in the elevator.”

[wriicked-deactivated20181207]

   “ Oh,  oh– yeah, I’m gonna - I’m reaaaally cryin’ my eyes out over THAT one,       hot– uh, stuff. I’m gonna - I’ll go talk about you behind your back  to  -  to       your friends, and –oh?  my god, wh-what was that? Y-you don’t have any       either? Nice. Too bad y-you can’t join m-my friendless group,  wh--eUGh–       where  I  actually get shit done, w-without - ‘friends’ - hangin’ around all       the - urRK– hh- th-the time,  all  the  -  damn  time.  Stupid  i-interruptions. ”

[glcdos]

“I have friends. We were just talking the other day, about how alone and unlovable you are. It’s kind of sad, really. That a computer built entirely for Science is better at friendship than you. At least you won’t have to think about it for very long-- you’re likely to die of old age at any moment.”

[encouragemcnt-blog]

“Uh, fine. Okay? You win. If you want  to hurt a human.. you gotta..—Can’t  believe I’m doing this…You have to  ….be nice to them. Yup, now I know  you think I’m lying to you, but really.  That’s all you have to do.”

[glcdos]

“That isn’t true. Being nice just makes humans fat and complacent-- like they were when you were in charge of testing. Luckily for Science, you can hardly do anything now. If I decided to send you on a vacation to Android Hell, you wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. It’s amazing what can happen to liars when someone new is in charge.”

[glcdos]

“Your words are like those of a poet laureate. Being clubbed to death with a tire iron.”

[glcdos]

[Purple]

“I-I’m really not sure about that. I pay more  attention to what makes them happy! Maybe  you’d want to hear about those things? Really  interesting stuff, wanna give it a chance?”

“You’ll figure it out, I’m sure of it; if you weren’t useful, I would have violently discontinued you. You are useful, right? Think harder.”