Portal/Half-Life: See You Soon

Three

Three

-

GLaDOS didn't sleep well that night.

It was neither uncommon nor really a bad thing; it was easy to rearrange her schedule to give herself some downtime in the late afternoon or early evening in the event that it happened. No, it was all of the things that happened after that made it so bad.

The first problem was that, even though she had found time as usual to allow it, she still couldn't sleep later in the day. Not until Alyx appeared, after which her system log noted she was able to do it just fine about ten minutes later.

The second one was that when she woke up, Alyx was sitting on her right side and her left hand was against GLaDOS's core. It was light there, and drier than she had thought it would be, and she remained still for some minutes wondering how long this had been going on for and for how much longer it would. Which lead neatly into the third problem:

She wanted it there.

What she should have done the moment she'd woken was indignantly pull herself out of Alyx's reach, make incredibly clear she was not to put her filthy human hand anywhere near her ever again, and send her away for enough hours that it was made clear how serious she was about this grievous transgression. But she hadn't done any of that. She had no desire whatsoever to do a single one of those things, and that was very, very bad.

The fourth problem was that GLaDOS did not get Alyx to remove her hand at all. No, Alyx did that on her own because the course of whatever she was doing drove her to get up and cross the room to get something she'd left back in hers. And that was when the fifth and final problem arose, which was, somehow, even worse than all of the other ones:

GLaDOS was disappointed that she'd left.

Alyx was only gone for approximately ten minutes, after which she returned with the battered sweater she had arrived in. GLaDOS had provided her with clothes in much better repair, as well as much more appropriate. Though literally anything would be more appropriate than a sweatshirt with the Black Mesa logo on it.

"Do all robots sleep here or is it just you?" Alyx asked. For some reason her sitting down next to GLaDOS spawned what seemed to be an unproportionate amount of relief. It was so distracting GLaDOS had to actually ask her to repeat the question, after which she answered,

"I'm a bit... different from the other robots here."

Alyx laughed. "Obviously. So the other ones don't sleep?"

"No."

"Are you... going to tell me why you do?"

GLaDOS found herself contemplating the wall. It was a long story which cast her in an entirely different light than the one Alyx saw her in now. If she told it, Alyx might even see her as some sort of victim, which merely as a thought was something that inspired a visceral hatred in her. No. No, she was going to keep it to herself. "No."

Alyx sighed.

"What?" GLaDOS snapped, her response inciting an unanticipated defensiveness. She watched Alyx shrug through one of the cameras on the panels.

"I've been here all this time and I don't know anything about you, that's all. It's kind of weird. I don't even know what your name stands for."

She supposed that information didn't need to be kept a secret. "It stands for Genetic Lifeform and Disc Operating System."

"Genetic Lifeform?" Alyx repeated. "What does that mean?"

Maybe she should have kept it to herself. "What do you think it means?"