Chell quite literally sped through the chambers. The speedy orange propulsion gel made the ground like an ice rink. As she maneuvered through these ancient rooms, she learned more about Aperture's past. What was weird, though, was that GLaDOS was beginning to act strangely whenever she heard the voice of Dr. Caroline. She was also extremely wary of the bird that lived in the underground, but Chell understood that.
The team had to use some tricky portal physics to get to station gamma, but with some thinking, they were on their way to the next set of tests. To Chell's astonishment, it was the vastly sought after conversion gel. The white substance that was the forerunner to the patented Aperture panels. Rival companies like Black Mesa had been unable to reproduce anything like it, and the original formula was eventually thought to be lost. But no, there were huge vats of the stuff down here. It was confusing at first, but Chell mastered this third gel.
She actually laughed aloud when she realized she was the one deciding where the portals went. She was making the test.
She also listened even more intently to Cave's audio messages. She began to realize that his next invention was going to be a sentient supercomputer. No, thought Chell. She knew what was about to unfold. As Chell walked out of the final test chamber of center gamma, the truth revealed itself.
"I've been thinking," mused Aperture's founder. "If life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Get mad! Demand to see life's manager!"
"Yeah!" cried GLaDOS out of the blue. "Get mad!"
"Do you know who I am!?" Cave was still ranting. "I'm Cave Johnson, the guy who's gonna burn your house down- with the lemons! I'm going to have my engineers invent combustible lemons!"
He slowly wound down, then broke the news. He was dying of a radioactive poison contracted from moon rocks, the key ingredient of conversion gel. Then he broke even bigger news.
"Anyways," he said at last, "I want Caroline to take over the project." The sound system clicked off. Chell gasped. Cave had been contemplating putting himself in the machine. But now, he was volunteering his wife.
Chell had known that second voice had sounded familiar. She looked down at the potato battery resting in the crock of her portal gun. GLaDOS was Caroline. Or was she? Had Caroline not been able to control the computer? Had this machine personality kept Caroline's brilliance and cunning but pushed anything human out of its system?
Even in potato form, GLaDOS would not have tried to propose an alliance under normal circumstances. Was this place awakening her humanity?
She would just have to wait and see. Then a wall snapped her back into reality. She cried out as she slammed into it and fell.
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Portal: A Novel (Portal/Portal2 fanfiction)
Fanfiction"What's that? Ooh, what IS that?" Well, it's a book. A book about a girl. A book about a monster with a conscience. A book about a friendly box and a bunch of talking orbs. This is the story of Portal. This is an unofficial novelization of a video g...
