Portal: Euphoria

Chapter Five

Chapter Five

The first thing she was aware of was a warm weight against the side of her head.

It was odd. She'd never felt such a thing before. Tactile sensory information was rare, other than a minor change in climate every now and again, and it was more than a little puzzling. With the sensory data and a little mathematics, she was able to discern the general shape of the weight, as well as a tentative mental image of what the side of her head looked like. Fascinating.

And the shape was… Oh no. It was Caroline. Why was she – Didn't she remember she wasn't allowed to consort with GLaDOS? She was going to get in trouble for this for sure. She needed to aid Caroline in some way.

The problem was that she had no idea whether or not anyone had come into her chamber yet. If they had, then it was a question of whether or not they had noticed Caroline was there. GLaDOS could not move, and so had no method of confirming their presence. If they were there, she should probably wait for Caroline to take the initiative. It was a tough call to make; humans often did not see things they weren't already expecting to see, but at the same time you would hope a laboratory full of scientists and Nobel Prize winners would be more observant than most. And if no one was there, it would definitely be beneficial to wake her. The best course of action seemed to be to do so, and so that was what she did.

She moved her head in what she hoped approximated a nudge and was not of a force sufficient to cause injury; she could have shocked herself for not thinking to run that calculation prior to the movement. Or perhaps not… if she'd done that, the current required to have an effect on GLaDOS would most certainly have killed Caroline. It was then that Caroline shifted, bringing GLaDOS out of one of the most ridiculous lines of thought ever to cross the brain of a supercomputer. "Hey. Lazy human," GLaDOS murmured. "I don't recall giving you permission to collapse on me."

Caroline giggled and pushed against GLaDOS's head. "I don't need your permission. I'm the boss around here." Her weight vanished, leaving an odd tingling sensation triggered by the lack of heat and pressure. "Look who's back to normal," she said teasingly, performing some action that GLaDOS did not recognise in the slightest.

"What was that supposed to be?"

"A shove," answered Caroline, "but I really didn't think you'd be so – "

More in reaction to Caroline's sudden pause than anything, GLaDOS looked up and saw just what had caused it, and she, too, could not help but freeze.

All of GLaDOS's engineers were in the room, and they were staring directly at them both. "Shit," Caroline whispered. GLaDOS would have liked to whisper something back, but her true whisper sounded more like static and her more audible one was not that much quieter than her speaking voice. So she elected to remain silent. For a long moment, the only noise in the room was of GLaDOS operating, and of course now that she was trying very hard to be unobtrusive, she was experiencing one of those horrible compulsions to change position, the feedback from her chassis quite ignorantly insisting she move it out of the default position. She struggled to fight off the urge, but her mental squirming translated into a violent physical spasm. It did nothing to relieve the tension and in fact made it worse. It was so bad that she was almost in actual pain.

Finally, one of the engineers spoke up. "I don't know what's going on here, and I'm not sure I want to know. But that is one of the most disturbing things I've ever seen." He crossed his arms and shook his head gravely, and GLaDOS determined that he was attempting to shame one or both of them, although it was more likely Caroline that he was going for. She knew she should do something to defend the poor woman, but she was reluctant to so blatantly put herself out for a human. But she helped you, something she termed the rational voice protested, making one of its rare and overwhelmingly annoying appearances. It was usually rational, anyway, and she hadn't heard from it since she'd thought about locking one of the more irritating engineers in his office so he might actually be inclined to do some work instead of stand beside the water cooler for extended periods of time, but here it was again, in a situation she didn't particularly want it in. As usual. Splendid.