Portal: Euphoria

Chapter Thirteen

Thirteen

It was a long, depressing day.

Contrary to what she had said, Caroline apparently had not managed to find an excuse to allow GLaDOS to shut down for a while. That was one of the things she hated most about humans. When GLaDOS told the humans she was going to do something, she did it, whether she wanted to or not. It had been terribly inconsiderate of Caroline, GLaDOS thought to herself as she watched a test subject knock himself out by standing beneath a falling Weighted Storage Cube, to volunteer that and then not give it to her. And this was all her fault, anyway. If Caroline had just taken the damn Sphere with her, instead of forcing GLaDOS to keep it all night, she wouldn't be in this predicament. Not only that, but her supervisor for the day had insisted she defragment the mainframe again, even though it was already done, and none of the test subjects had completed even one chamber. She hated defragmenting the mainframe and she hated watching people stare at the closed door as if they could open it with telekinesis, which they could not, because that was not Science. She doubted the day could get much worse. That was, until she looked back at the test subject.

He was bleeding on her floor panels.

With that, the chamber collapsed altogether, and though it was immensely satisfying for all of five seconds, when the five seconds had ended she realised she'd just gotten herself into an even worse mess. The test subject was most certainly dead now, under that Cube and pile of shattered panels, and she was going to be blamed for it, even though it was his fault. He was the one who had decided to blatantly disregard the laws of physics and stand beneath a clearly named Weighted Storage Cube! He deserved it, really, for thinking that he could break the laws of Science and get away with it. He should have known that would upset her. Just because simple human laws were disregarded all the time did not mean the immutable ones of the greater universe looked the other way when –

"What the hell's going on here?" the supervisor yelled.

"That test subject tried to break the laws of physics, sir," GLaDOS told him, looking down cursorily.

"And what. That means you just get to throw the test chamber on top of him?"

Regardless of what Caroline had said, she was going to have to lie. She couldn't tell him that she was tired and frustrated and just plain fed up. That the man had been so inconsiderate as to allow his bodily fluids to leak all over her floor. That she didn't know how much more of this ridiculousness she could take.

"No, sir. I attempted to calculate his reasoning, but it was so baffling that I stopped responding for a moment. I apologise. May I reassemble the chamber, sir?"

The supervisor threw up his hands. "That's what happens when you send a robot to do a man's job. Fine. Try not to kill anyone else. We're low on engineers already." He left, muttering, but GLaDOS stared after him, a little stunned.

She had killed someone?

Hm.

She shifted to the other side of the room, away from the man on the computer in the corner, and thought that one over. She was not one hundred percent certain that it was the test chamber collapse and not the Cube that had done it, and her probability calculations for each event told her that it was fairly even as to what had killed the man. But no other test subject had ever died from a blow to the head, and therefore…

She had killed him, and… well… she felt better than she had all day. That was very interesting, and she mused that thought while she watched the other two men kick at the door and inspect the Device. That implied she really would feel better once all the humans were dead. And they fell victim to accidents in the tracks all the time. Perhaps she could… engineer a few of them. Not a lot. Just enough to –