Portal: Euphoria

Chapter Seventeen

Seventeen

Caroline was very busy for the next few days, something that upset GLaDOS far more than she would have expected. Every day she waited for Caroline to come for their conversation, and every day Caroline did not come. She tried to tell herself that it had something to do with that folder full of papers. Caroline had mentioned she would have to examine them, after all. But back in the corner of her brain where she 'd banished it, the black voice whispered to her that Caroline had finally tired of GLaDOS. That she, like all the others, no longer wanted to put up with her. And why would she? it hissed, getting louder the more she attempted to ignore it. It's statistically proven that you're an unlikeable loner. Only one person in this entire facility has ever bothered to go near you on purpose. She's probably lamenting the time she wasted right now.

"It wasn't a waste," GLaDOS murmured, hoping that saying the words out loud would make them easier to believe. "She liked spending time with me."

Because it's completely normal to like talking to supercomputers. Maybe she's visiting your architecture in the basement.

She was tired of listening to the voice whisper insults to her. She was tired of feeling upset and alone and forgotten. The work she was being given seemed trivial and was, as a result, wholly unsatisfying as far as distractions went. She had come to a standstill, for the most part, waiting endlessly on someone who apparently was not going to arrive and was not going to so much as bother to communicate as such. And if it were anyone else, GLaDOS would have added them to the list of humans she hated and gone on with her day. But for some reason Caroline, damnable Caroline, had settled deep inside her brain and was not eradicable by any means she knew. She could not forget her, could not help watching her as she went about her business, could not deny the hope that rose up inside her when Caroline was supposed to walk into her chamber. And it hurt, all of it hurt like nothing she'd ever felt before, but she did not know what to do with this new kind of pain.

There had to be something she could do to distract herself. This was madness. In a rather encouraging fit of energy she dug into her hard drive for some task she'd left unfinished. She didn't care what. As long as it got her mind off that stupid, inconsiderate woman, it would be good enough for her.

She came up a little triumphantly with a file she had apparently flagged a few months ago. That triumph vanished two picoseconds later when she realised it was an audio file.

The black voice laughed.

If GLaDOS could have taken the file, rendered it into physical form, and smashed it into the floor panels, she would have. Why in the hell did it have to be that file? Of all the trillions of files GLaDOS had access to, she had picked that one. That stupid, stupid file that had started the months-long string of stupidity. It was because of this file that she even felt like this right now. She would have been perfectly fine right now if she had just left it alone.

The anger was flaring up again, hot and powerful and welcoming, and for a long moment she ran through the possibilities. The things she could do to finally rid herself of human pestilence once and for all. She had so many options and so much time to prepare them. And she was just about to get started when the small voice whispered, You promised.

That put all of her planning on hold.

She doesn't care anymore, she argued, wanting nothing more than to continue what she'd been doing but unable to ignore that voice either. Why should I uphold a promise to someone the promise no longer matters to?

You don't know that it doesn't matter. She hasn't talked to you, but you haven't talked to her, either.

Her plans immediately dissipated from her active memory.