trans_9 | Office Hours [Open, everyone feel free to bother GLaDOS]

One of the Sensoriums is active. Inside it's been made to look like a spacious office. A whole wall of windows opens up on a bright but indistinct cityscape. The decor is sleek and modern, though the predominant black and white with no color is perhaps a bit too stark. Some absolutely untouched-looking books sit on a shelf and a plant that is far too green to be real sits in the window collecting dust. There are barely audible stirrings of bad office muzak that are not entirely blocked out by the walls. It's all very sterile and feels off, like it's been put together by someone with a precise list of things that an office is but no understanding of what it's like to be in one.

Suspended over the desk is a gigantic robot.

It glares balefully at anyone who looks in. Or at least it seems to, thanks to that yellow "eye" in its "face".

"Oh. Hello. Come in. Make yourself at home," GLaDOS says. Under her attempt at a flat tone is the faintest hint of resentment.

She does not want to be here. At all.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

GLaDOS's body weaved a bit as she dragged up what she could access about Stacy. Unfortunately, it wasn't much.

"Most of this information is beyond what she allows me to access," she warned. "But the Daligig have claimed that she was a prison ship prior to being used as an intergalactic Noah's Ark. This is to blame for many of her, how shall we say, problems. I have little information otherwise and cannot study the ship thoroughly from within this system. If I were to make an educated guess, however? Someone, somewhere, had to assemble this mess. And whoever they were deserves to be fired."

She hadn't realised that GLaDOS might have limits, and sounded rather defensive now that Barbara had gotten close to those limits.

"I see," she said, although she didn't really. "Can you tell me anything about the pods? How do the saved get chosen, and why aren't we all released at once?"

"Prior experience with the Daligig indicates that many items found aboard the ship were selected as potential anti-Ohm weaponry," GLaDOS said. "This likely holds true for crewmen, although there are a significant number of beings that were rescued for their importance to others. As for who is awake and who is not, Stacy claims to be operating according to a plan. It would be wonderful if the rest of us could know what that plan is, but of course the Warden couldn't bear to let anyone know anything important."

"You don't sound terribly happy about that," a light smile tugged at the corner of Barbara's mouth in a slight smirk. "Is there any reason she's so secretive and so hostile? I can understand some secrets but she seems to be keeping more than necessary away from everyone."

"I suspect it's complete incompetence on the part of the person that repurposed her." GLaDOS could only shrug. Well, she couldn't actually shrug, but somehow the robotic body language was similar.

"I suppose it could be worse. We could be on an actual prison ship."

"I can't see how it's all that different," she pulls out the chair from in front of the desk and sits, legs crossed over the knee. "So many places we're not allowed to enter, the food is...questionable, and the clothing can be somewhat limited. Were it not for the city, I'd have no reason to not believe that this was an actual prison ship."

Barbara sighs, leaning back in the chair, realising just how not intimidated she now feels in comparison to when she first walked in. "What do you do on the ship?" she asks, "you're not like anyone else here." So her only conclusion is that this GLaDOS is a part of the ship herself.

"I am fettered in similar ways, though being a sophisticated artificial intelligence is quite different from being a human," GLaDOS replied. She was being pretty conversational by this point, not as obviously irked as at the start.

"I monitor the crew for dangerous avia fluctuations, test them when necessary, and occasionally return unsatisfactory crewmen to stasis."

"What are avia fluctuations?" Barbara asked cautiously after a moment. She contemplated asking what made a crewman unsatisfactory, and how GLaDos was testing people. There was something ominous about the idea of GLaDOS testing the crew.

"Fluctuations in the state of a person's avia, which are common in the bleed," she explained. "An unsatisfactory result means that an avia has become too detached from a person and it is to their benefit to be returned to stasis in order to recover."

That was a relief to hear, though something still didn't sit comfortably. What it was, Barbara wasn't certain. She sat forward a little in the chair, "does that happen often?"

"Reasonably so," GLaDOS answered. "Some individuals appear to be more fragile than others. Traumatic experience also seems to hasten the process."

That fact possibly made more sense than anything else GLaDOS had said all meeting. Barbara certainly didn't feel as though she were the right kind of person for this but here she was. She might as well make the most of it, seeming as she was selected to be in the lucky hundreds out of billions of people. And that was from Earth alone.

A moment passed. "Do you ever wonder why you were chosen?" Barbara felt the need to ask another question, despite the fact that she was now going around in circles. "And would you rather be here or in your old life?"

"Evidently, I am the best for the job," GLaDOS answered. There was perhaps a note of pride in her voice. "I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss my the enrichment center, but there's no use crying over spilled milk. It'd waste time we could be spending hunting down the bugs that spilled it and setting them on fire."

Right. Don't spill GLaDOS' milk, then.

"What about if you could choose?" Barbara didn't even know if a GLaDOS could make decisions based on want or desire, but she asked anyway. "Would you want to be with Stacey or would you go back to your enrichment center?"

That was an interesting question. GLaDOS had to weigh it. The enrichment center was hers, she had been as a god there with the entire facility at her disposal.

But...

No, nevermind, she didn't need to make this comparison. It was much simpler to attack the question more practically.

"Well, considering that my enrichment center is currently located within a collapsed universe, I don't think it's much of a contest."

Cheating was for winners.

"However," she admitted, "I can think of worse accommodations to be stuck with."

What a cop-out.

"Such as?" Barbara prompted.

Office Hours [Open, everyone feel free to bother GLaDOS]

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Agh, sorry for the delay!

'Tis fine :)

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