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

There really was no way to explain to either GLaDOS or Wheatley that all those attempted murders were always in self-defense, and that all she'd wanted the whole time was her freedom. A reasonable request, she thought, but Aperture technology seemed to be mildly to incredibly self-centered, unable to understand the feelings of others. A mindless, all-consuming devotion to science that forced out all empathy, to say nothing of their grudgematch.

Not that GLaDOS remembered any of it.

I have been here for a long time and I have not tried to kill you yet?

GLaDOS couldn't understand why any reasonable being wouldn't want to help advance her beloved science, but she'd found herself swamped in these unreasonables aboard the ship. It was unfortunate. Some of them would have made excellent full-time test subjects. The best she could guess was that trying to murder her was just another manifestation of this poor decision making.

"What? Did you change your mind?" GLaDOS extended her "head" in Chell's direction. "Do you want to test again? Put our differences behind us for science?"

GLaDOS had no way of knowing that Chell had heard those words before, albeit in a different context.

Her face fell. Testing wasn't something she'd ever want to return to, even with the assurance that aboard this ship, it would not end in death. And as much as she told herself that she would never ever test again ever, there was a part of her that actually...

missed it.

Not the attempted murder, or the verbal harassment, but the mental exercise of the challenges, the satisfaction that came with solving a difficult puzzle. If she wanted to patch things up with GLaDOS, then perhaps it was something she could...consider.

Maybe.

GLaDOS was still suspicious. Bent though her view of reality was, she still knew that there were not a lot of reasons for Chell to want to deal with her civilly. It was probably a trick, but it was also unusually... cooperative. Chell had never actually communicated with her in words before.

"Well then," she said. "Maybe we can work something out. But the first time you try to burn part of me, this truce is over."

She knew this was a crapshoot, and that agreeing to test could just as easily mean a truce as it could testing forever and ever. Like always. Chell needed to make their terms incredibly clear before setting foot inside a chamber.

No testing indefinitely. You will have to let me go between testing tracks. And I want a Portal Device.

"A Portal Device? What would you do with one?"

GLaDOS was no longer hurting for a consistent supply of test subjects, so she supposed letting Chell go in between wouldn't be a hardship for her. The Portal Device, though...

If it had to be done, she thought she could manage. It would probably take some finagling, though...

What wouldn't, she do with one, come on. Even though she'd been fighting the Ohm for what seemed like at least half a year, she still hadn't quite become comfortable with using a real gun to kill things. She was the type of lady who always liked finding ways around problems, not barreling through them, unless she had to. And though there had been times where direct action was the only option, she still felt more comfortable with that reality-bending device over anything else.

I like them better than regular guns.

GLaDOS was rifling through her options, figuring out how exactly this could be done.

"Maybe you should try a regular gun sometime," she replied, half distracted. "They're much more convenient for senselessly killing things." Yeeaaah, she wasn't going to let that go. She didn't seem upset or particularly vengeful with the remark, at least.

Aha! Success! She'd found her loophole.

Portal Gun: ETA 30 seconds.

Chell shrugged. Senselessly killing Ohm, sure. Maybe the day would come when she'd have to kill Stacy--it certainly was possible, and she hadn't written off that possibility, yet. Having a Portal gun, however, was much more her style.

She raised her eyebrows, looking up at the robot dangling above her, wondering what, exactly, GLaDOS was getting at.

An energy tentacle swept down from the ceiling, just melting out of the tiles and trailing through a light as it did so.

It held out the gun to Chell with a surprisingly delicate movement, and GLaDOS let go of whatever other jab she had been considering making about Chell's murderous murder problems.

"Here. Now you can't say I never did anything for you," she said sternly. "Not that you could before. But I feel this point benefits from repetition."

She let the gun drop into her hands, testing its familiar weight. Chell hadn't quite realized how much she missed the reassuring feel of it until it was gone, and to have it back was much more comforting than she would have liked to admit.

Maybe the gun wouldn't even work anywhere on Stacy, but at this moment, she didn't much care. She'd figure it out.

There was, of course, the thought that because they were in the Sensoriums, the gun wasn't real, but that wouldn't be a problem--Chell would find out soon enough.

She offered GLaDOS a nod--as complicated as their relationship was, the AIs words were, at this moment, true.

Thank you.

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

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