Chapter Text
It is easily the largest potato I’ve ever seen.
Curious, I set Cake aside.
The companion cube warbles out, “Four large eggs. Garnish with one cup lemon juice.”
“Any potatoes in your recipe?” I wonder. Cake’s recipe can be pretty… interesting.
“Fish shaped dirt!” comes the chipper response.
“Not even close.”
Cake goes silent. I crouch and study the potato. It’s at least a foot wide and shaped like… well, a potato. There isn’t a speck of dirt on it.
I wipe my greasy hand on my pants, leaving streaks of black across the bright orange material. The grease will be a pain to clean out later, but I’ve left my rags behind today and I’d rather clean grease off my clothes than the potato.
I pull the Aperture Laboratories backpack off and set it down. The potato is put inside, nestled between the two cans of beans and a handful of spare parts I’ve scavenged. I put the pack back and rise, then stagger at the weight. But I don’t want to leave anything I’ve found behind, not when there’s no guarantee that I’ll be able to find them again.
Standing, I activate the carrier on my portal gun. Cake, while a bulky cube, is pretty light and easily carried one-handed. I shuffle sideways out from behind the broken panel concealing the little room.
On the wall across from me is an arrow drawn with engine grease. It’s older than I am, but it points the way out of the testing room. I follow its direction down a hall, past a turn, then turn left at a fork in the hall, following a fresher arrow I drew this morning. Here, I slow.
Up ahead, there’s a low humming sound. Then, a childish, but robotic, voice says, “Scanning.”
Turrets. Those things pop up randomly in various testing rooms. They don’t really move on their own, but are always alert for any signs of movement. When they see movement, they open fire. The bullets can pierce my skin somewhat. Alone, their bullets wouldn’t do much harm. The problem is, they launch about five bullets a second. I shiver to think what would happen if I fell or was trapped in their eye line.
Creeping to where the hall turns, I peer around the corner.
A sleek white turret is standing in the center of a large room with a rough black floor and ceiling panels. I’ve learned it’s possible to drop cubes from the ceiling to knock over the turrets, causing them to deactivate, but that only works with the smooth white panels.
But this is where Cake is most handy. Taking a breath and making sure my pack is secure, I raise Cake and step into the room.
The turret notices me instantly. Its dome opens and it opens fire toward my chest. The bullets clatter against Cake, shaking the cube. If I was holding Cake in my bare hands, the constant impacts would shake my whole body. But Cake is suspended in the portal’s carrier, and a cushion of air absorbs the bullets’ impact.
I walk across the room, taking care to keep Cake raised defensively. The turret’s oblivious that it’s missing its quarry and fires ruthlessly away.
Across the room is a screen of bulletproof glass. I step behind the glass and lower Cake. The bullets rattle the glass, but it holds steady. I step through the vault door, pausing only to retrieve the screwdriver I used that morning to jam the door open. The door slides shut with a hiss behind me.
Outside the testing room, it’s absolutely quiet. Eerily so. I find myself holding my breath for a moment, and make myself let it out. I lightly shake Cake.
“One package, chocolate cake mix. Nine large egg yolks to garnish.”
“I don’t suppose you’d know where to find a cake, would you?” I think.
“Two cups of all-purpose flour. One and two-thirds cups of granulated sugar.”
“Didn’t think so.”
I pass through another vault door. The elevator on the other side is a mess of broken glass and sparking wires. I pass it and slip through a gap in the wall on the far side.
Beyond is a maze of broken panels and machinery. I follow the arrows I’d painted on the walls that morning, my long fall boots crunching on broken glass.
It isn’t as quiet here. Things are always moving in the building. Panels are adjusting themselves, robotic arms are cleaning up the debris that’s constantly falling from the derelict building, pipes gurgle with a variety of liquids, and sometimes the squeaky calls of a turret winds to the maintenance shafts.
I walk through long halls, use portals to get myself and Cake onto high ledges, and climb endless catwalks. The pack seems to get heavier and heavier as the hours pass, though Cake remains comfortably light. It’s something about the portal gun, something I haven’t been able to figure out and don’t care if I ever do. I don’t want to leave Cake behind, even if all it does is rattle off ingredients. It’s also a very effective shield and doorstop.
Eventually, I reach familiar halls. I speed up. This area doesn’t shift; panels remain where they’ve always been. Only the occasional turret appears in these halls, but the smooth white panels on the floor, walls, and ceiling makes them easy to deal with.
Today, no turrets have wandered onto my territory. Another fifteen minutes of walking, a couple elevator rides, and a quick crawl through an oil-slick air duct later, I open the door to an office. I quickly cross the office and peer into the massive space beyond.
The metal room is circular, with an arched ceiling high above. There are two raised platforms with staircases to them: one in the center of the room and the other along the left wall. The center platform is open and ringed with a railing. The platform to the left has an encased control room.
And hanging from the ceiling, front and center, is GLaDOS.
She’s asleep or… powered down. Whatever robots are doing when their eyes are darkened. Her huge robot body is curled against the ceiling, like a living creature about to pounce.
I creep along the wall, careful to keep Cake as still as possible. I reach the left staircase and climb up the stairs and along the platform until I reach the tiny control room. I set Cake carefully down there, then take the tins of beans from the pack and set them beside the remaining can and two empty cans. The potato remains in my pack with the spare parts and my tools.
I sneak out of the control room and down to the floor. I follow the wall to an alcove across from the office. A thick tube rises from the floor. The top has a series of slim, retracting panels covering the incinerator. I kneel beside the tube and pry off a panel.
I bite my lips at the mess underneath the panel. The controls to open the incinerator were severely damaged somehow, probably by one of the quakes that rocked the building. Vital wires and connectors were melted or broken, and finding replacements has proven to be practically impossible.
I pry out a bent nut and try a few of the nuts I found in the day’s scavenging. One of them twists into place, and I grin as I wedge two frayed wires into place with the nut. I pull a strip of electrical tape from a nearly empty roll in my pack, wincing at the sound.
I glance over my shoulder. GLaDOS is still asleep.
I return to my work, quickly wrapping the exposed wires. It might work for a brief time, at least long enough for my purposes.
“Where have you been?”
The soft, mechanical voice comes from directly behind me, startling me so badly I drop my screwdriver. I jump to my feet and spin around in one move.
GLaDOS is awake. Of course she is. Probably had been the whole time, and was waiting for me to get distracted.
I wave my hand in a small circle. I crouch to pick up the screwdriver without taking my eyes off GLaDOS hovering almost in my space.
“The upper levels,” GLaDOS says.
I resist making a face and just nod. No sense in lying. She’s undoubtedly been watching me.
“Are you strong enough yet?”
Nodding, I walk along the wall. GLaDOS’ “head” follows me.
“You don’t look sure. How about another test?”
Now I do make a face. I walk away from the wall and toward the center platform. GLaDOS follows me, watching silently as I place a blue portal on the ground directly beneath her. Her eye swivels back and forth as I pull off my pack and plant my feet. I’m not going anywhere.
“But the tests are important,” GLaDOS coaxes.
I narrow my eyes and shake my head. Not today. No more testing.
I place the orange portal on the wall and eye the other side. The blue portal is pointed right at her center. I place my pack on the floor and make a show of reaching inside.
GLaDOS’ head glides over. “What did you find?”
I pull out the potato and hurl it through the portal with all my strength. GLaDOS’ eye whips backward and a pair of mechanical pincers quickly catch the potato, which barely had enough momentum to bump lightly against GLaDOS’ underside.
But that’s fine. With GLaDOS momentarily distracted, I reach up and wrap my hands around her eye and pull myself up. GLaDOS jerks back a bit, but I cling gamely on and swing myself up to land on a curved piece of metal just behind GLaDOS’ eye. It’s just big enough for me to lay on my back with my feet curled underneath, which I do.
“What…” GLaDOS swivels around. “What are you doing up there?”
I tap the back of her eye. She knows perfectly well what I’m up to.
GLaDOS grumbles that she isn’t a sleeping pod. She’s still moving, but in a slow, back-and-forth sway. Panels underneath the arc of metal click open and lift up to cradle my body.
I smile and close my eyes. I doze off, safe in the grasp of the robot who saved my life.