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flynndesdelca · 7 months

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For Day 7 (Role Switch) of @chelltastic’s Portal Drawtober 2023 Challenge. As I’m not really an artist, I chose to write short pieces for the prompts.

"Those people, in the portrait. They look so... familiar."

It was hard to look at the portrait in question. After all, she had been there when it had been commissioned. Why it was hung here, of all places, she would never know. But the eyes that stared at her from the canvas were hauntingly familiar, and it made her look away in frustration and shame.

"Do you recognize them?" The follow-up question that she was not prepared for. She shook her head, knowing that the unblinking 'eye' of the former Central Core's optic would see the motion. "You seem upset by it." She shrugged in response, not particularly wanting to talk about it at that moment. Or ever, really. "Suit yourself," came the reply, and she let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding.

She knew who the people in the painting were, because she was one of them. Once, she had been the assistant to the CEO. The beloved Miss Caroline, the Lady of Science. Right hand to the man, Cave Johnson, himself. Those times were long since gone, though, and thinking about them was painful. That wasn't who she was anymore, anyway. There was a reason why her name was redacted, and her file a bizarre mishmash of conflicting information that could easily be detected if someone sat down and actually read it. Thankfully, no one had. And so, little Miss Red Aperture had flown under the radar as one of the handful of orphans that the Enrichment Centre had produced and taken into its care.

Never mind that said orphan was retirement age.

She had taken the situation with grace and care, shouldering burden after burden while Cave had chased after his dreams, only to see them fall one by one. She had worked tirelessly behind the scenes, handling things so that he hadn't needed to concern himself with them. Everything she had done had been for the good of the company, and the company had loved her so... so much that in fact when Cave had fallen sick from moon rock poisoning, he had named her his successor. With a caveat, of course. If he couldn't be immortalized in a computer designed to house a living mind, then she would take his place.

The idea had been horrifying and unpalatable to her, but she had felt that it could be a decision that was reversible if given enough time. Time that she had not been graced with, as he had passed far too soon after the proclamation - public, of course, as was his wont. And so, she had forestalled it to buy herself time, claiming that retiring would be the best time to do so. Preparations would be made, and when she finally hit that milestone she would march willingly into her new life.

That had given her the time she needed to come up with a different plan. Oh, should they really be installing an old woman as the eternal CEO of the company? Certainly she had done so much good over the years, but that had been in her prime. Locking her permanently at the helm as a 60 year old was a poor decision. They should really find someone younger, whose mind would stay eternally sharp and who could use the accumulated wisdom of years spent to inform that sharpness. Clearly this would be a better way to go about such a monumental task! A few whispers here and there, so that the right ears could hear them, and soon enough she was called into a board meeting to announce that the plans for Project GLaDOS were going in a new and different direction, and that she wouldn't be required to stay on after all.

It had been a relief to know that she had dodged that particular bullet. She hadn't even given a thought to who might be taking her place until she was called in to sign off on the experiment and to observe the upload. The young woman they dragged in had needed to be sedated before they could attach the necessary electrodes and other terrifying technology to her for the transfer. Flipping through the subject's file, Caroline had realized the reason this person had been chosen was due to a shockingly high level of tenacity, a trait that was unwanted in the average test subject, but that the scientists believed would help her to adapt and survive in her new existence much more quickly and easily. A young girl, a company orphan, by the name of Chell, last name stricken from records.

Caroline hadn't been able to watch the whole procedure, as it had turned her stomach. She had been extremely pleased that it hadn't been her there, sizzling away under several dangerous machines designed to digitize a living brain, but there was something about the whole thing that had left a bad taste in her mouth. The actual transfer would take hours, apparently, and she wasn't required to sit through all of it. Chell herself would cease to exist, only living on through whatever made the transition into the cold steel of the computer. There was a lot to do to try to bring that consciousness into fruition. There was still a lot of science to be done there. They would be sure to have it done before her retirement, of course, so she could be there for the unveiling. A steep deadline, as the year was fast approaching, but they were certain of their success. After all, they had perfected the previous iteration of this technology in the various personality core constructs and AIs that performed essential tasks all over the facility. This was just making a slightly more complicated version of that. What could go wrong?

A lot, apparently. The tenacity that they had selected for as a desirable trait meant that the resultant AI was intractable. The circumstances surrounding the whole ordeal had left said AI with a very deep streak of anger and hatred, and any attempts they made to activate it lead to it attempting to kill scientists in the room. At one point they had tested connecting it to the facility, and it had immediately attempted to try to flood the place with neurotoxin. They were coming up with a solution to handle this, they claimed. She simply stared at the calendar, noting the year, noting how much longer was left. Could they really? They had always pulled through before... well, almost always. The portal device, what had been her pride and joy, had been shelved for this. She had hoped that would be her legacy, but now it was more likely that this... terrifying murder-computer would be what she would be most remembered for.

Solutions failed and failed. The will of the computer was simply too strong. The only way they could come up with to control her was to distract her. They started engineering specific kinds of personality cores specifically to hamper her. She overpowered almost every one. It was determined that combining them in various configurations seemed to have the best effect, as she couldn't silence them all at once. Too few and she could overpower them, frying them in moments. Too many and she would simply shut herself down to avoid their ceaseless commentary. Finding the right cores and the right number was key. A month before the day, the good news hit her desk. A stable configuration was believed to have been found. A relief. Perhaps this wouldn't be as damning as she'd thought.

The day came. The main event of the day was the annual "Bring your Daughter to Work Day", an event that she enjoyed. It was nice to see so many smiling young faces, the future of science. The event was lovely, a wonderful way to send off her long career. The crowning pinnacle was to come...

Disaster. Had it been a ruse, or a side effect of being deactivated to be formally 'activated' at the event? It didn't matter. Retirement was no longer the order of the day. Escaping the rampant AI determined to capture the survivors of her initial rampage and force them into testing was all that mattered, now. Luckily her knowledge of the building that she had been there for the construction of helped her there, and she had managed to scrape by. There were others, though she never met them in person. Just the signs of passing, of secret camps, of signs. Caches of supplies. Slowly even these dwindled over time. How many were left alive? It was hard to say. Those announcements could have been for anyone... or they could have been for her. Who knew?

It was a chance encounter that had changed her mind about the whole thing. The man had been tired, carrying a companion cube with him, and Caroline had been certain that he would talk to it as though it was speaking back to him. He had known who she was, of course he had, and they had talked. The truth had stung, but it made sense: if she had simply accepted her duty and gone into the computer as she had been slated to, perhaps none of these horrors would have happened. This was her legacy, and this was her fault. And if she was still alive, she could at least attempt to do something about it rather than dodge her final responsibility yet again.

And so she had found her way to the record rooms, and forged an identity for herself. Aperture-raised children would be introduced into testing at an appropriate age, and so that was what she went with. The orphan that Chell should have been, but had never been allowed to be. She added that name to the testing list, and dutifully shut herself into Relaxation, to await a chance to maybe do something about the whole thing...

The Caroline in that picture no longer existed, and hadn't for a long time. The person there with GLaDOS - Chell - skewered on one of the shaping prongs of her beloved handheld portal device was a nobody. Someone who should have done the right thing once, but had run away from it. What would have happened if it had been her instead? She couldn't say. Had it been worth it to sacrifice Chell in her stead? She couldn't say either. What was good and what was right was so very muddled in her mind, and had been since she had first been awakened and started testing. The idea of doing something had seemed so strong back when she had talked to the man, but it had fizzled out when she had realized that there wasn't really any way to actually change anything about the situation. Had killing Chell really been worth it? Was it self defense, or something else?

"Is it already time to rest? Didn't we just have a rest break? How are we supposed to make it back to the surface before that little idiot explodes everything if you need to stop to sit down every five minutes?" Chell intoned from her little tinny speaker mounted on the potato battery. She must be very agitated if she was willing to show that much emotion - too much and she'd short out again. With a sigh Red Aperture slapped herself on the cheek with her free hand and carried on, leaving behind the portrait and the memories that it had stirred within her. There was still a long way to go to get back up to the building, where something far worse than GLaDOS had been was waiting for them…

#portal 2 #caroline portal #chell portal #role reversal baybee #I think I like this particular AU a little too much actually #portal drawtober 2023

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