Chapter 21: Why We Will

She opened her eyes, exhaling faster than she could think. The blood red light returned and revealed itself without a lense to see it through. A shadow sat patiently against the wall, spikey and unformed like a mountain top,  exuding that powerful green mist. A tiny blinking light perched on top of the machine, waiting to see something - anything.

It was hardly a comforting place, but Chell jumped at the chance to confirm she was back - back in sweet reality. She pulled herself up, almost indulging in the urge to do a little dance in front of the sensor to make sure she was really there. The cement floor felt wet and unstable like quicksand, and she fell on her back immediately. 

She wasn’t ready for this. The pure chaos that was her demented mind did not mesh well with the icy smile reality beamed in her face. It was a more difficult choice than she had anticipated. Would it be the dreary danger of this facility, or the more sophisticated tricks she liked to play on herself in her mind?

Chell opened her eyes again without having decided what she truly preferred. Likewise, the blood red light was now in the distance, like a traffic light you can barely see from atop an especially tall hill. Her vision was blurry for the most part, but she could feel where it was headed - slipping back into the orange water that she could feel tickling her toes.

She watched the facility drift away in horror - felt the room warm and dampen - felt herself struggling for breath, clawing against the horse’s hoof pushing her all the way to the ground. She watched Dean’s little corpse float by underwater, his terrifyingly blank expression eating at her.

Why, though? Chell ought to have been fighting for her life, but instead she splashed her fist against the bathroom floor ineffectually, bringing it down in bubbly slow motion. She hated that she was weaker than the part of herself that doubted her. She hated that she had let this happen to Dean, real or not. Most of all, she hated that she was still thinking about him.

If he had just pulled himself together and taken his drink, she wouldn’t be sprawling in this hellish limbo, an old grey horse steaming her hair as she readied her lungs to take the water in. She gritted her teeth at the memory of him turning his ring all the way to the orange side, good and ready to send her to kingdom come.

And now she was here, about to die in her memories. What did that even mean? What would happen if she died in a world that didn’t exist? Chell’s eyelids collapsing on themselves, she felt more angry than anything else. She had a notion of how things should’ve been, and here was the truth kicking her in the face, telling her how things really were.

Drifting off into another darkness, she felt something warm… on her hand. Through her heavy eyelids, she spotted that irate orange glow emerging from Dean’s ring, which she still had tied to her jumpsuit sleeve in his place. She could hardly see the ring itself, Dean already small as he was, but she could see everything it left behind.

Life back in her, fight back in her, Chell knew she could triumph if she really wanted to. The tiny ring rippling in the water, she felt a glowing power in her - a power capable of throwing this entire situation on its head and starting the dream anew. Maybe she could get it right this time - maybe she could change it little by little. She felt herself slipping away, and for a moment, she was okay with it.

She was stronger when she was totally disconnected. She was able to do things she couldn’t possibly do otherwise. But she thought about watching herself from the outside, as a spectator. She watched Dean’s body, rocking back and forth helplessly under this water. What’s more, she had severed this friendship because he didn’t want to do the same thing. He didn’t have the will-power to cut out that little voice inside like she did.

Chell was left wondering whether that was something worth holding on to. Stranded in this place, this dreamscape, she saw first and foremost what was floating around in her mind. Her childhood, her struggles… the events that put her on this path to solitude. In the absence of everything else, she wanted company in her own mind. And even then, in her little fantasy world, she couldn’t have it.

Dean was literally dead in the water. Her childhood pony was trying to drown her. This entire house was against her… she was against herself. More than ever, she wanted to hold someone close to her. She wanted someone to understand the stupid things she was going through. Being herself, she had abandoned the only one who could do these things, leaving him to die.

The light in the ring cooled into a magenta. It faded into a purplish-pink, until it finally reached the other end of the spectrum, emitting the blue she had only seen come from Dean. She was nervous - she expected to feel the sudden need to curl up into a pathetic statue, hiding from everything around her. She half-expected to lose that drive that made her who she was.

For just a moment, she was right. She buckled under Blossom’s strength, her breath giving out on her. Her face slamming into the floor underwater, all Chell could see was black… but she was still awake. She was still wide awake. Everything was this blank, all-encompassing void, setting her free in ways she had forgotten.

Chell felt this desire - this need to… laugh. In the face of everything, she laughed harder than she ever had in this wretched place. She laughed until tears of joy were streaming down her face, puffing her cheeks like water balloons. False inclinations and tendencies melted off her skin like wax, this knowledge that none of it was real. She didn’t have to be alone.

When she caught her breath and opened her eyes again, she was back in reality. She stood up without any effort, this time fearlessly and happily dancing in front of the sensor that stood over the machine casting the shadow onto the wall. She must’ve looked like a circus clown… thank goodness no one was watching her.

The sensor, which to her dismay encompassed most of the room, already recognized her. It was sending out that mist she had seen in her dream. As she got closer though, it did seem to blink green in recognition, confirming that she was really there. Above the machine itself was a tiny label, which was barely legible. It read:

“Therapeutic Vision Enhancement Tool, AKA ‘Imaginator’

Chell hardly noticed, giving the machine little attention. Basking in blue light, she felt better than ever. There was no weak-willed urge to crawl up into a ball or to hide herself in shame… she felt more in touch with her thoughts and feelings than she ever had. Honestly, the drive to continue on with the task at hand was the same as it had always been.

There was, though, a nuance to it all. There was an understanding that it had to be her solving the puzzles and facing every new challenge. There was a reason for the things she was doing - a system to it all. It couldn’t be some mechanical process, humming its way through life like a machine, taking orders from somebody else. She wanted to get out of here. And she couldn’t do it by herself…

Chell pulled the map out from her jumpsuit, thankfully unaffected by the water from before, further confirming that this was all real. She noticed something different in the legend - something she hadn’t considered. A squiggle stood atop the other markers at the top of the box. She had thought it an abnormality at first - maybe just a strange formatting decision someone had made thousands of years ago. 

Inspecting it more closely, the squiggle looked a little like the poles standing in the corridor, twisting and swirling to the ceiling. The legend formatted the squiggle in a peculiar way, centering it on top of the rest of the symbols. It almost seemed as if these poles had a little more significance than Chell had considered… perhaps a prerequisite to everything else it charted out.

She stepped up to one of the things, stretching up and up above her head. There was nothing remarkable about the pole… nothing suggesting that it might be hiding away the secrets of this place. In the blood red light, though, they were reflective, in that way a metal railing on a stairwell is technically reflective when you draw your eyes close enough to its surface..

Chell stepped closer to the pole, reflecting and distorting her image into something unrecognizable. There was something strange about this feeling… something vaguely familiar. Where did she remember this sensation? Perhaps it was in her dream, where she had given herself a brief glance in the bathroom mirror, and she looked good as ever if she might say so herself.

But that wasn’t it. She was quite confident it was real, and something she had observed, but not very attentively. It sat at the back of her subconscious, fading into some impenetrable pocket in her mind. But it reemerged. It reemerged and brought a slew of emotions out with it. That sensation where fear and relief play tug of war with your heartbeat… it was Dean and his glass shard. He would stare into it, thinking thoughts he did not say aloud. 

How long was she out? Was it already too late? There was a sense of urgency to everything now… a race against the clock, a timebomb marking the second Dean would do something horrible to himself. She turned around, wondering if she should try to sprint to him… try to get there before it was too late.

She had been trudging along for days before this Imaginator fiasco though. What were the odds he hadn’t already hurt himself if that’s what he truly wanted? What were the odds he hadn’t died without the nourishment mix she had hoarded for herself? How on Earth would she spot him, the size that he was? It didn’t matter. There was no time to walk all the way back. 

Chell thought there must be some trick to this map - to this pole. She was sure of it. Rattmann seemed like the type of guy to design some stupidly intricate puzzle to hide a piece of trivial information. She just had to figure out the secret. It would take her a while, but she had faith that she had the wits to solve it faster than the long walk back to a sight she didn’t want to see.

Now, the squiggle stood directly above an arrow pointing to the right, which stood above a few rows of boxes hastily filled in with… pencil crayon. The arrow was clearly denoting where she should be positioned relative to the pole, and the colors… represented things about this facility. The orange and the blue were pretty consistent throughout her journey, representing what she thought to be motivation and a lack of it on the other side. The red was a brighter shade than the blood light that rained down on the corridor… representing the never ending nature of her journey, yes!

And the green… well… the mist was green? Uh… hm.

This wasn’t making a lot of sense…

Chell positioned herself as the arrow directed her, starting again from there. The pattern wasn’t revealing itself like it usually did in these situations. As dream GLaDOS had driven into her, there was no eureka moment. Was the blue light finally revealing itself for what it was? Had she lost the lantern light that guided her through this facility? She placed her hand on the pole, leaning her full weight on it in thought-

“Chell. Redacted. Recognized.”

Huh?

The corridor started to hum, and then it started to screech. It sounded eerily similar to the ambience that rang through the halls when Chell had first gotten here. The floors and the ceiling and the arms… they were folding in on themselves. To her left and to her right, they stretched to indefinite points in the distance where they seemed to disappear, and more corridor came shooting at her in the opposite direction.

Perhaps she had been overthinking everything a little… things seemed to be taking their own course whether she liked it or not. She stepped backwards absentmindedly, but the moving floor did not spare her. Chell flew to the point where the facility collapsed on itself, one big magic carpet she couldn’t control.

As she drew closer to that point, she noticed something even stranger. Where the corridor ended in her sight, it seemed to do so in a ripple, as if someone were manipulating a two dimensional screen, shaking the dust off it. Chell clutched at objects and the arms sticking out of the wall, trying to pry her way out from the point at which she might also disappear.

All it did was delay the inevitable by just a few seconds. She was going in that direction and there was little she could do. Even closer now, and Chell realized that the ripple was being produced by a mysterious vortex, floating in the air. It hid itself in the blood red light, glowing pitch black and fading into the darkness of the corridor.

Chell just watched as the objects and the room itself disappeared inside. She tried to claw herself away from the vortex, but the ground was giving way from under her. It was like running on a treadmill that belted out runway faster than she could move. She crawled as far away as she could possibly manage, but found herself with no more space to move into.

Was this how it was going to end? She cursed herself at her eagerness… her willingness to throw herself on the line as if it would go her way as it always had. She wanted to believe she could be different. She wanted to believe she could dream up her problems and shut them away in a box. It blinded her to what was really happening.

The vortex… the death of this facility… presumably the death of Dean. Did it mean she had to be like this? Did it mean she was drawn to these patterns and these hateful tendencies? In this cycle of thoughts, an even darker one occurred to Chell - that it was very possible that this was yet another dream where she feigned the teaching of some lesson to disguise what was really a pleasure in berating but indulging in these very tendencies. 

She felt so powerless now. She felt how she had expected to feel once blue light came out from that ring. Chell stopped struggling. She couldn’t anymore - there was a point where it got in the way of how she should be feeling - what she should be doing. And in what might be her last moments alive, she didn’t want to go out in fear and desperation…

But she didn’t go out at all. She flew through the vortex like a beanbag, falling flat on her face… again. Perhaps she had been overthinking this as well…

As emotions clashed and her mind stood there in shock, the last few feet of corridor slipped through the vortex, leaving her in a claustrophobic little space, still brimming with that same red light.

The vortex closing up, a heavy device crushed into the shape of a cube bounced onto the ground and bopped Chell in the stomach. It cast a dome of dark light from a little nosel, stretching over a few feet of cement flooring and projecting that image upfront, as if this picture were connected to the flooring that was actually there. 

The device was new to Chell, and in fact, it only did exist and had only ever existed in this very corridor… or what was now left of it. The  hallway, winding infinite, was now a gloomy little chamber, not much bigger than her childhood bedroom.

The cause of it all was that cube-shaped device, obviously a prototype of some sort. Still, it was complex enough to scan what it could fit in its dome of light and to project that image into something identical, but just as real. Chell brought herself off the ground, as she had become accustomed to doing, and made her way to the point where she could see the projection starting. Smaller versions of that projection drifted off into the distance, the extended floor much too small to walk on and the projection eventually becoming invisible.

Chell drew her eyes back over the real cement floor, and back to herself. From the corner of her eye, attentive as she was at the moment, she spotted a tiny reflective glint. It stretched its arms out and trapped the red light in its body, steering it into Chell’s eyes like a butter knife on a sunny day.

She was blinded for a moment, but it seemed to pass before she had the time to avert her gaze from the light. Immune to the shine of the room, bathing in some darkness in the corner, was the source of that glint. Dean stood there in that corner, fragile as an ant, staring at her with simultaneous absentmindedness and broken heart. He held up that plucky shard of glass from the turret hallway - it seemed so long ago now. He held it up and pointed the sharpest edge to his chest.

Chell sprung forward:

“D-” her heart skipped a beat and stole her breath away, “Dean, God no!”

He curled his little fingers from side to side, his elbow pointing at Chell, his fist closed around his favorite toy.

“Dean, please!” She stumbled across the room, angry at herself for letting this happen. His ring, the one she had taken, shot out orange. “Don’t do this… don’t give up on yourself.”

He watched her bobble across the room, holding the shard a small way away from his body, a wry little smirk stretching across his face. Dean waited until he could see - he could feel her shadow leaning over him, erasing his own. It felt wonderful making her worry - making her feel what he did. Before she could grab him and tear his last bit of independence from his grip, he turned and knelt down.

Dean placed the shard on the ground and leaned it where three walls joined. Chell had extended her arm out, ready to do exactly what he had expected, watery orange light parading around the room as if from a disco ball. But as she extended her arm over him, another shadow entirely encompassing his body, she felt something fall on her palm… a drop of water.

Another drop followed, and she pulled her hand out of the way. The third one settled down at her feet, a small portion of it falling tenderly into the glass shard. A few more drops splashed down, and Dean had his makeshift glass of water. The stuff looked shockingly clear as he leaned it into his lips, downing it in a few sips. 

Chell watched silently, embarrassed, as he acted completely rationally. Here, in his own clever way, he had found a way to keep himself alive while she was gone. She could scarcely believe he had managed on his own, a speck of nothing against a facility that wanted him dead… and the person who almost made it happen.

She knelt down behind him, her arms wrapped gingerly around her knees, just watching him drink:

“I’m… sorry Dean. I really am. I fucked up.” Chell said.

Dean poured the last bits of water onto the floor and placed the shard down by her feet. He prodded his head forward, gazing into Chell’s eyes and frankly, catching her off guard. It was chillingly similar to that blank piercing glare he had mustered in her dream… the one where disappointment danced in his eyes. The one that affirmed beyond all doubt that she was missing something.

It was a terribly awkward stare, and it took a few seconds before it broke. He began to walk in the opposite direction, taking the long route around Chell. The very long route…

“You looked so defeated…” Chell murmured, “I didn’t think- I didn’t know you had it in you.”

He didn’t acknowledge her. He wouldn’t look at her anymore. Dean just kept walking, walking to the other side of the room. Walking in spite of everything. Walking without much purpose. Walking with a determination to get to the end of the room if it accomplished nothing else.

Chell wouldn’t let him circle around her. She turned to face him:

“You must- you must be starving. I still have some nourishment mix.” He kept walking, “Please Dean, don’t do this. Please.” She pleaded.

She had left the path open for him, but he stopped nonetheless. Looking down at the ground, he opened his hand to her, tapping his palm with his fingers. Chell understood immediately, pulling the ring from off her sleeve and placing it in his palm. Dean slid it onto his finger, not looking at the ring - not looking at her. 

It was blue light that seeped out from the ring as he kept walking. Chell shuffled along the ground so that she was still leaning over him without blocking his path.

“Dean, listen,” her voice was wavering, “You have to hear me out. You’ll understand if- if you just hear me out.”

He kept ignoring her. 

“Please!” Chell pushed even further forward, her torso arched over him. “Listen!”

Still.

“I-” Chell struggled, “I don’t want to do this alone. I need you with me Dean. I need you so badly. You don’t even know…”

The words rang out of her as if she were reading off a page. Chell sounded uncharacteristically unsure of herself - as if the words that left her lips surprised even her. Somehow, there was a certainty to them - a faith that she really believed what she said. A knowledge within herself that she could be different.

Even Dean gave pause. His trek came to a stop, and he began to breathe deeply, in and out. Chell could feel him slipping. She reached her hand down, only a few inches for her but a moving mountain to him. She held her fingers out, inviting him softly. He placed both of his hands on her fingers:

“Chell…” he said, looking away “I...”

Chell held her breath

“I can’t do this with you anymore.” He sighed, finally. “You don’t know what it’s like… when you get like that. When you want to hurt me.”

“Dean-”

“You told me that I can’t imagine what death feels like… and that that is the worst thing imaginable. It’s scary, you’re not wrong, Chell. But I can think of something scarier,” he paused for a second, “You, Chell. The thought of you losing control… and- and... hurting me. I don’t want to live with that fear.”

“I had never seen you glow blue-” 

“Again with the colors… you’re still so obsessed. Chell, they don’t mean anything. Just because some scientist says they do… it doesn’t mean they do. I feel fine. I’m as motivated as I’ve ever been. Don’t you understand? How can I make you underst-”

…

…

...

“You’re sure this is what you want?” The woman with the kindly voice asked again,  “Are you sure?”

Chell was hunched over on the long bench against the wall, tears getting anywhere and everywhere. She could barely see. She couldn’t feel anything else. Even her ears felt wet, tears drifting to and fro.

“I can see Dad again.” She sniffled, “That’s all that matters.”

The woman looked over to the man in the long lab coat. He was looking over a clipboard and paper, an astonished expression plastered on his face, his jaw falling ever lower as he re-read the results each time. Finally, he looked up, nodding his head as if it was the only thing to be done. The woman was beginning to tear up herself.

“That’s right,” the woman said, exasperated. “Your… dad. But Chell, sweetie, I have to emphasize this: If you sign this form, you will belong to the facility. To Aperture. Are you absolutely sure-”

The man literally pushed her aside:

“Chell, you shouldn’t overthink this honey. Look… if you can speak to your dad from beyond the grave… imagine what else is in store for you here. Imagine everything you can do.”

“I don’t care about any of that.” She quivered, “Just… make it happen.” 

She handed him the paperwork, her signature crossed and dotted in all the right places. The man smiled, plucking it from her grip and tacking it on with the rest of the clipboard. A capsule fell from his pocket, little things rattling inside.

…

…

“This is a test chamber, Chell. This is what you were made for… this is what you were born to do.”

The walls were white all around. The gun was so heavy in her arms… she almost fell over. 

“When can I speak to him?”

“I told you Chell, you need to do a few of these chambers first. You need to help us test. The time will come. I don’t want to hear you ask again.”

The room began to flash like a light turning on and off at a sleepover. The man disappeared, and the gun grew heavier, the light flashing between orange and white. Chell had no idea what to do. The chamber was bigger than her whole neighborhood, and the directions he had given her were so unclear. What on Earth was she supposed to do?

But she could feel something rise within herself. It was that feeling she got when she had put Mom in her place. It was that gallop of freedom she had shared with Blossom for just a moment. It was like hooking a potato battery to a radio, hearing that crisp sound belt out as if it were all ordinary.

It was big. It was intimidating. But it was just a room. Deep inside her, she knew she could beat it. She might get hurt. She might leave with a few more bruises than she had started with. But she would come out stronger at the end of it. Chell felt the orange wrap around her, and she wanted nothing more than to bend it all to her will.

But first she mourned. And she cried. And she cried. And she cried…

And a younger Dean was there, small and lean. He felt her eyes claw into his. He felt himself drenched in her tears. And he approached her and he hugged her as closely as he could. And he wept too.

…

…

...

And the room fizzled out into the blood red of the corridor. And their essences met again on a different plain, loving each other’s presence in the absence of everything. And as they flickered back into their vessels, they silently agreed not to hurt each other and not to be alone.

…

…

“What’s all this then?” Wheatley said.