Chapter 26: Crisis Core

Chell carried them out where the air stopped flowing. It wasn’t the type of plan that gave you a tremendous sense of security. It felt like a Wheatley plan with a little more intricacy. Doug gave himself the easy job, she began to think. Play that recording, play another recording… How could anyone possibly screw that up?  Let GLaDOS quake in her boots while I throw myself into the mainframe.

Meanwhile, the original trio were roleplaying undercover spies. Navigating air tubes and sneaking from place to place almost seemed mundane now. And still, how many times had they already put their lives on the line? At some point, it started to seem that they had some sort of invulnerability from this facility, even if it only resulted in their wandering it for eternity.

Was this just that? Was this just another dead end in the labyrinth they would die in? A crazy plan thought up by a clever scientist was still a crazy plan. And on top of that, it was a crazy plan that they all had a part in.

Wheatley was the decoy. While GLaDOS was down, they would put him back into the mainframe for another core transfer. He seemed reluctant to go through with it this time around, which of course, was a positive sign. Jolly as he was now, there was a level of trust he could never win back after his short-lived tantrum.

“She’ll almost certainly snap out of it at that point,” Rattman had explained, “But she can’t suspect we know about the vessel transfer. We have to make her think you’re doing the same thing as last time.”

“What if she catches me again?” Wheatley had asked. “Shouldn’t we have… a plan B?”

“Don’t get caught.”

Wheatley played and replayed that other time in his processor - where he took control of the mainframe, but not really. Legitimate or not, he had seen the facility from a different perspective. Literally. It was a playground of deadly technology and tiny ants. It was strange to fly through halls he had looked over, like a king walking among the peasants.

He couldn’t imagine himself thinking the same thing. He couldn’t imagine himself seeing little ants when he looked down at the ground. Maybe that’s all it took - maybe you just had to walk a little in someone else’s shoes. Fly a little in someone else’s core. On one hand, he once had a direct line into GLaDOS’ innermost thoughts, and not one of them had been of that nature. On the other hand though, there was a world where no one had given him a second chance. And every day this journey went on, he was thankful that he didn’t live in that world.

Chell, though, was fixated on the more likely outcome - the one Doug had told them to expect. Wheatley would create a nice diversion while she made a mad dash for a certain room - 3 left turns, one right turn and a 2 minute run for her life. It wouldn’t be a stop room, Doug had warned her. GLaDOS would see her clear as daylight in the old hallways, sneakily interlinking thousands of rooms.

And when she got there… well, she didn’t know. Doug didn’t know. There was a water chute zipped into the wall, and she would enter that water chute. She would replace Caroline in GLaDOS’ processor, and there would be a fight for her soul so to speak, with Chell on one side and a thousand lines of programming on the other. But at the end of the day, she had the willpower to beat it out. There was no reason why she couldn’t win.

Of course, there was something unnerving about this last adventure. For one thing, there was uncertainty. What would she see in the warm water? How would she hold her breath for so long? Would she actually pass out? But beyond that, Chell felt that same nervous energy in her stomach. 

She had been introduced to that feeling in her dream - that uneasiness. It had set her free in a number of ways, but it had also wired her back to reality. It didn’t matter how resilient she was. Ultimately, Chell had vulnerabilities like everyone else. Seeing If those vulnerabilities manifested, she wouldn’t win. And she felt them more than ever.

And the possibility of losing was terrifying. She didn’t know anything about this Caroline, but by all accounts, she was a nice, simple lady. No murderous streak in her. When she woke up though, Doug explained, she was GLaDOS. She wasn’t who she used to be. It seemed so ridiculous on its face: That she would put something so fundamental on the line. It was like walking into a room having been told that you might die or you might not. You might get out, sure, but why on Earth would you risk it?

Seeing GLaDOS like she had in her dream gave her a strange sense of deja vu. It felt like a confirmation that things were about to get worse. If that could come true, what else could she drag out of her darkest thoughts? Was she really in control of herself? Was everything just simmering inside of her, waiting to reveal itself to the outside?

For the longest time, the outside seemed like a distant but manageable goal. Had she put her life on the line in the process? Sure. But there was never this single moment - this one life-defining moment where she was forced to choose between her freedom and her very existence.

She had said to Dean that there was nothing scarier than that one thought - that the end of existence is worse than anything that happens before it. How could she believe that sincerely but throw it all away when some crazy old scientist had a wacky plan? If she had a moment to think it over, maybe she wouldn’t have done it. But it was too late now. It would’ve been like returning home after she’d set Blossom loose.

“This kinda sucks.” Dean interrupted her thoughts.

She stared off into space for a second, but at this rate, she felt that she owed him a response. 

“What’s the problem?” She asked.

“I’m not… doing anything.” He said it with a smile. He said the words, knowing how irrelevant that sentiment was in this situation. “I feel like I’m just… holding you back.”

“Dean…”

“Chell.” He said, “Maybe I should go in with you? Into the water chute. I… I don’t want to be alone if you don’t… uh-”

A smile crept across her face too:

“You can’t come in Dean.”

“Why not?” This had clearly been on his mind since they learned the plan. “I want to be there for you.”

Chell pulled him out from her sleeve. She let him lean against her fingers so she could look him in the eye:

“You’re the reason I’ll make it out.”

…

…

The mainframe was so barren without GLaDOS inside. Her enormous extender stuck through the giant rectangle in the wall, stretching on and on as far as the eye could see. It let you see the colors and walls from rooms across the facility. Altogether, it made this room plain - indistinguishable from any other. Rattmann had explained to them how he rebooted the stalemate function from his little layer.

They had left the air tubes some time ago, but only now did Chell realize that she hadn’t let go of Wheatley. Clasped in her arm, he had been uncharacteristically quiet in this whole affair. His little blue pupil gleamed all the same, nervous but still friendly in a way GLaDOS’ wasn’t capable of. 

Chell carefully let him go, as if he would fall to the ground without her. He didn’t of course, hovering above eye-level like he always did. Wheatley gazed at the two, his eyelid staying firmly in place. He didn’t blink - he looked at them as if he would never have another opportunity. He turned towards the deposit container reluctantly.

They could both sense something was up:

“You okay man?” Dean asked him.

Wheatley rocked a little, laughing a little:

“You’ll remember me like this, right?” He asked.

Chell looked down at Dean, then back up, confused.

“Remember you?”

“Yes. Remember me. I… have a real awful feeling about this. Rattmann doesn’t think much of my life… he never has. There’s something that bloke’s not telling us. He seemed jittery, you know?”

“That’s comforting…” Dean muttered.

Chell didn’t think he was wrong though. Medicated or not, she wouldn’t have said jittery… but ‘Inauthentic’ maybe. That was a word Dad used a lot… ‘Inauthentic.’ ‘This fellow or so and so doesn’t practice what they preach.’ But on the other hand, Doug had put a lot of trust in her. She wasn’t gonna buy it - not yet.

“What’s gotten into you?” She tried to convince herself. “You’ll be fine, Wheatley. We always are.”

“Ok.” He kept looking forward, “But if I’m not… I want you to remember me like this. As a friend… nothing else.”

“Warning. Central core is 100% corrupted.” The old reliable mainframe voice was still there.

“We will, Wheatley.” Chell promised.

“Alternate core detected.”

Wheatley brought himself down to their level, and then even further. He hovered over the receptacle.

“Can you um… smile please?”

“What?”

“I’d feel a lot better if you smiled.”

Dean nodded. He plastered a big stupid smile across his little stupid face. He nudged Chell, to the extent that he could nudge anyone. She looked a little confused… but she obliged. She grinned, and then she beamed and then she lit up the room. Satisfied, Wheatley sunk into his receptacle.

“Substitute core - are you ready to start the procedure?”

“Yes…” Wheatley said.

“Corrupted core - are you ready to start the procedure?”

Everyone winced. GLaDOS would come charging towards them any second now, hooks and insults prepared in advance. But she didn’t. The extender stayed in place as far as they could see. For a moment, everything seemed as if it would go smoothly. For once, things wouldn’t have to get ridiculously complicated.

“Stalemate detected. Transfer procedure cannot continue unless a stalemate associate is present to press the stalemate resolution button.”

The door to the next room opened like it was nothing. The cartoonishly Aperture stalemate resolution button stood there stupidly. They had almost forgotten about it.

“You gonna go… press that?”

“Yeah.”

Chell prepared to sprint over the floor panels like last time. But then she noticed her old portal gun, flung back to her side of the room. She didn’t need to make this difficult - she lifted it up and it felt so natural in her grip. She imagined herself holding it outside the facility, like a memory of a different life. She liked that idea.

One portal on this side and one on the other. She popped up next to the stalemate button. This was it - this had to be it. The end of this weird time in her life that happened to last a couple thousand years. Taking a deep breath, she reached down and pressed the button. 

“See you soon.” Wheatley’s receptacle whirred and buzzed and dropped below the floor.

He saw them real soon. The receptacle emerged from the floor tiles, Wheatley still inside:

“You’ll like it! I promise you will!” His core was twisted the wrong way so that he wasn’t facing them.

“Wheatley! What’s going on?”

“Get me out get me out get me out get me o-”

His body fizzled blue and his base shook violently. Chell rushed over to him. She placed her hands into the receptacle and yanked on him with all her might.

“For God’s sake, what happened?” She couldn’t pull him out.

“I told you so…” He said, his voice trailing off. “Thanks for keeping… my spirits high.”

His monitor shattered. He shook and shook until he was in a thousand pieces on the floor.

“Holy shit!” Dean gasped.

GLaDOS broke through the floor like a drill. For the third time, she left the room in a complete mess, debris flying all over the place. Chell fell backwards before those tiles of flooring took the long fall into the depths of the facility. She watched in awe as the scattered remains of Wheatley tumbled thousands of feet down.

GLaDOS took her sweet time, strutting her presence out like a peacock. Her base was so massive that she didn’t fit in the room. The edges of her extender brushed against the wall, effortlessly crumbling what was left of it. She seemed quicker, but a lot more erratic - as if she couldn’t manipulate her body quite how she wanted. Still, her presence was undeniably terrifying, looming over them like nothing should - a man looking up at a skyscraper - not one living thing looking up at another.

“What’s the matter?” She finally asked, a little confused by their dumbfounded expressions, “The core? Are you serious?”

Her voice was practically the same, but her inflection was a little different - a little more musical and a little less drab. She was humongous to the extent that Chell noticed a subtle change in her movements - she seemed to jitter back and forth with anticipation. This was in contrast to a generally motionless machine, only moving very deliberately.

“What did you do with Rattmann?” Dean blurted out, the thought too alarming to have occurred to Chell. She slowly backed up towards the doorway.

“I wouldn’t worry about that.” She slid towards them, wobbling on the extender “Chell… is that really your name? Is that short for something? Rachael?”

She kept backing up.

“Rachael: I’m not gonna hurt you. I wanna make a deal. Hand over the little guy. This doesn’t concern him.”

Chell wrapped her fingers around Dean. She curled them in and out as if she were considering her proposition.

“I can’t guarantee anything if you don’t give him to me, Rachael.” GLaDOS clarified.

The room wouldn’t end…

“I’m taking control of myself Rachael… like you should be. Why are you romping around with these lowlifes Rachael? Don’t you know how special you are? Didn’t he ever tell you? Just- just give me the little guy and we can move on.”

Chell spun out of the room and sprinted up the ramp to the hallway upstairs. It was all happening so quickly. It took her a moment before she could really process Wheatley being gone. That menacing little goofball who had turned into a sweet little goofball - she wasn’t going to see him again. 

She wasn’t exactly a stranger to killing intelligence cores… but this felt different. Wheatley wasn’t like any core she had ever known. He wasn’t some one-note string of programming with a folksy gimmick. He had explained his little adventure… he had explained it at length. It didn’t make a lot of sense, but the change was so evident. The anger, the sarcasm, the threatening little remarks disguised as little jokes: They had all subsided. There was a real sense that he was part of their company.

“That was so messed up…” Dean said.

Something even bleaker occurred to Chell - Wheatley had changed. Wheatley had put the effort in to become something totally different. At the end of the day, though, he was falling through the air in a thousand pieces. She hadn’t been careful enough…

‘There’s something Doug’s not telling us,’ Wheatley had said.

She hadn’t listened. She hadn’t listened because she had tied her perseverance to a belief that she too was different now. Maybe it was true - she had definitely carried herself as if it was. But whatever the case, it was becoming clear that it wasn’t enough. Maybe there was something she had lost… something she couldn’t replace.

GLaDOS burst out from the wall like a shark from water. It was getting a little old now. She was massive, of course, but bulky. Her extender carried her across the facility like a streetcar, and she wasn’t much faster than one. Her size didn’t allow her to squeeze into tiny spaces, but that didn’t really relieve the terror of a talking apartment building chasing after you. And of course, she had the facility on her side.

Chell swerved left like Rattmann had told her, Dean spiralling the same way like a set of car keys. GLaDOS seemed content to bring a good portion of the facility down. Her base took hit after hit, bringing down old bridges and floor plans. The ramp Chell had taken fell in an instant, somersaulting into the pit below.

Chell watched GLaDOS blot out the space behind her like a raincloud. Luckily, she was much too large to fit between the stairways and Chell made her next turn with ease. Stairs started slipping out beneath her feet. Everything with a chip in it moved in a single motion, standing in her way, GLaDOS flexing her mechanical muscles.

Chell tripped a few times and bumped her head on a slithering wall panel. Ultimately though, it was underwhelming. There wasn’t a great amount GLaDOS could do for large parts of her little labyrinth.

“So uh…” Dean tried to strike up conversation, “Rachael huh? I didn’t know.”

It was like speaking to a nervous driver on the freeway - she didn’t respond for a few moments:

“Uh… yeah. Never loved the name.” She ducked under a flying piece of debris. “Not sure why she’s calling me that.”

“I kinda like it.” Dean said, trying to lighten things up. The ridiculousness in bringing it up wasn’t lost on him, but he went on: “It’s a nice name.”

“It’s really not.” 

She slid onto the last platform. It was about as pretty a view as you could expect from the inside of the facility. Swinging pathways stretched into that foggy green halo in the distance. It was like running through a cave. Dean would have liked to stop for a moment if he could - stop and take it all in. Of course, he had become rather accustomed to staying put.

This last ramp was uniquely isolated on one side. All that stood below was that long fall into nothing. GLaDOS brought herself in front of it, coming to a complete stop. It was flat enough to see far into the distance… and there was GLaDOS, waiting at the end like a tollkeeper. Like a big metal troll.

“You can’t win, Rachael.” GLaDOS boomed. “You’re making this so much harder than it needs to be.”

Chell dashed forward, one eye twitching and the other gleaming. Everything felt so wrong. She hated how she let this place drive her feelings like a rollercoaster. Wheatley exploding in front of her eyes… Dean struggling in the water… GLaDOS handling her like a doll…

Turrets rained from the sky and shot at her in midair. Excursion funnels blinked on and off, trying to lift her up and toss her down. A laser light flicked on in her path and burned through her jumpsuit at the knee. She clutched it reflexively, but kept running. Kept running as if she didn’t feel a thing.

GLaDOS spun forward like a top falling down. The ramp cracked at the point of impact and began to crumble in an instant. It stretched one way and then the other, the foundation apparently slim as string. The crumbling reached Chell and Dean, and they went tumbling down too.

Chell leaned backwards in the air. Her long fall boots would give her a graceful landing, but she  seriously wondered if she wanted one. Everything was crumbling… everything was falling down. Dean flailed above her, still tied firmly in her sleeve. She wasn’t getting back up there - there was no way. She slowly separated her hands, ready to drop the portal gun so she could take her boots off-

“Dnnnnn!” Dean yelled

“W- what?” Chell looked up.

He moved his ring to the right.

“Don’t drop it!” His voice erupted over rushing air.

“Dean…”

“Look at the ramp!”

The piece of ramp spun upside down, and a white portal surface greeted them. High above them now, the doorway to that fateful room waited. And just above that little room was a single square of white surface. 

“Shoot it!” Dean screamed! “Do the… shooting!”

Chell grimaced:

“That’s a really hard shot.”

“What? You can make it.”

She bit her lip and orange portal into the ramp piece. She aimed the gun up high… and hesitated.

“Why Dean?”

Silence.

“What do you mean why?”

“You realize she killed Rattmann, right? And Wheatley…”

“So?”

“The dream is over Dean. We’re not getting out of here. We’re not invincible.”

She was surprised at the words that came from her mouth. It was a reflexive pessimism that she wasn’t prepared to think about. It came out anyway. Dean scratched his head, watching the upper level draw further and further into the distance.

“That’s… not like you.” He said.

Chell waved her arms in the air, not even knowing how to say what she was thinking. It was a jumble of thoughts - a multitude of contradictory information.

“I’m losing it.” She finally articulated, “You think I’m this… titanium lady. That I won’t - can’t give up. I’m not, Dean. Not… anymore. Maybe I was, but even then… I don’t even know if it was me. It was this thing inside and… I don’t have it.”

Dean blinked.

“Everything around me disappears.” She cried. “I can’t let it happen. I can’t let it happen to y-”

Her eyes watered.

“Chell…”

“Why now? Ugh this is so... stupid.” She rubbed her eyes.

The sleeve flapped upwards so that he was close to her face. Shaking to and fro, but close to her face. 

“It’s not stupid.” He murmured. A speck of her tears touched his face. “And… you haven’t lost it. You think that… if you’re not alone you don’t have that edge about you. I get that. I… knew a lot of people like that in prison.”

“Huh?”

“But Chell… you’ve saved me so many times. You’ve helped me more than anyone else ever has. I see you wake up every day and… do the things you’ve always done. You just… do it for others now.”

It didn’t feel right getting a feel-good speech from her little companion. It was a harsh reminder that there was still something - still a lot she hadn’t figured out yet. As silly as it felt, it must have felt a lot sillier on Dean’s end… wondering if she could truly take anything he said seriously. But she did trust him - she felt that flame reignite in her heart - reignite in her essence.

And she aimed the portal gun at the speck of white space she could scarcely see. And she plucked that piece of ramp out of midair. And with pinpoint accuracy, she shot that blue portal into that speck of space. And she dragged herself through the piece of ramp and she fell into a familiar room, GLaDOS watching helplessly from the outside.

It was the misty room, coated in thick white fog. But when the light flickered on and off, the halo from out the door expanded its influence. The room threw away its angelic lighting, embracing a gloomier aesthetic for the brief time Chell would be in here. And as the room grew darker, it became clear that the stuff wasn’t mist at all. It was that sickly green they had become acquainted with.

Chell felt nauseous just being here again. The little drawings sent a chill down Dean’s spine as soon as he recognized them - an artistic reminder of the folks who made him like this - of people who probably watched and took notes as his body shrivelled up. The entrance to the next room flickered invitingly, still intact. That was where it had all begun. And here he was, still tied to her but with a little more room to breathe. 

Everything was so different now, down to the tiniest detail. The room was a different colour.The entrance was one they should never have to go through. Even Dean in the jumpsuit sleeve didn’t mean what it used to mean. On one hand, they knew this facility better than they would like. On the other hand though, they barely knew it at all.

The back wall was literally zipped up. It bulged like a bullfrog’s throat, moving back and forth angrily. A firm sort of pounding noise seemed to thump as it bulged. It certainly hadn’t done that before. The wall breathed and thumped like a living thing. 

“Don’t be long…” Dean grumbled, looking less than pleased with the place.

Chell approached the zipper nervously. She felt her palms clam up as she kept looking at the thing. 

How on Earth had they gotten themselves mixed up in this. It was like shutting yourself into a coffin and agreeing to be buried underground.

‘Don’t worry, we’ll give you a shovel.’

“Guess this is it then…”

“Yeah.”

Chell uncurled him from the jumpsuit sleeve. She looked around the room as if there would be some convenient place to put him.

“Uh…”

“It’s fine.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

It seemed so demeaning. Chell rolled her eyes as if annoyed at the room for laying itself out in the way it did.Finally, though, she placed Dean onto the floor.

“I’ll be right out. I promise.”

“‘Course you will.”

She turned towards the wall and placed her hand on the very oversized zipper. She pulled it across…

But it was jammed. So she placed both her hands on the zipper and pulled with all her might. It seemed to resist from the inside, bulging, pushing her backwards. But she gritted her teeth and pulled even harder than before. Eventually, the zipper gave way. It hadn’t opened in a few millennia and it wouldn’t open now. It broke halfway down the wall, and thick colorless goop spilled out. Carefully, Chell walked in.

…

…

She was drowning in the stuff. It flowed further and further away from the entrance in a current, and Chell found herself unable to fight back. Doug had been incredibly vague about the nature of this place. To his credit, only one soul had ever stepped inside this place, and of course, she had never emerged.

It was becoming less and less clear how Chell was supposed to take control. There wasn’t some ancient corpse she could just toss out of the way. What she did see were gallons and gallons of goop, stretching impossibly far into the distance - much further than the misty room itself. 

It was like wading through molasses - molasses with an agenda. The goop was already climbing up to her chest, waves of the stuff appearing to rise over her head in the distance. Perhaps it was a little soon to rush to conclusions, but the sheer stupidity of it all culminated in her head. She had plunged herself into a death trap because some deranged old scientist had told her it was a good idea.

What was she supposed to do when she did sink under? What was any of this meant to accomplish? 

Shoulder-level now, and she got a few mouthfuls of the stuff. For its bland watery color, it was shockingly horrid to the taste. It was like sewage and… cilantro. She continued down the current, slowly but surely, until she couldn’t see the place where she had come in. A glimmer of dark light in the distance, Dean sitting there hopefully, thinking she would actually come back.

Chin-level now and she had to blow bubbles not to inhale the stuff. She wished desperately that she had not come in at all. She wondered if a lifetime with GLaDOS could be spent much worse than these last minutes of her life - testing and testing but with a bright light and a meal at every checkpoint. 

And finally, the goop crawled over her lips and reached past her nose. She could feel the tips of her now ridiculous hair standing at the surface like a lifeline - but they too took the dive into the underneath. She watched whatever light was left fade away from atop her head. She watched invisible ropes tie her to the floor.

Chell struggled for everything, reaching and kicking and propelling. Energy drew out of her like from an electrical outlet. And even when she relented for a few moments, her arms and legs moved forwards and backwards as if attached to marionette strings - moved forwards and backwards with minds of their own.

And when there was no more energy left, she found more energy and kept pulling and pushing and springing. And when that energy was depleted, she pulled breath in from all around her body. Her lungs wanted to break but they decided not to - they took in and recycled and stopped her sinking even further in the process.

She floated there tranquilly for even more moments, motionless to the observer. And after she had been motionless for a good while, the tired old air persisted for one more beat of the heart. And finally, it subsided. Finally, when the energy was gone and the air had vanished, her nostrils gave way and goop flooded in.

And she felt it rush into her.