Chapter Text
GLaDOS was absolutely caught off guard. Not too long ago they were worrying sick about somebody walking in with Elyse right there, but just a couple tasks completely managed to lower their guard. It was the equivalent of a child getting caught doing drugs while working on homework by their weird uncle. All GLaDOS managed to get out was “Good morning, Paul Sanders. To what do I owe the pleasure?” and hope for the best.
Sanders seemed completely disinterested in them, which was probably good, but it also felt weird. Up until now, any scientists that entered had only one objective, one goal, one thing they were here for. And that was them- GLaDOS- the first(?) successful AI in aperture laboratories. Even when Sanders was first here he was no different. But this time it was clear his goal lied elsewhere.
Only a few moments after GLaDOS greetings did the words actually seem to register with him and he looked up at them. “Oh- Good morning GLaDOS! Henry asked me to bring something here, didn’t mean to disturb you or anything.” While saying that he held up a small metal cuboid. It fit snuggly into Sanders’ hand. Size wise it was comparable to a Rubix Cube or maybe a hand grenade in size, but it lacked any distinctive features, at least from what they could see, but it seemed like it might slot into the console.
For a moment GLaDOS looked like they just achieved enlightenment surpassing buddha. For the first time ever GLaDOS had a glimpse of where all the new buttons might come from that Henry just loves to press that trigger happy— “For Henry? Is it a new function for the console? A button for him to press or something similar?”
Sanders’ seems thoughtful for a bit, “I hope so…” he said, already from halfway under the console. Then he halts for a moment before appearing under the console again “I mean— It would be a shame if he didn’t like it. Would be a waste.” He had a broad smile plastered across his face. GLaDOS wasn’t quite sure why, but something in them wanted to wipe that smile right off- Why was beyond them. But they managed to contain themselves. The most important thing right now was to get rid of him as fast as possible, not to antagonize him.
“Well thank you very much for delivering this in person, as I’ve heard you are a very busy and sought after person at the moment, so I’m sure you are wanted elsewhere too right now.” Smooth, both flattering and nice, but still showing that he should be moving along now. This response was the best that her system could come up with in the short amount of time. Ideal even.
Sanders however seemed not completely happy, at least openly. “Sure wished I wasn’t. All this work is killing me.” Though besides all the complaining, there was still a certain amount of pride in his voice about his work. GLaDOS could definitely understand that feeling though. Being needed, being helpful to others, despite not being human, it’s something they understood easily. “But you are right, I have things to do, I’ll see you around.” He waved goodbye as he closed the door.
GLaDOS waited a bit after the door closed, then did a full force spin. It was extremely lucky that he was there for the console and not GLaDOS themselves. Though they must’ve made some noise while doing so since Elyse started stirring awake.
“Hwuh…?? Ish it alredy tyme….?” Elyse was still half asleep and slurring her words, but GLaDOS got the gist of it.
A quick check on the harddrive showed that it was, in fact, almost time to change hard drives. Lucky them. “Indeed, I’ll arrange a coffee in a moment, in the meantime, it would be fantastic if you at least moved yourself into a vertical position.”
It was approaching evening, as such the chances of any unwanted guests was sinking by the minute, it was basically the homestretch by now. The two of them had the harddrive switch almost down to a science now: waking up, sip of coffee, lifted up to the hard drive, switch, back down, Elyse fast asleep. All in under 2 minutes. Insomniacs hate her.
As Elyse was already falling back into the realm of rest, GLaDOS tried to get back to work. The sudden disturbance by Sanders completely threw them off. They thought back… Pathogen. Who would have reason enough to release a pathogen into a building they most likely occupied themselves. Beyond asking for who had the best reason, the more difficult question was who would have a reason at all. What reason could someone have to do something so dangerous with few obvious benefits. Revenge? Unlikely. Someone that would have such an obvious motive is unlikely to be kept around.
GLaDOS was spinning in an aggravated manner. They were missing something. GLaDOS took a mental step back. The confined group seemed to be a sort of organization, including management, workers and so on. Looking at the descriptions of the different people, most likely a technical organization.
They started to mentally divide the people into different groups in terms of the hierarchy of the organization. A person at the top of the hierarchy would have little incentive to dismantle or damage the organization with a pathogen like this. Anything that could be achieved by that could also be achieved by instead abusing their power in the organization. It would be an unnecessary risk.
On the opposite side of the spektrum are the ones at the bottom of the hierarchy. For these people even if they did have a reason to release the pathogen, they lack the means. They just do not have the necessary clearance and access to the logistics of the place to actually pull it off.
That leaves the middle section. People that if they have a reason and the necessary skill they might be able to pull it off. Now what would a person like that have to gain… Power maybe? Given a certain level of control over the pathogen, through for example a cure only they have access to or knowledge on how it spreads, it could most likely be used to eliminate people in higher positions, meaning the person would by proxy have a higher chance of gaining said positions…
GLaDOS shakes their body again. That still doesn't make sense. The scenario described the spread of the pathogen at least to a certain point. Because of the amount of people dying, not just on higher positions but also on lower ones a lot of the workforce fell away. In most scenarios the organization collapsed pretty quickly just because the different jobs couldn't be performed anymore.
None of the people working for the organization, especially middle to higher positioned ones, would have little reason to let the organization they work for collapse.
If GLaDOS could, they'd punch the wall out of frustration. Instead they annoy some of their test subjects that have already returned to their rooms with sudden and unexplained movement from technical appliances. Way healthier.
Calming down a bit again, they try another approach again. While indeed most scenarios they came up with ended in a bad end, in some cases it ended in… not TOTAL collapse at least. Most of these were because the pathogen was stopped before it caused too much damage of course, but there were also a few outliers. The one that seemed the most promising for the current headache was the automation route. While most of the workers died, their work was just automated so much that the few that remained could pick up the work. Though this did rely on the fact that for one most of the higher positioned jobs and the ones whose job is harder to automate don't die.
Most tech savvy organizations have a lot of automated clearance. If all of the ones with the highest clearance just… die off without giving people below them clearance, a lot of the data, rooms, and so on will just not be usable anymore. So if someone wanted to gather power with the automation route it would be incredibly difficult. Now if the person managed to make the entirety of the high ranking staff team obsolete it would make more sense, but within this scenario there is just no way.
-
Many hours, much metaphorical head scratching and a lot of haunting of their test subjects later, GLaDOS decided to give up. The problem just didn’t make sense. They were missing something, they just didn’t know what exactly. The last hard drive exchange had just been completed, and it was time to move the hard drives away from their chamber, which served as a much needed distraction. For now they decided to send what answers they did get over to Henry and tell him they were having trouble with the last question, that way they could fully concentrate on Elyse.
Speaking of Elyse… She was sleeping. Apparently she had gotten so much into a rhythm of wake up, exchange hard drive, sleep that she will fully ignored GLaDOS’ remark that this would be the last hard drive and they would have to now move on to the next phase, They even gave a full monologue on the plan, like some kind of villain, but Elyse had skillfully ignored them.
GLaDOS let out what could only be described as the deepest sigh uttered in the history of the universe. Then they used one of the mechanical claws to grab Elyse and yank her around a bit until she awoke. This showed to be *very* effective.
“THE FUUUCKK iS WROOON WITTH YOUUUU?????” Elyse screamed while being yanked through the air. It showed little effect to stop GLaDOS, though when she showed signs of puking, they reluctantly stopped.
“I see, you have awoken. I’m GLaD. Now then, as discussed before you fell asleep again, this was the last hard drive, we are now moving on to removing the hard drives from my room.” if GLaDOS could smile, they would have the smile of a disappointed parent or teacher lecturing a child, but because of the lack of any discernible facial feature, the undertone had to suffice.
“Okay! Okay! No need to fling me around the room like some kinda ragdoll…!” after being set back down on the floor, Elyse was dusting herself off. “So, what do I gotta do?”
“Well if you listened before, you would know. And I’m not going to explain my entire plan to you… again. so you’ll need to find out as you go. For now, grab the hard drives and leave the way you came.”
Still a bit wobbly, Elyse made her way over to the hard drives, dropped them all back into the box she brought them here with, and headed out. This promised to be veeryy annoying.