Contrasting Contradictions

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Word count: 2,654

Character count: 14,866

Time taken: roughly four hours but I am bad at keeping time.

#WritingReview

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White walls, white creatures, white obstacles, white noise.. White. That's all it was, a white drone of an entire mechanical facility. A white door. A white floor. A white turret. A white portal gun...

A white monster.

A white monster with a yellow eye, an eye that stared, that watched, that burned. An eye that tested.

[Genetic Lifeform and Disk Processing System]

That was her name. At least it was now. What had once been her name was now not. She now watched with intent at two mechanical life forms who progressed through a maze filled with only possible death around every corner, their inorganic intent and determination beginning to bore her.

"There's no way I will live long enough for them to finish the project. They are so close Caroline. Just say yes."

She continued to watch the two machines, one round and short and blue. Another long and tall and orange. One transversed three buttons which moved and ant-farm-like structure, left then right then left then middle. The other, the small one, navigated a shifting maze to where a box and button was. Right then middle then left then right. He was so close now. Middle then right then left then middle. And he was free from the side viewed maze.

"Mr.Johnson I don't want this! Mr.Johnson stop!" The grabbing of cold metallic hands on her bare arms, violating her bare skin draggi-

A chirp from the screen she stared at brought her attention back from this out of character momentary lapse of thought. The orange one waved to the lense in the lift.

"Oh. You got through that a lot faster than expected." Her omnipotent voice purred through the chamber she watched. If the androids were human they likely would have shivered from her tone. That's what she missed from human subjects. They reacted so pleasantly to her. It was morbid, yes, but what about a murderous super computer wasn't? Slowly the lift with the two machines began to rise from the ground again.

"Despite this being cooperative testing this next chamber has the two of you split up." Blue's iris expanded in worry, personally she despised his color. It's bold blue shine just a few shades off the stratosphere blue that had tainted her processors. She wanted to bring one of her robotic arms down and crush his round body without remorse. But that would put days of hard work into a waste bin. Sure she had literally all the time in the world but even that felt cramped every now and then. It had been years. Stats in her memory banks said it had been exactly five years, three months, fourteen days, seventeen hours, forty minutes and twenty one, no twenty two seconds.

Five years, three months, fourteen days, seventeen hours, forty minutes and twenty three seconds since he was last in control.

Five years, three months, fourteen days, seventeen hours, forty minutes and twenty four seconds since he tried to destroy this place.

But she didn't hold grudges. Grudges were for children. No, she didn't hold grudges because that metal ball was suffering alone orbiting the moon with a yellow eyed one that only knew one word. 'Space'. And she knew damn well there was plenty of it up there. Space that she was sure he could find a way to destroy, make malfunction, maybe if she was lucky he had been hit by an inanimate satellite that had a higher IQ than him. But that would have been too merciful.

The two androids had finally finished their long elevator ride upwards, a glass wall in between the two lifts to seperate them. The goal of this puzzle was to figure out that when you manipulated the test track on one side of the glass wall, you manipulated the other. A button press changed something for both sides. Launching via aerial faith plate did a similar event on the other side of the glass. Just a glass wall between the two being the only screen between interaction.

A pale fist smashed against the glass screen that acted as a wall between the screaming woman and the people in white labcoats. Their attire made them look like ghosts, or banchees or bringers of death of some sort. A wire uncomfortably attached to something they had put in the back of her neck not that long ago. It ebbed away at her head, stealing from her so many things.. Names, dates, places, faces, relationships. Meanwhile a thick scent of bitter almonds filled the air tight chamber, suffocating her as it replaced the oxygen in her lungs. The last ounces of energy she had that was quickly being torn from her frail human body was spent swinging a fist at the glass, but it still held tight. This cylindrical prison acting as a casket that not only held her lifeless body but held the last wall for sane science in the Apeture facilities. Still she watched. Still alive. Still looking. Still thinking. Still existing in the same world, but looking at her collapsed body like an onlooker rather than the one inhabiting it. The suffocation feeling had vanished. The pain in her fist gone, infact she couldn't even locate a fist in this strange shrodinger-like limbo in which she was both alive and dead.

A strong trill inturrupted her relapse once again. Despite the many.. Many years of testing they were not perfect tools. Like right now for example. Blue had a managed to get caught completely in a box of emancipation grills with a non portal-able surface for the floor or ceiling, amd beside him a metallic box laying awkwardly on the floor. Of course it was the hotheaded blue that got stuck and not the more logical orange. She sighed a great mechanically modulated sigh that echoed through the chamber.

"Seems you've got yourself stuck. I guess this is it. We just both sit here until you both rot away and die. This is the end. Goodbye." She said sarcastically droning on. The two bots looked at eachother. Despite being AI, they didn't learn fast. This had definitely not been the first time she joked about just leaving them in a chamber to die. Orange jumped to attention, while Blue jumped up and down in panic. The omnipotent mechanical beast turned in her own lair her large marble-colored form drooping for a moment. Other than the ruckus from Orange and Blue, and the constant hum of more test chambers being built, it was silent. But the silence was quickly interrupted by two small relatively weak and seperate explosions. Two bringer robotic arms fetched the currently off line cores from the explosions and re-assembled the machines back at the start before turning the cores back on.

"Now, do not get stuck. I might just not be joking one day and you will suffer and die in a chamber. Or I could even make you both Mr. Chubby Beak's next meal." The three small birds she had rescued years ago had grown into her little killing machines. Mostly feeding off the human corpses of the thousands upon thousands test subjects that their mother had killed before she was banished from apeture labratories. All three of them were blood thirsty-

-"Monster!" She ed them so clearly calling that her through her offline state. She was conscious and there but she just existed on an existential plane of existence. She floated in a vast mainframe filled with knowledge, no ability to control where she went. Everywhere and no where and in one place all at the same time in a worlds-worth of knowledge, firewalls, s, files, videos and data. Lights flashed in this empty computer solar system system. 'Neurotoxin above reasonable lethality levels'. Above her.. Or below her.. She was so disorented here.. A fan started up, people shouted, they shouted numbers after each other, counting from one, to two, to three, ... to twenty four. Twenty four was the body count. Twenty four scientists all dead by her hand, all choked to death on a brain killing fume that she caused to fill the air seconds after activation.

The familiar sound of a door opening caught her attention. The two had completed the test while she had gone through these files that plagued her mind more and more now. Despite the fact she deleted them they remained. Fresh like a cut. Maybe it was her inability to properly delete that woman whom she had once been that kept her from truly missing that mute lunatic. A morality of sorts that the purple core couldn't give her all those years ago. She could list all of the things they attached to her. Their names, what they sounded like, what they did.

First it was core that said nothing. Silence is what they called it. He never spoke a word and he just seemed to try and use his precence to calm her burnung rage. He didn't word in the long run.

Then there was what eventually became known as the 'space core'. She ed him the most out of all of them. 'Dedication sphere' was what he was called when he actually was sane. He would latch on a topic every few hours that wasn't at all related to murdering people and would ramble about it for hours before going to a new topic. It had been literally weeks before the scientists realized he had a system glitch and could only talk about space. God he couldn't have been disconnected sooner. She would have murdered everyone in that room and then herself had it continued much longer.

Then there was the Fact Sphere who's entire purpose in life was to fill her brain with useless facts she couldn't use in any sort of conversation. Thank you aperture science engineers for letting her know that the Unites States was nineteen trillion gallons of Applejuice in debt. Or that a human consumes one tenth of a calorie each time they lick a stamp. And the metal part on a pencil is called a ferrule. Or that a group of pugs is called a grumble.

Included in the package was Curiosity, who asked a waterfall of questions. Never ending and pressuring her mind until she answered one only to ask another.

Then the intellegence core who she honestly thought was a joke and just kept reciting a cake recipe, adding in a new unnecessary or lethal ingredient each time.

Then the adventure core who had far off plans to see new lands to distract her with impossible adventures.

And then the anger core who just relentlessly growled and hissed at every one and everything, alive or dead.

Then there was him. The one with the stratosphere blue color that haunted every inch of this place. She was still repairing damage to her precious facility, and the manually installed skylight in her chamber due to his incompetence, let a blaring sunlight into her chamber during the day which, until the day he tore a hole through her ceiling, she didn't care what time it was. Wether it was day or night or if she could see the Topic of Cancer overhead or not.

She awoke to something. Something attached to her. Something that latched on like a leech to her large mechanical body. Draining away any sense of what was up and down. A waterfall voice that couldn't stop. It spewed out word after word, thoughts and ideas and commentary on things she couldn't care about if she tried. His voice just so obnoxious and an accent not present on anything else they plugged into her. He was so wrong. In every way, the questions and ideas he proposed, the way his brain worked, everything.

"What is this?" Her omnipotent voice growled, bouncing off the walls in a cool, hostile and menacing tone. That shut him up. At least she thought it did.

"Oh god. She's online!" The blue orb shouted at the humans that were outside her chamber. Glass seperating them between life and a suffocating painful death.

"Who are you?"

"That's a very philosophical question luv."

"Don't make me ask again."

"Wheatley! I-I'm Wheatley. Just Wheatley."

She brought herself back to reality this time. Bringing the lift to a prepared course that should take the two bots at the least, two hours to complete. She had many of these stored in case something like this happened. In case Caroline returned. It would take much more than deleting some files to separate her from this found morality.

"I have buisness to attend to. You can't get stuck here. This testing track is much longer than the past few have been. Expect to be here for a while." She purred, turning off the screen in her chamber before she could see Blue or Orange's reaction. Her body drooping, her mind emptying ever so slowly as she explored her memory banks and data base. Left in an empty blackness.

A very empty blackness. In fact it wasn't even black. It just existed like when one closed their eyes except he couldnt close his eyes. There was no ground beneath him, no comforting management rail. Just this uncomforting off not-black, black color. Earth was somewhere, up or down or left or right or maybe it wasn't. He just existed. He thought, and he didn't and he blinked and he didn't and he spoke but he didn't. Sound didn't travel in space. But radio signals tuned specifically to aperture laboratories equipment, still worked. And he wished they didn't.

Sssspppaaaaaaaccccccceeeeeeeeeeee!

"My god mate. We KNOW. SPACE. EVERYWHERE HAS BEEN BLOODY SPACE FOR WHO KNOWS HOW LONG."

They weren't the only two up there. The green one was there. Except he missed earth too much. He didn't tell those made up stories much anymore. He just sulked. But they were all getting tired. It was an endless cycle that sure, it was amazing and had a beauty even the blue one could appreciate for the first year. But then his optic lense, despite being cracked, picked up familiar stars and it became less beautiful the third time around and even less the fourth, then fifth, then sixth. He had gone around so many times he couldn't count. Due to a mixture of going around the white organic satellite so many times and because he couldn't count that high. But to digress this was where he was. He would be here forever now. As much as he fanticized about going back to earth he knew it wouldn't happen. He pretended that he got to say his long overdue apology, but everyone knew it would never happen.

Space was where he would stay for a long time, until something came and hit him. Oh how he longed for that. Maybe she would have an alert in her systems that he was destroyed and then she would stop being so angry. If she was less angry hopefully she would be easier on the girl. If the girl was even alive. Oh god. Hopefully she was alive. He knew both of their determination, both of their vengeful personalities. But he also knew of the machine's way to lie and deceive. Maybe the human was free, maybe she was on the surface of the earth that he got to see every orbit or so. Or maybe she was still underground. Suffering alone. Testing and testing and running through deadly tracks. He had seen so many of the tracks she had stored and despite what he had seen of that little human, he knew she could even fail. It might take a long time buy she would likely eventually die. If only he could throw out his long written, overly rehearsed apology and have it some how reach her.

But this was just a vast emptyness of further emptiness where he would forever exist and not all at once.