Chell (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
silentrunning) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
paradisa2013-04-15 08:01 pm
silentrunning) wrote in paradisa2013-04-15 08:01 pm
Entry tags:
021 - The Silence of Falling Ash (Backdated to the 13th)
[Chell's standing stock-still, staring at the fiery mouth of the furnace which will be the death of her only friend. All around her, GLaDOS's voice booms. The AI is taunting her.]
"Rest assured that an independent panel of ethicists has absolved the
Enrichment Center, Aperture Science employees, and all test subjects for all
moral responsibility for the companion cube euthanizing process."
[She drops to her knees, hugging the cube of hard metal on the floor in front of her, tears falling from her eyes.]
Euthanize your companion cube!
[Chell feels her heart breaking. But she knows. This is the only way. Hefting the cube she sets it gently into the incenerator... And wakes, safe in her bed, with a hoarse shriek of terror and grief. And of course, because the castle is an ass, her journal is lying there, innocently open on the table next to her bed. With a trembling hand, she reaches toward it, perfectly intending to simply check, to make sure that she's really still in the Castle... But as she drags the open journal toward her, she gets a good look at her hand and another hoarse shriek fills the air... Her fingers are covered with what looks like wet ash, and it's now smudging all over the journal page. Shakily she draws a breath, staring down at her journal. Yes. It's her journal. This is her room in the Castle. She's not in Aperture. Reaching to the table again, she grabs for a pen and shakily writes a message, not caring for a moment that she sounds like a loon.]
My hands... There is ash on my hands. I didn't mean to do it.
[God she thought she'd managed to bury that. She seriously thought that Aperture was finally mostly gone from her mind. And she'd tried, so carefully not to think about her past, about incinerating her friend. But she had. She'd failed the cube. She'd betrayed it. A tear topples off her eyelashes, spattering the page.]
"Rest assured that an independent panel of ethicists has absolved the
Enrichment Center, Aperture Science employees, and all test subjects for all
moral responsibility for the companion cube euthanizing process."
[She drops to her knees, hugging the cube of hard metal on the floor in front of her, tears falling from her eyes.]
Euthanize your companion cube!
[Chell feels her heart breaking. But she knows. This is the only way. Hefting the cube she sets it gently into the incenerator... And wakes, safe in her bed, with a hoarse shriek of terror and grief. And of course, because the castle is an ass, her journal is lying there, innocently open on the table next to her bed. With a trembling hand, she reaches toward it, perfectly intending to simply check, to make sure that she's really still in the Castle... But as she drags the open journal toward her, she gets a good look at her hand and another hoarse shriek fills the air... Her fingers are covered with what looks like wet ash, and it's now smudging all over the journal page. Shakily she draws a breath, staring down at her journal. Yes. It's her journal. This is her room in the Castle. She's not in Aperture. Reaching to the table again, she grabs for a pen and shakily writes a message, not caring for a moment that she sounds like a loon.]
My hands... There is ash on my hands. I didn't mean to do it.
[God she thought she'd managed to bury that. She seriously thought that Aperture was finally mostly gone from her mind. And she'd tried, so carefully not to think about her past, about incinerating her friend. But she had. She'd failed the cube. She'd betrayed it. A tear topples off her eyelashes, spattering the page.]