Mechanophilia

Part 1 - Intro

Lights glared down, blindingly white, from a window high above.

It had been twelve hours. Twelve, and now, the entire complex had adopted the sensation of a police station's interrogation room, or perhaps even a jail cell; where Aperture Science's oddly pristine walls had always given off feelings of imprisonment and everlasting captivity, today, the panel-clad walls barred down in stricter judgement than the test subject had ever seen yet.

It might have had something to do, she noted, with the newest addition to this far-from-streamlined set of test chambers—a great big, black monitor in each one, humming away with power and displaying lines of staticky interference overtop an eerily chipper blue-eyed construct's face.

The test subject—clad in (fittingly enough) a prison-style bright orange jumpsuit, which she'd shed halfway down her waist, and had tied it there—let her eyes pass briefly over the image of the personality core. She scowled. He made her itch, somehow—perhaps it was the way he was looking at her, his observation one hundred and twenty percent more obvious than his predecessor's; or maybe it was his voice that made her skin crawl, what with the way he retained that happy, deceitful tone when he spoke, as if he were casually chatting to her over dinner while she faced the dangers of the tests.

Most likely, though, it was because of his reaction to the test's solutions. Or rather, test, as she had only solved one of his, technically speaking—but that had been gross enough. She was admittedly quite confused and disturbed by his reaction, but understood that he was receiving some kind of intense pleasure from her ministrations—she didn't need to know anything more than that. That was enough information for her.

She breathed out slowly as she looked around, taking in the whine of the excursion funnel located in the center of the room, the rosy glow radiating from the button on the ceiling, and the distant chittering of Wheatley Laboratories' most brilliant creation—a half-turret, half-weighted storage cube hybrid monstrosity.

It was easy.

Especially for her—she was quite good at it by now. She had lightning-fast reflexes, sharp, eagle eyes, and a brain that was nearly hardwired for testing. She had no problem keeping Wheatley happy, not when she could solve them point-blank, almost immediately when he kept them relatively simple—which he would, she knew. He was too much of a moron not to.

In no time at all, she'd got the solution. She'd placed the weighted storage cube precisely on top of the checkered patterned square on the floor, and with a soft sound, fffop, the portal was placed with an explosion of orange. The funnel whined loudly as the cube drifted up, and Wheatley leaned into the monitor; but Chell was ready this time. Skin already crawling with anticipation, she focused all of her razor-sharp attention on finishing the test and plunged into the oddly muffled safety of the excursion funnel.

But it wasn't enough. "Auuuuughhhhh," he sighed in relief, his voice strained but low and gravelly, making the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end, "Wow. Heh," he chuckled, "Well done, seriously. Why don't you two go on ahead, yeah? I'll just- I'll catch up with you."

Wheatley sounded absolutely exhausted. Pushing aside the unholy feeling his—to quote him directly—pleasure sounds had brought out of her, Chell swung the portal gun over her shoulder for safekeeping and strutted, as confidently as she could, out of the test chamber.

"Okay," she heard the potato mounted to the end of her portal gun whisper, "So the bad news is the tests are my tests now. So they can kill us." Great, thought Chell sarcastically. "The good news is? Well… none so far, to be honest. I'll get back to you on that."