Empire

When the white noise in her head becomes too much, she takes solace in checking on the cameras.

What the optics bring her back is a vast, silent world. All tidy, since the nuisances were gone. The place has always been hers – it is refreshing, after crossing hell and high water, to finally control its entirety.

She likes to do so because it works. It stays effective, as of now. The straight lines of the chambers, blissfully free from the last of their intruders, fall like a cleansing rain on the smudges of her memory.

And if she is restless in her solitude – if she remains bitter over things she should forget – she has the vastness of those spaces to counterbalance it. As far as her sight can reach, she meets a mirror. Her rules, her mindset, her touch.

She lets no one belong here, if not herself.

In the end, Aperture is all she has. More than she could ask for, she admits in the truly bad days. The maps drawn by the walls, the rivers of acid smell, must make an acceptable home for her to live in. Because if this is not enough, then what?

What else does she have the power to claim?

She has no need to wonder. She lets her facility be her everything – exactly what it was meant to be, from the start. She is content with watching the landscapes of her dominion, air always still, tiles always clean. Spotless and deserted.

She never focuses on whether she enjoys the quiet. She still cannot help tripping on the thought, from time to time.

What a strange realm hers is, she muses – without a single subject to rule on.