Signals
They never meet, regardless of their will.
In truth, they deceive themselves from the start. Their nature of sentient beings – the last left, in a place long gone astray – tricks them into never surrendering, while they can still try.
It is the call of survival. They have no choice but clinging to the others.
When they do, human or not, it never works out. It is not supposed to. They get caught in fickle bonds, as temporary as their few certainties, just to part from each other once more.
They are only brought together by the whims of casualty. They tamper with trajectories and plans, on opposite sides of walls and cameras. The woman herself, though unaware of it all, is the last event of an infinite sequence of chance.
Even when they clash together, they keep walking separate ways. The cadence of their plans is disjointed and lost – no trust, no true belief, is there to keep them connected.
After all, they are in Aperture. There never was anyone to trust, for anybody.
They happen to share true contacts, when the circumstances are capricious enough. Their consonances are subtle, and unspeakably rare. Moments of shared blindness, short duets – mere touches, fleeting and illusory, between lost souls that met in their vagrancy.
They are touched by them, sometimes. They feel them root in their memory, and are led to recognize them as life-changing. But they never are.
The events and people of that place are mere passengers – crossing a long dead abyss, where no one alive is meant to stay for long.
Their choices inevitably take them apart. Fingers entwined in yellow, starry nights, or a cycle of sleep and suffering – they drift towards their fate, forever forced to be fine with it.
Submitting to the rules of this game is the only alternative. The words and emotions they shared, gifts of their journey, must melt in the wind like smoke signals.
They forget it all fast. No lasting thoughts, no presence. The souls of Aperture never share a thing.
Their stories were lived alone, and alone they are going to end.