-Rebooting Issues-

As the video came to an end, Amanda removed her display and looked over to the structure in the middle of the massive open space in front of them. It still looked the same from when it exploded all those years ago, only now it was completely silent in the big room ahead. Will stood next to her as they both looked at the structure. Will put his hand on Amanda’s shoulder and spoke “don’t worry, whatever did this to this place has been deactivated a long time ago. All we need to do is get in there and get that hard-drive to GLaDOS”. Amanda nodded and walked to the broken escort bot. she kept looking at it, she felt sorry for the machine. Will stepped to the panel and began pressing buttons. If I saw it correctly I can input the activation code here, Will said as he punched in the same code that was seen in the recording. The doors of the cart opened and Amanda stepped inside, Will followed her inside as the doors closed. The lift came to life with a rumble and began sliding down its cables towards the structure that lay before it. Amanda sat down as she waited for them to arrive, while Will stood at the front looking out the windows.

Around five minutes later the cart rolled into its station and two big doors shut behind it as the lift came to a halt. Will was the first to get out and look around the dimly lit room they were now in, “Come on” he said as he turned on his flashlight. Amanda now stepped out of the vehicle and walked closely behind Will. They walked over to a big vault-like door; Will checked all sides to see if there was a way inside. There were wooden boxes stacked along the walls of the room and Amanda went to inspect them from a little closer. Some boxes had writing on it while others were opened up and emptied out. She looked at one of the boxes with writing on it and started reading the inscriptions. Some writing had faded out but it was still readable that these boxes once contained power cores that were brought here for installation. She picked up the empty box and put it aside when she caught a glimpse of something behind all the boxes. As interested as she was, she began to move all the boxes out of the way. Meanwhile Will was still looking at the door thinking of a possible way to get through, he did find a keypad panel but it was so broken that even an Aspard couldn’t fix it. When Amanda had moved all the boxes she saw a lever which had a label printed above it which read; manual door override, use only when the keypad has melted or when Greg has locked himself inside again. Will then took a step back and looked at the door from another angle, “here goes nothing” he said as he started to run towards it. Amanda chuckled and pulled down the lever. The second that Will hit the door, it started to open slowly with the noise of grinding metal. Will jumped up in excitement, “Yes I did it! Ha-ha take that science!” Amanda walked over to him with her arms crossed and a smirk on her face. She nodded her head in the direction of the lever, “oh… I see… never mind then” Will said as he regained his posture.

As the large door opened before them Amanda looked inside and saw the tall cylindrical shaped room that sat before them. Will was the first to step inside and walk straight towards the middle pillar. Amanda followed him and looked at what she realized was the body of a big robot which had its body attached to the pillar in the center. Will walked up to its head, “so this is the AI GLaDOS spoke about… very interesting indeed”. He looked for a way to open a hatch on it but couldn’t find one. Amanda meanwhile was looking around the room with her flashlight; the room stretched out high above their heads and ended with what seemed like a very decayed ceiling. The walls were littered with round holes which held some kind of tube inside them, the spots to place and replace the energy cores Amanda assumed. She heard Will struggle and went back to meet up with him, as she walked over to him she stepped over the hand of the large machine and tapped her hand on Will’s shoulder. Will turned around and sighed, “it seems we need to power this thing on in order to get inside its head, maybe there is a panel somewhere?” Amanda looked around and found a floor panel that sat a little weird. She moved it away and underneath was a control unit, but it appeared to be smashed to bits. Amanda looked at it with a frown and nudges Will to take a look. In response he kneeled down next to the opening, he looked up at Amanda and shook his head. “it seems we need to find another way… again.” Will stated clearly annoyed with the current situation. Amanda responded by walking around the pillar to look for something that might help, instead she found a rusted door with the words elevator to control deck above it. Amanda pushed the door open hoping to find said elevator, only to be greeted with an empty and dark elevator shaft. She looked up and could see with her flashlight that the lift was stuck between 2 steel beams that had collapsed underneath it. “good find” Will suddenly exclaimed behind Amanda’s back surprising her as she jumped up. “oh sorry!” Will addressed her with a surprising tone, “I didn’t mean to scare you”. Amanda still shocked looked at Will with an annoyed but understanding look; she pointed up and nodded to Will.

“You think that something might be up there?” Amanda nodded in response. “okay, you look there and I will see what I can do to help you from down here”. Amanda gave him a thumbs up before walking to a ladder on the wall of the shaft and began climbing upwards. Will walked out and moved towards a control panel that stood on a small pedestal in front of the pillar. Meanwhile Amanda had reached the elevator and climbed on top, she looked up and saw that the shaft had collapsed further upwards. She could see a glimpse of a portable surface through the rubble and managed to place a portal on it. She then opened up the roof hatch of the lift and jumped inside, as expected the floor was also portable. She made another portal and jumped through it. She hit the rubble beneath her with a rumble; luckily she could balance herself before she would fall. She then continued to climb up the ladder until she reached the elevator doors which were coincidentally already opened; she climbed inside and was greeted with a sorrow sight. It was a rectangular room with windows looking over the large room she was just in, there was rubble everywhere and on the floor lay several skeletons all dressed in lab coats. Shocked, Amanda stepped back a bit. She kept looking at the skeletons with a feeling of sorrow and sadness. Suddenly Will contacted her again, snapping her out of her temporary trance. “Have you found anything?” Will asked, Amanda snapped twice with her fingers. This was something that she and Will have done for years now; since she cannot speak anymore Amanda relies on making sounds with her hands. Snapping once meaning yes, while twice means no. “Okay… keep looking” Will encouraged to Amanda, “I am sure there is an emergency power switch up there somewhere, it simply must be”. Amanda stepped over the skeleton towards a set of computers and sat down in an office chair. She wiped the dust off a monitor and saw it was still using emergency power; she looked for a command to turn back on the main power manually. After some time she finally found a file titled; power recovery. She opened the file and opened the console to input the commands found in the file. After she pressed enter all the lights in the room turned on and she could hear the noises of distant generators whirring back to life after a very long time.

Will called Amanda again once she pressed it; “good job! Now return to me so we can finish this mission”. In response Amanda placed the portal she used to exit on a nearby wall. But right as she did, the whole room began to shake and tilted slightly. Amanda quickly ran through the portal and arrived back in the lift. She took a moment to breathe until even the lift began to shake and suddenly began to plummet down the shaft. Amanda held onto a railing as she fell. The lift stopped when it hit the floor with a bang, luckily the fall wasn’t as far as Amanda feared and she walked out unharmed. In a crazed panic Will ran towards Amanda flailing his arms around. “Are you okay? Are you hurt? Do you need help?”. Amanda waved him away grinning and shaking her head to let Will know she was okay. “oh thank the maker” Will cried out. “I was afraid you were hurt.” Amanda gave Will a pat on his shoulder and looked him in the eye, she nodded and smiled at him as she walked past him. They both walked over to the pedestal and Will began to press buttons and flick levers. “that’s it” Will exclaimed as he began walking over to the head of the machine. The second that he touched the head the eye of the machine sprung open with a mechanical roaring sound, the head shot up and one of its arms whacked Will aside as the body rose up on its pillar. Amanda tumbled backwards in shock as she watched the robot move in weird unnatural motions. It quickly slid down the pillar again and Will could barely roll away before the hand came slamming down on the floor again. The machine then put his other arm on the floor as it looked around the room when it then spoke to Will and Amanda, “what happened? Who are you two? I demand an answer!”. Amanda covered her ears as the loud pre-rendered voice combined with its movements and shape frightened her to a certain level. Will bravely stepped forward to greet the massive robot, “uhm… good day my fellow. do not worry, we are not here to harm you” Will assured to the machine. “Interesting” it spoke as one of its face-panels fell to the floor, “I do recall the last thing I remember was some people trying to destroy me, how do I know you are not here to finish the job?”.  “I swear you can trust us” Will said while quickly glancing over to Amanda. “I assume you are known as the Artificial, Intelligent, Decontamination, Event, System, or Aides for short?” will asked carefully. The robot moved its head to level with Will as it spoke again, “you are correct… so what is your purpose here?” it squinted its eye as he asked this, a nervous Will responded “well you see, we came here to retrieve something that you ‘borrowed’ for a while, could you please hand it over?”. Amanda stood up and walked over to Will, who was bathed in the red light of Aides’s glowing red eye. “I borrowed something? Alright let me take a look in my files” Aides spoke as he turned around to face away from Will and Amanda.

“See, I told you it would be at least not too difficult” Will confidently said to Amanda. But in return Amanda looked a bit concerned as she heard Aides softly whisper some words to himself, she could hear words like; coordinates, spectrometers and X batteries. Aides turned back around and inspected the pair with a squint in his eye, “I did indeed found some new files, I read some and think they are… interesting”. Amanda noticed that his voice sounded more human with less stuttering and glitching, as if reading those files had restored and improved his cpu a little. “so will you hand over that hard-drive then?” Will asked with a friendly tone. “well I think I will hold onto them for a little bit longer, besides what do you need them for?” his eye narrowed when he said that, bathing both Amanda and Will in a concentrated beam of red light. “well actually we do not need it, we are just here to retrieve it for someone else” will answered. “who?” Aides placed his large three fingered hands on the ground and leaned his head towards Will, his voice echoing in the large room. Amanda took a couple steps back and held tight on her Aspard device as she looked at Will, she saw his hands were shaking a little as he looked at the imposing AI. “Oh yeah I forgot” Will spoke up, “you were not around to see her getting activated”. Aides opened his eye in shock and disbelief, “they continued the project?!”He shouted. Amanda now got scared as did Will. “I thought I did everything to stop them from finishing her!” he growled. Will stepped back as Aides’s body began to rise up a little and clenched his fists. “yes they d-did” Will stuttered, “but that is no reason to get angry, I am sure that if you give us that Hard-drive we shall have a talk with her and maybe”. Will tried to reason with Aides but before he could finish his sentence Aides slammed his hand next to Will.

“oh you two are going nowhere!” Aides barked, his voice getting more articulated and deeper. “because I already know what will happen if I let you both go, you will leave and then She will destroy me like those scientists tried so many years ago!”. Will quickly jumped out of the way before the hand hit him, Amanda rushed towards Will “RUN!” he yelled before grabbing her wrist and running towards the door. Aides reached out his arms to hit them, but before his hand crushed them Amanda placed a portal under them and one further away in the cable car station. Aides screamed in anger as he began hitting the walls, making the whole structure shake. Amanda fell over while Will hastily tried to start up the cable car again. Amanda looked behind her seeing Aides looking right at her, she never felt so scared as she was now. “come on! Get in!” Will yelled from inside the cart, Amanda crawled up to her feet and jumped inside as Will closed the sliding door and ran towards the front and pressed a button that made the cart start moving. Amanda quickly glanced towards Aides for one last time, and what she saw him doing only made her even more worried. He was pulling supports from the walls and punching holes into the floor, Amanda stumbled in Will’s direction who now also saw what Aides was doing.  “I said… you two are going nowhere” they could hear him yell, then without warning a steel support beam came flying from Aides’s room and hit the cable cart. Several windows shattered and both Amanda and Will were swept off their feet and Amanda fell against the door which fell open, she could barely hold herself up by a metal grip on the inside. “Hold on Amanda! I’ll get you” will consoled to her and began to climb towards her. But at the moment Will reached out his hand, a second object was thrown towards the cart and this time it hit the support cable which snapped on impact. Time seemed to slow down for Amanda as she felt herself fall down. The last thing she saw before plummeting into the darkness below was Will reaching out to her as the cart fell down with her. After that there was a loud crashing noise and darkness as she impacted a shallow pool of water.