//------------------------------// // Program Seven // Story: My Little Killing Machine // by Tatsurou //------------------------------// Seventh Entry Education I've never had much respect for classroom settings. All they're good for is indoctrination, in one form or another. Aperture Science has always embraced the concept of freedom of scientific expression...and hazmat suits. As such, I had a very simple way of educating Gilda as far as the various technology she needed to know about to handle everything Test chambers could throw at her. I let her build her own. Video below... "And this is the aerial faith plate," Glados explained as Gilda looked over the schematics. "As you can see, it is calibrated for a standard weight, the same weight that weighted cubes are matched to. It is approximately the weight of a human test subject." "Why does it only launch one way?" Gilda asked curiously. "It has to do with the calibration of the launching apparatus," Glados explained. "Current designs are unidirectional, though the exterior can disguise which direction." "What if it was on a rotating platform?" Gilda asked curiously. Glados calculated that for a time. "Rotating platforms...an interesting idea. Let's see..." After a time, schematics raced across the screen as the fabricators across the room began assembly. Before long, a circular platform was braced inside a square platform, the circle endlessly rotating. "It seems to function," Glados observed calmly. "However, we need to test someone on it..." "Pea-brain! Ass-phalt!" Gilda barked out. Grumbling over the - now official - change in designation, the two Cooperative Testing robots made their way onto the rotating platform. Their grumbles soon faded as they started enjoying it, playing on it like a carousel. "It seems to handle weight fine-" Glados began. "Variable speed?" Gilda asked in surprise as she looked over the controls. "Let's crank it up!" She set the speed to maximum. As the platform spun rapidly, Pea-brain and Ass-phalt let out screams as they went round and round like mad before being flung off the platform and into opposite walls. "Huh, when was the last time you dweebs upgraded your internal gyroscopes?" Gilda asked scathingly. Glados chuckled indulgently. "Very nice," she praised. "You're mastering the psychological aspect of testing quite effectively." "Oh! Can we conceal the faith plates under the rotating platform so they won't know where the plate is until they step on it and get flung like crazy?" Gilda asked eagerly. "I like how you think," Glados purred as schematics flew across the screen and the fabricators went into overtime. Ass-phalt groaned, covering its optic with one hand. Pea-brain let out an excited series of squeaks and clicks, interested in what was going to happen. This was the pattern as we went over each aspect of the testing environment. I would explain how each device functioned, Gilda would ask a question about how it worked - specifically, asking why it didn't work some other way - and I would initiate a manufacture of the variation her question suggested. Some were as entertaining as the one previously demonstrated. Some were rather silly. Some were...nostalgic. But one was especially interesting. Two videos below... "Why don't the turrets have bombs?" Gilda asked curiously. "Bombs?" Glados coached, encouraging further explanation. "Well, the rocket turrets shoot rockets," Gilda explained. "And the gun turrets shoot guns. But there are also bombs that get piped here and there...so why aren't there turrets that throw bombs?" "The bombs as they are would not fit in any reasonable supply in turrets," Glados explained firmly. "Beyond that, part of turret design is for them to appear innocuous...right up until they kill you. 'You', in this case, being the unnamed test subject going through the test, or unauthorized invader." "Then make the bombs smaller!" Gilda insisted. "I mean, if the Handheld Portal Device can be shrunk to the Portal Emitter, why can't the explosive force of the bombs be compacted in something smaller? Something you can make look innocuous?" "And what would you suggest?" Glados inquired, her tone amused. While compressing the bombs would be difficult, accepting a smaller explosive yield would solve the problem readily enough. Gilda thought back to picture books from earlier lessons in reading and writing. "How about lemons?" she suggested. "Innocuous and incongruous!" Glados was silent for a time. "...burn their house down...with combustible lemons..." "Yeah, Mama!" Gilda crowed happily. "Now you're getting it!" As Gilda turned back to the schematics, Glados whirred her optic idly. So very much a Johnson... she thought to herself. "Mom?" Gilda asked curiously as she went over the designs for the new 'bomb turrets', which would lock on like the gun turrets and then start throwing 'lemon bombs' until the target was destroyed or exited lock-on range. "How come the turrets don't move?" "Test chambers are supposed to be a puzzle," Glados explained calmly. "Find your way past all the obstacles and open the door. Obstacles are stationary so they can be planned around." "Well, why not have hunt zones and preset hunt paths?" Gilda pointed out, drawing a quick sketch with the terminal's stylus. She sectioned off part of the virtual test chamber with emancipation grids, then drew a curving loop around the sectioned off area, marking arrows to show the direction of hunt. "Flying turrets follow that path until one locks onto the test subject, and then they all converge, returning to the hunt path if the subject leaves the hunting ground." "...flying turrets?" Glados inquired curiously. "Yeah, that's something else I'd been poking at," Gilda explained as she called up some other files. "I saw some old files about giving cores Anti-Grav so they could float around, instead of having to ride rails or be carried. At first I couldn't figure out how to make it work...but then I looked at those files on my wings and jammed data together until the Anti-Grav files said 'Condition Green'. That means it works, right?" Glados quickly called up the discarded Anti-Grav files and examined the alterations Gilda had made. The theory seemed sound...but the only way for that to be tested was to...test it. Different used a modified form of the Anti-Grav files, but she was much smaller than a standard core, or even a small turret. Beyond that, she had really big, thin dragonfly-based wings for hovering to back it up. "Initiating fabricator..." Before long, a blank core had been constructed...and it hovered there, three feet above the floor. "Radical!" Gilda crowed happily. "Very impressive," Glados purred softly. "Now we can build turrets that would need to be taken out by launching something into them even when stationary. Now, you were saying about hunter turrets?" "Oh, I like that name!" Gilda cackled eagerly, rubbing her talons together with glee.