Program Four
Fourth Entry
Tenacity-Alpha
Gilda's first foray into Test Chambers proved to be as expected. While her armor had the capacity to dispense both propulsion and repulsion gel, that capacity was locked for the initial tests so as to first familiarize her with the more standard test mechanics. Buttons, weighted cubes, turrets, and lasers. This allowed the reuse of old test chambers to test her capabilities, as well as determine how best future chambers should be redesigned to take her abilities - and the capabilities of her armor - into account. Rather than explain each aspect as she went - which was against testing regulations - terminals that Different could interact with were scattered through the chambers as new features were introduced. In hindsight, this may have been a mistake as Gilda showed the expected feline curiosity, and a tenacity and determination rated at the 99th percentile in regards to test subjects. And she had only been on the 98th, and yet had conquered the entire facility three times...though once with my assistance.
Video below...
Gilda paused as she reached the first terminal, glancing between it and the shapes that resembled Different's original body that were scattered around the chamber. Shifting cubes onto buttons and climbing steps had been easy enough to master, and the use of the portal emitter had been rapidly grasped...although the first test chamber that allowed for free portal use had taken an exceptionally long time to clear due to Gilda playing around with the new function, diving in and out of portals as she gained excessive momentum, shrieking in glee the entire way.
Now, however, she was conflicted. Different had become her friend, which led her to believe that these similar shapes could also become friends. Different, however, let out a screech of "Watch out!" every time she tried to approach. Sighing, Gilda decided to go to the terminal, letting Different access it.
Connecting to the terminal, Different began reading out information. "Turrets use their laser sight to lock onto targets - in the case of Test Chambers, the test subject which is you - before firing their machine guns to riddle the target with bullets. Your armor will prevent you from taking physical harm, but will slowly lock up as damage is taken until it hits the threshold. At that point, the Test Chamber will lock down until you return to the last replenish checkpoint...which in this Chamber, is the entrance."
"How do I get past?" Gilda asked curiously.
"Turrets can be bypassed in a number of ways," Different continued. "If something blocks the laser sight from locking onto a target, they will not fire. They only have a forward view with a 45 degree sweep to the left and right. It takes a few moments for turrets to lock onto a target as they enter that view field. They will not lock onto me. If they are knocked over, they will fire randomly for a time before shutting down. They can also be destroyed by a high intensity laser."
"Laser?" Gilda asked curiously. "You have a laser!"
"My laser sight will not be effective," Different informed Gilda as she called up the specs of her own laser pointer vs the high intensity lasers used in the test chambers. "It might confuse their laser sight if I aim directly into their own," she added doubtfully, "but even if it worked, it would only work on one at a time, assuming it didn't trigger an auto-fire."
Gilda glanced between the two design schematics on the screen. "...Different? How strong is your power core?"
"Triple redundant relative to power usage!" Different responded proudly.
"Do you trust me?" Gilda asked softly.
"Absolutely!"
"Then come here," Gilda instructed, holding out her talon.
Different disconnected from the Terminal, floated over to Gilda's talon, and settled in.
"This...might hurt," Gilda offered before digging her talons into Different's optic and jerking her wrist. She then closed her ears to Different's screech of pain as she popped the optic open, cut out part of the Terminal's curved glass display, and inserted it into the focus apparatus of the optic that let Different zoom in and out. She then closed it up and pushed the optic back into Different's body, twisting until it clicked back into place and the shrieking stopped. "...you okay?" she asked nervously.
"...please don't do that again," Different offered softly.
"I won't," Gilda promised. "If this didn't work, I'd need better tools to make it work."
"What is it?" Different asked curiously.
"Turn on your pointer," Gilda instructed.
Different floated into the air, shining the laser pointer on the opposite wall.
Gilda clenched her beak as she resisted the urge to chase the red dot. "Up the power," she instructed.
"...working..." Different chimed. After a time, the dot glowed brighter, and a visible beam stretched between Different's optic and the dot.
Gilda sighed as the urge to chase dropped. "Now, shift your zoom back and forth slowly."
Different's optic buzzed as she altered her zoom, the beam widening and narrowing in response until smoke began to rise from the dot at the end of the beam. Different shut the beam off in surprise. "How?"
Gilda grinned widely. "Now you have a laser weapon!" she crowed triumphantly. She turned to the cameras, a huge grin on her face. "Did I do good, Mama?" she called out hopefully.
Glados didn't respond right away. Finally, she spoke up. "Clever use of available resources. You've earned five science points, and two radd points. With two 'd's."
Gilda thrust her clenched talon into the air eagerly as she sent Different to destroy the Turrets with her new laser weapon, clearing the path so they could walk through to the end of the test chamber.
Different had registered the modifications Gilda had made, and they were downloaded into the mainframe. Research on how to apply the modifications to the turrets was underway before their elevator ride had ended, and was ready for implementation in the next set of test chambers before they'd completed the next test. While altering the testing environment to that extent is normally frowned upon, I decided to let Gilda continue to experiment, finding ways to improve the tests from her works.
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Damn you Tatsurou! Why must you kill my sleep schedule with your 2 a.m. updates of your awesome stories!
Thanks for this. It's been a slow day at work today.
Well that was certainly a Different way to clear those tests.
Don't know what yu expected.
Yeah, I remember playing a Flash version of Portal and frequently doing that whenever possible.
You gonna tinker?
A laser weapon. NICE!
7861579 AGDQ is going on now, if your sleep schedule isn't already dead from that you're doing it wrong
Like mother like daughter.
7861688 This is where I shock you by asking: What's ACGQ, or whatever that acronym was?
Prediction: After the chapters where Gilda plays cat-and-mouse with Chell, they'll have a final showdown, but when they're in the final phase, both tired and out of ammo, the Combine will crash the party (part of the reason Chell came back?) and after a chase, Chell shoves Gilda into a pipe or something and seals it, saving her life, then keeps running. Cliffy ending where Chell is cornered. Next chapter, tense standoff, Combine soldiers raise their rifles- *woobwoobwoobwoobwoob-CRACK!* and one of them is headshot by a urinal. The facility is being rapidly overrun, despite heavy casualties, but the cavalry has arrived~ Of course, once GLaDOS sees the Gravity Gun, Gilda gets even more dangerous.
I'd be amused, anyway.
When did Gilda get those kind of technical skills?
When, why, and how did GLaDOS teach her advanced photo-electrical engineering (or whatever you would call jury-rigging a high-power laser out of a targeting sight and what amounts to a very big battery)?
Wondering what she'll do when she gets to the gels...
7861579
Personally I enjoy waking up in the morning of release and seeing the new chapters. The old way he was sometimes a day behind, I just worry about Tatsurou's current sleep patterns as he is either staying up late or getting up that early.
Yeah, I kind of have to join in with the 'give a lot more detail about where Gilda got Scotty-Skills, given her current age mental/physical' crowd.
1.) She learned the ins and outs of buttons, weighted cubes, and turrets. aka She pressed a button and tossed a cube at some turrets.
2.) Different is even more different! ...until the next test. Different is Guilty Spark.
7861710
7861904 https://gamesdonequick.com/
Bunch of speedrunners beating hundreds of games breaking them in insane ways. For a week straight. Donations go to charity and happens twice a year (AGDQ now, SGDQ in the Summer.) Have fun.
7861688 Well there goes any pretense of me sleeping for a LONG time.
7862459 Ah, I did actually now about them, just didn't connect the dots. I'm not that interested in speed running myself, but my brother watches them a lot.
7861754
7861775
7862047
The terminal displayed the complete technical schematics of both Different and the lasers used in testing side by side. Gilda noticed that the one part Different was missing from the equation was power and a focusing lens. Once she learned Different had more than enough power (but just wasn't using it), she attempted to jury-rig the missing lens.
She was just lucky it worked.
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7862798
Yeah, lucky GLaDOS decided to make the pointer system (among other things) able to work at temperatures that would apparently have destroyed Different pre-upgrade.
But as for Gilda, she's what, six? Ten? Seriously, how old even is she right now? The only thing we have to go on so far is, "can form complete sentences." And apparently, "can figure out how to turn laser pointers into laser weapons just by looking at the schematics," but considering some of your other stories that doesn't mean as much as it probably should (I'm pretty sure with Twilight, the latter came before the former).
7862964
Thing is, Different - as the Navi - was upgraded by Glados to be as indestructible as Aperture tech could make her so she didn't have to try and rebuild her if she broke. So it's more Gilda had materials to work with that could already survive what she was trying to do, and the schematics on the terminal showed that.
In essence, you're making a fuss over the following:
"I cannot do this, I do not have this piece."
"Can I make this piece?"
"Maybe?"
"I make this piece!"
"...hey, it works!"
7863014
As, yes that would explain her eye not melting out of her metallic head. Built Aperture Tough indeed.
Also, I'm sorry if my argument was misconstrued; as an author, I'm sure you can understand how hard it can be to translate base thought into words. In my mind, the was issue closer to this:
"I cannot do this."
"This blocky-squiggly picture supposedly shows something that does this."
"How do these lines and shapes translate into that thing?"
"How does that thing even do what I want to do?"
"Magic? I don't know, I'm not a scientician!"
The point being schematics are not very useful unless you already know roughly what you're looking at and how it works, including all of the physics behind it. If she has that kind of expertise at her age (I feel like twelve is high-balling it for this early in the story) she'd be better suited for work as one of the lab techs GLaDOS killed way back when (you know, the ones who developed all of the original Aperture equipment, including the Portal Gun) than running a glorified obstacle course. At which point it hardly feels like we're even talking about the same Gilda.
7863210
Except the technical schematics that Apperture uses are 3D images that expand and contract showing not only how all the pieces fit together, but also how to put them together.
Given all the parts and one of those animated schematics, any child could assemble one of these machines as long as they had the skill to color inside the lines. The only 'clever' part on Gilda's part was cutting the lens out of the Terminal screen's curved glass screen in the right place to get the right focus curve, and that's more a grasp of angles that any flying hunter would have.
7863375 It's true just look up any of the Portal 2 Apeture Science product commercials. (Launch teasers For Portal 2)
7863210
This is anexample on nature nurture in this you have nurture. What do you think they would teach gilda and how do you think she learned. Glados takes somthing apart and "fixes it". Gilda breaks it and its put back together again and broken again. And then the nature part avian/feline predator agresive and mean but curious
7861754
When she became the protagonist of one of Tatsurou's PWNY stories. They're pretty much all overpowered.
Well, Gilda is much smarter than I gave her credit for, I figured it would be a few years before she learned enough to modify machines.
7863375
Right, well, I guess all I can do is wait and see how it goes. I'll let you know how accurate my current hunch turns out.
*Shoots portal on floor and on celing and jumps in*
Imagine a co-op that combines the portal gun and the gel gun that would be so fun.
7864854 *puts 10 in thick titanium board across bottom portal*
7867585 * puts broken glass and rusty nails on the board*
7867585
*it glitches into the floor and I keep falling*
7868288 *Ender throws a grenade in the portal*
7869243 (Slams a spare DOS chassis through the wall and into both subjects)
7909734 (enters chamber, gets visual contact with situation, slowly retreats.)
7945704 *Shoots portal on ceiling above acid pit, shoots other portal on the other portal on the floor*
7863758
In a good way
8022592
(walks in with a fold-able chair, watches the situation with an entertained smile.)
8680404
*steps in, sees the chaos going on and yells*
“WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING HERE??!?”
8957541
I do not know but now i need therapy
I am now scared for Equestria when Gilda returns
9689592
You and me both friend
whelp Equestria is doomed