neurotoxined | 005. [Video / Re-Intro]

[VIDEO]

You know, there comes a point where you stop being surprised and you start accepting things as an inevitability. Gravity is always going to work. Eating paint is always going to be a bad idea. There's always going to be some mute lunatic running around and screwing things up.

Things like that.

[And a good morning to you too, GLaDOS; nice to see you're in...uh, good spirits, as always.

Of course, it's a bit difficult to tell where she is, given the angle of the video; it's definitely straight-on, as far as her face goes, but the long white hair she has tied back tightly, away from her face, seems to have gravity acting on it in a...weirdly upward direction. Either physics has temporarily shut itself off, or she's hanging off of something.

Spoilers: it's the latter. More specifically, her bed; she's got herself draped sideways over it with her legs braced against the wall, her head hanging down toward the ground.

It's a comfortable position, okay.]

Apparently I should add "not having five minutes' peace" to that list. Because I know for a fact that I didn't before being brought back here.

But then, the mute lunatic has been dealt with. And there are ways to make gravity less of a big deal than it thinks it is. And that's what science is about, isn't it? We're told that we can't do one thing, and we see the lack of point in moping about it.

So we get mad.

[Contrary to her words, however, she's smiling again; it's not a nice expression, closer to baring teeth than anything, but she's - ...yeahno, let's be honest with ourselves, she's not even trying...]

But while we're all beating the odds here, I'd still recommend against eating paint unless you've been instructed to by the proper personnel - after all, there's no point in being dumb about it.

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[Who needs tone anyway. GLaDOS' tends to be...a bit on the dry side, but at least she's not hostile; she doesn't seem too off-put by the question, anyway.]

I don't know if it can be considered very long. But this is my third time back.

That's more than anyone I've met before.

I guess a welcome back's in order. I'm Lee.

What an honor.

[It's sarcastic, yes, but at least it's not biting.]

And you can call me Caroline.

[That gets a wry smile out of him.]

It's a pleasure, Caroline. I take it you were in the middle of something when you got dragged here?

I'm almost always busy - I work in a very involved field. Science and innovations.

But we've had a bit of an...incident...lately. Made a mess of the labs. And now I'm back here, and not there to deal with it. Again.

Science and innovation, huh? I gotta respect that. Sounds like demanding work.

On the bright side, when you go back again things won't have gotten any worse.

[...okay, that gets a bit of a noise out of her. Not quite laughing, but it's close, and it seems to surprise her a bit.]

That's not how I would have thought to consider it, but you know what? I'll take it.

[Sure, he'll take it too.]

It's better than nothing, right?

So what kind of field of science are you in?

Experimental physics research. It's impressive, how much people will want to bend the laws of nature to their whims; we let them do it, to some extent.

And what is it that you...do, exactly?

I'm a history professor. Taught for six years at University of Georgia. Not quite as glamorous as experimental physics, but, well. Those who don't know the past are doomed to repeat it.

Well. They're doomed to repeat it until they repeat it so often that it becomes a moot point. There are only so many disasters that can be undone and all.